Eli is returned to her cell without remembering much of what happened to her. Then, things settle into a routine for a few days before things get more interesting when everyone is made to leave their cells.

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Chapter 4

Eli’s head did not feel right. It was not painful like a headache, but there was still a sense of wrongness that she did not like. Her mind felt fogged, and she tried to remember what was happening. She remembered fighting with the guards and doing better than she thought she would. They had all been so sluggish that it caught her off guard. She had been ready to toss the guards around until her implants alerted her to the presence of a human nearby.

Sure enough, one of her human cellmates was strapped to a little table on the floor. Crushing the little guy in a pitched battle would have been too easy. He was surrounded by more of those new little aliens. She hoped that meant these Goliath guards would be careful since the little ones seemed to be in charge. There was something offputting about their lack of any visible emotions, though. She could not even smell any changes in emotion from the guards. Would they even care if they stepped on their own comrades?

Since Eli could not tell their intentions, she tried to impose herself between her guards and the human. That turned out not to be necessary, as the fight did not last long after that. Reinforcements had been called in. It did not matter if they were sluggish with numbers like that. They were able to get her strapped to a Goliath-sized table, though she kept struggling. Then, the bastards had moved the human’s table so that it was beneath one of her paws. With the way the table was angled, if she broke her restraints, there was a good chance she would slide down right onto him. Eli did not want to test how well the human was augmented, so she calmed down.

That was when Eli noticed how frightened the human sounded. The sounds of the human in distress tugged at something in her. It infuriated her to no end, and not because of the way the human sounded without the translation implants working. Instead of sounding like a male wolverine her own size, the human’s vocalizations were more like tiny squeaks to her. She did not like seeing people get picked on and was not the type to sit around and let it happen, either.

However, there was something off about the human’s screaming. It was a bit…too much. To Eli, it sounded more like someone in a bad horror movie. Then she sniffed the air and realized there was not even a hint of fear. The human may have been tiny, but Eli had enough human friends and a good enough sense of smell to recognize even the subtlest hint of their fear. That was when she realized he was acting, probably hamming it up a little too much. But the guards must not have noticed it. The little aliens seemed smug enough to believe it from what she had seen of them so far.

Eli almost wanted to laugh. The human had been playing them. It looked like he was playing the long game. That was smart of him, but Eli did not have the patience for such things. She wished him well with whatever he might plan in the future. Then, her guards placed a helmet on her, and she did not remember what happened after that.

Eli could tell she was on the floor again. She felt a moment of concern, hoping she was not standing on the human. Fortunately, Eli did not feel anything. Humans may have been as tiny to her as feral ants were to them, but she knew she would be able to feel it if she stepped on someone. There were other people around now. More human and Goliath prisoners were around the room, all being interrogated. Eli was ushered out of the room before she was in a good enough condition to make out what questions were being asked.

Eli was just feeling fully recovered by the time she was returned to her cell. Ty looked relieved to see her. The wolf said, “I was starting to get concerned. They brought the human back a while ago.”

“Is he alright,” Eli asked, happy to hear he was okay. Actually, she thought she felt happier than she should, enough so that it surprised her. She took a peak into his cell to see him.

Ty said, “He looked alright to me. He and the other human had a nice long conversation. I’m guessing they talked about what happened.”

“Did they now,” Eli asked. “That’s odd. I can’t remember enough of what happened to have much of a conversation.”

“They messed with your memories again?”

“I think so.”

“Do you remember anything at all?”

Eli told him about her fight, the odd behavior of the Goliath guards, and how they used the human to manipulate her into behaving. Ty let out a low growl. Eli asked, “Something bothering you.”

The wolf calmed down as he said, “Sorry, that wasn’t meant for you. It’s just that my dad’s best friend was a human. I really don’t like the way these aliens are treating them.”

Eli grunted in agreement, “I came from a mixed human and Goliath world, and I had a few human friends, too. So I know where you are coming from.”

They shared a look before Eli continued, “Still, I wonder what the humans were talking about if they can mess with our heads like that?”

“You said the human was faking his fear, right?”

“Yeah, even though his acting can use some work,” Eli smiled.

“Well, maybe he found something out. They could be hatching a plan,” Ty said.

“I sure hope that’s true,” Eli responded.

If they had hatched a plan, it did not look like the humans could act on it right away. Days passed without them trying anything suspicious. Most of the time, it was monotonous. The guards took other prisoners away for interrogation, including Ty and the other human from the cell with the one that interested Eli. Besides that, all they could do was work out and spar with each other. Some of the humans did the same, though many stopped what they were doing when she and Ty spared. That was the closest thing they had to entertainment.

Eli did not mind putting on a show for many of the humans, but there was a way some of them leered at her that she did not care for. Those were the humans that did not do much of anything. They occasionally fought, but they did not look like simple sparring matches to Eli. Some of the other Goliaths sounded like they were equally troublesome. She hoped it was the pricks fighting each other, not some poor, innocent person trying to make the best of things. What worried Eli even more were the attempts she heard to break into the humans’ cells. None of them sounded successful, which was a relief, and she hoped those shields would continue to hold out.

It would have been hard to tell how much time had passed if not for Eli’s implants. The guards were not dimming the lights at all, and Eli had yet to see a window in the prison. So it always felt like the same time of the day. She could not even tell if they were on a planet or ship. The only comfort her jailers offered was periodically making the shields a solid color instead of nearly transparent. That allowed her to do things like change clothes and take advantage of the sonic shower that appeared from the ceiling every so often without all of the humans being able to watch her nude. Ty was also polite enough to avert his gaze.

One day, a different device appeared instead of the shower from the ceiling. It was an angry-looking red orb, and Eli wondered what it was until it emitted a painfully high-pitched noise. She winced. It seemed like a crowd-control device. Eli refused to do more than wince. She did not want to give the aliens the satisfaction of doing more than that. Ty seemed to be of the same mind. He was standing with his arms crossed and looking mildly annoyed.

The noise stopped after a few seconds, and her cell’s shield suddenly deactivated. A voice echoed from unseen speakers all over the cellblock, “Prisoners, exit your cells and follow the lights. Proceed in an orderly manner, or there will be punishment.”

Eli saw the angry orb remained as a lingering threat. She snorted. It would take more than that to threaten her, though she had noticed quite a few of the humans in pain. That included the human in the cell with her particular human, even though that one did not seem all that bothered either. Ty followed directions, and Eli decided to comply, too. She did not want the humans getting punished for her obstinance.

Upon entering the corridor, it looked like all of the Goliaths in the hallway had been set free. This was Eli’s first time getting a good look at everyone. She did not remember who was present during her interrogation, and she had only seen a few passing her cell on their way to be interrogated. There were a wide variety of races present. Eli tried to put faces to the voices she had been hearing. Some of the ones she suspected of being more hostile to the humans did not look as well-groomed as they should be. Their fur was a mess. Even the scaled ones somehow managed to make their scales look bad.

Some of them looked like they might have been decent street fighters, but there were only a few that Eli thought could come close to giving someone like her or Ty a decent fight. The ones that looked like they were in the same league as her looked like her kind of people. Unfortunately, there were only a few that looked like brawlers. The other well-kept Goliaths were in decent enough shape but were not up to Eli’s standards.

Despite the warning from the guards, a couple of the troublemakers did try to pick a fight. Of course, they went for one of the smallest people around, a squirrel woman. One of them, a hippo, shouted, “Let’s see how you are with that mouth without a shield between us.”

It looked like they were trying to make up for past insults. Eli thought the squirrel was in trouble, but she dodged with such grace that she thought the squirrel was a better fighter than she appeared. Good for her. However, everyone in the hallway was pretty fast to react. It looked like a serious brawl was about to break out. Then that noise sounded again. While it was not that bad for Eli, it seemed to affect many of the others, enough to calm them down. After everyone settled down, the noise stopped.

Eli did not like the implications of that. It seemed like they were being monitored, and she had been hoping her implants were preventing that. Trying to plot any kind of escape would be much more difficult if everything they said and did was being recorded. She looked around for cameras and did not spot any. But that did not mean they were not there.

“Look close to the ceiling. There are discolored spots on the walls,” a sea eagle whispered from close to Eli. He had noticed her looking around and must have done the same. His eyes were a lot better than hers. She only found what she was looking for because he pointed it out. Just as he said, a spot was just slightly off. There were other spots lining the hallway. At first, she thought they could be hidden cameras, but something did not feel right.

Eli reached up to tap one of the spots. It was not that far above her head, so it was within easy reach. The instant she touched the spot, the noise activated again. It was a bit of a surprise, but after having it used on her for the third time, she could ignore it if she wanted to. Still, she chose to wince. Better to let her captors think it was effective than realize they needed something better to use against her.

Despite playing along with the noise hurting her more than it did, she still kept an eye on the spot she tapped. It sent a slight tingle through her finger just before the noise hit. She was familiar with that shock. That was what a shield felt like when it was touched. There was a slight ripple in the spot. While shields could be made to mimic different colors, the second something big enough touched them, it messed up the effect.

Parts of the shield turned transparent as it struggled to stabilize. But Eli saw something before it could. One of the aliens was standing behind the shield, or rather, it was stumbling back from it. The creature looked terrified. Some humans feared Goliaths due to the size difference, or so Eli heard. She had not run into any humans like that. But she guessed those humans would have avoided her if they were.

Eli let that observation slide for the moment. While she could power through the noise, the eagle beside her shook his head once the noise faded. Then he said, “Wish they weren’t so quick with that. Did you see anything?”

Since they were being directly observed, Eli did not want to say anything. So she just grunted a neutral response. That got a quizzical head cock from the eagle, but he dropped the subject. Everyone walked on in silence after that. A few of the troublemakers looked more twitchy as they watched the orbs lining the hallway. Some of the larger, more powerfully built Goliaths had more defiant postures. Like Eli, they kept an eye on everyone else, trying to learn what they could.

The lights lead to a large doorway that eventually slid open. Even before Eli saw past the Goliaths ahead of her, the smell of vegetation hit her nose. She wondered if they were finally being let out into a yard of some sort for some recreation time. Indeed, there were some plants in a room up ahead. And it really was a room, not an open yard. The lighting was meant to simulate natural lighting from some alien world rather than the artificial lights of the ship. Still, the light was coming from synthetic sources.

That meant something. They might have been on a planet. Since they were in a prison, the area could have had a roof to prevent prisoners from escaping. But if an area with plants was there and they wanted a roof, even a prison would have used some sort of transparent material. It helped deal with the plants. With a roof like what Eli was seeing, it meant there was a good chance they were underground if they were on a planet.

There was a good chance they were still in space, though. Space tended to be a premium on ships. Even ships meant exclusively for human use, that could be designed as large as they wished, tended to be made as small as possible for whatever purpose they were built. Though mixed ships did have more spacious quarters. Unless they were on some pleasure yacht, she doubted a space like this would have been included. However, space stations were a different matter. They often included spaces like this, some much larger than this. It helped with raising crops and cattle. No matter how much time passed, fresh food still tended to taste better than its synthetic counterparts. So, as far as Eli knew, they were either underground or on a station.

Eli supposed it was nice of their captors to let them mill about in an area like this. It was a good change of pace from their cells. Unfortunately, the mood was ruined by having to spend their time with the less-than-savory-looking Goliaths. Two groups quickly formed that were obviously wary of each other.

There were other things to worry about, though, and Eli asked the eagle she had met earlier, “Do you see any more of those weird spots in here?”

He looked around carefully before shaking his head in the negative.

“Good, that means we aren’t being watched by the little grey aliens.”

“We were being watched in the hallway,” Ty asked this time.

Eli nodded, “Yeah, my eagle friend here pointed out some odd spots on the wall. When I tapped on one of them, I found out it was a shield. One of the aliens was behind it.”

A snow leopard spoke up next. She looked a bit older than most of the others present, not that she was elderly by a long shot. Eli doubted the leopard had even bothered using life extenders, but she was probably close to it. There was something very distinguished about her presence that almost demanded respect even though she was not that physically imposing, to Eli at least. Then she asked, “Do you think they’ve been watching us in hiding from our cells?”

The sea eagle answered, “I haven’t seen any of those shields in my cell. Looked into a few of the other cells as we passed them once I knew what I was looking for. Didn’t spot any in them either.”

“That’s curious. Why let us go unobserved if they have the personnel to do it,” Ty asked this time. “Could it be their monitoring equipment is better than we thought?”

Eli frowned, “I don’t know, but something seemed off about the alien I saw.”

Ty looked curious, “What was so strange about it?”

“It was absolutely terrified of me, even from beyond a shield. Why would they assign a guard to watch us who is terrified of Goliaths?”

The snow leopard sounded thoughtful, “Unless they’re all scared of us. Too scared to keep a proper watch on us unless they absolutely have to.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Eli said. “They may not even have anyone stopping at the hallway portals to try listening to us.”

“Here’s hoping that’s true,” the squirrel said, “But I’m going to be keeping my voice lower if I need to talk about escaping.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. As far as Eli could tell, this did not seem like a bad group. She was about to give an actual introduction to everyone when she thought she heard something suspicious. Not everyone seemed to notice. Only those species with a keener sense of hearing picked up on it. But the anomaly’s source was brought to their attention when they all stared in the same direction.

Another set of doors was opening, allowing more people into the room. The doors were much too small to allow for the admittance of more Goliaths. That was a set of human-sized doors, which was why the noise had been so silent. A group of humans stood at the entrance, hesitating to enter the room full of Goliaths. Eli did not recognize all of the humans, but she saw a few from the cells lining her cell. She assumed more were out of sight in the hallway beyond the door. Most of the humans were not looking her way but at the group of other Goliaths. They were murmuring to each other about them, and Eli assumed some were warning the others about the troublemakers.

Eli did not like the way those Goliaths looked at the humans, and she could not blame the humans for standing in the doorway. The orbs set off the noise for some reason, causing many to try and cover their ears, or whatever equivalent they had, to try and protect themselves. Despite the noise, a voice could clearly be heard saying, “The humans will enter the recreation area. Immediately!”

They only needed one look at the hostile-looking Goliaths before deciding they would rather deal with the noise. That was probably smart of them. It turned out the aliens were prepared for this. The pain they all felt from the noise increased with every passing second. It got to the point where even she found it more than annoying. Humans started making their way out of the hallway, and the pain lessened but did not completely vanish until they were all standing in the room with the Goliaths. Then, the doorway sealed shut behind them.

Eli was already moving. She could see where this situation was going. The others in her group were just as quick to react. They all moved to interpose themselves between the humans and the other Goliaths. While it was helpful, she also had to keep an eye on them. Ty was the only one she knew by name, and she did not even know him that well. If any of them were to turn on the humans, it would be very bad. If the humans were augmented, it might help them last longer, but augments only went so far. She noticed others giving her a suspicious look, too. This was not the best scenario to think about fighting under, but it was what had to be done.

The other Goliaths outnumbered their group by a good number. Eli thought her group looked like better fighters, and even the smallest member, the squirrel, had shown she was more skilled than she looked. The troublemakers were looking them over, trying to evaluate their chances. After a while, they appeared to decide that numbers were enough of a quality to make up for the skill difference.

A smirking female otter took a couple steps forward and said, “You all felt what just happened. That was all their fault, you know? Why don’t you step aside and let us show the squirts how much we appreciate what they did to us.”

The snow leopard responded before anyone else could, “Our captors did that. Leave the humans out of it.”

“What if we don’t want to,” the hippo asked condescendingly.

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve torn someone limb from limb,” Ty snarled. Eli was feeling pretty aggressive, too. Her fur was standing on end, and her fangs were bared. Ty’s aggression was on a completely different level, though. He must have really loved humans. That was a good thing, she supposed. Having a wolf of his size and build as a reliable ally was definitely a positive. She just hoped he would not go too wild. They would have to work well as a group if it came down to a fight.

“Come now, are the squirts really worth all this trouble,” the otter asked smoothly.

Eli walked up to the otter and looked down at her. By Goliath standards, she may not have been short, but she was only average in height. That put the otter at just mid-chest height to her. After staring her down, she said, “Who are you calling squirts, short stuff?”

“Well, you see-,” the otter started. Eli was observing the smaller creature closely. She saw her muscles bunch up in a way that screamed a sucker punch was coming. Eli may have been missing a few years of experience from her life, but she had been fighting for long enough to know that much. When the punch came, Eli was ready for it. She stepped just out of the otter’s reach, and the otter realized how bad a position she was in right away. Being so much larger than the otter meant that Eli was still very much in reach of the otter.

The otter did not have the time to react before she found herself getting kicked in the ribs by the larger wolverine. What happened next seemed like a big surprise for the otter, but Eli was somewhat expecting it. She did not remember getting many augments but thought she had them now. That assumption came from her fight with the guards. She and Ty had managed to bloody them. Unless these aliens were less advanced than she suspected, they should have had augments to prevent people from doing that to them. The fact that her claws had managed to penetrate his skin meant she probably had augments now.

That was why the otter went flying the way she did from Eli’s kick. She practically flew backward into the group of troublemakers, bowling a few of them over. Eli thought she felt a rib crack when she kicked the otter. The force of that kick should have shattered her rib cage and turned her organs into pulp. But, the otter only looked winded from the blow. Eli assumed she had some augments of her own. She wondered how many of the other Goliaths were also augmented. Even more worrisome, she wondered how many of the humans were augmented.

Eli dug her toes into the ground, testing the soil’s softness. She hoped the surface was artificial, but it really was natural soil. There were even what felt like small pebbles present. What were pebbles to her were boulders to the humans. When the Goliaths started fighting, they would kick up a lot of those pebbles. Without augments, the area was about to get very dangerous. Honestly, it might get dangerous for them even with augments if Eli’s group could not keep the other Goliaths away.

There really was not much Eli could do about that. The options were to either let the troublemakers have their way with the humans or fight them off. Talking things out did not look like it had ever been an option with this group. Eli’s group had to establish physical dominance. That was all there was to it.

Fortunately, Eli’s first move had stunned the troublemakers. It was clear to everyone that Eli was augmented. Many of them were also wondering if they were augmented. If they were not, a single blow would be enough to finish them off. Eli took advantage of their hesitation and rushed the group. Most of her allies did the same. She was greatly relieved when none of them took the opportunity to turn on the humans.

After that, it was hard to keep track of the humans and fight simultaneously. She could only hope they were smart and lucky enough to keep from getting underfoot. Eli had to keep track of multiple Goliaths at once. Everybody in her group had to pick their targets and try to keep them occupied. The otter had recovered just enough to wince when she saw Eli charging forward. But Eli ignored her completely. Even if the otter was augmented, she worried some of the other larger troublemakers might also be augmented. If that were the case, she wanted to be the one to fight them instead of the smaller members of her group, especially if they were also unaugmented.

Eli went for the hippo first. He was only a little shorter than she was and probably outweighed her. Fortunately, that did not look like it was due to him being more muscular. She punched him right in the throat, hoping to break his neck, but he just fell back coughing. It looked like he was augmented, too. Eli could only get a couple more free shots on other opponents before things descended into utter chaos.

It was such a large group fighting, and it looked like only a couple of them had experience fighting together. No one knew each other well enough to work together efficiently. Trying to feel each other out during the fight was not all that easy either. All Eli remembered was being as aggressive as possible and swinging away at anyone foolish enough to get in her path.

From what she could tell, no one was going down easy. It seemed like everyone was augmented. That meant the fight could drag on for a while. Eli thought she was giving more than she was receiving, but with so many opponents, she was not going to stop everything. But between her augments and the adrenaline coursing through her, she could barely tell when she was taking a hit. The only indication she had that she must have taken a hit to the face was when she felt the fur on her muzzle moisten from a nosebleed. Someone paid for that blood with blood of their own. Or it could have been multiple someones for all she knew. Her hands and claws were bloodied, and she was reasonably sure it was not her own.

The only bit of coordination Eli and her allies could manage was to push the other Goliaths away from the humans. Still, that was something. It was an indication of who was winning and who was losing. Eventually, that proved to be enough. A couple troublemakers extracted themselves from the fight, retreating to the other side of the room. They had enough. That started a flow of others to do the same. With the numbers advantage trickling away, the troublemakers backed off. They wanted no part of an even fight.

That was when Eli finally saw the damage that had been done. Everybody looked like they had taken a beating. Almost everyone had at least minor cuts. A few people were nursing what might be more severe injuries. Eli would not have been surprised if there were broken bones. She hoped her allies’ augments also included accelerated healing if they were going back into cells with the members from the other group.

The worst of the visible injuries was to one of the troublemakers. He was missing a couple of fingers. She wondered what had happened to them until she heard a crunching noise right next to her. That was Ty chewing on the fingers in question before swallowing. Eli grunted. She wished she had thought to do that. When you mess with an alpha predator, there should be consequences.

But the fight was over, and that was what mattered. The troublemakers glared at them, but that was all they did. Eli thought, let them stew in their anger as long they remembered who was in charge here.

However, with things calming down, Eli did hear more scuffling. But it was the humans that were fighting now. She wondered when that had happened. Eli and a few of the other Goliaths walked over to see what was happening while most kept an eye on the troublemakers. Emotions she could not explain welled up in her as she saw one of the main humans fighting was her human.

After just fighting a group of Goliaths, a fight among humans should have been nothing to her. But she felt helpless as she towered over the comparatively tiny beings. Trying to separate them could be dangerous. If the humans were not augmented, she could very easily kill them. And there were supposedly a lot of unaugmented humans. Some occupations required them, and it was also a requirement for living on a world with Goliaths. But it was optional for everyone else. Eli did not even know if it was safe to handle her human.

Ty was also hovering over Eli’s shoulder. It was incredible how sheepish he looked, especially after eating someone’s fingers. The wolf looked like he wanted to do something desperately. But he was in the same situation Eli was in. All they could do was crouch down and wait for the humans to settle things among themselves.