I Have Crossed the Stars to Find You - BOOK ONE

Chapter 17 - Hell on Pandora

Warning: knives, traumatic dreams, cutting/slicing/killing (with the knife), hard time telling a horrible nightmare from reality

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Z-Dog

I carry the unconscious woman into the main control room where Lyle and Fike are already talking to Colonel and the General, whose eyes flick to me when I walk into the room. I had wrapped her up in a tarp I found outside to at least cover up her chest and private areas, her mouth still gagged but I'd loosened it on the walk here enough that it wouldn't affect her breathing.

While the General and Colonel began talking to each other I lifted up my breathing mask and took a few breaths from it before taking it off with one hand and gently placing it around the girl's neck, securing the mask part of it over her nose and mouth after taking the gag out of her mouth and letting it hang around her neck. Then I caught a new mask Mansk tossed me and put it on, securing it around my neck, looking up just in time to see Colonel walking over to me. He looked down at the girl in my arms before making eye contact with me, hands on his hips as he spoke, "Why's she in a tarp, Zdinarsk?"

I coughed awkwardly and gently adjusted my hold on her before responding, "She was in the nude when we found her Sir, and I didn't want to risk disrupting anyone from their jobs on our way in here." He nodded slowly before turning and beginning to walk away, ears flicking against his head and tail twitching as he called over his shoulder, "Mansk, get the girl to one of the holding cells. Zdinarsk, you get her dressed in decent clothing." With a curt nod from both Mansk and me, I carefully handed her over to him and he carried her the same way I did, careful to make sure she was still fully covered by the tarp as we left the control room, he went for the elevator to go down to the holding cells while I went to find some extra Recom clothing for her.

✭・.・✫

I'm now down in the holding cell with the girl, trying my best to get her unconscious body into some clothing. I was alone in the cell with her, Mansk standing outside the door and keeping watch to make sure nobody tried to sneak a peek at her while she was being dressed.

Sighing in slight exhaustion as I finish pulling her tail through the hole in the baggy dark green camo cargo pants I'd put on her, I gently readjust how she's laying so she'd be more comfortable and be less likely to get back pain from the flat metal table. Aside from the pants, I'd also given her one of my dark green t-shirt-sleeve-length crop tops and fixed her hair since it was fairly messy. I had spent nearly half an hour on her hair alone, undoing all the braids except for the one around her queue before braiding the rest of the hair into one braid and carefully forming it into a bun, using a hair tie to hold it in place.

I made sure to dim the fluorescent lights in the room on my way out, walking out and locking the door behind me before both Mansk and I headed back up to the control room.

Once we got there Colonel was still talking with Lyle and Fike, and when I got within ear range I heard them describing the male that had ran out of the forest after us when we had snatched the woman. I watched as his eyebrows lifted in temporary surprise before a cruel grin spread across his face, followed by a low chuckle as he crossed his arms over his chest. "We got 'im, ya'll. We got his damn bitch in there, ain't no way we won't be able to get Sully in here now." Colonel said as he barked out a laugh, slapping both Lyle and Fike on the shoulders as he continued to smile, the sight strangely more terrifying than his usual angry expression.