Chapter 216: Deciding to Hang Around
The police officers that I worked with back on Earth always seemed to be a ridiculously superstitious lot, and I never understood it. They would lose their minds if anyone said that something was easy or a slow shift or that it was a quiet night. It was as if they thought that simply by saying those words, all hell would break loose.
I had heard that doctors and nurses were similar, but I had always wondered why such highly educated people would actively believe in superstition. It was nothing more than sheer stupidity.
But now, I stand corrected, or more like hang corrected. My belief that things would go smoothly resulted in all hell breaking loose. I am saying this here and now: I will never again so much as think those words when I am trying to hunt down the Easter Bunny.
But maybe I should start at the beginning.
We had made it through several levels of the dark and dreary ship. Pumpkin and Princess took turns pointing out all of the hidden eggs and either eating them or waiting for them to hatch before eating the bunny inside.
I had lost count of all the eggs, but I was pretty confident that we were not missing any. Unfortunately for me, all of our attention was on the eggs and not the queen laying the eggs. We had just entered one of the more brightly lit corridors when something came down from the ceiling, wrapped its arms around me, and carried me back up into the ceiling. The guys didn’t even have a chance to react before I was taken away through the ducts.
Yup, I had been kidnapped once again. Or was that abducted? I tried to remember the definitions of each. Apparently, kidnapping involves taking someone away with the intention of holding them for ransom or some type of gain. Abduction is just taking someone away without their consent.
So, I was definitely being abducted.
I closed my eyes as the Istar moved so fast through the metal vents that it was causing me to want to puke. We came to a sudden stop, and the Istar alien swayed back and forth, occasionally bouncing on the balls of its feet as it thought about what it wanted to do next.
"Feel free to put me down whenever," I offered as a suggestion, but I guess that wasn’t the correct response. The bunny once again took off, holding on to me so tightly I had no way of escaping. My only solace was that I had accidentally dropped Pumpkin when I was first grabbed, so at least he wouldn’t be hurt.
Once again, the Ishtar queen came to a sudden stop at a four-way intersection. It tilted its head to the side and looked in all directions before deciding to go to the left. However, that was the last thing I remembered before a sharp pain in my head caused me to be knocked out.
When I woke up, I was tied up in a weird, sticky web-like thing and hung from what looked to be the ceiling of the lowest level of the Saalistaja ship. I was back in the Everglades and not overly happy.
My arms were pinned to my side with whatever it was that was tying me upside down from the ceiling. If my brain wasn’t telling me that Istar was a bunny, then I really would have thought that it was a spider based on my current situation.
Looking at what was underneath me, I let out a brief prayer to whoever looked after alien abductees that the string was strong enough to not let me drop.
There was a nest under me with what looked to be almost ten bunnies, hopping up and down, trying to reach me, their eyes and teeth letting me know just how hungry they were. And apparently, I was what was on the menu that night.
There was a light scream from the Istar queen as she perched over top of me, staring down at her babies. I had yet to get a good look at the thing since it appeared to enjoy being in the shadows more than the light, but I don’t really think that was a bad thing.
I heard the sound of a wolf howl and realized that Midnight was probably losing his mind trying to find me. The others, as well. If I could just hold on long enough, they would be able to come and save me. The problem was that I had nothing to hold on to.
I tried to open my mouth to reply when I realized a very few important facts about my situation. First, my armor was no longer activated. Something that the Istar queen managed to do caused my nanos to recede. That meant that while I was still wearing my bulletproof catsuit, I was not wearing a helmet or had access to any of the weapons that came with that armor.
I didn’t even realize that I was no longer in my armor until I understood that I had no way of screaming for help because the sticky web that was keeping me suspended in the air also covered my mouth, preventing me from opening it.
Yeah, so much for things going smoothly.
I could feel myself start to panic as the web dropped me about half an inch before catching me again. Then, it raised me back up before dropping me down again. Was the fucking Easter Bunny using me like fish bait?
My stomach jerked with the up and down motions, and all I could think was that worms didn’t puke when they were on a hook, and neither would I.
Every time I was dropped down, the bunnies under me would try to jump up and catch me, but I was just out of their reach. I didn’t know if she was playing with all of us or waiting for a specific time to be able to feed her babies. Either way, I was not happy and impressed.
But what else could I do but hang around for a while and hope that the guys would find me quickly before whatever invisible clock in the queen’s head went off and I was dinner.
