The thick chains around my ankles rattled every time I moved. The cuffs were snug, but I was glad they were not cutting off my circulation. It was dark and musty. My clothes were in tatters, and I felt like I was hardly dressed at all in the skimpy dress that he made me wear. I hated it. I hated what it represented: that I was practically his slave. I had lost my freedom and control over my own life to this machine. I hated him, and I spent every moment trying to find out how I could escape him. This was my worst nightmare, but I was glad that I wasn't alone in this dark dungeon.
“Emma, what time do you think it is? Do you think it is daytime or nighttime?” Veronica asked me, moving over to me. Her chains rattled as well.
“Maybe he won't come for you tonight; he didn't come last night,” she said putting her dainty hand on mine.
“I hope that you are right. But because he didn't come last night makes me feel that he will tonight,” she said.
I pushed back my hair and tied it with a ribbon. It was always getting in the way; that wasn't a problem on Earth, but here in this cell on an unknown planet, I wanted nothing more than to cut it off. I couldn't let anything get in the way of survival—if we did survive.
I looked at the six women sitting on the concrete benches around the cell. They looked exhausted; we all were. Even though we were being fed well and could sleep as much as we wanted, we were emotionally exhausted. We had found ourselves in a horrible situation. But none of us really knew how we got there. The last thing we remembered was being taken from Earth.
It all started when I went to a yoga retreat in the California desert. It was an all-female retreat which I was glad to join in. I wasn't exactly in a trusting place with men because of my cheating boyfriend. I had walked in on him having sex with one of my friends. After that, I wasn’t able to date anymore. It had been a long time since I had been in love or even felt a man’s touch. So I was glad to have the company of women and to indulge in some rest, relaxation, and body and mind exercises. But it had all changed on the very first night.
We went on a midnight hike in the desert. It was a beautiful night with a full moon. It felt good to be one with nature and to let all the baggage leave me. It was what I needed. But none of us were expecting to see the brilliant bright light in the sky. It came closer and closer, and none of us knew what to do except to stand there and stare at it. Then all of a sudden it was close enough to see that it was a flying object; my first thought was that it was some kids playing with some sort of drone with lights on it. But it was very big once the lights dimmed and we could see the object. The door opened, and out stepped something absolutely incredible, what could only be called aliens. They were very tall almost ten feet, and they were blue-skinned. They were male, very physically toned and advanced. The last thing anything anyone of us could remember was that we ran from them. That was it. When we woke up, we were on a large spaceship; we could only assume that we were in space because we got very little answers from the alien men. We were fed and kept prisoner. Then one day the ship began to shake violently. It was obvious to us that we were going to crash. We had all experienced airplane turbulence before, and we knew that this was very close to it. Then everything went dark. When we woke up, we were chained in a dark cell. It was like a dungeon. That was all that we knew. All six women couldn't remember anything else, and I couldn't either. We didn't know how we had become prisoners of the machines.
The machines called themselves cyborgs. They looked to be half-man, half-machine. Cyborg was the perfect name for them, even though I had never seen anything like them in real life. As a medical research doctor, I found it fascinating at first. I wanted to know everything about their anatomy, but it was something that I wished I did not know now. The shiny chrome metal parts of them only covered their body here and there. They were very much like men, as I was to find out personally on the first night.
The first night being locked up was horrendous. A cyborg came to us and introduced himself as K2Q. K2Q seemed to be the leader of wherever we were. We didn't know much. I only knew that K2Q had expressed interest in my bright red hair. That interest would turn to him dragging me from the cell into another room down the hallway, where he took advantage of me. I hated thinking about it. I wasn't going to let him break my spirit. We were going to get out of there somehow. I just needed some time to figure out what was going on. But I had to go numb; it was the only way I could survive his violation of my body. So now, I sat in the cell with the other six women, waiting for him to return, dreading every second of it. But a part of me wanted it to be over with. The anxiety of waiting for the cyborg K2Q was even worse.
“What do you think happened to the others?” Amber asked. She had been one of the women on the yoga retreat as well, but I didn't meet her until we were in this dark cell together. The women that I had met on the retreat weren't with us. The rest were all new acquaintances to me.
“Yes, we have to think that they are alive because we need to know that they are out there and possibly could get us out of here,” Jennifer said standing up.
“I would rather be with the blue aliens than these machines. We have to get out of here. We have to figure something else out. We can't just sit here and do nothing,” Sarah said loudly.
“Calm down. It's all right. We are going to get out of here,” Veronica said to her putting her hands on her shoulders to calm her down. But we were all shaken up. I wasn't the only one that the cyborgs had taken advantage of. Sarah had also been used by one of the cyborgs, but it wasn't the leader K2Q, the one that came for me over and over. I knew that eventually all of the women would have their turn. Sarah was right. We needed to get out of there.
“You are right. We won't be able to the pier together. In a bus gets to run a then run. It will be up to you to bring a rescue team to us,” Veronica said standing up and giving a speech.
“Alone? You want one of us to run off alone? We don't even know what's out there. We could be surrounded by water for all we know,” Jennifer said.
“If that is the case, then you will just be brought back here. But if it's not, then run. Find help,” Veronica said.
We all looked at each other confused. Would we really be able to abandon each other when the time came? What if we weren't able to find help? What if there was nothing out there?