Straitjacket

[4] Sage

Dedicated to the above user for their amazing awesomeness (and love of Groot)! You totally would have been mentioned on the previous chapter if Wattpad would let me dedicate chapters to two people...

My nighttime arrangements are not comfortable whatsoever.

I am left in my straightjacket as two men seal me into a sleeping pod with artificial air filtered throughout - there are no openings whatsoever. This air is laced with odoriferous chemicals to keep me drugged and sleepy - presumably so that I don't think of an escape from the pod or a way to murder my caretakers and fellow inmates in their sleep. This plan isn't too thought out, obviously, seeing as I can clearly smell the sickly sweet gasses.

It's kind of stupid, really. My caretakers back on Earth left me unsupervised for hours at a time and never forced me to take any medication unless I was "having a really bad day" - code for "deep within one of my murderous rages." Now I'm on a spaceship where the only casualties would be three other freaks and a few official personnel (along with myself seeing as I can't pilot a spaceship) and suddenly I'm under close supervision and being pumped full of chemicals just to fall asleep?

Jake receives an actual bed, an object I haven't seen since before the mental hospital. Sure, he's tightly strapped down, but he gets to breathe non-medicated air, at least.

Xavier's legs are removed and he's allowed to sleep on the top bunk of a bunk bed. His hands are loosely strapped in, just in case, but he's too small and weak to use them to do any real damage.

Deirdre shares that bunk bed. She has received the same conditions of her bunkmate other than, of course, having her legs removed. I think it's more for show than anything - if she doesn't get her hands on a gun, she's as harmless as any other young preteen.

Nicole gets a pod just like mine. She is forced in with her muzzle on, so I still have no idea what her voice sounds like or how she feels about her sleeping arrangements. She simply lies there, clearly struggling against the drugs, until she is overwhelmed and passes out.

All of my fellow passengers are lined against the opposite wall except for Nicole. Her pod is placed to the right of mine, so I can only watch her slowly falling unconscious by lifting my head and craning my neck into a very uncomfortable position. Luckily, the Voice is interested, too, so it shuts down the majority of the pain for me. It does this when something benefits both of us - it goes against biology and basic human feelings, controlling the ones that don't benefit it like upsetting the balance of nature is nothing.

Once Nicole is asleep and I have returned to my previous, more comfortable position, I discover that Jake is watching me. I meet his gaze unwaveringly. The Voice wants to do something crazy to get him to look away, but there aren't a lot of options from within the pod. Besides, the drugged air is finally starting to kick in, making me inescapably sleepy.

As I drift into sleep, I note with surprise that Jake never breaks eye contact. He keeps staring at me as I slowly pass out into a drug-induced slumber.

*

The next day dawns in the most boring manner possible.

"Dawns" is inaccurate, of course. There is no sunrise or sunset out here. This spaceship is not a planet, after all. We have no orbit, no rotation around the sun. It is an odd thought, to think of us disconnected from time itself.

I wake up in the same seat that I had previously occupied rather than the pod. Someone must have moved me while I was sleeping. Rather smart of them.

Jake is, like last night, staring at me. "Stalker alert!" I pipe up. It is the Voice, of course. I do not mind him watching me as long as I'm sure it's not because he wants to kill me - which I'm still not convinced off. He can't be trying to get friendly or even the slightest bit interested in me, though. He has to be convinced of my utter craziness. That's what the Voice wants, so that's what is going to happen.