Page 5 of Infala: The Alien's Bond
“Okay, so this is real. I’ve been kidnapped by aliens.”
“We like to say abducted,” Maureen noted. “Kidnapping makes it sound like they want a ransom, and that’s not what the Raxxians are about.”
Darla nodded, numb from the rude awakening. “Fine.Abducted. We’ve been abducted by aliens and taken to their planet. Has anyone seen the outside?”
A murmur rippled through the others.
Maureen put a hand on her shoulder and looked at her with a sympathetic gaze. “Oh, honey, don’t you feel that? The little vibration in the floor?”
Darla was wearing shoes, and not her going out heels, but a pair of comfy trainers. “What vibration?” she asked, bending down and putting her hand on the smooth metal.
There it was. Faint but consistent. A low thrum that couldn’t be heard but was most certainly felt. She felt a new surge of adrenaline flood her system.
Maureen saw her look of stunned realization and nodded. “That’s right. We’re on their ship, and no one knows where they’re taking us.”
CHAPTERTHREE
Darla had to give herself a little credit. She may have nearly passed out from the shock, but at least she hadn’t thrown up, though she’d felt her stomach do more than one flip-flop when the reality of her situation sank in. Her ass had become well acquainted with the floor in a hurry, though, as she slumped down in a heap.
I’m in a goddamn alien spaceship. And I may never see home again.
It was a lot to take in even in the best of circumstances. And these? These were far from the best. In fact, it downright sucked.
What wastrulycrazy was that her unbelievable situation was almost expected in a strange way. Darla’s mother had long claimed to have been abducted by aliens in her teens, taken and experimented on before being returned to Earth.
Her mom had said the aliens had been intrigued with her human reproductive system, injecting her with strange fluids and probing her at length for days or weeks, she wasn’t really sure. She said that she had felt her body changing from what they did to her, though she couldn’t put a finger on how.
Eventually, the aliens grew weary of their experiments and decided to be rid of her, and that was the end of it. By the time she was returned home—with a story no one believed—she had felt certain she would be unable to have children. But then, just a few years later, and quite unexpectedly, along came Darla.
And now here she was, in space, just like her mom.
“How long?” Darla managed to ask.
Maureen lowered herself down next to her. “You? You’ve been here for about eighteen hours or so. It’s hard to tell for sure, but that’s about how long whatever they do to us seems to last on average. It’s a guesstimate, of course. No one wears a watch these days, so we can’t say for sure. And on top of that, the lights are almost always on.”
“Then how do you sleep?”
Maureen shrugged. “We sleep when we’re tired. Hugo says it’s called a multi-phasic sleep schedule. Apparently, it’s common in Spain. Siestas and all of that, you don’t just sleep for one long time at night. Took some getting used to at first, but I guess it’s all about adaptation at this point.”
“But how do you track time? Days, weeks?”
“We don’t, really. All of us who had phones still on us, well, their batteries died a while ago. No signal, you know? If we’d been smart, we’d have switched one off to save some juice, but we’re in space, so it really doesn’t matter anymore. Not to mention, the roaming charges would be brutal.”
Darla took in the new information, along with several deep, calming breaths. Freaking out wasn’t going to make the situation any better. And if she wanted to survive this mess she needed all the intel she could get.
She looked around, taking in their surroundings with a more detail-oriented eye. Her initial impression had been correct. There were no rivets holding panels in place. In fact, aside from the two doors mounted on opposite walls from each other, there were almost no seams visible in the entire compartment.
Almost.
There were a few faint lines she could make out, but to what end? It wasn’t like she was going to pull a magic crowbar out of her ass and make a break for it. No, this was an academic exercise. Something to keep her mind from cracking.
“So,” she said, looking over the rather spartan interior of the craft, “this is a spaceship. Not exactly what I thought it would be like.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Maybe walls of flickering lights. Or a window showing the galaxy.”
“Fat chance, that. We’re lucky for the few amenities we have. Speaking of which, are you hungry? Once the grogginess wears off, people are usually pretty famished.”
