Almost.

There were a few faint lines she could make out, but to what end? It wasn’t like she was going to pull a magic crowbar out of her ass and make a break for it. No, this was an academic exercise. Something to keep her mind from cracking.

“So,” she said, looking over the rather spartan interior of the craft, “this is a spaceship. Not exactly what I thought it would be like.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Maybe walls of flickering lights. Or a window showing the galaxy.”

“Fat chance, that. We’re lucky for the few amenities we have. Speaking of which, are you hungry? Once the grogginess wears off, people are usually pretty famished.”

Darla hadn’t thought about it, but now that Maureen mentioned it, she actually was hungry. Very hungry, in fact.

“Yeah, I could definitely eat.”

Maureen pushed herself up to her feet and offered Darla a hand. “Come on, let’s get some chow.”

The two of them crossed the chamber to a wall with a small textural anomaly on its surface.

“Here, this is how we get food balls,” Maureen said, pressing her hand against the rough spot.

A small hole in the ceiling opened up, though Darla hadn’t noticed any seams there, and a baseball sized orb of some green organic-looking material dropped into her waiting palm. She tossed it to Darla and repeated the process, getting a ball for herself as well.

Darla sniffed it. Pungent, with a hint of something that might be some sort of spice.

“Don’t try to figure out what it is,” Maureen advised. “Trust me, no one’s got an idea, and we probably don’t want to know. The only thing I am sure of is it’s gluten free.”

“How can you tell?”

“Ashanti over there is celiac. One bite of wheat products and she’ll be doubled over for hours.”

“A canary in your culinary coal mine, then?”

Maureen chuckled and bit off a piece. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, be glad today is green. The orange ones are a bit hard to get down.”

Darla was normally a somewhat picky eater, though not to the point of being a pain in the ass, but after whatever they’d done to her body when they took her, even that one whiff of the odd alien food ball had made her mouth water. She took a bite, ripping into the compressed food orb with a gusto that surprised her. She powered the whole thing down in under two minutes.

“More?”

Maureen chuckled. “Trust me, you’ll want to space them out. Food’s always available, but you need a lot of water to wash these things down, otherwise you’ll be all kinds of plugged up.”

“Ah, thanks for the tip.”

“Gotta look out for the new girl. And speaking of which, let me show you how to get water. It’s weird at first, but you’ll get used to it.”

Maureen led the way to another section of the wall. This one had a damp spot on the ground where it seemed a micro mesh allowed water to escape. Darla was not impressed.

“What are we supposed to do? Lap it up like dogs? Not exactly a high-tech alien wonder.”

“Just watch.”

Maureen stepped forward onto the mesh area, stopping just shy of the damp portion. She turned her head upward and waited. “Any second now.”

As if on cue, a trickle of water began flowing from the ceiling. She moved underneath it and filled her mouth, then stepped back to swallow.

“See? Easy. It’s pressure sensitive. All you have to do is stand there and it’ll turn on.”

Darla stepped forward tentatively. A moment later the water began trickling once more. She wasn’t as practiced as her new friend at catching the stream from above and wound up soaking her face, but Darla didn’t care. The water tasted amazing, and a side benefit of her messy drink was the added plus of washing the last bit of crud from her eyes.

“Better?”

“Definitely better. Thanks. But why do they do it like this? It’s such a weird system.”

“Beats me. Who knows why the Raxxians do anything? But at least we’ve got food and water, so I’m not going to look that gift horse in the mouth.”

Darla figured that was probably a wise outlook, given their situation. The two of them stepped away from the watering system so another captive could get a drink. She was jumpy and rail-thin. By the look of her, she wasn’t eating the alien food, and Darla wondered how long she could survive like that.

“Hey, Maureen?”

“Yeah?”

“Exactly how long have you been in here?”

“Me? Hmm, let’s see. I’d say a bit over a week. Like I said before, though, I can’t be totally sure of time in this place.”

“A week, huh? What about the others?”

“The longest is her over there,” she said, pointing to an Asian woman with a thick, long braid. “That’s Mei. She doesn’t talk much. From what I heard, things got kind of ugly when her group was brought aboard. I don’t know what happened to the rest of them, but she’s the only one left.”

Darla felt a pang of sympathy briefly outweigh her own self-pity, at least for a moment. Then the reality of the shitty situation crashed back around her.

“So, if they just brought me on board, how are you so sure we’re not still on Earth? Maybe—”

“Trust me, I know. We all felt it. The ship’s vibrations changed. Right after the Raxxians dumped you in here, come to think of it.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean—”

“And then we had a second of weightlessness when we popped out of the atmosphere before whatever they use to create artificial gravity kicked in,” Maureen cut her off.

“Ah,” Darla stammered. “Well, uh, yeah. I guess that kinda settles it, then.”

“Yup.”

Darla mulled over the details for a minute, coming to terms with the harsh reality of her situation. She was a captive on an alien spaceship, and she didn’t have the slightest idea what would become of her.

A cramp hit her as the alien food and water processed through her system. It seemed that while it was edible, it would take her stomach some getting used to.

“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked, her hand resting on her lower belly.

Maureen’s smile faltered.

“Follow me.”

She led the way to a seamless section of wall and pointed to a pair of slightly indented ovals barely visible on the floor. They were separated by about two feet, the metal between them faintly lined in an iris pattern.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Darla asked.

“Step on them.”

“Step on them?”

“You heard me.”

She had no reason to doubt her, so Darla took a step forward, placing one foot on each indentation. Immediately the iris in the floor cycled open beneath her, the faint stink of sewage wafting up despite the ship’s disposal system.

“Hang on. A shit hole? Seriously? A literal shit hole?” Darla stepped back and the iris snapped shut. “Uh-uh. No way. I need privacy. And toilet paper.”

“There’s a bidet sort of feature on it. Not sure how it works, it just seems to know when you’re done and gives you a spritz.”

“Fuck this. I don’t know about you, but this isn’t acceptable.”

“You don’t have a choice. And keep your voice down.”

“I will not keep my voice down. This is bullshit! They can’t treat us like this!”

“Will you shut her up?” a tall blond man in a stained tank top shouted. “You know what they’ll do.”

“Olaf’s right,” a woman with platinum blonde hair whispered from the bunk she’d slid into. “You have to stay quiet.”

“What’s with you people? They obviously need us alive, right? So why—”

“Just shut up!” the man growled. “Don’t make them—”

The door at the far side of the room slid open with a whoosh. Two massive, green, scaled creatures strode in, their stubby tails waving behind them through the holes in their uniforms. They were huge. Muscular. And worst of all, their reptilian faces sported row after row of sharp teeth.

The nearest of them grabbed the man roughly by the arm.

“No! It wasn’t me! Please! I swear, it was her!”