Save me, please...

Chapter 7

The door closed behind Conrad with a loud click and a soft rush of air. Apparently the lab is airtight. He stepped away from the door, and as he did, was blinded by a flood of fluorescent lights.

His eyes eventually adjusted to show him a cavernous lab with cables running everywhere, connected to monitors and boards displaying stats, graphs and data. All of the cables and chords linked up to a large cylindrical metal tube right in the center of the room.

"Is it...inside?" Conrad asked nervously.

"Open slate," Dr. Anderson commanded Ava and what looked like a covering, the metal part of the tube, began to shift upwards.

And there it was.

 Conrad was shocked, to say the least. He had been expecting a typical sci-fi alien, something that looked like a monstrous demon.

"A humanoid," Conrad stated to no one in particular as he looked on at the creature inside the tube. If you could even call it a creature.

The being suspended in clear liquid in the tank was what looked like a pale young woman. Her skin was a pale grey, her hair as white as snow.

Dr. Anderson walked in front of him, her hand gliding over the surface of the tank in a form of what looked like reverence.

"Isn't she beautiful?" she whispered.

He stepped forward, noting the lighter marks all over the alien's body. He thought they might have been scars, but on closer inspection appeared to be white intricate tattoos. Because of her all too human appearance, she wore garments that were skin tight, to hide any genitalia that might seem indecent. She just looked so human. Her impossibly long white hair hung like a shroud suspended around her face in the liquid. As Conrad stepped closer and closer, he could make out more and more of her face. Rose petal lips, the perfect nose, cheek bones meant for a god and eyelashes that any woman in her right mind would kill for. To his surprise and minor horror, her long lashes suddenly began to flutter under his scrutiny. There was the suddenly loud beep of a heart rate monitor and a spike on the screen that displayed the brain activity.

"Don't feel offended Conrad, she does that whenever a new presence enters the room, she will eventually get used to you. She is just fighting the drugs in her system."

"Drugs? What drugs? How are you giving them to her?" the technology being utilized in this lab was far beyond anything Conrad had ever worked with before.

"Yes, don't worry the subject is safe, it is a natural sedative and it is in the liquid that she is submerged in." Dr. Anderson seemed pleased with herself.

Conrad then noticed two things. One, she didn't have an oxygen mask on and two, her chest still rose and fell like it normally would. Also, there was no obvious presence of gills.

"How is she able to remain submerged?" he asked Dr. Anderson.

"She is submerged in a substance called 'breathable liquid', I'm sure you have heard of it before-"

"The oxygen-rich substance that was created by the government and usually used as an interrogation tool..." Conrad trailed off as a thought bounded into his mind for the umpteenth time since he had arrived : Exactly what have I gotten myself into... He suddenly saw this alien with new eyes and even a little bit of pity. She was a lab rat, having unknown substances pumped into her at the will of others and floating in a constant state of unconsciousness.

"She was promised safe haven-" Conrad was saying before he was interrupted by Dr. Anderson.

"She is safe, is she not? At least no harm has come to her. It's because of our intervention that she hasn't yet been killed and dissected. What we have done to her is a mercy compared to what most government institutions would have done."

"Couldn't you have studied her while she was concious? You could have learnt so much, how she lives, what she eats. The way you are studying her now, there is a very limited amount of information that you can discover. That must be why the project has come to a stand still-" Again, he was interrupted by Dr. Anderson. She seemed angrier now. 

"Don't forget, boy, this is an alien. An alien who killed humans. I discussed the implications of waking her up in length with the rest of the scientists and we all agreed that it would be better if she remained unconscious."

Although she was being very pig headed about it, Conrad could see her reasoning. This was an alien and more than just that, an alien who had killed people. Although she wasn't being treated fairly according to the agreement she made, she was being treated fairly compared to other murderers.

"You're right," Conrad said, "I'm sorry."

Dr. Anderson's anger was almost immediately replaced by smugness. "That's alright Conrad, you are so young and so new on the project. You're not the first person to fall for her charms and you certainly wont be the last."

Conrad didn't even have to ask her to explain. She carried on, proud of everything that she had thus far discovered.

"You saw the way that she reacted when you got close? She appears to have a sensitivity to brainwaves, she senses the people around her."

"So... she is 'unconscious' but aware of her surroundings?"

"Essentially, yes."

Conrad felt more pity for the alien now, not less. She was imprisoned by the government but not only that, she was a prisoner inside her own body, unable to move, speak, or interact with the outside world but was clearly aware of everything around her. Conrad couldn't think of any fate short of death that paralleled that.