The Clone’s Mate by Susan Trombley

Two

I awakened to a silence so profound my ears rang from it. My eyes opened to complete darkness, and I lifted a hand to touch them to make sure my lids had really opened. In panic, I followed that up with a flailing of my arms, crying out with a trembling voice.

“Hello? Anyone?” My voice pierced the darkness, and my panicked breaths sawed over my nerves with nothing else to break up the sounds. “Is anyone there?”

I didn’t feel like there were other people around. In fact, I felt totally alone, and the empty air around me confirmed that no one stood nearby. The temperature of wherever I’d found myself was just warm enough that it would have been uncomfortable if it weren’t dry as an Arizona summer. It also would have been uncomfortable if I weren’t fully nude.

I realized my lack of clothing as my full awareness returned, though I couldn’t see myself, even as I frantically looked down and patted my body desperately. My hands passed over fully naked skin. I hadn’t even been left with a bra for my slightly sagging breasts, when the girls needed all the extra support they could get at this stage in my life. If I had larger breasts, I probably would have been even more uncomfortable, but even with my tangerine-sized boobs, I felt their weight bouncing as I climbed to my feet slowly and unsteadily, my movements jerky.

I didn’t feel any aftereffects of whatever drug I’d been given by the—and now my breaths grew even more panicked as I recalled everything—aliens that had abducted me. I supposed it was too much to hope that they might have some hot barbarian types around ready to whisk me away to their home world to make me the queen of their reverse harem. Hot guy Jason and his creepy sis and family were definitely not the type I’d want to find between the covers of a paranormal romance novel. Sure, they had the look, but the attitude was not doing it for me.

At this point, such thoughts were all that kept me sane as I distracted myself from the horrifying reality of my situation. I couldn’t believe that only a short time ago, my biggest problem had been that I couldn’t get the right mix of colors to make the exact blue I’d wanted for my painting. Granted, I was divorced and out of work, but those hadn’t been “in the moment” kind of problems. One thing I hadn’t been then was freakin’ abducted by aliens.

That tended to change my perspective on things a bit. Now, all that other stuff I’d once stressed about escaped my mind and my lizard brain kicked in, my nostrils flaring as I tried to sense my surroundings without being able to see them.

The scent didn’t give me much better information than my sight or sound. There was a clinical, sterilized smell to whatever place I’d found myself in, with an overlaying odor of a server room or computer bay. Something plastic and artificial, though the heat suggested it wasn’t a room dedicated to electronics—unless aliens had figured out a way to deal with overheating computers.

I also didn’t hear the telltale hum of any kind of electronics. I didn’t hear anything but my own heavy breathing, which suggested I was in a sound-proofed room of some sort.

No, I didn’t like that thought at all. My brain had no problem imagining why that would be. I would rather find myself in the heart of some alien engine core than locked within a soundproof cell, though the best thing would be to find myself in my own bed, waking up out of a nightmare.

I wished I could believe that was all this was, but there was no mistaking the difference between dream and reality. Even the lack of sensory information was enough sensory information to convince me this was all terrifyingly real.

When it came to those senses, I was down to touch and taste since none of the others were telling me much. I felt the smooth, slightly cool surface of the floor beneath my feet, and could guess from that alone that the room was not a natural chamber but had been made—obviously not by man. I could also guess that Mr. Hot stuff Jason and his inbred family of creepy mannequin people didn’t look entirely human in their true form either. Who knew what kind of ugly they were behind those human disguises?

“Alien-built” didn’t give me any kind of comfort. The fact that I was in a room instead of a cave meant bad things as far as I was concerned.

Escape was clearly the order of the day. I didn’t let my mind dwell on the likelihood that such a thing would be impossible. The fact that my clothes and shoes and even my hair tie had been taken from me did not give me a lot of confidence that I’d be able to pull off a prison break.

Sometimes, you just had to focus on doing something, even when you knew it was pointless, to keep from dwelling on what terrible thing might happen to you next. My steps were hesitant as I chose a direction and moved forward, sweeping my foot out in front of me along the floor before shifting my weight to it. I kept my hands out at arm’s length, sweeping them back and forth in search of a wall, or even better, a door. Hopefully an unlocked one that opened onto a spaceship all gassed up and preset to take me back to Earth.

Yeah, I know it wouldn’t make sense, but a girl can dream. I wasn’t quite optimistic enough to hope for sexy barbarians of the alien variety or a buffet of “all you can eat” pastries that tasted the same as the ones I loved but had zero calories.

Hey, if they could send a spaceship to Earth, they should be able to make food that had no fattening qualities.

Yes, my mind dwelled on inanities. The lack of sensory information was close to driving me crazy, and without an imagination, I might have already been over that edge. If I didn’t also have the attention span of a gnat, with my brain jumping onto tangent trains every other second, I didn’t know if I would have survived even as long as I already had in this unknown, terrifying darkness.

I kept telling myself not to focus too hard on the fact that my hands weren’t encountering anything in the direction I was going, and the smooth floor didn’t change under the bare soles of my feet. I kept trying to focus on the thought of sweet, fresh-baked cookies instead of the unidentifiable odor that wasn’t strong enough to either despise it or fear it. I feared, instead, the lack of information it gave me. The mind plays tricks when there’s nothing for it to process. I could almost taste the sweetness of a forbidden and fattening dessert since the air carried no flavors to deposit on my tongue when I breathed in.

Even with all my mental tricks, I still almost gave in to despair when a dozen steps led me nowhere. In frustration, I turned ninety degrees, knowing that if I didn’t do things methodically, I’d quickly grow disoriented. Hands out again, I walked several steps forward, keeping close count while humming just to have a sound other than my own breathing and thudding heartbeat and the eerie slide of my bare feet over the unknown surface of the floor.

Then my sweeping toes brushed against a wall and my shoulders sagged in relief as my humming cut off. I set my foot down with toes pressed against the surface that felt perpendicular to the floor, then cautiously rocked my weight forward, my outstretched palms encountering the smooth wall in front of me. Unlike the floor, it felt warm, but at least there wasn’t any slime or dampness at all. Like the air itself, the wall felt dry.

It didn’t vibrate or pulse or do anything at all weird beneath my fingertips. There was no way of knowing whether there was machinery on the other side of it, but I could guess that it was thick enough to keep sound out in both directions.

Still, it was a start—a way to orient myself. I kept my hands on the wall, sidestepping now in the direction I’d initially come from as I counted each step. I passed the number of steps I’d originally taken before turning, then went a half dozen steps further before encountering a corner.

I whooped as if I’d just won a contest. Then I remembered where I was, or more accurately, the fact that I had zero idea where I was, and the triumphant sound died down to a mere echo, quickly muffled by the oppressive silence.

I made my way around the wall, concentrating on counting steps and feeling for any irregularities on the smooth surface that would give me more information. I debated licking the wall because I was so desperate for more sensory input than what I was getting. I figured my tastebuds might be able to detect if it was metal or drywall or plaster or wood, though my palms told me it might not be any of those things.

Plastic had a very distinct taste too, as did Styrofoam soundproofing.

Don’t ask how I know that.

I was certain I mangled the pop song I started humming again, but that wasn’t why I ended up choking off that sound suddenly. It was the lights snapping on that silenced me, blinding me as a sudden squealing of metal sounded overhead.

The sensory overload of all this sent me collapsing to my knees with a scream, my arms crossing over my head protectively. I shuddered in fear as light after light flicked on, finally showing me the chamber in which I’d been measuring my blind progress.

It took a long moment after the terrible sound of screeching metal ended, the last echoes finally dying abruptly, before I dared to look to my side and saw the length of a tunnel, now illuminated, leading far into the distance before rounding a bend that put its ultimate destination out of sight.

The wall I knelt closest to appeared to be an endpoint of that tunnel, and I looked up to see metal grating above my head, with an access gate right there where I must have been deposited while I was unconscious.

In fact, the entire ceiling was made of metal grating, showing another tunnel above my head that had been revealed by a metal cover that had pulled back all along the tunnel’s visible length.

Now, the acoustics gave me more information, though I suspected the tunnel above was also soundproofed. I debated trying to climb into the entry hatch, but the smooth white walls on this level showed no sign of places to grip and the grate was too high above my head to jump up and catch on to it.

The floor was white as well and as blank and uninformative as the walls. I saw nothing but my own well-lit tunnel, the dark tunnel above my head, and a floor between the two with another hatch near the bend.

My imagination didn’t need to be active to recognize what this was, and my heart sank into my bare feet.

I was a rat in a maze, and I doubted the cheese would turn out to be a sexy alien mate. It might be my chance at surviving—or more likely, it might just mean another horrible way to die.