Chapter 2: Contained in Siberia

Q: Do aliens have human rights? A: When they show up in warships, parked in orbit with cannons aimed at Earth? Oh, hell yeah. You bet they do. We'd be talking peace treaties and diplomatic immunity real fast. But if it's just one alien, alone? No backup? Human rights? Nah. Lab rat rights, at best. That's how the one they dubbed NLO Odin—НЛО Один, "UFO One"—ended up where he was now. A sealed, windowless room buried somewhere deep beneath the Siberian permafrost. No sun. No clock. No doors that open without permission. The cell was stark. One bed, one sink, one toilet. It looked less like a prison and more like the kind of hospital room you'd see in a Cold War-era biolab. A Soviet take on minimalist chic: white walls scrubbed sterile, chrome fixtures polished to mirror-shine. Ironically, the cell was actually larger than the tiny apartment he'd worked thirty years to mortgage in his last life. But there was no decor. No partitions. Just an open, soulless box. And he didn't even control the lights. Those were managed externally—probably by a guy in a white lab coat, watching through a one-way mirror. His wardrobe options? Two states: naked, or wrapped in a clinical white gown that looked like something between a hospital smock and a toddler's onesie. The only difference? No exposed butt. In the early years—when he was still a literal infant—someone would at least feed him formula. But once he was weaned? Nutrition paste. Bland, barely edible, and never enough. He was constantly hungry. Not starving, just... perpetually unsatisfied. The room was too clean to even find a bug to snack on. No cockroaches. No rats. No lizards. Just spotless emptiness. The only thing he could grab? Yeah... sometimes what was still in the toilet. But no. He hadn't sunk that low. Not yet. At least the flush button still worked. One of the only things they let him control. There were no clocks, no calendars. His only way to track time was by the rhythm of lights turning on and off. Meals came three times a day—sometimes. But no seasons, no weather, no natural cycles. Temperature? Always the same. No spring chill, no summer heat. The sterile kind of climate control that made you forget what nature ever felt like. And the weirdest part? He never got sick. Not once. No colds, no fevers, no flu. Not even a sniffle. But he wasn't "healthy" either. He was stuck in that grey zone—malnourished, exhausted, surviving on fumes. They rarely spoke to him. Doctors, scientists, whatever they were—always kept their distance. The only times he was physically handled were during blood draws and exams. Even then, they were silent, cautious. Hell, the room was only ever cleaned when he was taken out for testing. Left a crumb? It vanished. Hid a bit of food behind the toilet? Gone. Probably dissected. Eventually, he stopped trying to leave messages or stash things. No point. At first, he didn't understand the isolation. Wouldn't they at least try to talk to an alien? Try to get some kind of intel? But then it hit him. They didn't expect him to have any. He'd landed as a baby. How much critical intel could a damn infant possibly know? What were they gonna ask? "How does it feel to ride a spaceship while still in diapers?" "What's your planet's tech level?" "Any plans to invade Earth?" He wasn't even sure how he got here. No memories. No knowledge. So really, the only things of value were his body—and the pod he came in. No wonder they treated him like he was radioactive. Anyone who came near him wore full hazmat suits. Even the guys in lab coats only observed him from behind thick glass. He'd once considered shouting something like: I come in peace! I was raised under the red flag of socialism! Just to break the silence. But honestly? He wasn't even sure this was his Earth. Yeah, the people looked Slavic. Not chimpanzees or aliens. The language sounded Russian. Not English, not Japanese. Definitely not German. But if he said something too familiar, too specific about Earth? They'd wonder: How the hell does the alien know that? And once that question pops up? Yeah, that's how you end up on an autopsy table—regardless of your answers. He wasn't about to gamble on whether these guys would dissect him for fun. So he stayed quiet. He knew better. In this world—or any world—the only good alien is a dead alien. And the only way to stay alive was to play dumb, stay passive, and never challenge the system's cold, steel boot. No French revolutionary spirit here. He wasn't gonna rise up, break chains, and scream liberté. He was a career desk jockey. A veteran of 996s turned 007 schedule—worked to the bone, paid in peanuts, emotionally numb. His dream of being adopted by a rich cougar never panned out. He'd just... existed. Now? No games. No anime. No memes. No soda. No fried skewers or junk food. No phone. No music. No escape. He thought this was it. He'd grow up in isolation, poked and prodded until he died of old age in a sterile prison. But then something changed. The moment his body hit a certain stage of development—puberty, maybe?—the white coats ramped things up. Hard. The first injuries were small: scratches, bruises. Controlled tests. Then came lacerations, punctures, burns. Electrocution. Blunt force trauma. Fractures. They broke his arm. Deliberately. Just to study bone regeneration. They weren't trying to torture him. Pain wasn't the point. Data was. They wanted to know how fast he healed. How strong his immune system was. How much voltage it took to knock him out. How much skin could burn before his vitals spiked. And it only got worse. The lab rat life had turned into something far more brutal. In his old life, his suffering was mental—stress, exhaustion, burnout. He thought that was hard. This? This was a whole new category of hell. A rotating buffet of injuries. Endless pain. No recovery time. No mercy. He couldn't even guess what came next. Would they amputate a limb? Remove an organ just to see what happened? Inject him with pathogens? Parasites? Eventually, he'd just be a specimen. A display. Maybe a few labeled slices in a freezer somewhere. And the worst part? He didn't even know which was harder: the years of isolation... ...or this. At least Cast Away had a volleyball. He didn't even have Wilson. If not for the memories in his head—movies, anime, stories, music, a lifetime of cultural clutter—he would've cracked long ago. Now, though? He was circling the drain. Mentally shot. Physically mangled. Hope? Gone. So this is what karma looked like? He worked himself to death in one life, got reborn in a cage in the next? He had no idea how long he'd been here. But he knew one thing: the end started when the lights stayed on. They never turned off again. No meals were delivered. No doctors came. It was like he'd been forgotten. The faucet still worked, but food? Nothing. The starvation was sharp and cruel, clawing at his insides. His arm was still in a splint. He could barely move. The lights weren't searing, but constant. Sleep became impossible. Exhaustion built up like poison. In a bitter twist, he found himself missing the experiments. The pain, the trauma—it had at least meant he was alive. That someone still cared enough to hurt him. Now? He was just... fading. He wanted to scream in his native tongue: "Just kill me already! Give me a last meal, dammit!" But even if there had been grass to chew or bark to scrape, this place had none of it. He was starving in a sterile box, with no way out. Eventually, he considered the unthinkable. Eat his own flesh. But there wasn't enough of him to go around. He couldn't even lift his arm, let alone bite into it. The last thing he felt was his body shutting down. Heart slowing. Breathing shallow. Vision dimming. No fanfare. No flashing lights. Just— "I'm so hungry..." And then— Darkness.