My first attempt at escape is to try and reason with a guard, to tell him what federal law he has broken. "You have kidnapped a junior officer of the—"
The guard lunges forward and forces the prod onto the front of my chest. As a wave of electricity rattles my sternum, I fall to the floor in deep spasms.
"We've got a talker here," he growls. “Don’t like talkers.”
I jerk back against one of the alien women. To my surprise, she pushes me forward, causing a chain of women to fall with me. The room breaks out with disorder.
With glee, the guard shocks me repeatedly until I lurch forward and vomit over my hands.
I’ve never been this indecent. Never been treated like I was a pile of filth. I always tried my best to work hard with efficiency. I was ethical. What did following the rules ever get me?
"I'm not trying to talk back," I pant. "I swear. I can hardly breathe."
One alien woman looks desperately at the guard. "Look at her eyes. They are yellow. She has the Xygo fever," she says.
The guard smacks her. He sends her body crashing into the metal bars of the window.
I sit back and blink, stunned. You can catch Xygo fever by making contact with an alien, but I was immunized. All military personnel are given the injection upon the point of entry.
The guard looks at me intently. “Hm,” he groans, his nostrils. “Must have been in the syringe they gave her. A mutation, maybe.”
My heart pounds. It feels cold inside my chest. If what they say is true, my chromosomes will degenerate. I'll slowly lose all neurological function. My God, if I don't get medical treatment soon, I will die a slow and painful death.
The alien captives aren't against me, but they're not on my side either. As I sit back and feel the boat rock, I realize I have no one left to protect me. Maybe I had no one in the first place, but my team made the illusion of security feel real.
Now, half of them are surely dead. The other half will search for me, I think. But even with Earth Federation bases scattered across the planet, their reach only goes so far.
The aliens aren’t trustworthy. The local municipalities will be hard to look through. By the time they get the approval to search for me, I’ll be too far away.
They will lose me.
The smell in here is unbearable, and the air is thin. At this point, all of the women are huddled near the window to get a breath in. As the boat stops, we all run toward the exit.
Outside, alien guards bang on the exterior of the ships to herd us into the center of the dock. I scramble to get out, tripping onto the muddy null near the river.
The water reflects orange as one guard sets flame to the torches around the area. More and more women line up to be processed.
"Single file! Orderly fashion,” a guard calls out, yanking me out of the mud.
I can’t blend in with the alien women. My skin is far too fare. The guards make jokes about me. "This one looks decadent."
"Oh, she's a clean one."
The guard's scaly nostrils widen. He opens his mouth and inhales loudly, tongue extending into the humid air. "Clean, indeed."
I only get one short glimpse of the dock. There are at least ten different boats, with more of them coming in. There has to be hundreds of women. Thousands must come in monthly. It’s a systematic betrayal of Earth Federation’s goal of peace and stability.
It's all out in the open.
I'm hurried away by monstrous beings in masks, pushed into a long underpass tunnel that leads into a massive storage building. Here, women of all breeds stand. There are no humans in sight. Most of the women are alien races I have never seen during my time at the base.
Inside the warehouse, adjustable tripods prop up blinding lights to shine at us. I wince and force my hands over my eyes, spreading my fingers to see where to walk. More women push against me, and I stumble before catching eyes with another guard.
“Cutie-pie. Can’t hide from me. I see you,” he hisses.
There are guards posted in every corner. They have built a second level barricade for more to watch from above.
Every so often, a guard points and whistles at an alien captive. They sweep the cat-called women into a back room. This happens multiple times.