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Hello readers,
I hope you're enjoying the story of Windfire so far. I honestly have no idea when I'll be able to post new chapters, so please just bear with me and keep checking back. While you're waiting, I write three other serials, all of which can be found on my website. The link can be found on the side of the page where it says "Return to Main Site". If you are reading this on the website, please disregard this message.
Thanks!

Chapter 3

Everything was still very sore and very blurry when Natalie came to, lying once again on the floor of the cell. With a groan, she tried to get up, and fell back to the ground as her legs gave out under her. Something felt off. She couldn’t tell what the alien procedure had done to her, but there was something different. The problem was, she had no idea what.

The alien spoke in a monotone to the monitors on the wall. Natalie didn’t understand what it was saying, but she guessed it was informing the other alien what had happened. She propped herself up against the wall and tried to think. The alien obviously wasn’t done with her. What fresh torture was he going to come up with? She didn’t want to think about it. 

There was a rumbling sound, and something made the entire warehouse shake. The alien turned off the monitors and ejected what looked like a black hard drive, which he tucked under a tentacle. With his other tentacles he picked up what looked like a gas canister. This he proceeded to hook up to a tube in the wall, then he pressed a button next to it. With a hiss blue gases filled the sealed cell. Natalie put both hands over her mouth and held her breath, but eventually she needed to breathe and gulped in some of the gas. Instead of knocking her out, as she expected, she felt reenergized, and the pain in her arms and legs subsided. Shakily, she got to her feet, then discovered she wasn’t even shaky anymore.

A door in the back of the warehouse opened as the gas dispersed, and Natalie saw more tentacled aliens enter. Two of them stopped in front of her cell and opened the door. She was dragged roughly by the arms towards the door, slimy tentacles gripping her arms like iron shackles. She didn’t have time to think, just attempt to keep her footing as the aliens removed her from the warehouse and up the ramp of a huge red spaceship. Why no one had noticed it, Natalie didn’t know. It wasn’t making any kind of effort to hide itself. The aliens brought her inside the ship and down a long corridor, lit harshly like a hospital room. The entire interior was white and impeccably clean. Natalie was dragged to a door at the end of the corridor and pushed inside. She fell to the ground in what looked like an arena of sorts. A booth in the wall above her appeared to have glass in it, but she couldn’t see anything behind it. One way glass, she realized bitterly. Now I really feel like a lab rat. 

On the other side of the arena, a door opened and a boy stumbled in. A metal rod was tossed in after him, then the door slammed shut. 

“Fight,” boomed an alien voice from a speaker near the booth.

“Say what?” Natalie backed away from the boy, not that she was close to him to begin with.

The boy slowly picked up the rod and positioned it in front of him in a defensive stance. Natalie waved her hands at him, wondering if he spoke English. “I don’t want to fight you.”

He looked up at the booth. “If we fake it well enough, they might let us leave.”

Natalie studied him, considering her options. He obviously knew how to fight, unlike her. She didn’t think volleyball skills would help her out here. “Come at me, then,” she said.

He took a step forward, then stopped. “You want to do this for real.”

“I can’t fight. It’d be obvious we weren’t fighting seriously.”

For a moment, Natalie thought he was going to refuse, then he nodded and took a run at her. Natalie dodged the first swing, but the second knocked her sideways onto the floor. The boy swung the rod over his head as though he was going to hit her in the head. Instinctively Natalie raised her arms to shield herself, then orange flames erupted from her hands, sending them both flying towards the walls. Natalie got to her feet and looked at her hands. “What the-“ She raised her head to see the boy steading himself, panting.

“What was that?” he yelled. “Are you some alien too?”

Horrified, Natalie shook her head. “No, I-“ She didn’t have time to say anything more as the boy launched himself at her. She pointed both palms at him and balls of flame shot out once again. He slid across the floor, giving her a moment to wonder how he’d managed to propel himself all the way across the room with nothing but the muscles in his legs. He got up and swung blindly at her. She decided not to hit him again, just duck and weave until she could figure out how to stop him. It wasn’t hard. He wasn’t the focused, calculating fighter that had first attacked her. She wasn’t sure he was even thinking at all. Finally she found her opening. She grabbed the rod with both hands and ripped it away from him, swinging it into his stomach. He crumpled to the ground, coughing.

“Stop,” she told him. “This is getting us nowhere.”

He punched the floor, his hand leaving a circular dent in material Natalie could tell wasn’t made to be easily broken. The boy knew this as well, as he pulled his hand away and stared at it, his fingers shaking.

“I guess we’re both freaks,” said Natalie.

Chapter 2

Natalie’s eyes blinked open. For a moment she thought she was just waking up in the morning, then everything came back in a rush, volleyball, and the sandman, and getting beaten up. At least she wasn’t sore, since the sand wasn’t hard enough to leave so much as a bruise. Her vision cleared, and she saw a warehouse full of boxes and strange electronics. Computers filled the wall closest to her, but beyond them it was too dark to see. She got shakily to her feet, and then she saw the glass. She was standing in some kind of cell with a clear door. Concrete walled her in on either side. Natalie sat back down on the cold cement floor. Obviously that sandman had been sent to capture her, but why? What made her so different from everyone else on the beach that had made the creature go after her, and her alone? 

Movement in the darkened end of the warehouse caught her eye. Something was coming her way. A bizarre figure emerged from the gloom; some sort of red alien with two huge eyes, a smile stretching all the way across its face, two short arms, and a mass of quivering red tentacled bunched up underneath it that allowed it to slide along the floor. Natalie blinked at it. What is that? she thought. The creature slid in front of the computers and started them up. She saw four monitors with pictures of kids, their families and a map with black dots on it. One of the photos was her school picture from last year. The other screen showed a face. The creature seemed to be talking to it, but just as the face itself was blurred, she couldn’t quite make out what was being said. No doubt she wouldn’t have been able to understand it anyways. She examined the door. Maybe there was a weak point on the hinges or something. She got up and hit one as an experiment. The only result was a clang that sounded around the room. Well, that didn’t work. She stepped back as the alien’s head turned towards her and it started sliding in her direction.

“Don’t bother,” it said, its voice sounding surprisingly human. “These are built with the latest technology in containment, using advancements the likes of which the Earth has never seen.”

“What do you want?” She backed away from the thing on the other side of the glass. The alien stared at her without blinking. 

“Only your cooperation in a small experiment.”

“I think I’d rather not.” Natalie's heart pounded in her chest and she struggled to control her rising panic. You’ll never get out of this if you start freaking out.

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice in the matter. Your cooperation is requested, but not required.” The alien studied her, making Natalie’s breath catch in her throat. “Not this one-I’m set up for the energy subject.” It slipped along the floor out of Natalie’s field of vision, then reappeared dragging a black-haired girl towards a door in the far wall. Natalie sat on the ground, watching the closed door. After a few minutes, screams filled the empty space. Natalie put her hands over her ears, her elbows resting on her bent knees. Don’t think about her. Don’t think about yourself. Think about escaping. You’ve got to get out of here, somehow.

Natalie watched as the alien returned, the unconscious body of the girl wrapped in a tentacle. It returned to Natalie’s cell and opened the door a little. Natalie fought the grip of the tentacle that closed around her arms and waist to no avail. Cold, helpless fear replaced panic as she was carried into the little room. There was a complex array of alien machines and equipment positioned around an operation chair. The alien strapped Natalie’s arms and feet down in the chair and picked up a pair of tubes, which it proceeded to insert into each shoulder. Natalie yelped as the needles went into her veins. Something cold invaded her body, making her limbs numb and heavy. Then the alien switched on the machines, and all she could feel was pain. Her own screaming drowned everything out until she passed out.