like the animal he wants me to think I am. He leads me by the collar toward the bed where a chain waits for me. He is going to keep me like an animal, and there is nothing I can do about it.
“The old ways are the best. We have all sorts of implants and circuits and scanners, and machines you don't have words for, but when it comes to humans, there’s always an easier way. Collars. Chains. Control. That’s what you respond to.”
He clips the chain onto the collar, and I am thoroughly trapped.
“Wait here,” he says. “I have some business to attend to. This room has cameras all over it, so you will be observed if you try to do something stupid, and of course, punished.”
“Of course,” I reply.
He smiles and leaves me to my own devices.
I am sure this is a test. He is not going because he has something else to do. He is obviously going because he wants to see what I do next. He wants to see if I will panic, or if I will test the connection of the collar to my neck, or something else.
I can feel his alien eyes on me through the cameras located all through this room. I flick my middle finger toward the ceiling, and then I stand up. I am shaky. Soup’s not enough to restore the hunger I've been experiencing. The murketeers decided not to feed me during my journey. They thought it would make me easier to handle, but it almost killed me.
Submission to Warden’s authority is all I’ve got. I need him to take care of me and make me strong enough to escape him. Just a few days. That’s all I will need. In a few days I’ll have my strength back. I will know this ship. I will know Warden’s weaknesses. And I’ll be free.
It all starts with this first step up from the ground. He is right about one thing. Humans do need to crawl before we can walk. But once we learn to walk, it’s not that long until we find a way to fly. I’ll be flying out of here, and soon. I just have to crawl first.
The chain is long enough to allow me to lie down and stand up and walk a few paces from one side of the bed to the other. It is also theoretically long enough to lie on the bed itself. I decide to sit on the end of the bed. I am sure he will put me on this bed at some point.
I never expected to escape on the first day. My life is a series of escapes, one after the other, but they are never instant and they are never easy. I sit down and I observe. He has a communications panel in this room. Something which has the capacity to hail off-ship frequencies. They can get all the way to the IHPZ. That could be useful.
I am a part of something bigger. My crimes were never committed alone. If I can get word out, I might be able to be rescued. Especially if I can get a shuttle to meet them somewhere.
The plan is already coming together. The IHPZ was impossible to escape from. To me this ship is practically a wet paper bag. For all intents and purposes, I’ve already escaped.
“Comfortable?”
He returns through the sliding door which opens with an efficient hiss. I wonder how it is opened. Does it open for any solid object of the right height, or is it calibrated to his body somehow?
“Very,” I say. I am starting to feel more like myself.
“I’m going to unchain you and let you use the bathing room. Alone.”
“I thought I would have to earn that privilege?”
“You have.”
“Really? How?”
“By doing as I said, by waiting for me.”
“That was easy.”
“Obeying me will rarely be hard, pet. Most of the problems you have will be in overcoming your resistance to obedience.” He unchains me and gestures toward the fogged glass enclosure, a universal cipher for ‘bathroom’.
This is more freedom, and more luxury than I have ever experienced in captivity. Maybe he’s going to be soft. The scythkin all have their own cultures, their own little clutches hatched in the wild. There is no single scythkin culture. They share brutality and aggression, genetic similarities which carry across the species and make them act more or less the same. But not precisely the same.
Maybe I’ve gotten lucky.
There’s a water-based shower. That’s not common