⚠ WARNING ⚠

Slightly mature theme. No explicit scenes I hope but still read at your risk.

Written for the contest by ScienceFiction and adultfiction

Ticotan wasn’t a station I usually saw on my way to and from earth. It was something I stumbled upon when I was low on fuel.

We don’t usually end up going to that area especially because it’s the home of dangerous wormholes, time portals and what not. If you are sucked into one unawares, you’ll be lost.

Ticotan looked quite modern from the outside. Entirely powered by solar power harnesses, a titanium and Kevlar structure with glistening steel frames looked quite ominous in the way it shone with the light of the Andromeda.

A gut feeling told me I had landed up in the wrong place, the moment I touched the empty refill station on Ticotan.

The place reeked of rusted metal and a miasma of formaldehyde hung in the air. The entire station seemed to be plunged into a massive power cut as no light reached my eyes.

My first thoughts were to get my gas and ignore the gut feeling I had. But there was no one whom I could pay and ending up in the intergalactic jail at the age of 47 was not a lucrative option. I counseled my mind that I was going to search for any sign of life in the abyss of death.

I flashed my plasma torch in all directions and discovered a massive door separating the refill station from the rest of the structure.

The reckless explorer in me wanted to go beyond those doors. Carefully I tiptoed to the huge structures, looking behind every now and then.

Groping in the dark I found a security panel locking whatever was inside.

Mindlessly I punched in random codes and as luck would have it, it matched.

The first thing that hit me was the smell of blood and rotten flesh, mixed with disinfectants, like one would find in a laboratory.

I gulped. That was another sign of what I was getting myself into. Space stations were strictly banned from carrying out biological experiments.

There was a large space which branched into multiple corridors. The saner part of me wanted me to go back. The crazier part urged me forward.

A mellow blue light lit the corridors and I turned off my torch to avoid detection.

The first corridor went on and on where it ended up into a massive gallery.

At first I thought they were a flock of eagles huddled in the center of the room unless one of them moved. She was a human, at least that’s what I thought she was.

But what was the most unexpected were a pair of black wings which were attached to her back. The woman was stark naked and the massive wings did little to cover her. The others who were sitting still got up too.

Each one of them looked beautiful, alluring and yet dangerous but what struck me the most was the look in their eyes. It was glassy still.

Then I saw the center of the attraction. One of them was writhing on the floor, covered in a pool of blood.

I realized that the wings weren’t a part of their body. They were sutured to their backs.

She winced in pain as the suture site bled, with pus discharge and infection. Multiple wounds had opened up in her whole body.

The fallen form shivered as it moaned again and suddenly the movement went still and so did her eyes.

I grabbed her arms feeling for the pulse but I had already known the answer.

“What happened?” I asked, “Who are you all?”

I was greeted by a stoic silence as they all circled the room, as their wings dragged along, sweeping the floor.

Stunned and heart broken, I was determined to get to the end of that.

I ran out of that hall to find a small pool and a muffled whimper warned me of another presence.

I went closer to the pool which was another dangerous thing to have in a space station, with the risk of short circuits.

And what I saw was beyond cruelty. There were a boy and a girl and they were hardly in their teens. The lay in a crumpled heap on the floor as the blood seeped from under them, landing into the pool.

They had no legs, rather, their legs were replaced by scaly fish-tails and in the same way had ben sutured to their torso.

The poor things had the complete lower half of their body removed and I wondered how had their creator expected them to survive without the organs of excretion or has they made internal surgeries, tampering with their genitalia!

I couldn’t even begin to try to imagine what it must have felt like.

They were perhaps drugged or their screams would have torn the place down.

Leaving the hapless pair, I made my way to corridor with tall glass cases which were filled with a clear fluid and it I saw specimens, preserved humans with various parts altered and rejoined with homologous animal parts.

Women with the legs of octopus, children with fins and flippers, more winged ones, men with bodies of apes. Someone even tried to make a centaur and the result was gruesome as they had tried their best to patch up a human and a horse which was practically impossible.

Those, I realized were failed experiments. As I went along, studying labels and dates, I was shocked to find some even ten years older.

And then I heard the screams. Pure, terrified, human screams.

“Let me go. Please don’t take me there. What did I do to you?” a female voice wailed.

The screams were muffled immediately but I had gauged their direction.

Frantically I tore through the corridors, trying to find that one prisoner. I would save even one life if it was possible.

And then I found her. There were men, ten at least, in white coats and protective gear…

Two of them had the woman strapped on a gurney in prone position.

And as the woman tried to move, one of them stabbed a syringe in her arm. I wanted to jump in but knew I had no power to fight ten of them. They were humans but their cruelty made them no less than monsters.

I needed to gather evidence and take it back to the Intergalactic Tribunal of Justice. They would want solid proof and suddenly I regretted not recording the earlier galleries.

I suppressed my urge in view of my greater purpose and waited for a moment to let them get into the room. They left the door open, having nothing to fear.

I concealed myself in one of the metallic crevices of the room, aiming my camera at the operation table which had brilliant white lights.

The scientists all wore masks, making it difficult to identify a single person.

And then they set out their tray in which stood out a small electric saw.

I froze as I saw the sharp teeth made a gnashing sound and the sickly crunch made me realise they were cracking her skull open.

The surgeons dug their scalpels into her cranium and excavated a part of her brain and that’s when I realized that they had removed the prefrontal cortex or  hippocampus to destroy any traces of memory.

They joined the frayed ends of the skull again and the surgeons turned to the cabinet on the far end on the room.

One of them opened the lid of a cryogenic freezer and dug out a massive thing form the liquid nitrogen. He dropped it in the adjacent incubator and they were one of the massive eagle wings.

The others proceeded to peel apart the skin of her back and what appeared was that they had no concern about hygiene and aseptic conditions. The entire setup increased the chances of infection.

I cringed as the blood trickled down the incision site. Then they brought the wings and someone worked their way fitting it where they had dug out her flesh. They crowded over the area, securing the wings with sutures.

And at that moment, somehow unexpectedly my phone rang out.

The damned thing continued ringing. They looked around startled and spotted me slinking away.

Immediately I heard the sound of sirens. Someone had pressed the alarm bell.

I rushed through the halls breathlessly and ended up in the hall of eagles which stank of death now.

Passing them I charged for the steel doors, praying that they hadn’t closed it.

A grating sound made me aware that what I feared had actually happened.

I gathered up my strength and leaped out before the doors closed shut.

I had kept my engine on for such a circumstance. I pressed on the accelerator, maneuvering my spacecraft away from the fated Ticotan.

I drove at full speed ignoring the space traffic unless I was closer to the earth way.

I shuddered again as I pulled out the evidence from my pocket.

1500 words completed.

Thanks MaryFahey Pipigrin KashishBelikov lindajonesAuthor for sticking with me throughout. Love you all.....