21 · Darrin
The first weeks of Anlyn’s captivity in the Darrin system were the worst in some ways but the best in others. Best, of course, being a relative term. The bad parts came from the confusion. Anlyn was kept in a cell by herself, the other cages around her packed with anywhere from several to a dozen aliens, mostly Humans. She was treated as a curiosity by a few and as a scourge by most. Even the younger Humans spat at her between the bars, using words Anlyn could figure for cussing just by the energy and invective put behind them.
Lots of adult males came and paid visits; they were always careful to shimmer their suits before they stepped in the cell with her. Anlyn learned quickly not to put up a fight. If she thought there was a chance of hurting her captors—or possibly ending her own life with the effort—she would have. But any sort of kinetic blow just shocked her with more of the electricity, jolting her like a blast from a Drenardian guardlance. And so she allowed the Humans to inspect her, prodding her in the most humiliating fashion in front of the sneering, spitting spectators.
When her captors weren’t around, Anlyn spent her time huddled, her knees to her neck and her back to the lone solid wall. They had taken her stolen flightsuit and left her with the short undertunic she’d put on so long ago, back when her father was still alive and only one person ever touched her against her will. She sat like that, enduring the odd cycle of artificial light and dark, as she watched the Humans and the others come and go from their cells, their energy to yell at her and spit at her seeming to fade with time.
It wasn’t until much later—many, many sleep cycles later—that Anlyn would see anything good about those first weeks. It took her that long for the confusion to be understood as a blessing, for her to appreciate how wonderful it could be to not know what was going on around her.
After at least two dozen sleeps, the men in the dark tunics with the thread-thin stripes began pulling her from her cell, just like they did the others. They first led off a group made up mostly of Humans. They paused before bringing Anlyn out and marching her off in the same direction.
The sight of her along a new stretch of prisoners elicited fresh howls and new volleys of saliva. The Humans banged their palms against the bars, a sound that wouldn’t have been too loud if there had only been a few of them doing it. So much anger directed at her made Anlyn cower deep inside her own skin. But then, some other part of her wished she could speak their language. She wanted to yell at them, to let them know that they were only alive because of her people. She felt an urge to spread the seeds of doubt among them, to detail the treacherous nature of the Bern and that they were likely infested with them.
Had she known English at the time, she probably would’ve yelled all of that and more. And of course, she would’ve been ignored as their enemy and as a raving lunatic.
Outside the hallway of cells, her captors led her through several gates and down a long corridor. They finally passed through a door at the end and into a wide room humming with electricity. Anlyn could feel heat from the machines hanging in the air—the stuffiness that came from cabinets of computing power inadequately ventilated. Along the far wall, the other prisoners were already being situated, made to lie flat on their stomachs on padded beds. A dozen men in the dark, tight-fitting tunics cinched straps across their backs and clipped wires here and there. White helmets studded with more tangles of multi-colored wire were strapped down on the prisoners’ heads. Some of the Humans tried to twist away; they shook their heads in an effort to resist the procedure. Others seemed to prefer not to get the small jolts from the shock-devices that came from putting up a fight.
As Anlyn was pulled toward one of the padded tables, she felt a compulsion to disobey, to kick out at her escorts, to put up enough of a struggle that they’d be forced to kill her—but her body was too fatigued to do her bidding. Or perhaps it disagreed with her mind’s wish to have their combined life snuffed out. Before she could summon her courage, she felt herself being lifted up and shoved flat on the padded table. She turned her head to the side as they strapped her painfully in place.
A man in a white tunic—a proper one with a flowing bottom—rushed over. He seemed to be arguing with the ones in the dark, open-front tunics. There was a lot of shouting, then the pinch of straps across her back and the bite of more straps into her legs. The man in the white tunic was shoved away. More yelling followed. Painful pricks bit Anlyn’s skin as wires were clipped, unclipped, and reclipped. Several people seemed to want to be in charge at the same time and disagreed on where things went.
The helmet came on last. They held her head in place, being rough with her as they strapped it beneath her chin. Anlyn shouted her own string of curse words, unleashing a fury built up over so many imprisoned sleeps that the time seemed to stretch back into forever.
She cursed at them and was still cursing at them when her first nightmare began—
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It was a chasing dream. As it would turn out, they would always be chasing dreams. It took Anlyn so very many of them before she figured out what was going on, how they were using her. At first, she thought it was just for torture. She thought every bad piece of propaganda she’d ever heard about Humans was correct, that they were tormenting her for the mere sport of it. It wasn’t until much later that she learned the truth and realized the propaganda had been tame in comparison.
The machine tapped straight into her fears. It placed her in immediate danger, turning her loose in a dream world and leaving her to survive on pure adrenaline. Her brain was made to feel the worst sort of panic, its entire computational powers melding with her most primal fears. And so Anlyn found herself in a Wadi canyon, chased by a hoard of scratching, clawing, hissing males. The nightmare was so powerful, so real, that Anlyn could feel with complete surety that she would die if they caught her.
And so she ran.
She ran faster in the dream world than she could in real life. Her brain was alive with terror and made powerful by a surge of hormones. As the Wadi came after her—a handful, a dozen, hundreds—Anlyn twisted and turned, dashing along the shaded paths branching out in a knotted web before her.
She looked left and right as she sprinted along, trying to make sure she saw them all. Wadi were everywhere: darting and leaping, pawing the air where she had been just moments before.
Anlyn became consumed with the awareness of them. Her autonomic fear response—her overwhelming urge to live—told her where to cut and dive and dodge to avoid them. The scenario set up by the nightmare felt impossible to survive, but it became ever less so the longer she ran. Eventually, the hundreds of Wadi dwindled to dozens, then down to a handful of the biggest and sleekest ones. Several times, these ultra Wadi grazed her, nicking her leg as she spun out of the way a blink too slow, gashing her arm as she swung it out for balance or to fend off another attacker. Each time, the pain was real—Wadi toxins could be felt spreading through her nerves with painful electricity. Anlyn dug deep, summoning every drop of will she had to outrace the rabid animals. She pounded her feet, choosing one turn in the shady paths after another, running toward a hole she somehow knew was just ahead, a hole only she would be able to go through.
When it came into sight—this magical place where she would be safe—there was only one Wadi left behind her. Anlyn felt a powerful urge to forget the beast and run straight for the hole, but a smarter part of her knew it would mean her death. If she were to forget the danger for even a moment, if she were to make the mistake of dreaming too fondly for an end to the nightmare, her foolish hopes would surely just worsen the torture. She knew without knowing how she knew that a twisting path would be shorter in the end.
With renewed vigor, she darted to and fro, cutting a mad and winding course across the flat rock. The last Wadi skidded behind her, slipping now and then, cutting across the sunrock when it had to, its scales gleaming in the fury of her nightmare Horis.
Anlyn lunged left and right several more times, her thighs so heavy and sore that they threatened to collapse with each powerful juke. She forced her feet to grip the stone, forced her arms to pump along with her legs, took one more spin, faked to the side, then dove, headfirst, through the hole of her imagined and longed-for safety—
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When the helmet came off, there were even more men around her than before, more in the dark suits and especially more in the white tunics. They were yelling even louder, but no longer at each other. They seemed to be cheering. The wires came off her skin with sharp stings. The straps were pulled away, and Anlyn was forced up. She could see that the room was empty of other prisoners; all the padded beds were vacant, which left her with the impression that she’d been in the nightmare for much longer than it had felt. Then again, in other ways, it felt like she’d been in that horrible place for several sleeps.
The Humans were obviously happy with their experiment. A large group of them continued to speak loudly with one another as her escorts led her back to her cell. Along the way, there was more spitting and yelling. This was followed by more hours of sitting alone, hugging her shins, and then another sleep during the confusing cycle of light to dark. The only change was in the quality of her water and the amount of food she was given later that night. Neither, however, were enough to overcome the residual shaking the nightmare had left in her bones.
The next day, they did it to her again. It was another Wadi nightmare, very similar to the last one. The fear and pain did not lessen, but Anlyn at least knew what was expected of her. She made it to the hole once again, cut up and bleeding by the time she got there. The dream wounds felt so real that her flesh was tender as they drug her back to her cell. She half expected to find actual scars or dried blood on her somewhere. She slept with real aches and with the perpetual fear of the nightmares finding their way into her cell.
And so it went: Wadi dreams for a dozen sleeps. Anlyn became exhausted by the ordeal, which at least meant she was able to pass out for the entirety of her imprisoned nights. During a subsequent march down the cell-lined corridor, one of her escorts lashed out at a spitter, which was different. Anlyn hardly cared. She liked it better when they left her alone in her cell.
During the next nightmare, she learned something new. The Wadi could be turned on one another. Not purpose-minded, but on accident. She could taunt them along on colliding vectors, sending the imagined animals into each other, which made them vanish even quicker than outrunning them. At the beginning of the dream—when there were lots of them giving chase—this tactic worked well to thin the herd. It was after a few days of experimenting with this that she reached the hole for the first time without getting touched, with nary a nick. The Humans were oddly silent after that dream. A group of them huddled together, their heads bent close, as she was led out. It was also one of the few times other prisoners were still strapped to their beds when she awoke. She saw them twitching with shocks of pain as the guards marched her out of the room. She tried to feel some twinge of joy at seeing the spitters get their own, but she couldn’t quite manage it.
And even though Anlyn hadn’t gotten nicked in that last dream, she was already losing her sense of feel. She could hurt while not being touched and feel numb as she was struck. It left her in a confused, permanently anxious state. Her environmental cues did not match her feelings.
After that first untouched nightmare, the Humans gave her a sleep cycle off. The following day, they took her to a different room, one with more of the white tunic men and fewer of the black-suited ones. That was her first day of learning English, one word at a time. They used pictures and repetition. They showed her words made of letters, the shapes of which she recognized as Human, just as she knew the florid script of the Bern. Her meals were served as she followed along, the two feedings framing the extremely long sessions. Even though her mind was numb from her conditions, Anlyn fought to absorb the lessons, knowing that communication was the way out. If she could explain who she was, perhaps appeal to their leaders, she might be able to return home.
And so she learned. And the next day they forced her to suffer a nightmare. And the next day she learned some more.
And so it went for many sleeps.
And what they were teaching her was war.