The air felt heavy and hot bound in muggy darkness bereft of stars and moon. There was the feeling of something hard beneath, grainy like sand but solid and damp against her skin. Consciousness came slowly, her body ached as if recovering from the grip of a long illness and she lay still in the all consuming darkness still drowsy, waiting for reality to return to her. Scents began to play around her, soil, stone, damp, sewage and the iron tang of blood all mixing in the still air calling her back from sleep. What noises there were sounded mute, voices muffled not by her ears but by the barrier that still existed in her sluggish mind between sleep and waking. She listened intently trying to will the sounds to her from obscurity.

Water came first, a slow drip from somewhere close, the whispering rumble of her own breathing added to the rhythm followed by the offbeat groan of pipes overhead. In this dazed state Vespera let herself drift for unable to wake fully and yet not willing to slip back into unconsciousness. Images played back to her while she dozed, a long car journey in the heat, white buildings harsh against a foreign countryside, a long hall packed with uncertain jostling people. Scenes switched suddenly a long black staircase, her socked ankles being held in unfamiliar hands, concrete walls stained with dark liquids rushing by, a room so full of unfamiliar frightened people she could feel the air being forced from her lungs as the crowd suddenly huddled together, screams in the darkness.

She baulked at the unsettling images her ankle colliding heavily with soft flesh. Vespera opened her eyes jerking her leg away. The room she was in was small and in darkness casting its contents into shades of grey and shadow, breezeblock and concrete made up the decor and narrow bunks lined the walls. Two doors were outlined in the gloom, one leading to a bathroom by the smell and the other heavily fortified making the room a prison cell. There was one other thing, something disturbing in the gloom. Half sitting now, swaying with the effort, Vespera surveyed the prostrate shapes strewn over the concrete floor, half a dozen people deep in the same slumber that had held her only a few moments before. By her feet lay a heavyset women covered in an array of dark tattoos. It was she Vespera had accidently kicked only a moment earlier but the lady slept on oblivious to the blow. Tentatively she reached out this time with a hand and shook the sleeper hard.

"Wake up." Her voice sounded slurred and hesitant but loud as a gunshot in the chamber. There was no response from the sleeper, Vespera shook hard again

"Please wake up." The woman slept on and Vespera withdrew to her own space again.

A loud crash from the direction of the fortified door made her jump. Light streamed through a small square temporarily blinding her, she covered her eyes as the room was flooded in an eyrie array of colour.

"One's awake Doctor." A man's voice boomed out over the silence.

"Let me see." A pair of eyes appeared blocking the light and casting the room once more in mute shadows. The voice was clinical and cold. "Get her out, I want to examine her in the open while the drugs still have a hold."

Bolts were drawn back in a series of heavy grinding scrapes, the cell door opened. Men in combat gear poured into the room, but these did not look like ordinary soldiers, their movements were wrong, unrefined and eager, their appearance too was unpolished, mismatched. They held strange weapons, guns but with an odd assortment of attachments, including the glass of what she could only assume was a torch above the nozzle. The men aimed these at her and the sleepers nervously as if expecting to be attacked at any moment. Two men grabbed her arms and jerked her to her feet. They held her hard, hurting her skin walking her out of the room faster than she could stumble so that she ended up being half led half dragged from the darkened room out into blinding light.

Vespera blinked. The corridor outside the cell was concrete, stretching in either direction until it disappeared round unknown corners. Two doors other than the one she had come out of lined the walls close to one another, one similar on the other side of the corridor, the other next to the cell door polished steel with a reinforced look, supposedly stronger than the other two. There were more of the odd soldiers out here; she did not like how they looked in her direction, hungry expressions full of knowing malice.

A pair stood out from this crowd, a neatly dressed elderly man whose hair was patchy and white wearing a white coat like a badge, probably the doctor referred to by the guard. The other was clad as the other soldiers but this one held himself differently and stood apart, his appearance orderly and congruent. It was only out here in the light did she notice her own clothes had changed. She vaguely remembered a skirt and shirt but now she wore what she could only describe as hospital scrubs, a pale blue trouser and top combination that she'd come to associate with medical dramas. The unexplained change in clothes made her shudder, the thought of unfamiliar hands on her skin repulsed her.

The moment her escort had stopped the doctor took her head in his hands and began to move it from side to side, checking her eyes. He stared at her as if she were a particularly interesting specimen taking his time with the examination. She still felt muggy the movements he put her through sending her off balance, whatever the drugs were they had mentioned earlier they still had a hold.

"You look puzzled doctor." It was the well dressed soldier who stood watching the proceedings. The doctor turned and began sorting through a medical bag.

"This one doesn't seem as advanced as the other batches General. Her pupils have yet to show the first signs of a reaction." Cold sweat began to break out on her back. Reaction, reaction to what? What had they done to her while she was unconscious. Fear began to rage within her. The doctor pulled out a syringe.

"We can only hope the rest of her set progress as usual." Vespera struggled to move away from the needle, the fear seemed to be flushing through her brain, washing away the drug's effects.

"What did you do to me?" Her voice sounded stronger than before, she tried to pull back again but the men held firm.

"Who the hell are you? Let me go." The doctor ignored her concentrating on the needle.

"Hold it still gentleman, we have a limited amount of equipment out here and I don't want to break this taking a blood sample."

The General took hold of her arm, wrenching it so that the veins on her forearm where visible. She screamed as she felt the needle burrow into her skin.

Men jumped back bringing their guns round fearfully. Another cry had started, almost at the same time as her own, but this one was like no human voice. It seemed to radiated anger, odium and desperation, the cry of a soul in torment. The sound cut her to the core, Vespera felt strangely connected to it, a deep link touching some part of her that had remained dormant. From behind the polished door came the sound of wrenching metal and the heavy thud of furniture being destroyed as if some cadged thing were trying to break free. The General pushed back his cap.

"That damn monster." He moved over to a small panel by the door and hit some of the buttons there. From around the edges of the door's viewing panel light spilled as if a flashbulb had suddenly been let off inside. The unnatural screams changed to pained cries and then to silence. The General hit the door hard with the palm of his hand."

"If you don't want another dose keep quiet in there." He turned to the Doctor.

"Are you finished with her?" The doctor tapped the red syringe.

"Until the lab work comes back. I wouldn't fit the collars on that batch yet, they may not be suitable."
"Fine. Get her back in the holding pen, and then we'd better see what damage the creature has done to his room this time." The General motioned to her escort.

Vespera felt the hands pull her up, she was thrown backwards through the doorway and landed hard among the bodies, rolling away quickly to try and find her own space away from the motionless figures. Her hand touched the line of rough bunks, still weak from her ordeal she pulled herself tentatively onto one and lay back, her head spinning with the new information, working away at the conversation in the corridor. What had been done to them while they slept, what were the other batches the men talked about and who were the other people in the room with her? The thought that seemed to occupy her most though was the voice from the other room. Who and what was the creature it contained and why did she feel such a connection to the beast? She drifted, watching and waiting, half hoping to hear the cry again, needing even the small shred of comfort the strange noise brought her as she lay caged in the endless darkness haunted by disturbing questions she could not begin to answer.