Escape (The Alien's Plaything: Chapter Two)

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Kalin finally found himself alone in his cell. His captors seemed to have left him unattended, relying instead on him to be monitored by the automated systems of their facility while they slept. He rolled onto his stared up at the ceiling of the cell once more. The pain was still unbearable.

He let out a long, slow, pained sigh as he tried to focus his attention on the panels of the ceiling. Something had seemed off about the pattern before, and it was still proving difficult to tell exactly why with his entire body screaming at him.

“One, two, three…” he whispered, trailing off as he tried to manifest the focus on the tiles. As the pain arrested control of his attention back for his conscious mind, he let out another restless sigh, more annoyed this time.

With a prolonged groan that felt like it took minutes, he dragged himself to his feet and tried to survey the ceiling. Pain continued to radiate throughout him, and light-headedness hit him briefly once he stood up, but for some reason, progress felt more achievable once he was on his feet. Not one to let any sense of achievement go when mounting a daring escape, Kalin returned to studying his surroundings.

Some of the ceiling panels had off shapes, hinting at functions. They likely required a concerted effort for his captors to reach so, he wrote those off as problems for later. The unusual shape of the panel was not, however, unique within the confines of his cell. He studied the walls looking for the same shape. It would make sense that these Viridians would give themselves an out from their own containment cell, and with the cell having been set up exclusively for local flora, it was unlikely safeguards against escape had gone beyond the need to operate a panel. If he was very lucky, nothing would have been updated and- “BINGO!” he whispered excitedly.

He found a similar off-shaped tile on the wall slid his thumb across it. It lit up, tracing a small light across its surface in the shape of a Z. He mimicked the swipe with his thumb, being careful to maintain as much surface area as he could in the process. The device was designed for his captors’ hands and the light touch of a human fingertip might not be fully recognised. Success, the transparent wall began to slide open. It was mercifully quiet, and the process did not seem to have triggered any alarms.

Kalin felt his heart pounding in his ears. This was nowhere near his most daring escape, but so many other times had been lined up with contingency plans or he could expect an ally to be working on making one for him. This time was different. Anybody he might have looped in on his movements was someone he was glad to be keeping far away from the Viridians. He would only have been putting them at risk.

He crept silently through the facility, keeping his ears open for any signs of movement. He had been in blinding pain the first time he had been dragged through these corridors. That would have been enough to have disoriented anyone but being dragged along by a leg and looking up at ceilings through tear-filled eyes had only compounded the issue: Kalin could not rely on getting his bearings. He would have to find a way out without the benefit of past experience.

He continued to move; his body fought him. Walking normally was proving painful. He did his utmost to prioritise stealth.

A footstep nearby caught his attention, and he froze. Realising where the footstep had come from, he tuned in and heard another. They were headed in his direction. Two of the Viridians at least, possibly three.

‘I couldn’t handle a single one of these Viridians if I were in peak condition,’ he thought to himself, ‘two or three in my current condition is basically begging to be recaptured.’

He searched a hiding spot from the approaching footsteps and found one amongst a few crates. He thanked the stars that the corridors were anything but unbroken eyelines. Hiding spots had been few and far between.

As he remained hidden, he saw Zara and two of the other Viridians pass in the adjacent corridor.

“The records search came back, by the way. In addition to knowing that the prisoner is something called a human, we got some files from observations,” one of them explained.

“Good,” replied Zara, “his species being documented gives our reports context.” Her voice had a cold detachedness that should not have surprised Kalin at this point, but the experience still served as a cherry on top of the wild experience sundae that had been his experience on this moon.

Then, a flicker of hope surged through him as he heard a door open. The subtle sounds of the wind rustling gently through the leaves of the plants outside. The sounds, to him, of salvation.

He crept to the edge of the corridor and peered around the corner. The coast was clear. He moved up to the edge of the doorway and held his position. As he edged closer to the doorway, he recoiled. The Viridians were not far from the doorway.

“The human got here somehow. As soon as the craft is located, we’re to secure it to be collected by another research team,” Zara explained, “as soon as Zylara is here, we can pair up and go looking for it.

His heart raced. If he couldn’t return to his ship soon, an escape would be of no value to him. At their height, they would have a clear speed advantage. His only edge would come from a passing familiarity with the landing site. If he could take a more direct path back to his ship, maybe, just maybe, he might be able to get there first.

As he stood watching Zara and the two other Viridians in the glade, waiting for them to give him an opening to run, they seemed to mill about aimlessly. ‘What are they waiting for?’ he pondered.

His mind raced with the steps he would have to take if he made it to his ship. Which pre-flight checks could be skipped, which could be delayed and how quickly could he get in the air. He could almost feel the controls in his hands again, he just needed the Viridians to move out of the glade.

At that, he felt an explosion of pain shoot through his whole body. Kalin was lifted off the ground, and as he looked down, he saw the combat boot of one of the Viridians between his legs. Control over his body crumbled, and he dropped. First to his knees, then to his hands, and finally he lost balance and collapsed onto his side. He curled up.

“Oh, Zylara,” Zara called out, “it seems you found my missing toy.” Sadistic thoughts swirled through Zara’s mind and a smirk formed on her face. Her lips pulled back to show her teeth in a way that should have formed arguably one of the most beautiful smiles Kalin had ever seen, but in the moment the action might has well have been a predator baring her teeth. “Perhaps, you’d like to stay here and play with my toy. We want to make sure he’s occupied,” her attention and gaze dropped to Kalin, the eye contact drilling into his soul, “don’t we?”

He felt Zylara push him onto his back. He looked up to see her letting out a quick “ok” to Zara before turning her attention to him. She grabbed his forearms and peeled his fingers away from his aching testicles. They weren’t alone for long, however, as her boot soon joined them and pressed down firmly.

“Please,” Kalin moaned, “please no!” His soft begs fell on deaf ears.

Zara approached him on the ground, and crouched next to him and looked him in the eye. “Silly human,” she quipped, “the toys don’t decide when it’s playtime.” She stood back up and walked away, her short black dress swaying gently on her body as she moved. “Have fun, Zylara! Make sure you don’t break my toy!” She called out as she and the others reached the edge of the glade, off to rob him of his only remaining hope of escape from this horrid moon.

Zylara’s crushing boot continued to press down on his balls, the agony continuing to flood his body. He tried to cry out. His cries barely left his mouth as moans before fading to soft whimpers within seconds. After a few minutes, she took her boot off him. This time he didn’t even curl up; the pain had incapacitated him too thoroughly to even grant him an attempt to shield himself. Pain overwrote every sensation. As he lay there, prostrate on the cold floor of the Viridian facility, minor details began to creep back in. The floor was indeed cold. There was something else. A sound. Music? Singing? As he managed to draw the song into focus, he realised that it was in fact the laughter of his captor Zylara.

She dropped to her knees next to him. “How are you this weak, human?” she spat the words at him between bouts of laughter, “what is down there that you let incapacitate you so easily?” Her eyes drifted down his body, making him more and more uneasy. Finally, her gaze rested between his legs, and the anticipation of more torture was palpable. He wanted nothing more than to be able to shield himself, but he could not anymore.

She held up her open hand, Zara’s warning not to break her toy echoing in her head as she pondered her next move. Her hand slammed artlessly into his testicles and Kalin let out little more than another hoarse whimper. She fumbled indelicately over his jumpsuit and formed an imprecise grip on his testicles. “These?” She joked cruelly, “you were incapacitated with a tap to these?” Kalin’s body mustered just enough resistance to clutch helplessly at Zylara’s wrist. “Your bodies have an external off switch? You don’t even hide it behind anything?” She laughed again, this time the derision seemed to bypass him. She wasn’t even laughing at the pain she was causing him. For a moment, she seemed almost to have forgotten the pain she was inflicting; and in that moment, she directed a separate laugh at his anatomy on a physiological level.

“Please,” he mustered, this time as little more than a hoarse whisper. She looked over at him, not loosening her grip on his balls. The look was almost inquisitive. In a Herculean effort, he gathered all his energy to add a simple, “Why?”

A wicked grin spread across her face, and she leaned in, whispering “because it hurts the most” in his ear. As she leaned back out, she released the grip, but the reprieve was short lived. It was followed by a slap, then a series of slaps. Kalin felt the rest of the air leave his body by the time she finished with an eleventh slap. She leaned back against the wall, chuckling to herself.

“Ok,” she finally remarked, breaking a long silence. “Get up, I want to knee you now.”

Kalin could not speak. He simply let out a lengthy formless wheeze that seemed to send Zylara into another fit of laughter. When she was finished, she leaned over him, her large green face looming over him with a grin plastered across it.

“Let’s get you back to your containment cell, shall we? We’ll probably need the restraints for me to knee you if you can’t get up.”

She got up and grabbed his ankle. “Gives you a few minutes to stop crying,” she giggled. She then started dragging him back deeper into the structure to his new home. He blinked hard to clear the tears from his eyes in the hopes of studying the layout more effectively this time. However, as he opened his eyes and saw the exit and the glade recede from view, his eyes welled up again as his last lingering shreds of hope faded too.