Elara knew space. She knew its quiet, its vastness, its cold indifference. At twenty-four, she charted stellar phenomena from a remote outpost, a tiny speck of human endeavor against the cosmic dark. Her long, dark hair, the color of the deepest void, was usually tied back, away from a face that held full lips and striking green eyes – eyes that could trace the birth of stars. Her body was slender, moving with a natural grace, but with soft curves at her hips and bust that spoke of her humanity, her womanhood. Vulnerable.
One moment, she was leaning over her console, the glow of holographic charts painting her face with shifting light. Her green eyes, focused and intent, tracked a rogue comet. The outpost was silent, save for the whisper of life support and the click of her fingers on the interface. The next, a flash. Blinding. Whiter than any sun she’d ever cataloged. It seared through her closed eyelids. A pressure, immense and sudden, slammed into her skull, like the galaxy itself collapsing in on her. Her breath hitched. A silent scream died in her throat. Then, blackness. Utter and complete.
She woke to cold. Hard, unyielding cold pressed against her cheek, her hip, the length of her arm. Metal. Her eyelids fluttered, heavy, so heavy. A low hum vibrated up from the floor, through her body, a deep, resonant thrum that felt alien to her bones. The air was thick. She dragged in a breath, and a scent, musky and unidentifiable, filled her nostrils. Not the sterile, recycled air of the outpost. This was…animal.
Panic, raw and cold, clawed up her throat. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a wild bird trapped. She tried to push herself up, but her limbs were lead. Heavy. So heavy. Her head throbbed with a dull, insistent beat, each pulse a wave of nausea.
Slowly, fighting the weight, she managed to lift her head. The room was small. Circular. The walls glowed with a faint, internal luminescence, seamless and smooth. No doors. No windows. Just that unbroken, glowing curve. Above, in the center of the ceiling, a red light pulsed. Slow. Rhythmic. With each pulse, a fresh wave of dizziness washed over her, making the glowing walls seem to sway.
Where? The thought struggled through the fog in her brain. What happened?
She pushed again, harder this time, her muscles screaming in protest. She got to her elbows, her vision swimming. The floor was bare, cold metal. She was still in her outpost uniform, a simple, dark grey jumpsuit, now likely smudged from the floor. Her hands trembled. Not just from cold. Fear. A deep, bone-shaking fear.
Another scent, fainter this time, pricked her awareness. Sweet. Sickly sweet, almost hidden beneath the musk. It seemed to come from the air itself, from the rhythmic pulse of the red light. As she inhaled it, the sharp edges of her panic seemed to…soften. Just a little. Her racing heart didn’t slow, not really, but the frantic terror felt… distant. Buffered.
No. Her mind fought against the strange calm. This wasn't right. This feeling, this dullness, it wasn't hers.
She forced herself to sit up, her back against the cold, curving wall. Her body ached. Her head felt like it was full of thick, swirling liquid. She looked around the small, circular prison. No escape. No way out.
Collector ship.
The words slammed into her consciousness with the force of a physical blow. Abduction. She’d heard the stories, the hushed whispers among spacers on distant starports. Tales of ships that appeared from nowhere, of people vanishing without a trace. Collectors. Aliens who took… what they wanted.
Her breath hitched. The stories always mentioned their methods. Efficient. Brutal. And something else… something about control.
The red light pulsed again. Dizziness. The sweet scent seemed to thicken for a moment. Her thoughts grew sluggish, like wading through thick mud. She tried to focus, to think of escape, of fighting back. But the will to act felt blunted, her intentions dissolving before they could form into action. Her limbs felt like they belonged to someone else, heavy and unresponsive.
Move, she screamed inside her head. Get up! Fight!
But her body barely twitched. A tremor ran through her, a shudder that had nothing to do with the cold. It was the sensation of her own will slipping away, being gently, inexorably pried from her grasp.
Elara was five foot six, slender, but strong from her outpost duties. Her dark hair now clung to her damp forehead. Her full lips were dry, parted as she tried to draw steady breaths. Her green eyes, usually so bright with intelligence, were wide, reflecting the pulsing red light, clouded with a confusion that was rapidly giving way to a terrifying, artificial pliancy. She was human, all too human, trapped in an alien cage designed to break her down.
The musky scent in the air grew stronger, more pronounced. The hum of the ship seemed to deepen, vibrating in her teeth, in her bones. The red light pulsed, and with each beat, the fog in her mind thickened. Her fear was still there, a cold knot deep inside her belly, but it was being wrapped in layers of something else. A strange lethargy. A disorienting sense of… inevitability.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the pulsing light, the glowing walls. But the sensations were internal now. The thrumming. The sweet, cloying scent that coated her tongue, her throat. The heavy inertia in her muscles.
Captured. The word echoed in the dimming spaces of her mind. Swift. Brutal. Efficient. Just like the stories.
She remembered her long, dark hair, how she’d sometimes let it down in the privacy of her quarters, a small act of freedom. She thought of her face, her lips, her eyes – features that marked her as her own. Now, she felt like a specimen. A thing.
The ship was silent except for that constant, low hum and the soft, rhythmic throb of the red light. Each pulse seemed to press down on her, pushing her deeper into a state of weary compliance. The initial terror was being systematically dismantled, replaced by a hazy disorientation.
Her body, her own human body, felt strange. The skin on her arms tingled. A warmth, unwelcome and alien, began to spread low in her belly, a sensation entirely at odds with the cold terror that still flickered weakly in her core. It wasn't arousal, not yet, but a strange, unsettling awareness of her own flesh, as if it were being… prepared.
The air shifted again. The sweet scent intensified, making her head spin. Her thoughts, once sharp and clear, were now like scattered stardust, impossible to grasp. She was Elara. She charted stars. She was…
She was on a Collector ship.
Her abduction had been clean. No struggle, no memory beyond the light and the pressure. Now, the disorientation was setting in, thick and suffocating. The mind control, insidious and gentle at first, was beginning its true work. It wasn't erasing her; it was… overwriting her. Dulling the sharp edges of her terror, making her pliant, ready.
A tear escaped one eye, tracking a hot path down her cold cheek. Not a tear of fight, or of defiance. But a tear of dawning, helpless horror. Her will was not her own anymore. She was being unmade, remade.
The red light pulsed. The hum continued. Elara sat, small and human against the glowing alien wall, her body heavy, her mind adrift in a fog of fear and engineered submission. The journey into the Collectors’ hands had truly begun. And in the deep, visceral parts of her being, some primal instinct knew what they wanted her for. Her fertility. Her body. She was to be harvested.
