Page 11 of Aria's Ascension

Finally, it sealed shut.

Waiting tensely, she listened to the footsteps pass by the door and continue down the hallway. When she couldn’t hear them anymore, she spun on her heel and quickly scanned the room.

From her position, she couldn’t see anyone, and listening didn’t reveal any sounds of someone moving around farther inside. At Tirox’s nod, telling her he, too, thought them safe, she relaxed, blowing out a silent breath of relief, and took a slower look around as she sheathed her sword.

The space was absolutely massive, resembling a warehouse more than any of the smaller rooms they’d checked. There were rows of horizontal tube-looking things stretching all the way up to the hundred-foot ceiling, reminding her of pictures she’d seen of vertical gardens, except the tubes were people-sized and looked entirely too much like the cylinders in the labs.

“What is this place?” she wondered quietly, a bad feeling already growing in her stomach.

Keeping her senses sharp in case there was unwanted company hiding within, she cautiously crept to the closest row to take a better look, Tirox on her heels while Kix stood guard by the door.

The sides of the tube were tinted, blocking her view of whatever was inside, but as she got closer she saw it was clear on the top, giving her a horrifyingly perfect view of the withered, emaciated alien sleeping within.

“What the fuck?” she breathed.

The being inside looked like one of the pink-skinned aliens she’d faced in the arena, but this one was old, its skin wrinkled and a sickly color instead of the odd, but healthy, pink of the one she’d fought. There were tubes going into its arms and stomach, and sensors around its ovoid head. It appeared to be sleeping peacefully, but something about the setup had the hairs on the nape of her neck standing on end.

Something about this was wrong. She could feel it, like a shadow growing in the back of her mind, holding secrets she knew would haunt her.

Peeling her eyes off the gruesome form, she slowly walked to the next tube. It, too, held a gaunt, shriveled being, though of a different species than the pink guy.

The next tube and the one after that held more of the same.

“Are these retired gladiators?” she asked, more to herself than to Tirox still following behind her. “Are they in stasis? That’s… slightly more humane than I anticipated. I assumed they’d just kill them when they were no longer able to fight.”

Aria frowned even as she spoke. Her assessment didn’t feel quite right, but she couldn’t think of any other reason Zhrovni would keep a warehouse of old, sedated gladiators.

She kept going farther down the row, walking faster and faster, looking in at the various aliens. She was searching for something, but what exactly that was she couldn’t say.

Glancing into the next tube, she froze. Her lungs seized, and she went perfectly still, not even reacting when Tirox bumped into her at her abrupt stop.

Blinking, Aria tried to interpret what she was seeing, but her brain wouldn't process it.

She’d experienced that feeling before, at a particularly gruesome crime scene during her first years as an agent. It was a defense mechanism, her mind’s way of giving her time to look away, to not see the terrible thing in front of her, to spare her the horror of having that image forever burned into her memories.

It was trying to protect her, but it was her job to look at the horrors, to face the nightmares so other people, regular people, didn’t have to.

So she stared, and waited, even as Tirox leaned against her to peer over her head and made a sound of such shock it set her heart to racing.

Finally, her mind quit trying to shield her and let her see.

Chapter 7

Aria choked back a scream, and her legs almost gave out. She would’ve dropped to her knees if Tirox hadn’t caught her.

It was her.

It was her, lying naked in the tube, hooked up to wires and sensors, with a helmet of sorts hovering over the top of her head.

Even wrinkled and skeletal, she recognized herself.

Tearing her eyes away, she swept the massive room, filled to the ceiling with bodies in tubes.

We’re here. We’re all here.

She’d suspected as much, but confirmation was a punch to the gut, not just for herself but for the hundreds of other people trapped here.

Swallowing hard, she took a slow, steadying breath and ruthlessly locked down her emotions, compartmentalized her devastation. She’d let herself feel it later, but right now she needed to think. She couldn’t do that when she was frozen with horror.

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