Vlad’s eyelids fluttered open, the harsh glare of an unnaturally white ceiling searing into his vision. His head throbbed as if someone had taken a hammer to it, and his body felt heavy, like he’d been dragged through wet sand. Speaking of sand—where was the beach? The last thing he remembered was the salty tang of the ocean air, the laughter of his friends, and then… nothing. Darkness. Now, he was here, wherever “here” was.
He sat up with a groan, his bare feet touching a cold, seamless floor. The room was a sterile void—walls, ceiling, floor, all a blinding white, devoid of any texture or imperfection. He glanced down at himself and froze. His clothes were gone, save for a pair of worn-out boxer shorts clinging to his hips. A flush of embarrassment crept up his neck. “What the hell…?” he muttered, his voice echoing faintly in the empty space.
Before he could piece together a single coherent thought, a low hiss broke the silence. A section of the wall slid open with a mechanical precision that made his stomach lurch. Two figures stepped through, their forms humanoid but unmistakably… wrong. Their skin was a pale, almost translucent gray, stretched taut over angular frames. Their eyes—large, black, and unblinking—locked onto him with a cold intensity that made his blood run cold. One was slightly taller, its posture rigid and commanding, while the other lingered a step behind, holding what looked like a metallic clipboard.
“Stand, human,” the taller one barked in a stilted, guttural approximation of Russian. The voice was feminine, sharp as a blade, and carried an authority that brooked no argument. “Remove cloth. Now.”
Vlad blinked, his brain scrambling to process the words. “W-what? No way!” he stammered, clutching the waistband of his shorts like a lifeline. His heart hammered in his chest as he shuffled backward, his bare back pressing against the icy wall. “Who are you? Where am I? Where are my friends?”
The taller figure tilted its head, a gesture that might have been curiosity if its face weren’t so devoid of emotion. “Questions irrelevant. Cloth off. Or we remove.” Her tone was flat, but there was an undercurrent of menace that made Vlad’s knees tremble.
“Look, lady—or whatever you are—I’m not stripping for some creepy alien science project!” he snapped, though his voice wavered. “Tell me what’s going on, or I’m not doing a damn thing!”
The smaller figure let out a low, mechanical hum, almost like a chuckle, but it was the taller one who stepped forward, closing the distance between them in a single, fluid stride. Up close, Vlad could see the faint shimmer of her skin, like polished glass, and the way her black eyes seemed to bore straight through him. “Creepy alien?” she repeated, her broken Russian laced with a mocking edge. “You, small human, are funny. But funny not save you. We take what we need. Always.”
Before he could protest further, her hand—cool and unnervingly strong—clamped around his wrist. The smaller alien moved to his other side, and together they dragged him toward the open doorway. Vlad dug his heels into the floor, but it was like trying to stop a freight train. “Hey! Let go! I’m not some lab rat!” he shouted, his voice cracking with desperation.
“Rat?” the female alien echoed, her head tilting again as they pulled him into a corridor just as white and sterile as the room. “No. You are… experiment. Better than rat. More… entertaining.” Her lips—or what passed for lips—curved into a faint, predatory smirk.
They hauled him into what could only be described as a laboratory straight out of a nightmare. The space was vast, filled with towering machines that pulsed with eerie, bioluminescent light. Strange tools hung from the walls, their purposes incomprehensible and terrifying. A central platform, surrounded by glowing panels, awaited him like a sacrificial altar. Vlad’s stomach churned as they forced him onto it, his wrists and ankles snapping into unseen restraints with a metallic click.
“Seriously, what is this?!” he yelled, thrashing against the bindings. “You can’t just—!”
“Silence, boy,” the female alien cut him off, her voice like a whip. She loomed over him, her gaze raking over his nearly naked form with clinical detachment—and something else, something that made his skin crawl. “You fight. Pointless. We begin now. First, we… clean.”
“Clean? What does that—?” His words died in his throat as the smaller alien approached with a handheld device that emitted a low, ominous hum. Before he could react, a beam of light shot from it, sweeping over his body. A prickling sensation erupted across his skin, and to his horror, he watched as every hair below his neck—from his chest to his legs—disintegrated in an instant, leaving him smooth and utterly exposed. The air felt colder now, every inch of his skin hypersensitive to the sterile chill of the room.
“Oh, come on!” Vlad groaned, his face burning with humiliation. “Was that really necessary? What’s next, you gonna paint me pink?”
The female alien’s smirk widened, and for the first time, there was a flicker of amusement in her obsidian eyes. “Pink? No. But smooth is… better. Easier to study. You look… less like animal now. More like toy.” She leaned closer, her face mere inches from his, and Vlad swore he could feel the weight of her gaze. “You blush, little human. Why? Shy? Or… excited?”
“I’m not—! I’m not anything!” he sputtered, his voice climbing an octave. “This is insane! You can’t just shave me like some lab monkey and expect me to—!”
“Monkey?” she interrupted, her tone dripping with sardonic delight. “No, no. Monkey too simple. You are… special. We have plans for you, boy. Many plans.” She straightened, gesturing to the smaller alien, who approached with another device—this one smaller, with pulsating nodes that glowed a sickly green. “First plan… lower body. We test. We change.”
Vlad’s eyes widened as the device hovered over his groin, the nodes emitting a faint, electric warmth that made him flinch. “Whoa, whoa, hold on! What the hell is that thing? You’re not touching me there!”
“Oh, but we are,” she purred, her broken Russian taking on a darkly playful lilt. “This… wakes you. Makes you… respond. We need data. Your body, your… urges. All ours to play with.” She tapped a long, slender finger against the edge of the platform, her gaze never leaving his. “Fight if you like. Scream. Cry. It changes nothing. I am Klyra, and I always get what I want. And I want… everything from you.”
The device descended, and a jolt of sensation—part pain, part something disturbingly else—shot through him. Vlad bit down on his lip to stifle a gasp, his mind reeling as Klyra watched, her expression a mix of cold calculation and wicked amusement. “Good,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Very good. You feel it, yes? We begin now, little human. Welcome to my game.”
As the machine hummed louder, Vlad’s fear and confusion twisted into something more complex, a tangled mess of dread and unwilling fascination. Klyra’s voice, sharp and commanding, cut through the haze like a knife. “Relax, boy. Or don’t. Either way, I win.”
And with that, the real experiment began.
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