With a bit of typing, the scientist summons a second guard.  This one is a woman, followed by a yellow tapir-like daemon.  One at a time for security reasons, a cell is opened and the occupant can be led away.  With the daemon still restrained, the guard doesn't feel they are any threat, or at risk of escaping, and they are led with only gestures and words rather than by the arm so long as they don't start causing trouble.

Outside is another room, also oddly-shaped and small though larger than the first.  There are more machines and some plastic crates, but no cells.  The far wall has another reinforced door like the one they came out of, and the bathroom door is adjacent to the room with the cells.  No other doors are visible, nor are there more people other than the guard and scientist in sight.  However, the door to the room with the cells looks like it was designed to lie flush with the wall on this side, patterned such that it would be very hard to spot if shut.  If other doors exist, they might be equally hidden.

The bathroom is the sort where the entire tiny room doubles as a shower, with a sunken tile floor and a sealed cabinet under the sink for holding a towel and clothes.  The woman does not walk into the bathroom with them, instead waiting outside with her daemon for them to come back out.  

(Dom? Sub?) 

He does not start causing trouble. (He doesn't feel very comfortable, in front of these strangers in his nightclothes. But that isn't important.) If the guard doesn't get close enough to him herself, he'll try to get closer, in some way that'll look natural, not like he's trying anything. Reach out. Can he feel her (not all of her, of course, but the matter of the part of her body closest to him he reaches for)? (He doesn't do anything, not anything she might feel. Just the reaching.) (Just in case, can he feel the probably-daemon?)

Since he's here, he pays attention to where they're going, to features of the way and of where they are. Does the other room look like it might be where the guard was before, or was she probably somewhere else? How did the door open, when she came in? Is the guard armed? Does she have more restraints with her, or a gag, or a strap or something like it like prison guards do?

Is the bathroom door locked? Can he lock it behind him? Are there any objects in it that might be usable for something?

The first kidnapper said 'it may be uncomfortable' - can he feel anything like that? 

This one has slightly more dom-like mannerisms, but the aliens don't seem to adhere to the same conventions for identifying dom and sub.  Neither of them are leering or seem to find him interesting as anything other than a test subject, regardless of his clothing.  Her only weapon is a police baton, kept in the hand she isn't using to gesture.  The daemon has a belt with something phone-like in a holster, but no weapons.  She isn't wearing what he'd expect of a prison guard, though it does look more guard-like than a lab coat.  The clothing is loose enough to move but not grab onto, and is padded.  It is mostly yellow, the same shade as her daemon, with black and white stripes along each hem. 

The guard isn't deliberately trying to avoid getting within range, and it's easy enough to get within sensing distance.  She can be felt as normal, and feels indistinguishable from a human as far as he can tell.  The daemon does stay well out of reach, and any attempts to get closer to it result in a harsher warning and the brandishing of her baton.  

The reinforced door had a hand scanner (or something like it, that went all the way to the floor) on the inside, but no obvious mechanism for opening from the outside.  She doesn't bother shutting it behind her in between restroom trips, so the way of opening the hidden doors is still a mystery.  There aren't any chairs visible in the outer room.  The bathroom does have a simple lock on the doorknob, typical of a bathroom, but isn't locked by default and couldn't be used to lock someone inside.  The little cabinet for keeping things dry has a roll of toilet paper, but no clothes or towels currently inside.  A single bar of soap, eroded into a smooth oval, sits near the sink on a wire shelf.  It smells faintly floral, though not quite like any soap or flower he's familiar with.

At the farthest point between the restroom trip and the cells, right outside of the bathroom door, he does feel an unpleasant tug.  It's as if a part of him is being pulled unpleasantly away, and continuing beyond that point would be painful (a bad kind of painful).  Going into the restroom, which is closer in direct distance if not pathing, makes it go away again.  

Of course signifiers would be different here - even in their own world, would he know who was who all the time in foreign or historic images, if it weren't for the captions? It feels weird not to be able to tell from how they move, carry themselves. But it isn't, really, not with what this is. But it'll help him learn, probably, to watch who he does see.

A baton isn't a surprising thing for her to have. (He wouldn't know how guards might dress in other places, but if these people are so similar to them, the work might come to about the same.) He doesn't do anything with his power - more likely they'd notice that. Ducks his head and says 'sorry, ma'am' at the warning and doesn't try to get closer to the daemon again.

Did someone use the scanner to open the door, or did the first kidnapper get it from his workstation?

...that is, indeed, not comfortable. (From his gift he can tell it isn't physical.) Can he tell anything more about it? Does it go from nothing to suddenly present and back, or does it build up and die down more slowly? Does anything linger after? Did he get any sign when it would happen, before it did?

(The creature in the cage at the foot of his bed moves to the farthest extent the cell allows, and then curls up a little.)

That doesn't seem great, especially given what the kidnapper was saying about 'souls' and 'bonds' and everything, but he doesn't think going 'what the hell are you doing' at the guy will achieve anything he wants.

He's glad to see Alessa looking at least seemingly alright when the guard brings him back.

On his own turn he'll make some pretty similar observations to Alessa (also think that two people isn't enough to know how people dress in general here. And if and how much they'd stand out in their nightclothes or alternatively if they stole these people's clothes, if they get that far. And that he's pretty sure it wouldn't end well if he tried locking himself in the bathroom now, but it might ever be something they might want to do.)

Given that it presumably happened to Alessa first, he's is relieved that the discomfort at least doesn't seem worse than what this is. Though he's not especially happy at having sudden mysterious pain sources. (Wonders as a side thought if whatever this is gets used for discipline here.)

On his way, he makes little illusions in both the other room and the bathroom. Blending in, at them moment. He'll have to keep in mind maintaining them, but he's done that for performances before. And it might end up somehow useful.

Now it's the other creature's turn to look distressed (in a new way).

He observes this with worry.

"Sir, is she alright?"

They can't recall the scientist doing anything from the inside of the room before the guard entered, though they also can't see the screen of his monitor.  

The scientist glances at the open door.  There aren't any noises indicating an issue.  "Yes.  Daemons get upset when their human leaves their range.  Both sides do, technically, but humans are usually better able to handle it.  Didn't you experience it when you left?  Your spinarak reacted."  He jots down the information.  He doesn't have a hypothesis in mind, but any details on their bond or how they might differ...

The discomfort comes and goes with range, not lingering afterwards.  Anything within the bubble of acceptable distance doesn't hurt at all, while breaching that boundary becomes unpleasant suddenly, then worse with range from then on.  A meter or so for only the brief few seconds before and after entering the restroom door, is something that people instinctively avoid but not awful.  There is a strong desire to linger closer to their daemon's cage when they get back.

"I experienced discomfort, like you said, sir.

Spinarak, sir?"

He should probably not let himself act on desires that come like that, right now. 

He keeps worriedly watching the other creature until Kente is back.

The spider-like creature now tries to get as close to him as the cage allows.

Oh, great, sudden pain sources and sudden craving sources.

He has the same idea as Alessa about what he shouldn't act on; lies back down on the bed.

His creature does the same as the other; attempts to stick out limbs through the bars. 

"The form your daemon settled as is referred to as a spinarak.  The orange one is a vulpix, mine is a liepard, Maize's is a drowzee.  There are a few hundred in all," he says, voice still in a monotone. 

He records their reactions.  Personalities are so annoying to work around, particularly in a small sample size.  There's also culture to have to keep in mind, and he is not an anthropologist.  Perhaps they aren't speaking with their daemons because they have no interest in doing so, or perhaps they are refusing to because they're being watched?  

The liepard decides to jump down and make her way onto the reinforced back of the scientist's chair.  They have a whispered conversation, too low to hear.  

Yeah, if you want people to interact with something maybe you shouldn't kidnap them, nonconsensually attach it to them (apparently), and give them lots of reason to think you're going to kill them.

He takes that in as information. (He wonders if doms and subs have different ones - and other things like that, the kidnapper had said 'suitable for their personality'.)

...they - can talk? 

That's a fairly enormous piece of new information. He doesn't do anything about it - he doesn't know enough, and as the kidnapper noted, they are being watched. He looks at the creatures with a different kind of worry.

Instead asks, "Would be be not safe to go farther away than we did, sir?"

The scientist considers what to tell them.  It would hardly do for them to think they could escape.  "At least in naturally-occuring bonds, there is a chance of death when people are taken too far away from their daemon.  It would take several times farther than you went before there is any risk of that."  

It isn't entirely false, if overstated and overgeneralized.  

"Thank you, sir." He knows better than to believe what he's told for certain, but it's still good to have an answer given.

"Are there other things we should know, sir? So we don't do something dangerous, or wrong?"

He pauses before answering.  Much of daemon behavior, such as how some daemons choose to only speak to other daemons and their person, might be cultural.  Informing them of it when they don't have the relevant cultural expectations already might interfere with their future behaviors.  

"Don't reach through the bars and touch each other's daemons.  They don't need to eat, and we won't be providing you with extra food for them.  Other than that, nothing you can get up to in here.  A more thorough book will be sent home with you, once we've finished our observations."  

"Thank you, sir.

What would happen if we touched, sir?" He isn't sure if the part about eating means that daemons don't get anything important out of food at all, or just that they won't starve and the kidnappers don't mind lesser effects than that. But he isn't going to ask that.

Huh. The bit about the book isn't the sort of thing he'd expect a lot of people to think of, if they were trying to pretend they'd leave someone alive when they wouldn't. But maybe these ones did think of it. He'll - consider the possibility that they're maybe actually going to be returned, but continue to put most of his bet on not that.

...Or, the kidnappers don't want to give them daemon details to make it harder for them to run off, and the part with the book is an excuse so they don't keep asking.

"It causes pain.  Humans can touch each other, and daemons can touch each other, but not a human and daemon who aren't attached."

Again, an implied half-truth.  The daemon and attached human experience pain.  The human touching the daemon... well, they do typically get punched or otherwise attacked afterwards. 

"Thank you, sir."

He doesn't even need to really look at Alessa to know they're thinking the same thing - that they can do that then, probably, if they have to. 

(He doesn't trust the kidnappers to be telling them the truth any more than Alessa does, but he figures the kidnapper would have said if it would actually kill or seriously injure them. Presumably they didn't bring them all this way to have them killed or seriously inured by accident before the kidnappers want.)

Not great to be causing pain to the - daemons. Who are apparently also people. Or something. But. If they have to.

He'll stop disturbing the scientist again for a little.