The Elder's Mate

One - First Contact

She didn't know how long she had stared at the adjacent wall. It must've been a long time because she had memorized how many grooves were in the white paneling. Sixteen grooves connected the large square pieces. They were always clean, shining under the artificial lighting high above.

Even through the huge glass dome she was kept in she could see the forty-five tubes. Each one bathed the room in perpetual day.

At this point, she forgot what darkness looked like — craved it, just to remember.

Artemis wanted to see more than just the space she was forcibly kept in. It had been a long time since she still had a will to fight. A will to escape back to her old life. Her old life being full of paintbrushes and blank canvases yet to be transformed.

In her prison she could stare at four blank walls that surrounded the bubble of her cage. Here there was only the clinical white on white and little colors to admire.

Her captors had left her to sleep off the injections they gave her for the ultrasound. An ultrasound that drove a stake of fear into her heart, ice flowing in her veins in its wake. This wasn't the way she wanted this to happen. A place like this was no place for a child. A child that had been created when they implanted her with the semen of an alien.

Doctor More had been ecstatic.

He had gone into detail how she was the first successful implantation in trying to hybridize humans with a creature from outer space. One they called...a Predator. Yautja — such a weird word — was what he claimed they were truly called. The father of the child that grew within her was an alien, one who was also being forcibly held in this stark white cage.

Somewhere in this place was an alien, a living breathing alien. Every time the scientists would see her they would chatter amongst themselves with excitement about the "creature" and how he was a "monster". She had never seen the alien and was curious to see what he looked like. Maybe it would help her to gain back some strength to claw her way back to her old life. Or maybe, what she really wanted to know, she would find out what their lab-born child would look like.

Despite her child being implanted within her, she felt a motherly bond that grew in strength. This baby was hers and she would not let them take it away from her.

They didn't feel the little kicks. They didn't have to deal with the side-effects of growing a life inside of them nor did they get to feel the bond that formed between mother and child. All of those Ivy League assholes hadn't the faintest clue the means a mother would go to protect her child, her baby.

Artemis knew for a fact that she was four months along, the little life in her growing rapidly. Many hours were spent lying in bed with her rounding tummy on display as she rubbed it in gentle circles. She would talk to it and sing. Amazingly, this helped her to keep her sanity. At least the baby seemed to like her affection since she'd get strong little kicks from wherever it was inside of her womb at the moment.

It was this that kept her going now. This child gave her strength. She would protect it with every ounce of strength she had.

• • •

Rhage watched from the shadows as the door to his prison opened. Standing on the other side were three large guards with another behind them carrying a small white clothed shape.

A human woman, he saw, whom they placed on the floor with her back facing to him. One whiff of her scent had ice chilling his veins. He finally understood the reason behind being held captive and it filled him with rage.

The door shut behind the humans and he was left to sit there, only able to study the unconscious female in the center of the room. A click alerted him to his hands and ankles being freed of their shackles.