LITMIR.BIZ

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obscured by a chaotic assault of smoke, dust, and blood.

      She spun to find cover, then something hard and heavy hit the back of her skull. When she awoke she was in a cage in this network of caves. Some cowled underlings had taken her to this small cavern, stripped her, then gagged and bound her to the chair. Then Awar had appeared and the “interrogation” had begun.

      The memories were just a flash in her brain as she looked in every direction. When she found herself a prisoner, she immediately acted as dumb and numb, while tightening her muscles as subtly, as possible. She wanted them to think she was just a little, terrified, girl. She didn’t want them to know what she was capable of.

      Sure enough, the underlings judged her book by its cover. As she relaxed her wrist muscles, she felt a little give in the cords. When they wrenched her ankles and arms up, she let her tightened muscles give the impression that this was as high as they could go. Nichols inwardly scoffed.

      Yeah, she could have been a gymnast, remember?

      When she saw there was another exit opposite where Awar had gone, she worked quickly and efficiently. Her fingers and palm curled into the shape of an empanada at the same second her arms rose up her back into a yoga reverse prayer position. Her arms were free of the choking sling within moments. Despite their numbness, they fell silently upon her ankles on either side of the seat, already scratching at the knots. Her bare feet hit the dirt seconds after that.

      Only then did her fingers find the edges of the duct tape on her chest and face. Her Marine training co-eds use to have contests to see how long they could keep uncooked eggs, among other things, intact in their mouths. Political correctness and equality be damned, being female was far from a detriment if you knew how to work it. She was standing, holding the sodden light bulb by its screw-base in front of her, within a minute.

      Nichols was not embarrassed or ashamed by her nudity, so she moved silently away from Awar’s exit and hazarded a quick look out. The cavern continued down a winding tunnel, illuminated by strung bulbs—much like the one they had put in her mouth—hanging on nails hammered into the rock walls. Incredibly, from this exit to a turn in the cavern, it was empty, with no sounds giving hint of a meeting or eating area beyond.

      What, didn’t they have LED lights in this godforsaken sandpit? At least if they tried to catch her again, she could do with them, to them, what they wanted to do to her mouth and intestines. If it came to that, she had to admit it would feel great to tear open their flesh that way.

      But, as Key had repeatedly told her, first things first. Nichols moved into the low, narrow, rock hallway, intent on being ready for anything. Anything, except for what happened.

      Once she had reached the curve in the stone hall, she heard a grinding sound behind her. She whirled to see the opening she had left from being filled by a huge, circular slab—which she had seen, but thought was part of the cavern wall. Apparently, as soon as she left, Awar’s people had snuck in and quietly pushed it into position so she was cut off.

      What the fuck? Do they want to…

      Nichols stopped her recoiling brain. Trying to decide whether they were going to gas, drown, starve, or simply imprison her somewhere else was a waste of time. The lights were still on, and she had yet to turn the corner of the cavern. There was only one thing for sure; they didn’t want her to go back, and she was damned if she was going to just stand there.

      Nichols started to step forward when a glint in the corner of the cave top caught her eye.

      Yeah. They might not have LED lights strung along here, but they definitely had recessed camera lenses stuck deep into the rock.

      The whole thing was some sort of insane set-up. But no matter how she racked her prodigious brain, she couldn’t figure out why. If they wanted her to go down this hall, why not just throw, or drag, her? And why the hell did they strip her?

      Nichols looked at the dim glow at the curve of the cave, feeling something she hadn’t felt since joining the Marines, even since waking up in this cave.

      Dread.

      Even so, she looked up at the camera lens with defiance. “Okay, sicko,” she said. “You want a show? You’ll get a show.”

      In the cavern that served as his control room, Usa Awar smiled back at Nichol’s determined face on the monitor screen. It was just one of many monitor screens, each manned by one of his people, with each person ready to take complete, detailed, notes.

      “You see?” he said with a smile. “Look at her. She does not cry.” He nodded slowly. “She is the bravest of their soldiers I have yet encountered. Unlike the others, I feel certain we will learn what we need to know from her. We have tried every other variation possible, so watch carefully, my children. Watch carefully, and remember everything.”

      Back at the curve in the cavern, Nichols turned the corner. She found herself standing in the entrance of a larger, circular cavern. There were no strung lights here. The only illumination came from the lights beside and behind her.

      She peered closer. The walls of the space did not seem to be made of rock. They seemed to be made of mossy clay. The clay was tan, like potter’s clay, seemingly squeezed on top of the rock beneath it. The moss was white and gauzy, and Nichols immediately noticed it riffled in a wind she did not feel. But that meant that there was an exit somewhere. She could follow the air until escape.

      Then something else moved. Her senses knew before she did that it was not human. Every pore on her body went concave. Then whatever moisture was left in her slopped out. Terror widened and sharpened her eyes.

      Something was crawling over the lip of a clay-plastered hole. Something as big as a brown bear. Only it wasn’t anything as familiar as that.

      She saw the legs. She saw the mandibles. She saw the six shining, dead eyes. She saw the bulbous quivering abdomen shuddering like a castanet. She saw the fangs.

      Theresa Jane Nichols didn’t know she screamed. She didn’t realize that she screamed so loudly and piercingly that Usa Awar and his cabal winced and cringed many caverns away.

      Then it was on her.

      Chapter 3

      “You should’ve seen him!” Morton Daniels laughed. “He was just standing there in the middle of the worst shit-storm ever, looking around like it’s a day at the beach. And then he starts walking like he’s in candy-land or something. Just walking over a bluff like he hasn’t got a care in the world—while I’m screaming at him to get the fuck down….”

      “Ssh,” said a nurse, who, because she wasn’t young, pretty, and slim, Daniels ignored.

      “You wouldn’t believe it,” Daniels continued, his eyebrows practically crawling into his hairline. “I’m fighting like a sonuvabitch for what seems like hours only to find him, like, a klick away, staring at nothing, his weapon empty and smoking. Then the next thing you know, he drops into my arms like a fainting debutante.” Daniels took a second to grin at Key, who lay, expressionless, in an infirmary bed. “You did, you know,” he added pointedly. “You did.”

      “I told you he was suffering post-concussion trauma and post-detonation deafness,” interrupted another, calmer, more professional, voice. Key turned his impassive face to Doctor Stanley Weicholz, who sat on the other side of the bed, away from the leering faces of Daniels’ audience, who were other patients at the Camp Lemonnier Hospital.

      “Hey, doc, don’t be a killjoy.” Daniels grinned, hooking a thumb at his listeners. “They seem to be enjoying the story.”

      “Yeah,” said the doctor calmly as he continued to take Key’s pulse. “They can. They’re not from what’s left of your squad.”

      Daniels’s face changed, as if his brain had been yanked out his mouth. He took a second to recover, then patted Key on his other arm. “Yeah, that’s right. You take it easy, Joe. Rest and recover, okay? I’ll be right outside if you want me.”

      “Yeah, no wux, as some Aussies say,” Key replied,

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