He lays on the cold hard table, shivering slightly but otherwise motionless. Despite the paralysing drugs, they have restrained his limbs tightly. The stark white light floods down from directly above him; the drugs prevent him from closing his eyes, and the blocks to either side of his head prevent him from turning away for a moment’s respite from the glare.

His eyes burn, and he can hardly see at all. In the chilly lucidity of his mind, unaffected by the chemical restraint that keeps his body immobile, he decides that not being able to see is probably a good thing. It means he can’t see the incisions they’ve already inflicted on him.

The clank of heavy feet on metal flooring alerts him to their return – he had hoped, vainly, that perhaps they had done all the tests and experiments they required. But it appears there is more horror to come, further indignities to be visited on him as if he were some lesser lifeform, an experimental animal in a laboratory cage – which to them, he realises, is exactly what he is.

As the chilly metal of some unseen lubricated instrument slips into an orifice which he unaccustomed to feeling things slid into, he mentally flinches with shock, and fights down a wave of unreasoning fear and unjustified self-loathing. Not for the first time, he wishes he’d never stepped out of the saucer to take a look at those buildings in the first place.

[Yeah, I know, the oldest gag on the planet. What can I say - two weeks out of the regime, and my game has declined. But owt's better'n nowt, as they say up where my mother lives.]

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