Page 5 of No Strings Attached (Mated Fates #1)
Cut off in the middle of “Nobody Home,” Vi saw her look of surprise mirrored on the Grey when the lid of her statis pod opened. And that was…something, to say the least. Without eyes that could widen, or eyebrows that could raise, she wasn’t sure how her mind was interpreting the expression as one of surprise until she made conscious note of the open mouth gape. Her mouth was the same as it had been for nearly a month, crammed full of respirator, but she could feel her eyes bugging out of her head, and it felt like her eyebrows were in her hairline. Her whole body had stiffened at the sound of the lid’s seal being broken, followed by the current sight of a Hollywood movie alien leaning into her pod and staring at her, dumbfoundedly. Then, she heard a conversation take place inside her head.
What the fuck, Gagnor?! She’s awake!
What do you mean?
What do you mean, “what do you mean?” She’s fucking AWAKE. Did you forget to administer the stasis gas? Has she been awake this whole fucking time? Qlu’s going to kill us if we’ve damaged her.
No, Flot, I didn’t forget. I’m not an imbecile.
Without pausing to marvel at the miracle of telepathic communication, Vi instinctively tried to send a mental scream at them: GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THIS POD. NOW. I will rip every limb and appendage off o--
Suddenly, her mind was filled with buzzing, and she lost the ability to even think words on her own, much less project them into the minds of these aliens. They had blocked her transmission somehow. She started to think of the most ghastly, violent imagery she could, trying to push it from her mind into theirs. Images of her running nakedly amok through the ship, ripping their heads off their bodies with her bare hands, slashing through their torsos with a giant hunting knife, feeding their long fingers into their decapitated heads, painting her name onto the walls of their ship in green blood: VI WAS HERE, MOTHERFUCKERS.
It occurred to her that she very well might have become a little deranged during her interminable captivity, because she intrinsically knew that she would follow through on each and every one of those images if only given the tiniest of chances.
Gagnor and Flot both took a step back away from the pod as if they suddenly understood that, too. Apparently, they were getting the visuals she was trying to push into their minds. Or maybe it was that Vi was making a strangled screaming noise around the tubes, a vocalization of purest animal rage that she only then became aware of, so it was possible that they were responding to the sound, instead. If her limbs weren’t so tightly restrained, they would have been thrashing. As it was, she could feel her muscles tensing and bunching as she pushed against the restraints even though they were digging deeply into her body.
Gagnor looked at Flot in terror, and Flot stared back angrily. Close the fucking lid and activate the statis gas now, you imbecile…she’s gone feral!
As the lid closed, Vi shut her eyes and restarted The Wall with “In the Flesh?” exploding within her mind.