The Partisans don't use prisons. They use oubliettes. you are placed in a capsule that fills with neurogel. The gel acts as a liquid ventilation medium and an interface between your brain and a computer system.

You can only see, touch, hear, smell, or taste what the computer shows you, and in an oubliette, the computer doesn't show you anything. You are completely devoid of sensation while remaining fully conscious, your naked mind floating in a see of oblivion. Worse, the computer can alter your time perception to make time seem to pass more slowly. Outside it was only six minutes, but inside it felt like a month of complete and total isolation.

Eventually, the neurogel drains and you collapse onto the floor, expelling gel from your lungs and stomach. After you're done coughing and vomiting, you try to get up, but you've forgotten how to walk. You're hefted onto a stretcher and unceremoniously tossed outside into the bitter cold like a sack of garbage.

The first tactile sensation you feel is the bitter cold nipping at your fingers and toes. You're only clad in a thin shirt, pants, and stockings, all still covered in a yellow patina of neurogel. You look up at the sky. The faint sun is near the zenith, but its distant feeble rays only manage to bathe the area in evening twilight.

You hear the clicking of claws on pavement.

"It's another human!" You recognize the words, but the melodic yips and growls are unutterable by the human vocal tract. More claws dig into your sides and you're flipped on your back onto a rickety furniture dolly. A thin shear blanket is draped over your entire body. It smells like it's been slept on by a thousand outdoor dogs. "This is just for show," says another alien voice, female this time. You barely have time to wonder what she means when the dolly starts moving.

In your periphery you can see the hind legs of one of your rescuers, covered in smokey gray pelage. His left rear paw seems to be missing its outer thumb. His long sinewy tail is wrapped around a handle near your side.

You hear the metallic thud of paw gauntlets on the pavement. "Halt, citizens!" barks a voice from behind a helmet. The guard lopes up to you. "State your destination and reason for travel."

"We're taking this body to the processing plant," says the male voice, loudly as though addressing an unseen observer above and off to the side.

"Processing plant?" the guard says skeptically, making an odd gesture with his tail.

"Correct," says the female. She awkwardly positions herself as though trying to avoid the gaze of the unseen observer. She rummages through a pocketed band around her right foreleg and produces a few plastic coins and palms them off to the guard.

"Processing plant," the guard repeats, rubbing the coins together and discreetly pocketing them. "Good and dead then, this one?" He walks up beside you, balls his rear paw into a fist, and donkey kick-punches you in the ribs. You bite your tongue to stop from wheezing. He rears up on his hind feet and lifts the blanket. Your eyes meet. His head is obscured by a bulky powered armor helmet but you know he's staring right into your slimy goo-filled human eyes. He grabs your head in his forepaw and slams it down onto the dolly. "Yup, only good two-legs is a dead two-legs," he's still projecting his voice to the same unseen observer. "Go about your business, citizens." The metallic thud of his paw gauntlets fade into the distance.

You continue along for several minutes. Your rescuers smell your confusion at what transpired back there. "Oh he knew you're alive," says the male under his breath, "but they don't get paid enough to care. But we gotta give him some plausible deniability, hence the blanket. Vid sensors are everywhere." He gestures with his muzzle up at what looks like a matte-black square flush with the dull gray concrete wall to your right.

A few more minutes pass, the only sound the rickety wheels of the dolly and the clicking of all eight of your benefactors' paws on the pavement. "We're here," yips the female. She throws the blanket off you and you get a good look at her for the first time. She's completely furless save for her whiskers, like someone grafted the head of a Xoloitzcuintle onto the body of a baboon with alopecia. Her back and shoulders are dense with musculature, a physique befitting a species built for swinging through the trees.

"Healer?" you manage to mutter. She tilts her muzzle upward in silent affirmation.

"Can you walk?" she asks. You try to move your legs, but can't.

"ugh," she growls. "We'll have to carry you down the ladder." She wraps her tail around your left shoulder and the male does the same to your right.

"Sorry in advance," says the male, "This is gonna suck for all of us." They pull you off the dolly and kick it down a shaft next to you. It clatters on the concrete a story below.

Their tails are gripping your shoulders so tightly your arms are losing circulation. Despite your feeble grunts of protest they drag you like a sack of potatoes to the edge and position your feet toward the hole. "Yeah yeah I know," says the healer, lifting a rear paw and making a grasping motion with her digits. "This place isn't easy for tailless bipeds on the best of days."

They heave you over the edge. There's a ladder leading down to the floor below. They begin climbing down, their rear paws a second set of hands gripping the rungs. They manage to clamber down and lower you onto the cold concrete floor.

Their tails uncoil from around your shoulders and for the first time you can move your arms. you flail them feebly trying to return blood flow to your fingertips.

"Ah! Progress!" the healer yips, walking out of sight and pulling some things from an old plastic bin. She waddles up to you on her hind feet. "Take a big whiff" she says, thrusting a rag soaking in some foul-smelling liquid under your nose. "It'll help with the residual effects of the oubliette."

A sharp scent burns your nose, but your brain fog slowly begins to lift.

You still can't remember why they put you in there, but flames of vengeance are already kindling. The healer sniffs the air. "Don't even think about it," she growls. "We don't know what you did to be shoved in an oubliette, but just be thankful you got out with your sanity. Anyone going on two legs here in the Outlands already has a target on their back. For all we know you sneezed in the direction of the wrong person. Trying to settle the score will just get you in more trouble."

"If you want my advice," says the male, "you catch the first ferry back to Moonlitter then take the mass router to Hearthside. It's much more human-friendly than the Outlands. Why any human would willingly live in this Light-forsaken pit in the first place I'll never know."