Roughly three days after he had first woken up, Michael had done practically nothing but straining against the walls of flesh around them and talking with the girl.
Well, he wasn't really sure if it was three days at all, or anywhere close to it. She had a clock, but it was broken. She had told him that there used to be a saying on Earth, back when she was young. It went along the lines of a broken clock being right twice every day. In her estimation, apparently she could use that to tell how many days had passed, if not the time itself. Michael wasn't exactly sure that made sense, but so far he had been following her schedule, and his muscles hadn't yet betrayed him or complained about his lack of sleep, so he was pretty sure that her assumptions were at least semi-accurate.
Then again, his body was very used to him abusing it far past the time when he should have been asleep, so maybe it was that.
Experience and adaptation. There were good and bad ways to put it. Muscle development and growth couldn't happen without it, because muscles grew by reforming themselves stronger than they had been after being damaged, most often by exercise or overstraining. The same went for the brain, arguably the most important organ in a human's body. It grew by taking the things outside and making connections inside itself.
But as in Michael's case, it could be a bad thing. If you got into the habit of not giving your body enough to eat, or enough rest, or enough exercise, it would grow used to that eventually, and stop complaining. That meant that you would stop feeling that need, even though the need didn't go away.
Michael exercised plenty, just never around other people.
He glanced over at the woman. She was humming softly to herself, her head turned sideways and eyes unfocused. She did that a lot. She also watched Michael a lot.
Just because he didn't take the best care of his body didn't mean that he wanted it to deteriorate, but he also didn't want to show his capabilities in front of someone else. Or maybe he just preferred not to be out of breath in case she attacked him or something. He could tell himself it was that, but he was really just insecure.
He could tell things about other people. He could tell enough things that he knew how terrifying it would be for people to be able to see through him like that.
So stony face and silent lips.
The thing was, there was a pretty easy way to exercise without being obvious. And that was to push against something stationary. Michael sometimes used this method in class, because he couldn't concentrate on the actual class itself. When your body was tired, your brain was more willing to shut down.
So he had placed himself against the wall and silently shoved against it. He set his feet and stiffened his back, then pushed. Both with his feet and his arms, as well as his entire body, he forced himself against the wall.
It wasn't the greatest solution, but it worked. And Michael had a feeling that he wouldn't be doing this for much longer. There had to be some point, some point that would hopefully come soon, where the creature either was killed, laid down and died, or reached its destination, though Michael wasn't sure it had one. Maybe the woman would eventually decide that she had had enough and try to sneak away.
Regardless, he would do what needed to be done when the time came for it. Of that he was sure.
But what exactly it was that he would do, that he was still working on.
If the creature died, the answer of what to do was pretty simple and straightforward. Get out of there as fast as possible. And if it decided to sleep? Although there was virtually no reason for it to do so, Michael felt the question needed an answer. If the consistent rocking motion of the flesh around them came to a halt, and the hard, corded muscles relaxed, even if only slightly, then they would have to find a way to sneak out. Whatever way that the woman had originally brought him in, they were likely able to get out that way again. And if it brought them somewhere?
Then they would just have to try to survive whatever gauntlet lay before them.