Vil imagined this was how a frog in a blender felt, a body torn to pieces and squished back together in one big mess like a meatball. “I'm not going to drink what I had last night ever again.” he thought and groaned for a fraction of a second before the vibration of his voice flared up his headache and he shut up again.
Apart from his physical state, he had trouble with his mental state as well. Shreds of a nightmare where his ship along with the rest of the fleet was annihilated fluttered through his mind. He really hated what he had drunk. At least it left less of a bad taste in his mouth.
He decided to stay where he was, keep his eyes shut, and wait until someone told him to wake up for duty. From the silence around him he expected that could take a while. The cold and hard surface he lay on made him expect it could even be much longer.
Poking carefully around his sensitive brain for a clue on what happened lately resulted in nothing. This time he worried. He never drank so much that he couldn't at least partially remember what happened, so whatever that booze was that he had drunk was really dangerous.
He risked opening one sticky eyelid slightly to see if he had somehow ended up in the brig, and if that was the case he had really messed up because hardly anyone would be locked up nowadays. There was no light and he opened both eyes. There was always some light in the brig and touching the ground confirmed that was not where he was. This felt like concrete and not like steel.
Despite stings shooting through his neck he turned his head to look right and left but only saw darkness. For the first time in ages he felt an anxiety that had nothing to do with the war. It was more personal. Muscles, skin, organs, there was nothing that didn't hurt as he rolled onto his side as a test. Nothing seemed to stir in the silent dark and he lay still long enough to gather the strength to sit up. His vision went dark for a moment although it made no difference to him in the dark, he felt glad enough he didn't faint.
Peering into the darkness once more he detected a faint glow in the distance. With no other point of reference he crawled as fast as his aching body let him towards it, and after what seemed an eternity he reached a bare concrete hallway, dimly lit at one end. “Exit?” he thought and stood up with some effort.
He leaned against the wall, his knees weak but his body responding better after the crawl got it a little into gear. Step by slow step he trudged along the wall trying to remember if he'd been here before but his memory wasn't quite accessible yet.
Squinting to lessen the damaging effect of the light to his pounding headache he looked out across a hall with several large square openings on one side leading outside. The air smelled so fresh he thought he was still dreaming because there wasn't anything like that on Earth or the colonies. Shuffling further towards the light he thought there was a street just beyond, but then it had to be one that hadn't been in use for a very long time. Plants and trees covered half the surface, some kind of vine strangled askew poles from street lights, and the buildings matched the look.
“What is this dystopian place?” he thought at the sight of windowless buildings with greenery growing along the fronts and sides. Even if his memory failed him, he was sure there wasn't any such place on Earth or one of the colonies.
While moving along the street he found no remains of other objects. No vehicles, no electronics, plastic garbage, nothing that would have been further evidence of the people who once lived here. The couple of streets he crossed were the same. Desolate, overgrown, and the only sign of life birds, insects, and whatever scurried through the undergrowth.
Wearily he slid with his back down a wall and sat with his head between his hands, breathing deep to steady himself. “Where the fuck am I!?” shouted his brain. “What happened to me!? What happened to the others!?”
Before he could make any sense out of his surroundings a voice echoed between the buildings and he looked up. What was said he couldn't make out, but the intonation and pitch sounded like a woman in distress. He pushed himself up and bit through the agony of his body as he hurried towards the source.
The voice became more desperate when he came closer and as soon as he turned a corner he found someone clad in a large black mantle with hood resisting the two Ants dragging her along away from him. Putting his hands on his hips for his gun and knife he cursed. They were gone. He'd have to improvise.
Snatching a sturdy looking branch from the ground he ran towards one Ant hoping to catch him off guard and grab his weapon. His feet weren't combat ready though and the Ants reacted before he could tackle the first. It went down with him when he crashed into it but it rolled along to deflect the impact. Vil reacted quick enough to hit it between its bulging black eyes with his elbow and punch it in the neck but the second Ant used a stun gun to knock him out.

***

For the second time Vil woke up as if he'd been chewed up and spit out by a shredder. This time he couldn't care about adding anything to his headache and groaned to confirm he was still alive, and blinked to get used to the light.
His surroundings seemed more familiar now. Square concrete room, concrete slabs large enough to sit and lay down on, hole in the floor in the corner with a suspicious smell, ceiling light behind grate, steel door with a peep hole. “Definitely a cell.” he thought and stared at the figure in black sitting on top of the opposite slab. “And that would make her my cellmate then.”
He pushed himself up into a sitting position. The figure didn't move and he barely caught a glimpse of her eyes with the hood drawn far over her face. 'Hey.' he said. 'Can you tell me where we are?' The figure sat motionless and he pulled on his ear and gestured at his mouth and the cell while repeating the question.
The silence from the other side of the cell made him sigh deep. 'It's going to be a very boring time if I'm the only one holding a conversation here.' he said and looked around for anything he missed the first time.
'Makta.'
His gaze returned at once. 'Makta? Is that the name of the prison? Or the city we're in? Although it didn't look like much of a city to me.'
The eyes under the hood observed him for a moment more before the hood was drawn back. Vil gasped as he stared at the brown feline face in front of him.