Low, indecipherable moans roused her from a dreamless sleep. Beck didn’t open her eyes. Whatever was out there couldn’t have been pleasant for her. Instead she purposefully tried to lull herself back into the quiet darkness from which her mind had emerged.
It had been a strange sleep and despite the fact that she hadn’t dreamed, she felt as if she’d been trying to; as if the dreams were surrounded by a thick, dark cloud and every once and a while her mind would brave that smog to try and reach for her dreams. A dream for a witch was important, especially if that witch happens to be in peril. In dreams the guardian spirits of their clans could wander without physical restraint. Even in her death like slumber Beck had known that somewhere beyond herself, if her brother still lived, he searched for her.
An ache in her back turned into a stabbing pain that shot up her spine and spurred her mind into motion once more. It was fruitless. Between her cramped position and the checkered bars of the cage digging into her skin as her body slumped lifelessly against it, there was no hope of falling back asleep. She sat up, twisted her tingling ankle to restore feeling to it once more, and then opened her eyes.
She was in a cage. Not a cell like a prisoner or a person. A cage. The kind of cage one would throw an ill behaved dog. Which, technically, she supposed wasn’t too far off from what she was, and under normal circumstances, that implication might not have offended her. But these people didn’t know what she was. She’d been careful. No one had ever seen her shift; not the others on the drop-ship, not the grounders. The only people that could have possibly known were thousands of miles away in a spacecraft. That was the rub. They hadn’t thrown her in here because they knew she was like an animal, they’d thrown her here because she was no more than an animal to them... and apparently she wasn’t the only one.
From her cramped corner cage Beck could make out at least three dozen other people, but given the size of the place there could have been more farther up than what she could see. The sight of them--pale and withered, shaking and groaning--made her stomach turn. Some looked at her with dead, unfeeling eyes. Others looked wild, frantic, ready to jump the second anyone came down the little aisle between the cages.
“Psst.” Beck flicked a link in bars between her cage and the one next to her. The metal hummed from the impact and the tip of her finger tingled. “Ancestors please tell me you understand me. Do you know where we are?”