Increase the dosage? Double his cuffs?
That, but we need to start looking at alternatives. We want him working with us, not against us. We can't keep him drugged forever. He's an athlete and a hunter. He needs exercise and stimulation.
You're the scientist. It's your responsibility to come up with solutions.
It's not that simple. Splices never are. If I could just handle him like any other slave, don't you think I would?
Their hated voices drift through my mind. I crack open my eyes, but everything around me is wobbly again. More drugs. They slide through my veins, hot and syrupy, and they make me mellow. A different kind of drug, then. A happy one. Either that, or this is the aftermath of the adrenaline rush. The two captors keep arguing, and I want to listen in, but something new is coming into focus.
A scent.
A fascinating one.
My nostrils flare, and I struggle to open my eyes wider, to focus on the spinning room. To my surprise, there's the loud hum of something coming online, and then I'm dragged off the bed.
I lift into the air and fly backward. My limbs slam into the wall behind me, my hands over my head, my feet clasped together. Magnetized cuffs, then. I'm familiar with this…somehow. It’s happened before. That whenever someone enters my room, a panel behind the wall activates and I stick to it like a bug. I can't lift an arm or a leg. I'm helpless this way, and it usually means more experiments, more needles jabbing me.
More drugs.
I clench my jaw, waiting for the rush of drugs to roar through my system, but nothing happens. The scent—the good one—grows stronger and stronger.
Footsteps.
Dazed, I drag my eyes open and look around.
It's…a female.
The scent is a female.
I lift my head, even though the effort feels greater than anything I've ever done before. I stare down at her, trying to determine what race she is.
She's ugly, this female.
She's small, for starters. I don't think she would even come to the top of my chest. Her limbs are small and a pale yellowish-white with traces of blue veins underneath. Her hair is an odd golden-brown color and held back from a pointy little face. She's impossibly fine-boned, this female, and everything about her is small and delicate—except for her eyebrows. They are two dark slashes that dominate that pointy little face and frame a pair of gray eyes that glare up at me with irritation.
Whatever this ugly female is, she's not scared of me.
Perhaps that's why she smells so sweet. There's no fear-scent covering her, no acrid terror tingeing her natural smell. Too bad she's so keffing ugly and small. I'd crush her the moment I got her under me.
The female has a cart with her. She parks it in the middle of my room, studies the mess I've made, and then glares up at me again.
I want to laugh, but my drugged face won't respond. She's mad that I made a mess. I could eat her up in one bite and she's glaring at me for being dirty. Meanwhile, my two captors are behind the glass and still tremble with fear when I approach.
It's fascinating.
I watch as the small female gets to work. She pulls tools out of the cart and sweeps the leaves into a pan, and then picks up the broken sink. The water's off now, and she places the broken thing atop her cart, then starts to mop up the muddy mess on the floor from the dirt and the water. She's…cleaning up. There are bots to do this sort of thing, but for some reason, they've sent an alien into my cell. A tiny, delicate female alien that I could crush with one twist of my hand…but she's unafraid.
It's fascinating. I watch her as she works in silence, her movements efficient and crisp. When the floors are clean again, she picks up the remnants of my mattress and shoves each piece into the cart, where a compressor whirrs and pulps the trash. She bends down and pulls out a small package from the bottom of her cart, unwrapping it. The moment she does, a mattress self-inflates and unfurls. The female carefully smooths it over the bed and even adds a plas-film blanket for comfort.
Then she glares at me again, as if chiding me for making such a mess.
Her scent swirls in the air, and she nudges her cart into motion. She's back out of the cell so quickly again that I wonder if I imagined it. There's a buzz of release—and then I fall to the floor, the magnetism in my cuffs gone. I crawl to the bed, my head swimming, and sure enough, the plas-film blanket carries her scent.
Stubborn, ugly female. She should have been afraid of me. I'm a bad guy.