The sound of heavy duty power tools kept me awake. Shaw and his men were at work in my old room. They moved me into the uh, suite, where the young Black Sapphire died. I wondered what they did with her body. I wondered what Preston Cane would do to this place if he knew what was going on. Would he still cherish his Anthro pets and their species so much if he saw how they were treating us in this lab? I bet he’d listen to me then.

The never-ending clanging of their machines sent a nerving chill down my spine. I wished I could stop it. I wished I could scale and take off into the night sky. This was becoming unbearable. The minute I began to feel normal, Addison was right there with a dose to either sedate me or pump me full of that other crap. I had to get out of here or at the very least figure out a way to get word to Bart and the others. They needed to know about this serum.

“Hey, Princess,” Shaw called from the outside of the barred doorway, “I got something pretty cookin’ up next door for you.”

“Whatever Wingless,” I scoffed, “If I wasn’t drugged up, there isn’t a room in this damn Station that could hold me.”

“Right and next thing you know you’ll say if you were an Anthro, you could take me one on one,” he laughed.

“No,” I shook my head, “That’s definitely what you want, but that’s not what I want. What I want is to be left alone. What I want is to find a nice piece of land to share with someone I care about. Make nice little Scaler babies and live happily ever after. You? You want a fight because you want scales. You want to breathe fire and slice through the air, over the clouds, and into the sun.”

“Not in your wildest dreams-” he began to protest.

I grinned, “Yes in your wildest dreams, you want to be me. You want to sprout wings and breathe fire. You want to turn shit to ash which is why you’re so hellbent on keeping me here. You want to see if she’ll come up with a permanent solution. If she comes up with that, then you’d want her to be able to develop some antidote, some reversal of sorts. Yeah, I know your type. You were someone’s pet and got turned out. You let one of those Black Sapphire chicks get their talons in you, and now you want to be one of us.”

“That’s it!” he shouted. He released the bars and charged into the room.

I didn’t move from my spot on the floor. I’d been leaning against the bed since my last dose. It was the most comfortable spot to be in until Shaw came into the room. He went to kick me but I caught his foot. More and more, the doses of the serum were affecting me less and less. I refused to tell anyone that, especially Addison. I’d already gotten her in enough trouble. Seeing her hauled away in handcuffs wasn’t an image I’d like to see again.

Pushing Shaw away, he stumbled a bit before regaining his footing. He charged back at me, but this time I darted out of the way before he could knee me in the chest. A swift tuck and roll across the floor left him stunned. His anger continued to grow while I tried my best to keep the fact my strength was returning to myself. Roaring like an Onyx Skull, he ran after me with his hands in the air trying to get a hold of me. Again, I outmaneuvered the big guy finally getting to my feet. I bolted toward the door and pushed the button releasing the bars and locking him inside.

I could barely catch my breath as I snickered from outside the barred room, “That was great, Shaw. You think you can hand me your keys so I can get out of the rest of this place?”

There was a look in his eyes as he approached the doorway, one I didn’t like. With a sinister tone he told me, “Oh Princess, you’re not going anywhere but in that new cell.”

“You’re talking mighty big for someone behind bars,” I laughed, “How exactly do you propose to put me over there, huh?”

“Like this,” a voice sounded from behind me. The jolt of electricity charged through me like a hot knife stabbing into my lower back. I couldn’t help but scream as the excruciating pain coursed through my body. I could see my burgundy and red scales threatening to reveal themselves, but scaling in the lab would be dangerous. The harder I fought to stop it, the stronger the current felt until it brought me to my knees.

I collapsed onto the floor, but I didn’t pass out. My body refused to do anything but twitch as the electricity traveled through me. I watched small feet walk toward the barred doorway and press the button to release a smiling Shaw from my chambers.

“Get him up,” the voice stammered, “And stop playing with my specimen. I need him in prime physical condition.”

It was Eric.

“Addi-” I tried calling out to her, but she wasn’t in the lab. I couldn’t smell her. I couldn’t feel her. I needed her to stop whatever this sadistic bastard was about to do to me.

“Oh no,” he squatted down and turned his head sideways to talk to me, “It’s not her shift. She has no control over what I do to you for the advancement of our program here. And because it’s blatantly obvious she can’t control her emotions around you or about her precious research, we’re just going to eliminate you from her having to make the tough decisions. Take him to his new home. I’ll be sure to let Addison know that he didn’t survive his second escape attempt.”

There wasn’t anything I could do as Shaw and another guy came into the room to haul me out of there. Every muscle in my body tensed and wouldn’t let go. I tried desperately to keep my eyes open so I could see where we were going, but it all looked like grey cement walls. There weren’t any noticeable markings or notations to tell me whether we were going left or right, up or down. Panic began to settle over me, and I couldn’t remember the last time I actually felt panicked.

By the time we came to a stop, the bright white walls of the lab were something I begged to see again. The place we were in was obviously not as finished of a space as my last holding cell. They tossed me onto the ground where I landed in a puddle of murky water.

“You can hose down the place from that chain in the corner,” Eric called down to me.

I’d been thrown into a pit of sorts. The walls were cement like the rest of the building and stood about ten feet tall. Two piles of straw and grass rested in the corner while a raw chunk of meat sat in another corner with flies buzzing around it.

“You plan to get what kind of results from keeping me like a rabid beast?”

“You are a rabid beast,” he growled. “Now eat the putrid fucking meat so we can get started on these trials.”

“Trials? So what we were doing in the other place wasn’t a trial?”

“No, not at all. That was Addison being a veterinarian. I’m not that. I’m a biochemical weapons engineer, and you are going to be the first Scaler in history to die from my Shave gas.”

“Do you realize how insane you sound? You don’t have enough of the serum to do that.”

“Unlike Addison, I am not stupid enough to believe there’s a one for all treatment. It would be a hell of a lot more convenient, but right now I’m only interested in perfecting the process. We can streamline it later. Sleep tight, Princess,” he sneered and pressed the remote on a button.

Before I could even tell what was happening, nozzles protruded from the walls around me. A teal-colored gas began to spew out of them, and moments later a plastic lid was placed over the opening. Eric watched me from up above as this poisonous gas consumed me. I’d much rather be electrocuted. My chest tightened as my lungs fought for air. I couldn’t stop coughing as the gas hadn’t anywhere else to go but inside of me. Every breath I took was harder than the last. My eyes watered. It felt like my throat closed.

It all faded to black.

The gasp of air I took sounded like I’d been underwater for hours when I woke up. The plastic lid had been removed. The air was breathable again. The pile of straw was soaked with what I hoped was my sweat. I hadn’t any idea how long I’d been out but a part of me wondered how potent that gas was. Flexing the muscles in my forearm, a single scale flashed but then disappeared into my skin. They were winning and I had to get out of here. If he figured out a way to release this gas in Black Harbor … I didn’t want to think about the results.

I took several deep breaths. While the air was far damper than it was in the lab, I was a lot closer to the outside world. I needed to see where I was being held. The nozzles were still protruding from the wall, so I decided to use them. I anchored one foot a few inches above the ground while pitching the other one on the wall next to it. Once I was nozzle height, I used it as a foothold to let me peek out the top of the pit. I had to pull myself up the last three feet only to see another lab, but not as bright as the other. The one main difference was the beam of light shining through a square window. While it did have vertical bars across it, there wasn’t a pane of glass or anything to block the fresh scent of salt water from trickling inside.

My muscles gave out not too long after that. My strength wasn’t anywhere it needed to be to get out of here. The ten-foot tall pit would require me to pull my way out of it and after a tiny dose of that gas, I was scared that I would never get the opportunity. Maybe Eric was right. Maybe I was going to be the first Scaler to die from his shave gas.