White Lotus Ch. 01

Incongruous trap-star scientist lizardmother pumped & juiced for info by the baddguize

A/N: WARNING: Some scenes in this work do involve non-consensual sexual encounters and light torture.

*****

She awakens slowly like dust clearing from rubble. Eyelids fluttering without any real power behind them, a cold that keeps her from needing to breathe. She's hanging, gently, irrespective of gravity, manacles clinking against the hard wall as she makes her wakening struggle. Almost a soft sound, like rising on a Sunday; but then she becomes aware for the first time of her pain, and then her terror—and her senses fire open all at once.

It's difficult to take inventory in the dark, there with all the breathing and dripping that comes with basements, with the lack of windows, but still she knows she is aloft, suspended at least feet from the ground by only her wrists. Experimentally, she shakes her bonds, but they only scrape her along the hard stone behind her. She is nude, she realizes, naked in that post-biblical shameful way that exacerbates the seriousness of her captivity by marked degrees. She is silent for a moment after this, feeling her blood move, the bones of her wrists straining, the pull of musculature in her arms that makes her feel weak, heavier.

The room is dizzy. "Hello," she says, tentatively, with a thirsty tongue. It comes out low, no echo, hoarse from screaming. She realizes her body is sluggish, now—whether from exhaustion, poor circulation, or substance is impossible to tell. She's too panicked to panic, and turns her neck to the side to chew apathetically on her hair, a disheveled dirty-blonde waterfall hanging over her shoulder. It tastes like butane, antiseptic, cigarettes.

Memories of the nights past elude her. Working in the laboratory. Cleaning her minivan. Working in the lab. Working late. Installing shingles. Driving to the Circle K. Nothing that logically relates to her situation and the black holes are staying black. "Hello," she tries again, louder this time, carrying a vague echo back to her. The drips continue in the darkness for several more moments before a hatch unseals, and warm, industry-scented light floods into the room, brushing against her nose, raising the fine hairs all over her body into goosebumps. Beyond that hatch, something smells of escape, and she closes her eyes hard and wonders if it will come to her.

"Beauty," says her visitor, a man, dressed in dark garb with heavy boots that he drags across the floor. In front of her vision, backlit, wearing a hat. "You're stronger than you look."

Her disorientation hasn't faded. "Why am I here?" she asks, because it seems to be the question most likely to elicit a helpful answer.

"Anita." Now it sounds like he's smiling, but he's not talking to her. He reaches into one of his pockets, removing a syringe. "You're so fucking beautiful, it's almost a shame to do this."

Adrenaline isn't pumping. She feels calm, an accepting sort of dread. "What are you going to do to me?"

He shifts the syringe to his left hand and reaches his right hand up to cup her breast. He is dazzlingly, impossibly warm, and she can do nothing but watch him in blind disgust. Her captor is definitely smiling now, caressing her with terrifying intimacy, rolling her left nipple between two of his fingers. He tugs the cap from the syringe with his teeth and spits it on the ground, bringing his mouth down on her chest just as he drives the needle into her belly. Within seconds, the world around her erupts into heat, and she is only barely aware of the man below her pulling his cock out of his jeans before she's unconscious again.

-

Anita is reclining in an office chair, wearing white scrub pants and just a tank top as an attendant pierces an artery, removes some blood. The attendant smiles at her and she smiles back.

The blood is transported, then frozen.

-Homeostasis, someone says, tending a young reptile in an incubator. -It keeps us alive.

-You'd better ease up on the growth hormones in T-9 otherwise we're going to be re-enacting Jurassic Park in this bitch. (Everyone laughs.)

-Anita, what do you think?

-This is our chance. We've already made ourselves gods, why half-measures now? We need this.

-It needs you, too. You're on next!

-

This time Anita wakes with a start, panting. There's more oxygen in her room now, the air is better. Whatever was leaking has been repaired or silenced. She remembers the man instantly. It is a horrific way to tell, chained, being unable to move her limbs freely, but as far as she can decide, she isn't in any significantly greater amount of pain. Not killed. Not, she believes, raped. And this is relief enough that she tries to twist herself, her torso, her hands, to reach the chains that suspend her, to try and wrench her ankles apart. It's futile—it's metal that binds her, and she feels heavier then ever.

When the doors open again, a different man emerges. He's wearing a polo shirt, and before he speaks, he offers her a glass of water by way of holding it to her lips. She doesn't resist—even if it were poison, thirst is captivating—and she's fairly certain that it isn't. When she's done, he sets the glass on the ground by her feet.

"Better?" asks the man. Good Cop. When she nods, he replies, "Tell me about your monster."

Thinking about her predicament is easier, now. She still can't remember how she came to be captured, but the controversial nature of her recent project is difficult to forget. The usage of reptilian aminos to battle cancerous cells, infertility. The intermingling of DNA. And of course her project, Derexin, the lizard-beast to whom she, in any applicable sense of the word, mothered. Derexin the free-beast, threat to the natural order, loose somewhere in Northern Michigan. When he escaped, he had already been taller than her.

"We need your help to find him." Good Cop squats on the floor and looks upward into her eyes. "We think this is a goal that can benefit everyone."

Derexin wasn't a hostile thing, but the idea of an escaped chimera tends to consume one's mind, stirring up ideas about Frankenstein and dragons and similar urban fantasy. Naturally, the media was obsessed with it, in addition to local vigilantes, thrill-seekers, scientists and soccer moms. In a matter of only two or three weeks, the backlash and threats from a government level became stifling, and Anita fled to her Wisconsin cottage to ponder how to hunt Derexin, to find him before the Federal Bureau of Investigations could destroy him in the name of the greater good.

But as yet, she had been unsuccessful. "I can't do that," she replies, with little hostility. "Being captured and tortured is a poor source for inspiration."

"I've always heard that necessity is the mother of invention. But regardless, we don't need your ideas, we just need your cooperation. We've developed bait, a pheromone that he will respond to. We just need your voice, some of your DNA, that whole bit. If you're willing to help us, we won't harm him. We can give that to you in writing. If not, then we'll just take what we need, and wait. His senses are attuned enough where he'll find his way here out of pure curiosity regardless."

The man's persistent use of 'we' is unsettling to her; it makes her feel as though she's being watched by a grand number of presences, visited by an envoy of some strict government—whose lackeys have apparently developed better scientific techniques than her own. "Are you FBI? You don't have to lie to me. I already know what your plans are."

He stands up. "No, we aren't, but I'm flattered that you think so. Have you decided how you want to proceed? If you'll work with us, I can let you down right now."

"That isn't a bargain." Her body wants to kill her for stubbornness, its normal functions being delayed, stifled, altered. "Let me down anyway, I need to use the bathroom. You've got a lot of nerve, treating me like this."

His eyes flicker to the half-empty glass of water set below her feet. "There isn't a bathroom in the cell, miss, I'm afraid you'll just have to hold it. How about you just scream when you're feeling more compliant?" He turns heel to exit, and Anita growls in frustration as the airlock re-engages the darkness. She shivers with the cold, with hunger, and the effort of holding her bladder.

*****

A/N: Will be continued! Your feedback is always read, appreciated, and responded to.