Breakout!

I could hardly breathe. The glass walls were closing in around me. I couldn’t think clearly. I pressed my hands against the glass wall in front of me, as though I could push it away from me, but it would not budge.

Movement outside of my containment unit caught my eye. Three creatures walked into the room, wearing long white coats and rubber gloves on their pale extremities. They must have been preparing for another dissection—no, a vivisection. They were not so kind as to kill us before cutting us open.

I shivered.

Monsters. These things were monsters.

It was only a matter of time before they would vivisect me. They had already gotten to our captain. I could still hear his screams ringing through my head. Only these beasts could tolerate such a screeching and continue their work without it ripping into their hearts, if they even had one.

I watched as the three creatures began to sterilize their equipment, vicious and primitive scalpels and knives. My heart raced. I could not let them get to me. I had to find a way to escape.

A fourth creature walked into the room. I recognized it as the compassionate one. It had tried to stop the vivisection of our captain. It had even stepped in between the leader of the monsters and our captain, only to be punched in the stomach and sent crumpling to the floor. Perhaps I could use its emotions to my advantage. If only…

Yes!

The other three left the room, but not without giving the fourth creature some sort of stern lecture. With one last glare at the fourth creature, they departed.

My heart leapt into my throat. This was my chance. I had to do something if I wanted to live to see another day.

I made a loud whimper, unsure of whether the creature could hear me through the glass. To my relief, it turned to me. It quickly returned its attention to the clipboard in its gloved hands. I whimpered again, and again, until it could no longer ignore me.

It walked to the front of my containment unit and knelt down to my eye level. It said something that I could not understand, but by the light in its eyes, I could tell that it felt pain at my supposed pain. I whimpered once more, and it turned its head from me, as though looking at me were too much for it to bear.

I tilted my head and blinked. It was amazing how compassionate one creature could be and yet still allow others of its species to commit such great atrocities. For a moment, I feared that it was not true compassion at all but an act to make itself feel superior to its companions.

No.

I couldn’t let myself think like that. If I did, my whole plan would fall apart.

When I saw the creature glance my way again, I lifted my hand and pressed it to the glass. The creature smiled weakly, lifted its hand to the glass, and put it against mine. My heart pounded briefly in a moment of kinship; I could only hope that the creature felt the same way.

The creature’s eyes fell, as though deep in thought. Then it stared at me in determination and reached for the keypad on my containment unit. After the creature pressed a few buttons, the front glass wall swung open. I was free.

The creature grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to a back door that I had not seen before. It entered a code into a keypad, then led me down a cold, scarcely lit tunnel. We took so many twists and turns, stopped for so many keypad entries, that I began to lose count. Every time we almost ran into another creature, my new companion would hide me behind it until they passed. It seemed that the armored creatures would hardly pay my companion any attention, much to my relief, and the creatures with white coats would only sneer at it before moving on.

We continued like this for what felt like hours. Finally, the creature keyed open a door that led to a hot, dry, sandy environment that could only be the outside world.

The creature motioned wildly at me and barked some commands. I did not know what it said, but the message was clear: run.

Without looking back at my companion, I took off. I only made it a few steps outside the door before alarms began to blare all around me. I forced my feet to run faster as I bolted for the metal fence surrounding the base.

Barking reached me. I pushed myself to go faster. Guns sounded in the distance. I could feel my bare feet scraping against the sand and starting to bleed, but I begged my body to go faster. The roar of armored four-wheel vehicles came up behind me, and bright lights glared down upon me. I had to go faster. Faster. Faster.

I slammed into the fence. Without hesitation, I started to climb. Halfway up the fence, I could feel freedom within my grasp…

Then electricity pulsed through me, locking up my limbs and sending me falling back to the ground. I stared up at the lights as the outlines of the creatures surrounded me. They grabbed me by my useless limbs and threw me into the back of one their armored four-wheel vehicles.

I whimpered. I whimpered at the pain of the fall from the fence. I whimpered at the thought of freedom slipping away from me. I whimpered at the thought of the vivisection and our captain’s screams, how that would soon be me. I whimpered at the thought of being returned to what these creatures called Area 51.