The Mercenary's Embrace: Savasan Mercenaries (Paperback)

Chapter 1.
Laura.

My stomach churned as heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway toward my cell. I dug my nails into my palms, trying to hold back tears. As much as I wanted to hold my head high, I knew it would only prolong the inevitable.
They had delivered breakfast a while ago, so I knew he was coming for me, but I didn’t move from my cot. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering why they were doing this to me. My heart raced in anticipation of what would happen next.
For God’s sake, I styled women’s hair for a living! How did I come to be in this hell?
I couldn’t fight back. The bastards were stronger, uglier, and meaner. I always crossed at crosswalks, never had a speeding ticket, and went to church. Well, I went when I had time. But in general, I was a good person. How this happened was beyond me.
The room was quiet except for the sound of his heavy breathing. Every part of me was alert and waiting for him to make a move.
He deactivated the force field and spoke to me, and I turned my head to glance at him. He said something else, this time with malice in his tone, and I looked up at his green, round face, my eyes narrowing. When he spoke again, setting one foot inside my cell, I just stared back at him.
I didn’t know why I was defying him. Maybe it was because I’d become fed up with this situation. No matter what I did or said, it wouldn’t change the outcome.
When he finally reached my cot and grabbed me by the arms, all the air rushed out of my lungs as I thought today would be my turn. He would beat me like he did Ellen yesterday.
His words made no sense to me, but the rage burning in his eyes was perfectly understandable. As that thought crossed my mind, he threw me toward the entrance, slamming me against the threshold.
“Humph,” I groaned. Pain radiated from my shoulder, and I curled up.
Once I got to my feet, he lifted a hand to slap me. It stung my face like a hornet’s bite, the resounding crack resonating through the corridor. My ears rang from the impact, and my eyes watered from the pain.
Why was I doing this to myself? Why did I defy him?
“Seriously, you could just give me a translator,” I said, swiping my face with the back of my hand. Wasn’t that what they did in the movies? Like, I’d have to understand alien language to know what he meant. A strike from his weapon would put me down for a few days. I imagined it was like being hit by a lightning bolt. Despite being well-fed with whatever it was that they thought was good for us, because I couldn’t recognize any of it, I had lost weight, and the lack of exercise and fresh air made me weak.
Enraged by my words, the alien holding the electric stick paused and looked at me for a moment before raising his stick in the air. Not wanting to experience the searing pain of electrocution again, I hurried away toward the lab.
My jailer had a human-like appearance and could fool many in the dark—if he weren’t green. The weapon he was carrying, that damned baton, discharged electric shock waves that could fry my brain if set on max, which they never did. They only shocked us to the point of incapacitating us for a couple of days. Not fun.
He walked behind me, and I already knew where to go. I stumbled and dragged my feet, hearing the sound of my boots tapping on the cement-like floor. The brightly lit corridor was chilly and smelled of unwashed bodies and disinfectant. I had been here for almost three months, the exact number of my menstrual cycles, and I knew what those bastards wanted, though I didn’t understand why.
As we walked, I passed by other women’s cells lining the hallway, each with a large entrance secured by a transparent magnetic field force. Through it, I could see the women being held inside. They watched me in silence as I passed, their eyes revealing a mixture of pity and desperation. They knew what awaited me because they, too, had been in the facility for months, if not years.
My insides twisted into knots as I shuffled down the hallway, their eyes piercing me like needles. I kept my gaze ahead, determined not to acknowledge their pitying expressions. Then my eyes landed on Ellen, and I gasped. Her skin was unblemished and glowed with health, not an ounce of evidence to show for yesterday’s beating.
I thought I was hallucinating for a moment but shook my head. I saw two of them beating her, so she should at least have a black eye today, but her skin was flawless. Not a scratch on her face.
She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her blue eyes, and it fell flat. I shook my head and forced my thoughts away from the endless questions.
The chilly corridor was a reminder of the lack of sunlight. Ellen was right. We had to be underground, or maybe in a space station, because I hadn’t seen daylight since arriving in this shithole. The day they abducted me was the last time I saw the sun; since then, the days had been indistinguishable from one another.
I stopped before the door and waited for the guard to deactivate the force field. He scanned a keycard over a panel to the left, removing the magnetic barrier.
The room was clinical, with white walls and a gynecological recliner chair that adjusted to the doctor’s height. It had stirrups for our feet, made from a leather-like material—natural or artificial, I couldn’t tell. In front of it was another chair, where they sat to observe us.
It was a mix between an examination room and a lab. I had a hunch that the actual lab was on the other side of the door at the back of the room.
The room also had two white, waist-high countertops on opposite walls. Above them, cabinets made with what looked like glass had dishes and test tubes filled with liquids in various colors. A few labeled packages and bottles stood over the counter by what I guessed was their version of a microscope.
I stepped inside and sat on the gyno-like recliner. I looked back to see if the guard had stayed outside and felt relieved when I saw that he had. I removed my boots, pants, and underwear, and as I sat on the sterile chair, a door at the back of the room opened, and he came in. He was the primary doctor who ‘attended’ us, for lack of a better term.
I called him Dr. Evil.
Not in my strangest dreams would I have ever imagined I would be before a being like this. His black, thin-scaled skin and horns were enough to scare the daylights out of me. The first time I saw him, I thought I had died and gone to hell. I remember screaming bloody murder.
The alien was tall, albeit the curvature of his spine decreased his height, but he was over seven feet tall. He looked old, but I couldn’t tell how old. His thick, black hair was braided and tied up in an updo on the top of his head.
That first day, he had gotten pretty annoyed with my reaction and shouted and restrained me to the chair. I learned to keep quiet and stay still. Those straps had been so tight I thought they would cut me in half.
Roaming the room with his eyes, he found me immediately, and his smile disappeared. He shouted, and my jailer entered the room.
I squeaked and tried to cover myself with my dirty clothes. What the fuck?
Dr. Evil screamed at the green guard and then pointed to the door. The guard turned but, before leaving, stared at me with hatred.
I recoiled at the intensity of that stare, knowing what awaited me afterward, and sighed in frustration.
Dr. Evil babbled something and smiled at me.
I found it odd that the bastard smiled at me. Huffing, I lay down and stared at the ceiling. I didn’t want to watch him fumbling with his cold fingers on my lady bits. That was just too humiliating.
I waited for the feeling of his clawed hands on my lower half, but after a few moments had passed without it, I looked for him and saw he was fiddling with a machine that could pass as a vacuum-cleaning robot on Earth. It was round, bigger than a football, and had a robotic arm protruding from its middle. Alarm bells went off in my head, and I sat up straight.
He mumbled something I didn’t understand and came closer, holding the robotic disc.
This differed from our weekly visits. During those, he just checked my hoo-ha and injected me with something. Sometimes he would do an egg retrieval, and those days were the worst because he did it without anesthesia.
All the women locked up at this facility were lab rats. I didn’t understand what they said, but this animal was studying something. All those samples and drugs he gave us were supposed to show him something.
My mind refused to think about what he was doing with our eggs, and I swatted the thought away as quickly as it came. Not thinking had been my coping mechanism so far, but this change in routine was worrisome.
Sitting up, I got ready to bolt when I saw him raising his weapon and pointing it at me. I knew he would fire because he had done it before, and it hurt like a sonuvabitch.
From what I could understand about those weapons, their intensity could be regulated. Dr. Evil used it as a taser on steroids, and today I wasn’t keen on being fried. Not after my encounter with the guard earlier.
The effects lasted a few days, during which I felt like a vegetable. Been there, done that, and I was not interested in repeating the experience.
He grabbed me by the nape and forced me down with my face against the chair. He brought the robot thingy close to my head, and I felt a prick in the junction between my head and neck. It burned, and suddenly, there was an explosion of pain that radiated from that point and spread to my whole head and down my neck and shoulders. A jolt of electricity streaked through me, and I howled, pushing my head against his hand and straining against his grip. Tears streamed down my face when my body went rigid, kicking against the chair. My muscles spasmed wildly, and I felt something cold in my head, like an iron bar had been placed there.
My legs flailed and jerked uncontrollably, and I screamed, clutching at the sides of my head and writhing on the chair.
Dr. Evil was immovable, holding me still with one hand. He leveled his creepy green eyes at me, disgusted at my reaction. Irritated, he bared his fangs at me, and I shrank, but I couldn’t help but curse him.
“You bastard! Why did you do that?” I shouted at him while trying to breathe through the pain. Surprisingly, it receded as quickly as it came, and I felt more of a dull throb where he had pricked me.
“Ah, I see you are feeling better now. Such a tantrum over a little prick. You humans are so weak. I don’t know how this will work,” he admitted, reading something on a tablet while stepping to the counter.
Wide-eyed, I stared at him, surprised. “I can understand you.”