Alien Penetration

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  The ceiling above her looked like metal of some kind. Her brain, searching for a match to what her eyes perceived, connected with the thought that it looked like she imagined the inside of a tank would look. She followed the plating in an arc that brought a huge room into focus—beds, women.

  Women who looked as confused as she was.

  Her head pounded when she sat up and she put her hand to it to counter the throbbing pressure even as her mind began to scramble for explanations, memories.

  The last thing she remembered was closing her eyes to rest on the table in the clinic, she realized. How could she be here? Where was here?

  As if the same thoughts were running through the minds of the other women, she heard several of them voicing similar questions. Fear threaded their voices. It sent the blood rushing through her veins a little faster.

  A chime sounded. Instantly quieting, Simone looked around with everyone else, seeking the source, trying to understand what it might mean. A robed man, she discovered, had entered the room. He strode to a raised platform and climbed the steps.

  When he’d reached a podium, he lifted his head and scanned the room. He lifted his hands. “Quiet, if you please.”

  The women who’d been talking agitatedly fell silent.

  “I am Akule. I am a drak of Macedon of the worker class and it is my duty to help you to understand our customs so that you will be able to adjust to your new status and hopefully avoid punishment for ignorance of our laws.”

  He spoke with a strange accent—spoke English, Simone thought—but he might as well have been speaking gibberish. Absolutely nothing he said made sense.

  “What’s a drak?”

  “Macedon?”

  “What the fuck do you mean ‘our new status’?”

  “Quiet! You are never to speak to a male, any male, unless you are given permission to speak!”

  “Maybe you didn’t notice, dick-wad, but there’s only one of you and there’s a hell of a lot of us!”

  The speaker—Akule—pinpointed the woman who’d threatened him with a hard look. As Simone watched, two men appeared—just appeared—out of thin air. They weren’t dressed in robes as he was. They were wearing something like a jumpsuit. The moment they became solid, they looked at Akule. Akule pointed out the woman and they plowed their way through the other women. Each grasped her by one arm. They hauled her from the bed and marched back to the position where they’d appeared. And then all three disappeared.

  There was a pregnant moment of silence, a collective gasp, and then bedlam ensued. Women leapt from the beds and began running in every direction, screaming their heads off. Simone was too stunned to react at all until the stampeding herd was almost upon her. She leapt up on her bunk then, glanced around wildly for an escape route, and leapt to the next bed, and the bed after that, bounding away from the maddened pack. There was no way to completely escape them, she discovered. As soon as she ran out of beds to leap from and landed on the floor, she was pelted by the women running past her. She managed to make it to the wall without too much damage, however.

  Plastered against it, she watched the other women as they frantically searched for an exit, pounding on the panels with their fists when they didn’t find a door.

  A hissing sound brought her focus from the women to the ceiling. To her horror, she saw a fine mist forming a cloud just above their heads, slowly descending and, as it did, the women rushing around slowed, began to stumble and wobble on their feet. Too terrified to actually assimilate what was happening, Simone dropped to her knees and then to her stomach, trying to evade the encroaching mist. She discovered it was impossible, though. She felt it settle against her skin like cold fingers. She coughed as she inhaled it and then she lost consciousness.

  Fear was the first emotion that swept through Simone when she rose toward consciousness, a nebulous uneasiness that failed to fully connect in her mind at first. Her eyes popped wide open the moment memory rose to the forefront, however.

  She found herself staring up at the same ceiling she remembered when she’d woken before and a sense of déjà vu and disorientation swept over her. She’d been lying on the floor face down when she lost consciousness and yet she was in the bed.

  And choking.

  She lifted a hand to her throat and discovered the tightness there wasn’t internal damage from the choking mist. Her hand settled on a metal collar. Panic erupted instantaneously. She’d never been able to bear having anything close around her neck and the snug fit of the collar made her feel as if she was suffocating. She clawed at it, trying to tear it off, whimpering when she discovered she couldn’t.

  She was so focused on struggling with the collar she didn’t notice the men approaching her until she felt two hands settle on her arms. Her panic shifted then from the collar to the more immediate threat. She threw her weight backwards as they yanked at her. It didn’t loosen their grips as she’d hoped, but it gave her the leverage to swing her hips and legs upward. She managed to catch both men full in the face—one with her foot, the other with her shin bone. Pain shot through both legs, but the men fell backward, losing their grip on her.

  She drew her knees to her chest on the rebound from the kick. The moment her feet touched the mattress, she rolled from the bunk, shot to her feet, and took off running, weaving between the beds as she heard them gaining on her.

  “Stop! Now!”

  The bellowed order didn’t come from behind her. Simone’s head jerked instinctively toward the sound and she discovered a man had appeared in front of her.

  Screaming, she veered away, too mindless to think, too frightened to consider there was no way to escape. Someone caught her, slamming into her and manacling their arms around her. She screamed again. Lifting her foot and slamming it backwards, she caught his shin. He grunted in pain. His grip on her slackened, but even though she threw her weight against his hold, he managed to prevent her from slipping through his arms.

  “Simone!”

  She jerked at the sound of her name, whipping her head around to stare at the man who’d spoken it. She didn’t immediately recognize the man striding toward her, but there was something vaguely familiar about his build, the way he walked …. The hard, angular face.

  She sucked in a sharp breath when she finally lifted her gaze to his eyes.

  They weren’t human and neither were the pointed ears she could see protruding through his black, black hair.

  She struggled to suck in a breath, felt the choking hold of the collar around her neck and felt herself falling into a deep, dark hole. Her entire body felt as if it was suddenly too heavy for her to hold herself up. She felt her knees buckle.

  “I have her, Ean.”

  It was the same deep voice she’d heard call her name, but she didn’t understand anything he’d said. She felt the arms holding her loosen, felt hands pulling at her and then a wave of dizziness as she was lifted up. The collar pinched as her head fell back limply. It took a great effort to lift her hand to it. “Can’t breathe,” she whispered.

  A finger dug beneath the collar.

  “You think it’s too tight?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the damned collar! I tested it myself. It’s just that she isn’t used to the weight,” Camryn said grimly. He pulled her hand away when he’d settled her on her bunk again. “You have to wear it. You will grow accustomed to it.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  She turned onto her side away from him, curling into a tight ball. The darkness that had descended on her began to recede, though, and she wished it back. She focused, trying to slip away from awareness, trying to escape the thing around her neck in that way if she couldn’t escape it any other way. It was difficult to swallow, however, and every effort to swallow past the collar only increased her awareness of it and made it that much harder to escape. Trying to close her mind to the weight around her throat when she discovered she couldn’t will herself into unconsciousness, she focused instead on tr
ying to fight the panic.

  A shiver went through her as her search to find something else to think about settled on the image of the man she could still feel crouched beside her bunk. Not a man, she reminded herself, not human. He couldn’t be human, not with eyes like those—eyes as black as obsidian. Even the shape of his eyes wasn’t entirely human, not like any human eyes she’d ever seen, at any rate—almond shaped, not Asian and certainly not Native American—no more than the ears were. They weren’t freakishly different, but they were different.

  And yet, it was almost more as if they were a different race than a different species. It was hard to grasp that they could look so different and so similar at the same time.

  She wondered, now, why it hadn’t occurred to her before that he wasn’t ‘quite’ any race familiar to her—nothing about his face—but she knew her mind had simply tried to slip him into an identification known to her. Just like everyone else had.

  Everybody in the bar had noticed them. Everybody had stared at them and not one of them had realized they were staring at beings that weren’t human.

  Maybe the men had sensed it? Maybe that accounted, at least in part, for some of the hostility she’d sensed from them?

  She hadn’t sensed it, though. None of the women had. She had looked at them and everything inside of her had felt want, desire.

  She felt a little nauseated at the thought.

  When she finally opened her eyes, she discovered that the other man, the one she’d kicked, had crouched down on the other side of the bed, facing her. The expression on his face lightened. “Are you hurt?”

  She swallowed convulsively, but she couldn’t find her voice. She couldn’t seem to drag her gaze from his. A shiver raked its way down her spine and she twisted her head to see if the other man was still behind her.

  He straightened to his full height as she did, staring down at her for a moment before his gaze shifted to the man still crouched beside her bunk. He tilted his head in a silent command. She glanced back in time to see him straighten and the two of them strode away. When they’d reached a spot near the podium, both of them vanished.

  “You ok?”

  Simone transferred her attention to the woman on the next bunk who’d spoken to her in a shaky whisper. “I don’t think so,” she said finally.

  Chapter Four

  “God! What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette!” Simone muttered, rocking slightly on her bunk where she sat, folded in upon herself.

  “You couldn’t smoke in here anyway!”

  “It would give all of us cancer!”

  The comments, spoken from either side of her when Simone had been muttering to herself, drew both her attention from her misery and her wrath. “Tell me, have either of you ever had an opinion of your own?” she growled.

  “It’s true! You hear it all the time!” the blond on her right snapped.

  Simone rolled her eyes. “Duh! That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You don’t have an opinion of your own! You never question anything. You always accept whatever’s beat into your brain without question, without investigating it yourself!”

  “Nut job,” the blond muttered under her breath. “Here goes another conspiracy theory!”

  “Oh yeah?” Simone snapped. “Well, just how good is your memory? Because I’m wondering if you remember when they were pounding it into everybody that they could only have sex, if they had herpes, when they were free of outbreak? And now, when one out every five people have fucking herpes, they’ve completely reversed that. It doesn’t make you just a little fucking suspicious that they might be telling us shit when they don’t know what they’re talking about? That they might tell us what they think will be best for them and the hell with us? That they might use the media to fucking experiment with us?”

  Neither woman said anything for several moments, obviously trying to remember.

  Finally, the brown haired woman on her left spoke. “You think cigarettes aren’t bad for you?” she asked in a neutral voice.

  “Of course they are!” Simone snapped. “The question is, is it any worse than anything else? It doesn’t strike you as odd that the number of smokers has dropped steadily and cancer is still on the rise? Living is bad for you! The air, the dirt, the water, the food—everything inside our homes, everything in the places where we work and play—if there’s one damned thing that hasn’t been poisoned by the people that employ us I’d love to know what it is! If you don’t contribute in any way, shape, or form to the pollution that’s really causing everybody to get cancer, you might have the right to judge me. Otherwise, shut the fuck up!”

  “Who the hell is they?”

  “Anybody who has something to gain. Try using your brain for a change for something besides admiring yourself in the mirror!” Getting up, she stalked off with no particular destination in mind, but rather a need to work off some of her nervous energy.

  The craving for nicotine was still driving her up the wall but the lack of anything to focus on to steady her nerves was almost as bad. She didn’t have any fingernails left to bite.

  She’d been seriously contemplating starting on her toenails.

  It occurred to her, if she could believe anything she’d heard, that it couldn’t have been very long since she’d been taken if she still had enough nicotine in her system to feel like killing something. The bitch was right—and stupid anyway! She was nuts at the moment, which should’ve been a warning to steer clear. Baiting somebody on the edge was just asking for trouble.

  The thought brought to mind the woman who’d heckled the drak, giving her something to do, however useless it might be. She began asking the women she passed if they knew the woman or had any idea what had happened to her. She’d almost worked her way all the way through the prison when she finally hit pay dirt.

  “Who wants to know?”

  Simone turned to look at the woman who’d spoken. She didn’t have a very clear memory of the woman—just the incident itself—but the woman who’d spoken seemed vaguely familiar. “Was it you?”

  “Why?”

  Hostility! Simone sucked her lower lip, wondering whether to pursue her curiosity or retreat. “I just wondered if you were ok.”

  The woman looked her over. Her expression wasn’t friendly. “So you can know whether you’ll be alright or not? Don’t bother to express concern. I know you don’t give a shit! You’re just glad it wasn’t you and curious to know what’ll happen if you step out of line.”

  Simone studied her uncomfortably. “There’s something wrong with that?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry. They’ll tell you,” she responded sarcastically, but her hostility seemed to wane. “I’m Liz Carmichael. Used to be from New Jersey, and you are?”

  The comment startled Simone. “New Jersey?” she echoed.

  “Yeah, they shopped there, too.”

  Simone moved closer, holding out her hand. “I’m Simone Beauchamp,” she said, giving it the French pronunciation ‘booshay’.

  Liz shook her hand. “Pretty. French?”

  “Descent—and Indian—whoops! Native American! Cherokee, I think—and a little of this and that. I’m from Georgia.”

  “It makes you wonder if they just hit the states or collected breeders from all over.

  Guess they could have done that anyway shopping in the states. You talked to anybody else?”

  Simone sighed. “Just the two bitches sitting on the bunks beside mine and lecturing me on the evils of smoking.”

  “You got one?” Liz asked hopefully.

  Simone huffed. “No, damn it!”

  Liz looked disappointed. “Why don’t you sit down so I don’t have to crane my neck?”

  Simone settled at the foot of the bed. “You smoke, too?”

  “Used to. I quit. I wouldn’t mind taking it up again. Actually, I wouldn’t mind getting bombed on something, but I don’t suppose we’re going to get the chance.”

  “What do you mean they collected breeders?
” the woman on the next bunk asked uneasily.

  Liz and Simone both turned to look at her. “I was informed that that’s what our status is. That’s what these fucking chokers are for—to identify us as breeders.”

  Simone wished she hadn’t mentioned the damned collar! She’d almost gotten the hang of pretending it wasn’t there.

  “Define breeder!” another woman demanded. “You aren’t saying they brought us here for fuck buddies?”

  “That was my guess,” Liz said dryly. “You’ll no doubt be relieved to know you aren’t worthy of receiving the dick—being human. No, when they said breeder, they meant breeder! You are now, officially, a cow for the draks of Macedon. Your job, whether you want it or not, is to breed!”

  Simone and both of the other women gaped at her blankly.

  “As in, they impregnated us to produce their off-spring and when we spit these out, they’ll ‘re-seed’ so we can do it for the next batch.”

  Horror slowly clawed its way up through Simone’s shock. No fucking wonder Liz was so subdued!

  “You mean to say they already did it?” one of the other women demanded, her voice vibrating with hysteria.

  “You’re saying they’re going to keep us pregnant?” the other woman asked in horrified disbelief.

  “You can’t be serious!” Simone exclaimed.

  Instead of commenting, Liz retreated into her own thoughts.

  “Did they do it already?” the first woman demanded, leaning over to clutch Liz’s arm.

  Liz shoved her off. “Yes! That’s what they told me, anyway. I’ve got five of Macedon’s finest!”

  Simone felt a panic attack coming on. She focused on her breathing to keep from hyperventilating—not that she would’ve minded passing out, but she was afraid of what might happen if she displayed signs of hysteria. Get a grip, she chanted to herself!

  The first woman began blubbering. “It was supposed to be my husband’s baby!