you think they’ll really let us go if we want to tomorrow morning?” Penny asked hesitantly.
Shurla made an incredulous sound in the back of her throat.
“I don’t think so—these bastards are playing for keeps.” She sighed and put her head in her hands. “This is all so crazy—it just feels like a bad dream, you know?”
“I was thinking the exact same thing,” Penny said fervently.
She thought again of the Oompa-Loompa NeverBreeders and the public orgy they had witnessed out in the town and the way the “Glorious Leader” looked exactly like Colonel Sanders. Maybe she had fallen asleep somewhere and this was all just a really vivid dream.
In fact, maybe she had fallen asleep even before she was captured—possibly she was in her bed on the long-range shuttle with Rive and Y’lla and everything she’d gone through in the past two days was all just a nightmare…
It was such a seductive idea, Penny was really tempted to give in to it. Maybe once she went to sleep, she would wake up in the real world, back aboard the Kindred ship.
It was all she had to hope for, since at the moment, she saw no way to escape.
Twenty-Four
About an hour later, when Penny was so hungry it felt like her stomach was gnawing on her backbone—as her very Southern mom would have said—the door to the dormitory/prison opened and a normal looking humanoid woman came in. She looked to Penny to be in her early to mid forties and she had short black hair and guarded eyes.
There was something different about her, though, Penny thought. She was the first humanoid person, other than her fellow prisoners, who wasn’t smiling like a loon.
She doesn’t look like a Disney cast member, like all the rest of them, Penny thought, watching as the woman brought in a hover-cart loaded with large, frosty glasses filled with some kind of thick white liquid. In fact, she doesn’t look happy at all.
“What is this?” Shurla asked as the woman attempted to hand her a glass.
“Is it some kind of milk shake?” Penny asked. That was what it looked like, anyway.
“It’s a protein shake,” the woman answered evasively. “What flavor would you like?” she added, addressing Penny.
“Uh—they all look the same to me. Is this that Mother’s Milk stuff everyone kept talking about?” she added.
“It’s a protein shake,” the woman insisted. “And you pick the flavor this way.” She reached for a small metal canister on the end of the cart and opened it. Inside were lots of little flat sticks that looked a little like tongue depressors to Penny.
“What are those?” Shurla asked, suspiciously.
“They’re flavor-sticks,” the woman said patiently. “Just think of what flavor you want—I recommend something sweet—press the stick to your tongue and then stir the protein shake with the stick. The flavor you thought of will be instantly transferred to the shake.”
“Do we have to use the sticks?” one of the other prisoners asked, frowning.
“Well, no.” The woman shrugged. “But I’d recommend it. The shake doesn’t taste like anything at all unless you flavor it. It’s like drinking a big glass of cold glue—not very nice.”
“I’ll try it,” Penny said. She knew she ought to refuse the stuff they were offering her, but by that time she was so hungry, she would have eaten or drunk almost anything.
She took the flavor stick the woman was offering and pressed the end of it against her tongue. Wondering if this could possibly work, she thought as hard as she could about a peanut butter-banana malt shake from Bo’s, her favorite ice cream shop back home. Then she dipped the stick into the frosty glass of what appeared to be vanilla milkshake the woman had handed her and stirred it around thoroughly.
The liquid in the glass remained the same color, which gave Penny serious doubts.
There’s no way this is going to work, she thought, as she took an experimental sip. No way it can—
Suddenly the flavors of peanut butter and banana and malt powder swirled across her tongue. The shake didn’t just taste similar to the one from Bo’s—it tasted identical.
“Wow!” Penny looked up at the woman in surprise. “It really worked!” She took another, bigger sip. “It tastes exactly like what I imagined!”
The woman offered her a wan smile.
“Told you. The flavor sticks make all the difference.”
“Let me try one,” Shurla said grudgingly and the other women asked for their shakes as well.
Penny felt guilty—she hoped she hadn’t inadvertently convinced all the other prisoners to drink