Sett wanted nothing more than to lie there and hope to die, but he knew he couldn’t. He slowly rose to his feet, stumbling a few times. The chains were heavy, though he would barely notice the weight if he was at full health. He didn’t know if he would ever be at full health again.

  He looked forward and saw more of the dull black walls and sickly yellow lighting, but the hall he was thrust into was rife with activity. The ceiling reached as far up as the hangar from before, though he could see the criss-cross of steel beams holding it up. Scores of walkways bridged the upper reaches of the room far above his head, the tiny silhouettes of despondent thralls moving across them. Hundreds of thick, giant chains the size of Sett’s swollen leg extended across the floor, moving slowly towards unknown destinations like gunmetal gray snakes, their segments clanging as they were pulled by unseen forces. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of slaves were pulled by their shackles, their manacles attached to the giant chains across the floor by some unknown force.

  Sett guessed it was some sort of guidance mechanism that uses the chains to send the slaves to where they’re needed. He noticed the people from his commune exit the doors next to his, naked as Sett himself. Some of them collapsed out of despair, others understood their situation and quickly scrambled to put their rags on. The moment a slave got close enough to the giant chains, their own shackles would surge towards their enormous counterparts seemingly magnetically, yanking the wearer in the direction they’re supposed to go.

  He took a deep breath and unfurled the bundle of clothes he’d been given. The upper garment had open sides with laces along the fabric so you could wear it over your head like a poncho, and lace up the sides. It seemed like it was made considering the manacles on the wearer’s arms. The material was thin and smelled synthetic, like chemicals, though it would quickly be replaced with the stench of sweat, dirt and blood. The loose sleeves reached Sett’s elbows, and barely did anything to protect him from the cold.

  He sighed and slowly sat down, dreading the process of wearing the pants. They were thankfully loose fitting, but any brush of clothing against his leg would hurt. His face contorted into a permanent wince, he gently guided the fabric up his legs, breathing through the incensed pain. A few minutes of agony and rest later, he tied up the laces around his waist and pushed himself upward, taking care to keep his leg as steady as possible.

  The door behind Sett opened, and an older man walked out, naked as the day he was born. His wrinkled face was marred with despair and exhaustion, his body littered with purple bruises. He was holding the same dull bundle of clothes in his hand, which were promptly dropped onto the ground as the man collapsed, weeping and crying out a name Sett didn’t recognise.

  He watched the man and considered helping, but knew there wasn’t anything he could do. His own leg pulsed in pain, and he could not take up someone else’s.

  “Put your clothes on quickly, man. I don’t know what they’d do if you don’t,” Sett instructed hoarsely and added after a moment, “You need to make it through this.”

  The man looked up at him but Sett turned around, limping towards the giant chains. He didn’t want anymore conversation, exhaustion and pain robbed his heart of any empathy. All he could do was move forward.

  The chain linking his cuffs lurched forward, locking itself onto its gigantic cousin with a clag. Sett was jerked forward with a force too strong, and he stumbled to his knees. The colossal links continued pulling him without a pause, and Sett winced as he climbed to his feet and walked at a pace too fast for his injury, tears of agony welling up in his eyes.

  A few minutes of frantic movement later, the chain that was carrying him was swallowed into a hole in the ground. His manacles detached before they reached the cavity, and quickly reattached themselves to another, equally big, fetter moving perpendicular to his original path. Sett’s body was quickly yanked to his left, and he struggled to stay on his feet as his new guide dragged him to a narrow hallway in the wall in the far distance.

  The hallway was dark, the yellow lights that spanned the ship sparsely spread out across the low ceiling. Going from a vast hall to this corridor barely a few metres across invoked a sense of claustrophobia that was overshadowed by his aching legs. Sliding doors of the same dull black littered the walls, but he didn’t see another soul in here, neither guard nor slave.

  A short while in, his chains abruptly detached from the larger one, the momentum of his pace causing Sett to stumble and fall. He cried out and clutched his leg, slowly opening his eyes after a moment of collecting himself.

  He had reached close to the end of the corridor, and he noticed the chain disappear into a hole in the wall at the end. His surroundings looked the same as any other section of the hallway, with a door next to where he was deposited. He assumed this was the medical bay he was meant to go to, so he sighed and slowly got up.

  He had considered ignoring Croh’s advice of going to the medical bay, knowing that the knife hidden in his leg would be discovered. If the chains didn’t drag him there, he would’ve followed the rest of his cohort to wherever they were sent. Now that he was dragged here, though, all he could do was hope the doctor wouldn’t cause any trouble.

  He took a deep breath to ease his nerves, and limped towards the bleak looking door that slid open as he approached. Sett knew he should’ve expected a medical bay for slaves to be horrible, but he was still shocked at what he saw inside. There was better lighting, thankfully, a white glow illuminated the otherwise bare room. It was about the same size as the chamber where he was probed, with a handful of steel tables stained with blood strewn across.

  At the far end of the room, a woman of a race Sett didn’t recognize with scaly green skin sat on a seemingly uncomfortable chair, her reptilian eyes studying him. She wore the same gray clothing as him, though with a notable absence of shackles on her arms. She had a thin scaly tail that poked out of a gap on the chair, her face surprisingly human apart from the scales. Human enough, at least, for Sett to make out an irritated expression.

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  She glanced at a tablet-like device on a smaller, less bloodstained table next to her, and motioned with her head towards one of the bloody ones. Sett complied, and slowly limped towards the closest desk, observing as she eyed his leg. As he prepared to mount the table, his doctor spoke in a whispery voice he could barely hear,

  “Remove your pants first.”

  Sett was thankful for the Universal Common lessons as he quickly undid the knot and let the flimsy fabric drop. He winced in pain as he climbed, the cold of the steel feeling sharp against his bare skin. The metal strips that closed his would were crusted with dried blood.

  The woman turned around to walk towards the metal cupboard near her desk. He caught a glimpse of a healed scar on the back of her neck as she turned, shaped similar to the symbol on the ships that took him, the emblem of the Salsai. It seemed like the absence of visible chains didn’t mean freedom.

  She opened the cupboard and picked out a long needle-like device with a circular lens attached on one end. She stabbed the sharp end into his injured leg and Sett screamed. He squeezed the edges of his makeshift bed until his knuckles turned white. She ignored him as she slowly poured Ether through the needle and stared into the lens. After a minute, Sett felt her Ether leave his body, and she removed the device.

  “How did you get ….?”

  He assumed the last word meant injured, and he recited the excuse he had prepared, “I accidentally got hurt when we were transported here. By a sharp object. On my ..uh.. planet.”

  She stared at his face before speaking, “Why is there a knife in there?”

  Sett felt dread grip his heart. He had hoped she didn’t notice, but it was inevitable that she would. His grip tightened and he opened his mouth but he didn’t answer her. He didn’t know what to say. She stared at him for a few excruciating minutes, her expression morphing into a frown. Without a word, she walked back to the cupboard and returned with a scalpel.

  “No! Don’t-”

  “We need to remove the … or it’ll get worse. Your wound is …” When she saw Sett’s confused expression, she shot off a few more synonyms until she landed on one Sett recognised, “diseased.”

  “Don’t remove the knife. Please. It is a possession of my mother,” Sett begged in all the Common he could manage.

  She stared into his eyes expressionlessly and said, “If you don’t remove the knife you will never walk. Is that acceptable?”

  Sett nodded and she made a thin, precise cut next to the metal fused with his skin. His leg erupted in pain as pus and serum gushed out of his wound like a river, pouring down the table and onto the floor. She continued her surgery, deftly seperating molten skin from cold metal as she removed Sett’s crude staples. The skin under had scarred, and while her scalpel drew blood, it did not reopen the wound.

  He shut his eyes tight and endured the agony when he felt her hands wrap around his thigh and squeeze, the torment amplifying by multiples.

  Sett’s leg shrank at a noticeable pace as the festering wound was squeezed dry. The putrid purple eased into a color closer to Sett’s own complexion as dollops of black, red, yellow and clear fluids gushed out. Sett screamed through the entire process, his throat burning in overexertion.

  After what seemed like forever, the doctor seemed satisfied and withdrew her hands. The table and the floor below it were a mess, with blood, pus and other liquids Sett didn’t recognise painting a gory picture. The pain slowly eased as he lay there panting, sweat pouring down his body and adding to the mess.He heard the splashing of her feet as she walked away and returned, and felt the cold of a salve being rubbed against his wounds. He lifted his neck to see a dark green gel being generously applied on both the festering cut he made and the clean incision next to it. He instantly felt the stinging of the wound reduce, though the ache of the torn muscles and flesh under it didn’t budge.

  She wrapped his leg tightly in a long strip of cloth that was closer to a clean rag than medical bandages, but Sett was grateful nonetheless. Even more grateful about her implied decision to not report his hidden weapon to the guards. Sett desperately welcomed the gesture of solidarity in this hellhole.

  He wanted to lay there for a moment until the aching dulled a little more, but he knew rest was a distant luxury here. He swung his legs out of the side of his bed and dismounted, wincing at the pain but recognising that it wasn’t as bad as before.

  The doctor walked back to the storage cupboard and began rummaging for something as Sett dressed himself. His new clothes had lost what little cleanliness they had, splotches of blood and other fluids added to the gray. He looked at her once he was done, but she didn’t glance back. He wanted to thank her, but he realised he hadn’t learned the word for it from Croh. He hadn’t expected to show gratitude here.

  “Wait.”

  He was slowly limping towards the door without a word when she called out. She handed him a verdant, spherical pill smaller than the one he swallowed in the woods what felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Take this if you ever remove your knife. It’ll …. your flesh.” She sighed at Sett’s expression and said, “Make new.”

  He understood immediately. A pill that will regrow the flesh displaced and taken out when he created the cavity, a priceless gift in his situation.

  “I am … happy,” he muttered after a moment of searching for the right words, hoping to convey gratitude.

  “The word you want is ‘thank you’.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now leave.”

  ****

  Sett stumbled out of the hallway and into the giant chamber he had come from, dragged by parallel chains moving opposite to the ones that brought him there. The pace they set was more manageable after the treatment he had just received, though he still walked with a limp he expected to be permanent as long as the knife was a part of his body.

  He had already hidden the pill, wrapped up in the edge of his sleeve, and tied together by a torn strip of cloth. It was a precious gift, just as important to him as the knife and he would make sure not to lose it.

  The chains around his arms detached from the larger one, and quickly reattached to another train moving deeper into the hall, parallel to dozens of others dragging many more slaves. Sett let it take him to his fate.