Page 21 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Abigail

I was shaking with cold, utterly and completely frozen to the bone.

I noticed it first thing when I woke up.

It took a while before my brain rallied enough to pay attention to anything other than that terrible, bone-rattling cold.

The second thing I noticed was that I was most assuredly not in my cozy bedroom with its marvelous queen-sized bed with a memory foam mattress.

It did not smell like my lavender detergent here; instead, the air was stale and musty.

Although it was pitch black even with my eyes open as far as they could go, I could tell that I was in what amounted to a coffin made of glass.

There was a glimmer above my head. Fear and panic bubbled through my bloodstream, and I wanted to scream for help.

I wanted to pound against the glass, but I was shaking so badly from the pervasive cold that I couldn’t get a single muscle, not even my vocal cords, to obey.

Shit, shit, shit! This was a nightmare! This had to be a nightmare!

But something told me that it wasn’t. This was real.

Trying to make sense of it all, I worried I’d somehow died in my sleep, or maybe slipped into some kind of coma and been mistaken for dead; I’d been buried.

That was a thing, right? Didn’t I read somewhere that sometimes, though rarely, doctors mistakenly pronounced someone dead?

The surrounding air was warming a little, and as it did, my shaking subsided until I could finally feel my skin instead of the numbness that had invaded my body.

I was dressed—a relief, for sure—in my suit from work.

What idiot had decided to bury me in my work clothes?

That was the last thing I wanted! If I never saw another day at my bank teller job again, I’d be forever grateful.

Moving my head, I could tell the two rubber bands I’d used on my last workday to restrain my thick, curly hair were still there.

I’d used the makeshift solution because my favorite hairband had given out halfway through my work shift.

What did that tell me? Whatever had happened to me must have happened right after work, or I’d have gone home and changed my clothes.

Moving my hands to touch the glass just above me, I felt something dangle from my wrists.

Wires stuck to my skin, like the kind of electrodes used in a medical exam.

Now that I was aware of them, I felt more of them attached to my chest, tucked into my blouse, and a pair attached to my temples and the sides of my neck.

I yanked them off with a shiver, as if they were cobwebs. What the hell was this?

This wasn’t a coffin, was it? Why would they hook me up to electrodes inside a coffin? My brain tried to come up with logical explanations and settled on a CT scan or MRI. Those were like tubes or something they stuck you in, weren’t they? Did I get into a car accident and not remember?

Then, from one moment to the next, light suddenly permeated the tiny space I was crammed into.

It seared my eyes and blinded me. I was yanked from my resting place by rough, sandpaper-textured hands until I dropped onto a hard metal floor.

Guttural, male voices were talking around me, but I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

When my eyes finally adjusted, I wished immediately that they hadn’t.

I had landed in a nightmare. It was the only conclusion I could draw.

The room I found myself in was bright white and decked out with futuristic displays featuring blinking lights.

A terrifying-looking mechanical arm was tucked behind a glass panel against one wall, right beside a medical cot of some kind.

Antiseptic smells singed my nostrils, making it at once clear that this was indeed a medical room.

Only, it looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Then there were the nightmarish-looking, wart-faced men looming around me.

Big and hulking, with gray skin and tusks, they looked to me like someone had crossed a Klingon with a warthog, with disastrous results.

One of them yanked me roughly off the floor and threw me onto the medical cot.

I nearly rolled off the other side, only stopping when I hit the bed rail.

A scream ripped from my throat. I couldn’t help it—whatever that thing was, it was hideous, and its grip had hurt my arm.

That alone was more than enough to prove this wasn’t a dream.

Shit, shit, and double shit! What the hell was going on?

I tried not to let another wave of panic overcome me. I had to stay focused, and I had to find out what was going on. Except it was really hard when these ugly gray dudes were looming over me. They looked menacing and spoke in an indecipherable, guttural language.

Futuristic, medical-looking room and alien creatures; was I on a spaceship?

About to be probed? Holy crap, had I lost my mind completely, or what?

I knew I needed to get a grip, but I couldn’t seem to control my hyperventilating.

As I struggled against the hold of the one pinning me to the medical cot, there was excited talking among the others; something that sounded like orders being barked.

A new alien stepped into my field of view then, this one stunningly beautiful, though terrifying-looking in its otherness.

Anthracite-colored skin shimmered and glittered, while long, straight black hair draped around broad shoulders clad in white.

Through the hair poked sharply pointed ears, silver rings and studs glinting against the dark skin.

It was his eyes that freaked me out. They were like shimmering black mirrors—no whites, no iris, no visible pupil.

Just a sheet of glimmering black that reflected everything like a mirror.

It was truly terrifying to look at. Those eyes were the kind of eyes they put on demons in movies or TV shows. They were truly evil.

Shaking, I felt my body give in to the freeze part of fight, flight, or freeze, all of my muscles turning to stone. They were talking to the evil-looking alien doctor in harsh tones, and then he pulled a tray of tools toward him and approached me. Was that a scalpel? Fuck no!

When I struggled again, the warthog aliens jumped into action, strapping me down to the medical bed until I couldn’t move an inch.

The shimmering black alien leaned over me, and I couldn’t keep looking when the scalpel approached my face.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight. Briefly, I fought to keep my head straight when the alien grabbed my face and pressed down, so my ear was pointing up.

Hot, searing pain shot through me when the knife touched the skin just behind my ear.

Oh God, what were they doing to me? It seemed far too long that the alien was rooting around behind my ear with his knife and God knows what else.

It was searing pain and freezing cold, and I screamed and screamed until my throat was raw and I tasted blood.

The pain eased when some cool gel was smeared across the incision, and then my head was turned, and the entire process started again on my other ear.

My voice gave out halfway through that side, but to my shock, as the sound of my screaming faded, I realized I could hear the guttural voices of the aliens around me, and now their words made sense.

“I love how she screams! Such a pretty sound,” one was saying as he elbowed the ugly brute next to him. He stared at me, licking fat lips framed by his yellowish tusks. It was obvious he had very bad things on his mind.

“Oh yeah,” the one he had elbowed replied, making a lewd gesture. “Too bad she’s worth more intact.” I did not like the sound of that at all. That sounded really, really bad.

The anthracite alien above me smeared cool gel behind my ear, and the pain faded away.

His large but fine-fingered hand lifted away from pinning my head in place.

I twisted to better see the room, and he spoke to me, his voice low and mournful, pitched so the gray-skinned warthogs couldn’t hear him.

“I’m so sorry, little human. They don’t waste painkillers on slaves.

Please forgive me.” His voice was perhaps the most gentle thing I’d ever heard, so sad and apologetic.

“Are you done yet, Doc?” demanded one of them, and the doctor who’d just done surgery on my ears shook his head, his eyes taking on a crafty look. When he shot a glance at the warthog alien, I could tell it was filled with hate.

“I need to make sure everything’s healthy before I give her the fertility drugs you wanted.

” Now, hold on a minute, fertility drugs?

I had a very bad feeling about that, and this Doc could look all sad and mournful, but I was not okay with that.

Not with any of it. I opened my mouth to demand they stop this, to protest, but I snapped it shut again when I realized how futile that was.

Strapped to this cot, there was nothing I could do.

“Well, hurry up!” was the response from the mangiest and smallest-looking of the four ugly aliens. If the others looked freaky and horrible, this one took the prize in the ugly pageant. He was slimy and weaselly on top of being ugly.

“Oh, shut it, Frek!” the largest one responded. “You were against spending credits on those faulty pods!” The enormous monster gestured at the glass pod they’d pulled me out of; it was propped in a corner. “And now you’re invested because it worked?”

Everyone but Frek laughed, a creaking, sharp sound that had me flinching back into the medical cot I was on.

It was at that moment that the doctor leaned over me, his hand pressing something into mine, hidden from the others behind my leg.

“Bide your time. Please try to survive. You can’t fight the Krektar. Not alone.”