Kaitlyn O'Connor (2 page)

“She didn
‟
t mean we were all standing around just waiting to get scooped up by the fucking aliens, moron!” another woman growled angrily.

“Who
‟
s the moron?” another woman said loudly. “This isn
‟
t a fucking alien ship! I
‟
m telling you, we
‟
ve been taken by sex slavers!”

“That had a…a thing like the one that zapped us?”

“And tell us how we got in a ship, as long as you
‟
re at it! There
‟
s no such thing as little green men that fly around in UFOs!”

Loren wasn
‟
t about to argue with them on that—actually, any part of it. “You saw an alien?”

“Nobody saw a damned thing—except the light!” another woman snapped. “I
‟
d left the club and was heading to my car and then this light surrounds me and the next thing I know I
‟
m lying on the floor and then that horrible thing came in and zapped me and I woke up here! It was like that for everybody!”

A horrible suspicion arose in Loren
‟
s mind. She tried her best to dismiss it, but it wouldn
‟
t be silenced.

They
‟
d thought of another way to make sure she didn
‟
t tell their dirty little secrets!

And she
‟
d walked right in to the trap like a complete idiot!

“What do they want with us?” another woman wailed.

Loren covered her face with her hands, struggling with fear, anger, and humiliation that she
‟
d walked into their trap like a…child that had no sense of self-preservation. How could she have anticipated that her own government would do something like this to her, though?

Well, people that worked for the government.

Someone settled beside her and slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “We
‟
re going to be alright.”

Loren lowered her hands and discovered it was the black woman who
‟
d first spoken to her.

“I…don
‟
t think so.”

7

The woman
‟
s chin wobbled. “We
‟
re alive, aren
‟
t we? If they
‟
d meant anything…awful, we wouldn
‟
t be alive.”

“Well! If you don
‟
t think it
‟
s awful to be sold into the sex slavery market…!” one of the other women snapped angrily.

“I…uh…I actually think it
‟
s aliens,” Loren said uncomfortably.

“This isn
‟
t a ship,” the black woman said. “We
‟
d feel movement, right? We
‟
d feel the pull of gravity.”

Loren chewed her lip uncomfortably. “Not if we were in space.”

“Well! We
‟
d be floating around then!” one of the other women said, her voice quavering on the edge of hysteria.

“Not if they had artificial gravity on the ship.”

“We
‟
re trying to figure this out!” the blond said angrily. “Hello? We don
‟
t have things like that!”

“Aliens might!” the black woman who
‟
d befriended Loren said tightly. “Not that I believe that—the part about us having been picked up by aliens, I mean.”

Loren was bone deep scared that it was aliens. If it had just been her, she might
‟
ve been able to dismiss that. There might
‟
ve been some possibility of believing she
‟
d been imprisoned on Earth because she knew too much, but she
‟
d spent the last four years of her life studying alien technology. She
knew
there was such a thing.

And she knew she
‟
d guessed right the first time, when she
‟
d been summoned to the administrator
‟
s office it was because they knew she
‟
d been snooping and they had every intention of putting a stop to it before she found out more than they wanted to know.

Such as the fact that they were bartering Earth women for the technology.

She didn
‟
t want to believe that, but she was almost a hundred percent certain that she really was on an alien ship, imprisoned with a roomful of women. The agents had taken her right to the spot to be picked up. It sure as hell wasn
‟
t a coincidence.

The terrifying part was that she hadn
‟
t snooped nearly enough—not enough to find out what it was the aliens
wanted
with Earth women.

They didn
‟
t have nearly enough time to sit around discussing it and trying to figure it out to Loren
‟
s way of thinking. They
‟
d had just enough time to begin to calm down when an opening appeared in the side of the room where they were held and the metal monstrosity entered.

“Please rise and exit the room in an orderly fashion.”

Loren tried not to think the fact that the damned thing spoke English was yet another indication that the government was cooperating with the aliens in the kidnappings, but she
‟
d begun to realize that they were completely ruthless.

Not surprisingly, no one leapt up to do as they were told. Most of the women simply fell into another fit of hysterics. The rest cowered against the walls, terrified.

The robot—Loren figured that was what it was although it looked more like a square trashcan with octopus arms—zapped two of the women closest, caught each of them by their ankles and dragged them from the room. Almost everyone else bounded forward immediately and followed the machine out of the cell and into a corridor.

The emotionless monster pointed out the direction they were supposed to go and continued to drag to the two unconscious women. Another one of the things appeared in the corridor behind 8

them and entered the cell, returning a few moments later with two more unconscious women.

The stragglers followed the second robot out.

As terrified as Loren was, she felt downright nauseous when they
‟
d scampered down the corridor ahead of the robots and met up with a line of women—a long line. The black woman exchanged a look with Loren.

“There must be several hundred women here,” she whispered. “My god! How could they make off with so many women without anybody noticing?”

Loren was bone deep cold with shock and her jaw was spasming. “They don
‟
t take them from the same place. I heard once that thousands of women go missing every day and many of them are never seen or heard from again.”

“That
‟
s comforting.”

“Sorry,” Loren said apologetically. “It isn
‟
t something I want to think about either.”

“I
‟
m Karen, by the way. Karen Smith.”

“Loren…Hess.”

“This is a hell of a way to end a night of partying,” the brunette just behind Loren muttered.

Loren was on the point of telling them that she hadn
‟
t been when it occurred to her that they would demand an explanation. She considered it a moment and finally decided there was really no point in keeping it to herself. “I wasn
‟
t partying. I was taken there specifically to be picked up.”

“So you know what this is about?” the woman in front of Karen demanded.

“Not…not really,” she said uncomfortably, “but I can guess.”

“We can all guess!” the woman behind her snapped. “We
‟
ve
been
guessing!”

Loren struggled for a moment with her conscience and her fear that she
‟
d be blamed. “I was an engineer—working for the government. My job was to reverse engineer alien technology for our government.” She paused for several moments. “I began to be suspicious after a while. We thought all of it was from a crash, or maybe several, but every so often we
‟
d get something else and none of it looked like it had been in any sort of crash. So…I started trying to figure out what was going on and….”

“You ended up here,” Karen said in a shaky voice. “You
‟
re saying this really is aliens and we
‟
re really on an alien ship?”

She hadn
‟
t expected the information to set off a new wave of hysteria, but that was exactly what it did, traveling from her small group all the way down the line of women.

“What do they want with us?” the woman behind her demanded.

“I don
‟
t know. I didn
‟
t really find out anything…until I got here.”

The woman seemed to think she was lying, or holding back. “Tell me, you bitch!” she screamed.

Before she could grab Loren, she was zapped by the robot behind them. She twitched all over and then collapsed. Loren wasn
‟
t even aware that she
‟
d grabbed Karen fearfully until the robot spoke again. “Please move along in a calm, orderly fashion.”

There was nothing calm or orderly about the procession. There wasn
‟
t one woman in the group, including Loren, who wasn
‟
t hysterical or borderline hysterical, but they were trapped in the corridor between the robots and whatever their fate was and there was nowhere to go but 9

forward.

Several women tried to make a break and race down the corridor in the opposite direction, but they didn
‟
t make it far before they were jolted unconscious.

Loren almost envied them. She didn
‟
t really want to find out what awaited them at the other end of the corridor. She saw her fears hadn
‟
t been misplaced when her group finally made it to the door at the end and she discovered they were being processed for shipment. They were all stripped naked, thoroughly examined—more thoroughly than she
‟
d
ever
been examined before—their bowels and bladder emptied, and then shoved into a pod. She had just enough time to be more thoroughly terrified than she
‟
d ever been in her life when she saw the pod was filling with some sort of fluids and then, mercifully, she lost consciousness. She drifted for what seemed almost like an eternity to her, dreaming at times, vaguely aware of floating at others and then she was as rudely awakened as she
‟
d been knocked out.

The fluids drained away and she struggled to suck a breath of air in, only to have the fluids, which had filled her lungs, begin to evacuate. She was still coughing and gagging and shivering when the pod tilted and dumped her on the hard, metal floor. A robot appeared beside her, jerked her upright by her hair, clamped something tight around her throat and moved on to the next woman.

“Get up and move along!”

Loren jerked at the sound of the voice, the first male voice she
‟
d heard that sounded as if it had been uttered from a human throat. She discovered as soon as she managed to focus her vision, however, that he most certainly wasn
‟
t human even if he wasn
‟
t a machine.

“Move!” he roared when most of the women who
‟
d managed to gain their feet simply stared at him in horror. “The auction is already in progress! If I lose sales because of your laziness, you
‟
ll regret it!”

Loren was still completely and utterly confused about everything except the threat. That was enough to get her on her feet, but she discovered she was chained to a woman both behind and in front of her. When she surged forward, the metal around her neck tightened and nearly sent her into another coughing spasm. It didn
‟
t help that the creature set his damned metal beasts on them to herd from behind when everyone was chained together. Screaming, many of the women tried to run and only succeeded in jerking women around them off their feet. Finally, they managed order of a sort and began moving quickly along the corridor. They met up with another robot after a short run that diverted them down a gangplank.

Loren was in too much terror and distress to think about her nakedness until they began piling down the gangplank, but they were met with a sight that made the women in the lead come to an abrupt halt and everyone behind slammed into them and ended up in a tangle.