Portal Tours

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But this isn’t a vacuum. It’s Laika, the largest city on Ocean Planet, and things have gone badly south.

I violently tug at my chains even though I know I can’t break them. I shake my head to try and loosen the shock collar but it does nothing. I’ve been forced to stand here for an entire week, and there’s no escape in sight.

So I scream into my oxygen mask, knowing that each decibel I raise starves me of more and more oxygen. And I don’t want them to refill the tank.

They’ve kept me awake the whole time, and the pain is unbearable, but I don’t want to break. I want to rip out the tube that’s feeding me, and I want to snap the device that’s automatically giving me drugs to stop me from passing out, but I absolutely do not want to break.

I scream one more time, then look at the screen in front of me. It shows a live feed of the eight cages we were put in and only one of them has someone in it. That’s me.

One by one they dropped. Three went on the first day, within the first 12 hours. Another two went the next day and one more the next. But Roxy stayed strong. I stayed strong, and together, we stuck it out. A full week of pain in a collective show of defiance.

“You okay?” she asked after they took Oz, number six on their list.

“No. You?” I replied.

There was a silence, the only silence I have heard since it all happened. Since it all went south. Through the orchestral screaming that surrounds us and the high-pitched squeals of our captors, it’s fair to say Laika is not a place that is friendly to those with hearing.

“Think we made a mistake?” she laughed, somehow.

“Yeah. You could be right.” I replied, but this time, there was no silence, just an involuntary agonising cry as the sleep-depriving life-preserving needle shook me with whatever poison they keep injecting me with.

Now it’s just me. They took her. She didn’t give in or say what they wanted to or be overcome by the injections. They turned the lights off and in a swirl of putrid tentacles and acrid dust, released her bonds and snatched her away into their darkness.

And now I stand here, screaming, and alone.

No matter how much I shake my head, it is forced into position, and my face has been directed at the screen the whole time. In the video feed, I catch a glimpse of my hand and realise why it’s throbbing so much; it’s getting bigger. It is swelling and growing and transforming into something else and I can see it all happening on the screen I no longer want to see.

Because this isn’t what it was meant to be like and things aren’t going to plan. When I signed up there was no screaming, no injections and no swelling limbs.

There was a waiting room, a table covered in magazines, a rude lady, a form to fill out, and a promise of a new life. All I had to do was pass a test, hand over the money, and step into the teleportation chamber. My world would change forever.

I could get away from everything that one planet had failed to offer me, and start again on a new one.

A job as a chef at The Golden Moon, Laika’s premier resort for teleporters from all around the earth.

But this is not a holiday resort, and things have not gone to plan.