In Search of Home

Chapter 14

After days of being looked at and kept in the vet's office, the humans suddenly found themselves being carted off in large carriers once more. 

The vets had played dirty trying to get them all in there. They hadn't fed them the night before, which certainly wouldn't have been out of the blue when in the arena, but after nearly a week in the vet's clinic, the humans had gotten quite used to being fed delicious jerky multiple times a day. So, as one could imagine, they were quite peeved that they didn't get supper. 

It had made sense, however, when a carrier was propped up against their cages the next day. Both doors were open wide, and deep within the carrier, a bowl of jerky. Viktor was convinced he had seen heavenly light shining on it. 

It really hadn't taken much more convincing to get them all into the carriers.

Now, they were all shoved into a vehicle, carriers stacked on top of each other. They were smaller than the ones they had come in, but still pretty roomy. They were long enough for Viktor to sit and stretch his legs, but not tall enough for him to sit up straight. He was slumped against the back of the carrier, knees bent. 

Wherever they were going, it was a long way away. Viktor was bored. Thankfully, he was the carrier on the top of the stack. Pedro was in the carrier directly below him. Viktor drummed his fingers annoyingly loudly on the bottom of his carrier.

"I will break out of this thing and come up there," Pedro threatened, knocking harshly on the roof of his carrier. 

"Will you turn the car around, too?" Ezekiel snarked lightheartedly. 

"Yeah, I'd leave you on the side of the road," Pedro grumbled. 

Viktor sighed dramatically, trying to force out the nerves of where they were going in that single breath. After a week of getting taken care of, he was pretty sure they weren't going to go back to any arena, but it was still nerve-wracking. Anything could go wrong. They had been stolen away in the middle of the day, after all. Of course, there had been a few thousand humans in their section of the corral; several going missing wouldn't have even been blinked at. 

He shifted his legs again, stretching them out enough to touch the door. Ever since he had outgrown his shoes, Viktor's socks had taken a beating. They were nearly worn through. He kicked at the door uselessly. "I am going to go fucking crazy in here," Viktor declared, contorting himself so that his head was near the door and his feet at the back. Lying on his stomach, he looked out at the passing scenery from the back window of the alien car they were in. 

"Tell me about it, kid," Aiko said. 

Viktor closed his eyes, resting his head on his arms. He idly listened to the alien's conversations, mingled in with the humans' understandable ones. He must have dozed off somewhere in between because his carrier nearly fell off the stack when the vehicle came to a stop only a few seconds later. His body told him that at least another hour had passed, considering how stiff he felt. Blinking slowly, he watched as the back of the vehicle opened up to reveal an unfamiliar alien accompanied by one of the vets. 

Most aliens Viktor had seen had all varied in some shades of deep red. They were darker, duller. Some had other hues mixed in their color, but they all erred somewhere on the red side of the color scale. The only exception he could recall seeing was Lilac, who had only the slightest hints of purple in her. 

This alien was literally fucking pink. 

"Wow," he heard someone say. 

Enamored, Viktor hardly even minded that they started lifting carriers eagerly. The new alien spoke with a soft voice, cooing at the humans. She was definitely female, going off of her voice. She wore an outfit of light blue that didn't clash too terribly with her skin. Unlike Lilac, she didn't have a tail. She was definitely way taller than Lilac but fell short of that official-looking alien's height who had visited the vet earlier in the week. It took the vet and the pink alien about twenty minutes of effort to get them all out of the vehicle. After they were on the ground, the vet went around and slammed a hand on top of the carriers.