Abducted (rottmnt fanfic)

Starving

Donnie's pov:

After spending an entire day in the rainforest room, a guard came down the elevator capsule and approached me. I'd spent the time I was stuck in the room staying as still as possible, I'd gotten too overwhelmed and I didn't have the energy to try to escape by the time it was over. I didn't even try to get away from the guard, that would just make me more uncomfortable in the end anyways. What was the point of trying to escape when, at that point, the only exit possible was where they were trying to get me to go anyways? At least when I was picked up by the guard, I was away from the leaves, they weren't brushing against me or making my skin crawl anymore so it was better than nothing. I didn't let go from hugging my knees when I was taken back to the room with the large monitor that they'd been using to watch me, I just let the guard sit me down and I closed my eyes. "It looks weak. Did you guys feed it like they asked?" One scientist, who'd joined to observe along with a few others, spoke to another while examining me. 

 "We tried, but it seemed to not work. I even put the food right in it's face and all it got me was yelled at by them!" Another huffed, gesturing to my caregiver, who watched my examination over in the corner of the room. All they did was roll their eyes. 

"Soft shells will eat basically anything near them, so it's actually kind of surprising to find this one is picky." The leader walked into the room. 

"Anything?" The first one sounded rather surprised. They were making generalizations about me based on things about unmutated spiny softshell turtles, which wasn't reasonable since I wasn't like them. 

"Pretty much, yeah." The leader nodded. "Though they tend to stick with more meat based foods, they're omnivorous, so maybe going with something more plant based could be helpful."

"Hmm... do you think he'd eat fruit?" My caregiver asked. 

"Most genetically modified foods are much too rich in sugars for wild animals but..." I kept watching them converse. Fruit sounded nice actually, it was very appealing. Plus, it would be hydrating, which was going to be helpful since I hadn't had water in well over a day. The room hadn't had any water in there at all that I could find. "It's not necessarily like wild animals. Remember how one of our coworkers theorized that it was possibly being kept as some exotic pet earlier?"

"Yeah." The other responded, sounding like they weren't going to like what was going to be said next. 

 "Well, what if it only ate people food? Think about it, it acts somewhat like a person, reacts like a person to specific stimuli, and was even put into clothes like a person. So I wouldn't be surprised if it was fed like one as well." The fact that they were finally bringing that up gave me a small amount of hope, maybe I was actually going to get some edible food. It was humiliating that it was even something for me to be happy about to begin with, but I'd take what I could get at the moment, especially after being in an environment like the rainforest room. 

"What do you want us to do, feed it a cheeseburger?" One scientist laughed. A cheeseburger would be a blessing at that point even though I knew it would be terrible for me. 

"No, I'm suggesting we feed it cooked food though." The other scientist sighed softly. 

"If no one else wants to do it, I'm more than willing to cook his food." My caregiver spoke up. "I can season the food with things he needs too, he'll probably like it. Of course, we can't give him salt since he's a freshwater turtle, but feeding him just something better than the stuff he didn't like is probably going to mean a lot." I didn't particularly like them withholding salt from me, but what was I supposed to do? Tell them to give me salt?

"Well, no one knows the last time it ate anything, so go ahead, we can try." The leader gestured to the door, telling my caregiver to go and make me some food. They then picked me up and sat me down on something similar to the exam table at a hospital, taking my hand and holding it out. "Can someone bring me a tag?"