The dull, off-white lab darkened as the power flickered. "Shit! What is that engineer doing?!" the scientist yelled up at the ceiling, his attention forcefully drawn away from the screen. When his eyes returned to his work, he was rewarded only with more stress.

		[color=red]TRACE System failure. Restoring default settings until the error is resolved. Error code: 942.[/color]

		"Why yes, [i]of course[/i] it fails. Obviously! Poor girl, that maniac of a project leader gave her some nasty defaults..."

	He looked up from his monitor to check on the Sapishte, only to realize that she was now awake, staring at him with eyes wide open.

[hr]

	Maji had been sleeping peacefully, dreaming as she often did about swimming in the ocean. She'd been gathering pearls, when suddenly a tasty-looking fish swam by. She felt her body painlessly break apart as she began to mimic a school of the very same fish. As the fish drew closer, thinking to shelter itself with numbers, the school of fish quickly reformed, and the Sapishte sank her fangs into her prey. As the carefree girl was enjoying her free meal, thinking about how much more fun this was than spearfishing, the waters darkened, and she looked up and saw the familiar, chilling outline of the boat—the big one, which brought the humans that captured her. Ah... a dream. [i]That[/i] dream. Next, her body would become inexplicably weak, a net would carry her aboard, and the hired hunters would beat her, until they realized that she couldn't struggle. Rather than re-live that nightmarish moment, she decided she'd better wake herself up.

	What Maji awoke to, however, was even darker than the sea beneath the boat, and more red than the trail of chum behind it. The lab was running on emergency power! In what she supposed must have been at least five years by now—judging solely by how much more old and tired the lab-man was looking these days—this had never happened before. Pressing her face against the glass of her containment pod, with a bit of a squint she could just about see the lab-man in the dark, and could make out what he was saying. Except... he wasn't so much saying anything, as he was just making angry human-noises. Opening her mouth to speak, Maji—

	—felt a "snap" in the back of her head, not unlike the sensation of abruptly waking up to a loud noise. No actual words came out, only an abbreviated cry of surprise. She tried again to speak, and the same thing happened. Could she... not speak? The lab-man spoke again, louder this time, but his words were certainly complete gibberish. Maji's eyes widened as the scientist looked up at her, visibly upset with both the situation going on around him, and whatever was happening to her. She had no idea what was going on, and could neither speak nor understand. Was she having a nightmare? Was she going insane? Was her brain... broken? And what if the science-man couldn't fix her?

	Tears welled up in Maji's eyes. The containment, she could handle. For the sake of her health, a nice doctor named "Lea" had recommended that she at least be allowed to walk when being transferred between labs—and though she didn't know the lab-man's name, she'd trusted him too. His experiments were fun—not like the experiments the [i]other two[/i] put her through—but she hadn't seen either of [i]them[/i] in quite a while. Neither of them could stop her from playing, and if she was bored, she could always sleep. Dinner was always a surprise. Life on this ship—called the Alcatraz, or so she had been told—wasn't horrible for her... as long as she didn't have to be lonely. But what now?! What if she could never talk to anyone ever again?! No! She [i]would not[/i] stand for this!

	Maji took a deep breath from her breathing tube, and braced herself for pain—as did the scientist, who knew what was coming: the piercing, gurgling shriek that an earthling could only describe as "a blue whale that swallowed a mountain lion." Slightly mournful, but mostly blood-curdling, whether it was a distress call or a war cry, only another Sapishte could probably tell. It echoed throughout the lab, and down the halls of the high-security block, still faintly audible by the time it would reach her "cell-mates."

	Maji's hopes were briefly kindled as the lab-man's body language changed, pleading with her to stop. Whenever he did that, her patience and cooperation with him was usually rewarded. The other two nameless lab rats that she didn't like would just sedate her, of course, but this man had earned her trust. However, the scary balding man burst into the lab and shouted something, which caused the lab-man to quickly leave with him. Scarcely could Maji have known that other prisoners were being released, and his life was probably in more danger than hers. From her perspective, he had abandoned her just like that. Was she alone now, then? Could she not trust anyone, not even the lab-man? She sank to the bottom of the containment pod, hiding her face behind her knees. She cried a little... then tried vocalizing vowels. Then, a few other sounds. Soon, she was singing a wordless siren's song of sorrow and loneliness.

	The moment she tried to form words, her mind would seemingly just fail to conjure them from memory. She would have to find some other way to communicate, for now. As quickly as she'd lost hope, she'd took hold of it again. She'd lived on the streets until she could afford to one day wear the white coat, just like the lab-man. She could be just as resourceful as he was. She could figure this thing out.