Page 8 of Commander’s Mate

I got the trash tied before the bag could finish betraying me and carried it to the bin by the side gate. The recycling bin was still on the porch. I turned back for it, brushing my hands on my yoga shorts.

That was when the car slowed near the curb.

It was a new-looking Chevy. Dark color, clean, ordinary. People stopped for directions on Cherry Street all the time because our little grid of roads made no sense if you missed the turn off Main. We had Cherry, Chestnut, Chapel, and Charles within six blocks, because some town founder had apparently loved confusion and the letter C.

The driver rolled the passenger window down.

“Excuse me,” he called.

I should have ignored him.

That thought has visited me a thousand times since, though thinking it never changes anything.

I did what I would have done any other day. I stepped closer, not too close, and gave the polite half-smile women give strange men when they want to be helpful but not inviting.

“Can you tell me how to get back to Main?” he asked.

“Sure. You missed the turn.” I pointed. “Go down to the stop sign, take a left, then another left at—”

Something flashed.

White. Blue. Painless at first, then everywhere.

My mouth opened, but I did not hear myself scream.

The sky tipped sideways.

For one impossible second, I saw my recycling bin on the porch, still waiting for me.

Then Cherry Street disappeared.

I woke strapped to a bunk with a headache that felt like someone had poured broken glass behind my eyes.

For a while, I did not know I was awake. I floated in a gray place where voices rose and fell around me in languages I almost understood, then did not understand, then suddenly understood again. My body felt too heavy. My wrists would not move. My ankles would not move. Something pressed across my waist, chest, and thighs.

Panic arrived before memory.

I sucked in a breath and jerked against the restraints. The straps held. A sound came out of me—half gasp, half sob—and someone nearby whispered, “Easy. Don’t fight them yet.”

Yet.

That word did nothing good for my nerves.

I forced my eyes open. The room swam, then steadied enough to become a nightmare.

Bunks lined the walls, stacked three high. Women lay strapped to them, some awake, some moaning, some unnaturally still. The air smelled of antiseptic, fear, bodies, and a faint sour chemical odor that turned my stomach. The walls were smooth gray metal. No windows. No visible door at first, until part of the wall slid open and something walked in.

Not someone.

Something.

He was tall, wide, and wrong. His skin looked slick, orange-gray and faintly mottled, with a face like a catfish dragged upright and taught to hate everything softer than itself. His arms ended in broad, flipper-like hands with fingers. He wore a beige tunic belted at his middle and carried a device at his hip that I immediately understood was a weapon, though I had no idea why.

My brain tried to reject him.

Mask. Costume. Movie set. Drug hallucination. Nightmare.

Then he spoke, and the sore place behind my ear vibrated.