Home in the Space Beyond

Chapter 2

I woke up moaning a bit. I didn't actually mean to, it just came out. My head hurt a little less than the last wake up, but I was still pretty dizzy and uncomfortable. As soon as my eyes opened and I saw the blue bars over my head I began to feel sick to my stomach and I remembered the creepy lizard aliens who seemed to be our kidnappers. I started to sit up but almost threw up as I did. So I laid my head down slowly again and just tried to breathe. Whatever was going on with my head was not pleasant, and the stress of being in a cage was not helping. Neither were the aliens. The redheaded girl came into view over me. I barely heard her whisper, "are you okay?" because she was so quiet. Like she was terrified to make a sound. I didn't blame her after seeing those lizard alien guys. They were intimidating, but they also gave off an aura of bad news. Like they were predators.

I just winced and said "not really, but I'll survive."

She gave me a sympathetic look and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. I think I like this girl. Just then I see the other two younger girls peeking at me over their shoulder. I give them a hesitant smile and they return it. I try to sit up again and manage it this time. I notice two of the food bowls the aliens brought in are next to me. One has a small amount of water and the other the biscuit type food. I smile again, knowing the girls locked in here with me saved me the food and water. I whisper a quick thank you and reach for the food. It tastes like if you made crackers with a lot of vegetables in them and then forgot to add any salt or other seasoning. I could eat it, but it wasn't pleasant. Drinking the water next, which was a little odd out of a metal bowl, I looked at my fellow captives.

"How long was I asleep?" I asked.

The older looking brunette held up her hand with four fingers up. Four hours I guess that means. I wasn't sure how she could tell time but then I saw that her sleeve had slid back when she held up her hand, and she had a watch on. So, I hadn't missed an entire day or something. That was probably good. I was uncomfortable with the idea of being unconscious in this place, knowing the aliens could show up anytime.

"Can we not talk or something?" I whispered next, thinking about how she kept whispering and how she had shushed me when I first woke up here.

The redhead shook her head and scooted just a bit closer. She explained that they probably could, but everyone was trying to not get the aliens attention. Apparently she had been here a couple hours before they brought most of the rest of us in, and some of the men in the big cage had been really loud. That made the aliens come to see what was going on, and when the men yelled right at the aliens they got taken out of their cage. They fought that out of fear, but the aliens hit them, and that's why a couple looked like they had been in a fight with the black eye and bruises. Since then there had been an unspoken agreement by everyone to not draw attention to them.

I nodded to show I understood, but there was one thing I really needed to ask. So I did.

"Do you know how we got here? Or where here is?"

The youngest girl gasped, and the other two just looked surprised.

"Don't you remember?" she whispered.

I shook my head. "I think I hit my head or something, it hurts and I can't remember much except seeing those aliens before seemed familiar."

She looked sad, and then answered me.

"We were abducted. I guess everyone here was. We all seem to be from different places in the world. Not everyone even speaks English. But, we're..."

Her eyes looked at me like she couldn't quite bear to finish her sentence. One of the brown haired ones did for her.

"We're on a spaceship" she said softly, sadly, "...a spaceship in space".

I looked at them and realized what that meant. It should have been obvious what with the aliens and cages that I wouldn't be going back to my normal life anytime soon. But somehow I had figured we were still on Earth. Being in space meant, well it meant there was no way I could somehow escape or be magically rescued by the government. Neither option was probably realistic even if we were stored in a warehouse on Earth, but flying through space just made everything about this situation feel a lot more final and hopeless.

I sat there stunned and still dizzy as the red haired woman said her name was Lauren. She was from Tennessee and had a bit of an accent. The other two were sisters like I had thought, and from Spain. They were named Lucia and Sofia.

"I'm Ava" I told them in a daze, "from California."

After the introductions I was still pretty dizzy and distracted by the news of how completely out of luck we were, and Lauren looked lost in thought too. So we all fell silent and retreated to various corners, not that that left us more than a foot or two away from one another in such a small space. The sisters hugged each other and the younger one started to doze on her sisters shoulder. After a while I ate a bit more food, and then closed my own eyes. I didn't mean to fall asleep, but there wasn't much else to do besides worry, and I was injured, so I fell into a fitful sleep once again.