Garth expressed his own recognition with a curse and turned to Rowena. “This was your surprise?”
She smiled.
“You told me he was dead.”
“I thought he was.”
Garth crossed the remaining ten feet that separated them. His dark goggles glittered like spider’s eyes, and the closer he got, the more suffocating his presence became. His face was hard and haggard. Black threads cavorted about him and the exposed portions of his face flickered iridescent yellow—both indications of regular fire-curtain exposure. And Pierce was right about the smell, almost sweet, with a tinge of decay.
He stopped in front of them, standing a good foot and a half taller than when they had parted. Pierce met his stony regard unflinchingly, but Callie fought to hold her ground. The psychic force of Garth’s personality was even more daunting than his size, and his close proximity generated the same tooth-gritting sensation as a fire curtain.
Pierce spoke quietly. “Hello, Garth. I guess you made it up the canyon all right.”
“Sure did, buddy. Thor and Lokai with me.” He half turned, indicating two of the men who had accompanied him. Thor’s hair had grown out in a mane of red that billowed around his helmet. He was almost as big as Garth. Lokai, by contrast, was all bones and teeth.
“It was one rockin’ hot fight,” Garth went on, “but we made it. Without any help, either.” He spat off to the side. “Matter of fact, we’ve come all this way without kissing up to one stinking alien. Did it all on our own.”
What about the weapons you carry? Callie thought. And the armor you’re wearing?
He grinned at Pierce, his chest swelling. “Told you it could be done.”
And the fire curtain. You can’t deny that’s alien made.
“We’re gonna go all the way, too. Straight through Splagnos to the portal.”
“Are you?” Pierce said mildly.
“Hey, if it wasn’t for us, these fool gaters’d all be dead. You should’ve seen those muties run when we came up. We’ve got a reputation, you know. No one tangles with Hell’s Horsemen. That’s what they call us—Hell’s Horsemen.”
Rowena handed him a water bottle. He spat again, then drained the vessel in huge, sloppy gulps, liquid spilling down his beard and chest. Done, he handed it back to her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, goggle eyes fixed on Pierce. “You come through Zelos, too?”
“Of course.”
Garth shook his head. “I am truly amazed. You are one lucky sucker!” He turned to Rowena. “You check the subway yet?”
“Earl and Grandy are now.”
Garth motioned for Thor and Lokai to go below, as well.
Pierce started forward again, continuing in the direction he’d been heading when the newcomers arrived.
“Did I say you could go anywhere?” Garth asked.
Pierce eyed him sidelong.
At the stairway’s mouth, Thor and Lokai paused.
“We’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” Garth said.
“And we have a lot of city to cross before dark,” Pierce countered. He brought the SI up, bracing the butt on his hip.
Garth laughed. “You know, I thought you just said you were gonna cross this city before dark. Isn’t that crazy?”
Pierce walked on.
“You’re gonna get those people killed,” Garth yelled.
Pierce ignored him as Callie and the others followed.
Garth erupted in an explosion of curses. “You’re not gonna do this to me again.”
Pierce kept walking.
“NO!”
The back of Callie’s neck crawled. Then a wave of rage slammed into her, washing through her like liquid fire. Red tinged her vision, violence swelled within her—and changed, instantly, to paralyzing terror.
He’s doing this, she thought. Find the link and you can turn it off.
Feeling as if she were drowning, she fought through the emotion, seeking the connection with Elhanu. Warmth bloomed within her as his reassuring touch drove away the dark passions. Exhaling deeply, she walked on. An instant later green fire slammed into her back, hurling her forward into the rubble. She smelled ozone, but when it faded she was unhurt. Pierce helped her up and they kept going.
“You stop now, Pierce,” Garth roared, “or I’ll set my men on you. You know we’ll win.”
They’d almost reached the first rise of blocks when a fountain of rocks erupted to the left, and then one of the fallen pillars danced upright to fall at Pierce’s feet, a yard from crushing him. Dust billowed up as another psychic wave assaulted them, sluicing by Callie like water around a rock.
As it died Pierce wheeled, SI leveled. “Back off, Garth.”
Growling, the bigger man lifted a meaty hand, the motion sharp and jerky. Pierce’s weapon leapt from his grasp, as if on a string, and sailed through the air, clattering to the ground at Garth’s feet. Callie stared, struggling to accept what she’d seen. She knew there were Trogs who could do this, mutants in the wilds, but Garth was not—
Understanding made her sick and cold. His size, the edge in his voice, the growths on his arms—she had seen it all before.
Suddenly a wall of bodies hurtled toward her from the right, armored giants that took at least three hits to drop—the rest of Garth’s men, she realized, hiding out of sight until needed. She shot three of them before she was bowled over.
Shortly she and her friends were disarmed, relieved of their belts and headbands, and lined up at gunpoint before the substation opening. Garth strutted up and down before them, the dark goggles still obscuring his eyes. He stopped in front of Pierce.
“When you left,” he said, “you might as well have taken the rest of the group. Those that didn’t desert worried about everything, doubted my every word. In the end, it got them killed. And left the rest of us fighting for our lives. I lost an eye, Thor lost his hand, and Lokai’ll never be the same. You’re not running out on me again.”
He turned to his followers. “We’ll let them lead the way. If those rumors of poison gas pockets are true, they’ll be the first to know.”
“General, sir—?” One of his men slipped through the ranks, panting. “Splagnosians just entered the city.”
Garth gave passionate and profane vent to his annoyance, then ordered everyone into the hole. “The drones’ll come first, so make it fast, people.”
They hurried into the substation, herding their prisoners before them. A wide stair descended through successive curtains of age-stiffened vinyl slats to a vast shadow-swathed rotunda. Hand-lamp beams revealed lines of sagging wooden partitions and crumbling walls extending toward them from beneath the great fall of debris where the ceiling’s center had collapsed. Massive iron beams rusted with age, angled amid boulders and dark veins of earth. To the right of the entrance, railed passenger aisles gleamed dully before a pair of featureless sliding doors in the curved outer wall. Several Watchers clung to that wall, their eyes reflecting the light in eerie yellow-green disks.
Callie followed Pierce down the stair, sneezing in the dust, her nose burning from the acidic stench of mites. In the darkness she could hear them chittering and rasping. At least it was cooler here.
The prisoners were prodded into the ruins of a three-sided vendor’s stall, stone walls crumbling at waist height. Relieved of their boots, they were left under guard as the rest of the men began assembling what appeared to be a pair of generating poles.
“Are they making what I think they’re making?” Callie asked Pierce in alarm.
He nodded grimly. “They’ve got some injuries to heal, and if they’re planning a run on Splagnos they’ll want to be as strong as possible. There won’t be time for this later.”
“When they come through, though,” she whispered, “won’t they want to eat and . . .” She trailed off uneasily.
Pierce’s jaw muscles rippled beneath the grizzle of his beard. “The eat part for sure.” He directed her attention to where several of the Horsemen were emptying their absconded packs, tossing aside clothes and equipment, but piling up any food or E-cubes they found.
Rowena came over to gloat. She wore one of their stolen belts and had removed her goggles and helmet, leaving only the respirator. “You thought you were so smart,” she sneered at Pierce. “That you were the only one who could get us out, the only one who could really understand the precious manual.” Her face twisted. “What a worthless waste of paper that turned out to be. All those glowing promises, the armor, the invincible belts—not much good to you now, are they?”
“It’s not the equipment that matters, Rowena. It’s the source.”
“Your alien master, you mean? Wonderful Elhanu, who’s promised to deliver us all? Well, where is he? Where was he when the Trogs attacked? When forty-seven of our friends were slaughtered on the road from Rimlight? Where was he, Pierce?” She advanced on him till she was shouting in his face.
Her voice faded into silence. Everyone was watching them. After a long moment, Pierce said quietly, “I think you know.”
She slapped him. He stood like a stone, holding her gaze.
Her face fluoresced yellow-green. “You are so arrogant! So absolutely convinced you’re right. Even now, even here, you still believe he’s going to bail you out!”
“Only if it suits his purpose.”
She shook her head. “What’s happened to you, Pierce? You used to be a man.”
“Rowena!” Garth’s rough voice echoed through the chamber. “Knock it off. I need you over here.”
She eyed Pierce a moment more, then stalked away.
“She hates you,” Meg said, standing at Callie’s shoulder. “Ever since we split, everything was always your fault.”
“It’s not me she hates,” Pierce said, settling against one of the walls. “It’s Elhanu.”
“Or herself,” said Callie, watching Rowena squat beside Garth as the two bent over some kind of box.
Meg was hovering too close again, as if she took comfort in the nearness. Puzzled, Callie looked at her. They’d taken her helmet along with those of the other prisoners, and like Rowena, her hair had been hacked away. A seven-inch gash lay open and suppurating on the side of her head.
“Oh, Meg,” Callie murmured. “What happened?”
Meg probed the swollen skin around it with hesitant fingers, tears glittering in her eyes. “No one would sew it up. And we don’t carry antibiotics. Garth says we don’t need them as long as we have the curtain.”
“Which you aren’t using.” She’d known that from the beginning.
Meg lacked the curtain aura.
“I didn’t like what it did to me. I didn’t like what it did to them. I guess maybe I saw—well, anyway, I only used it a couple times.” Her eyes watched Garth’s men, setting up their generator. “It’s getting better, though. I think it’s going to heal, given enough time.”
“The scar will be horrendous.”
Meg smiled bitterly. “As if that matters.”
“Of course it matters. The Aggillon may be able to resuscitate us, but they might not be able to do anything about scars. Teish, do you have some of that miracle salve?”
“Not anymore.”
“I’ve got some,” John said, handing over a small plastic vial.
Callie took it and sat Meg on a tilted block.
Her friend eyed the vial. “Miracle salve?”
“We got it in a harries’ nest. More than that, you don’t want to know. But it works wonders.”
“You were in a harries’ nest?”
Callie nodded. “They ignored us. I guess they only get aggressive outside their nests.” She frowned at the wound. “I oughta wash this first.”
She got up and asked Lokai, who was their guard, for some water. He met her gaze sullenly, dark eyes blank in his gaunt face. After a few seconds, he looked away. “She chose to let it fester, she can suffer with it.”
“Don’t be a jerk, Lokai. Give me the water.”
He shifted uncomfortably, and then Garth joined them. “There a problem here?”
Like the others, he had removed his goggles. One of his eyes rested blindly askew in a horribly scarred socket. Now he grinned at Callie with a familiar leer, and she fought to keep from walking away.
“I want some water,” she said.
Garth stroked her face. “You still look good enough to eat, babe.”
She slapped his fingers, and he grabbed her hand, jerking her close. “Don’t get feisty, girl. I can have anything I want from you, anytime I choose.”
“Except my respect.”
His eyes flashed and his teeth bared. Then he smiled. “Maybe I only want your body.”
She glared at him. “Can I have the water?”
Working his jaw, he released her and motioned for Lokai to get it. But he stood grinning while the man complied, and when she turned away, bottle in hand, he pinched her bottom. She flinched, swallowed her cry of outrage, and hurried on, his laughter burning in her ears.
Pierce stood twenty feet away, fists clenched. Whit blocked his path, one hand on his chest, the other on his arm. John had the other arm.
“You know he’s nuts,” Callie murmured as she drew even with them. “It’s not worth making trouble over.”
Pierce didn’t acknowledge her comments, his gaze fixed on Garth. She exchanged glances with Whit, then returned to her patient.
Meg hissed at Callie’s first touch but held still after that. Presently she said, “You know him? The General, I mean?”
“Remember Garth?”
“The one who abandoned you on the trail?” Meg turned wide eyes upon her. “That’s him?”
“He’s bigger now. And uglier.” Callie set the rag aside, fingered oily salve from the vial, and daubed it onto the wound. Meg hissed again and ground her teeth until she was finished. The stuff stung fiercely—Callie knew from experience.
As Callie recapped the container, Meg sobbed. “Oh, Cal, I’ve been such a fool. And I’m so sorry I said all those things to you.”
Callie sat back on her heels, wiping her fingers on her pants. “Well, I deserved most of it. And you were right about me and Pierce.” She smiled. “I am in love with him.”
Meg’s eyes rounded. “Does he know?”
Callie nodded.
Her friend glanced over her shoulder at him, sitting now with Whit and John, their backs braced against the tottering masonry. “Does he. . . care?”
Callie held up the hand with the ring on it. “You might say that.”
Meg’s eyes widened further. She seized Callie’s hand and pulled it close to inspect the ring, a single blood crystal on a band of gold. “He gave this to you?” She looked up. “You’re going to marry him?”
Callie nodded, enjoying Meg’s shock. “When we get back.”
She expected Meg to squeal and giggle hysterically. Instead, after a minute of stunned silence, her friend burst into tears and threw her arms around her. As Meg bawled into her shoulder, Callie patted her back, completely bewildered.
“I’m sorry,” Meg blubbered. “It’s just—from the night I left you at the lake it’s been one awful thing after another. Coming down that road was a nightmare. We had to leave the injured, and they begged us to kill them so the Trogs wouldn’t get them. There was no place to hide, no place to rest. We didn’t sleep for days. And then the harries came. And the fear—you have no idea. Constant terror, never knowing what was going to happen. I thought I’d go crazy. When the General saved us, we were so happy. But then he—”
Her face twitched and she looked away, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Her eyes fastened on Garth as he supervised the construction of the fire curtain, the poles extending eight feet high now. Hatred hardened her face, and, given what Callie knew of Garth’s sexual appetite before his exposure to the fire curtain, she guessed what must’ve happened.
“Oh, Meg,” she murmured.
“The second night after he rescued us,” Meg said bitterly. “And any time he’s wanted it since. It doesn’t matter where we are. Or who’s around to see.” Her face crumpled, and she started crying again.
Callie held her, swaying with nausea and fury and a hot regret for having told her about Pierce. Meg’s nightmare made her own good fortune seem hideously unfair and sent an irrational knife of guilt twisting into her heart.
It took Meg a while to stop weeping. Then they sat in silence, holding each other until Meg asked, “What’s going to happen now?”
“I don’t know. But something will turn up. You can count on that.”
Meg raised hopeful eyes. “You honestly believe that? Even now?”
“Especially now. This is the way Elhanu works. You’ll see.”
The ground began to shake, and everyone froze, all eyes darting to the darkness above. Dirt and small rocks rained briefly upon them, then the tremor faded. Gradually activity started up again.
The grit of a footstep and the sense of someone nearby drew their eyes to Brody, standing beside them, his eyes on Meg, his expression hesitant. “You okay?”
Meg wiped her face again, smearing dirt across her freckles. “Better than I’ve been in a while.”
Brody squatted beside her, and suddenly Callie felt like a third wheel. Murmuring an excuse she knew neither of them heard, she went to join Pierce. Whit idly tossed a palm-sized rock in one hand as the others watched their captors put the final touches on the curtain.
“How is she?” Pierce asked as she settled beside him.
“About as gutted as this substation.” She watched Garth gesticulating at his cronies. “I hope he does make it to the portal. And that I’m there to see him fry when he tries to go through it.”
Pierce said nothing. But after a moment his hand slid over the back of her neck, fingers massaging away the gathered tension. She leaned into the pressure, grateful for the comfort of his touch, wishing there was some way to offer similar comfort to her friend.
Meg and Brody were talking quietly now, keeping their distance, their body language still strained. Their trials had forged them into different people—there was a brokenness in Meg, a humility and soberness Callie had never seen before, and in Brody, a compassion and a gentleness that reminded her of Mr. C.
“I don’t get it,” John muttered. “What’re they doing here?” He gestured toward Garth and the others. “Why were they allowed to make it up that canyon?”
“For the same reason Mander was allowed to bring Jacki and Brian to the top of the cliff,” Pierce said. “Volition. The cliffs aren’t there to keep people out of the Inner Realm so much as to discourage them from seeking the Exit before they’ve been Changed. They make it harder to do the wrong thing, rather than removing the opportunity altogether. But those who are determined to go their own way, no matter how difficult, will ultimately be allowed to do so.”
“And in the end reap the consequences of their decisions,” Whit said, still tossing the stone in his hand.
“Yes,” Pierce said softly. To Callie’s ear, sensitive as it was to the subtle tones of his voice, he sounded almost sad.
Garth’s voice rose abruptly over the murmur of conversation. “No, you moron! If they’re all battered, they’ll only hold us back.” He said something more in a lower voice, and then more loudly, “We’ll do this fast and get out, understand? Now turn it on.”
Someone flipped a switch, and a high-pitched hum accompanied the leap of energy from one pole to the other. Neon shades of green and blue oozed between slowly shifting globs of black, the light reflecting in a greenish arc that betrayed an ominous gathering of Watchers in the shadows around them.
The curtain had long ceased to entice Callie. Now its whine only triggered an annoying vibration in her teeth.
The first man stepped through, his bloodied right arm hanging limp at his side. The membrane jerked him off the ground, pulling out both arms like a marionette. He cried out as white flashes swarmed along his injured limb like fireflies. For three seconds he hung there, moaning and twitching. It released him abruptly and he staggered through, his arm no longer limp. Immediately he fell upon the food packets.
A man with a ruined leg was shoved through next. The curtain caught him mid-stumble, and he spasmed upright with a cry of pleasure, just like the other man. Again he hung spread-eagled, shivering and shaking as the healing sparks crackled up and down his leg. It reminded Callie of the Aggillon’s regenerating gel, only more aggressive.
They ran several more through, then Garth called for Pierce and Callie. He sat in a field chair about thirty feet from the curtain. This close its energy field sent unpleasant chills across Callie’s skin and set her teeth on edge.
Garth stood and walked around Pierce, looking him up and down. “You’ve tasted it before, haven’t you?” he said at length.
Pierce eyed him calmly. “So what if I have?”
Garth sat down again. “Figured as much. It was the only way you could’ve survived with them as long as you did. Is that why you lived and Tom didn’t?”
Pierce did not answer.
“You’re feeling the pull, aren’t you?” Garth asked with a grin. “The need, the shaking want of it.”
As far as Callie could see, Pierce was calm and solid as a rock.
Garth tilted his head back. “How long’s it been, huh? A week? Two? I can see the craving in your eyes.”
There was nothing of the kind in Pierce’s eyes. He couldn’t have been more deadpan. Besides, with the link so consistently open and active within him, Callie had long ago stopped worrying about his vulnerability to the curtain’s allure. Right now she suspected he was as revolted as she was, and Garth was simply projecting his own desires.
“You can have it now,” Garth said, motioning for the guard to free him. Pierce didn’t move. “If you don’t, you’ll die before the day is over.”
Pierce cocked a brow. “I thought you didn’t hold with accepting alien help.”
Garth laughed. “I don’t see any aliens helping us.”
“What do you call that?” Pierce gestured at the fire curtain.
“It may be an alien device, but I stole it for my purposes.” He looked at the thing with an expression of warm pride. “That little baby’s given us the edge we need to make it to the Exit.”
Pierce shook his head sadly. “It’s not making it to the Exit that sets us free, Garth. If you’re not Changed first, you’ll only die trying to walk through it. And if you die in this Arena and you’re Unchanged, that’s it for you. You’ll never see Earth again. There’ll be no more second chances.”
For a moment it seemed he had captured Garth’s attention, that somehow the respect the man had carried for him all those years they were together pushed itself to the fore and made him listen where he wouldn’t have listened to anyone else. Callie saw it in his face—the sudden uncertainty, even alarm, with which he considered the possibility his old friend was right. But then it was swallowed up by the passions he’d so completely surrendered to of late, and he rejected it with a forceful vulgarity.
Even then Pierce didn’t give up. “Come on, Garth. You must see our bodies aren’t like yours anymore. How else can we walk this realm unprotected and suffer no ill effects? How else can we can touch the toxvine, go unaffected by mite venom, and breathe the poisoned air?”
“I can breathe the air fine.” Garth yanked off his respirator, glaring. “See?”
“Then why were you wearing that thing?”
Garth lurched out of his chair and seized Pierce by the throat. “Don’t mock me, you miserable Trog licker! I could kill you in a heartbeat!”
Pierce’s face turned red. He began to gasp and pry at the fingers gripping his throat. Laughing, Garth lifted him off his feet, holding him one-handed. Callie threw herself at them but was knocked away as if she were a fly. She slammed into the ground, and blinding agony speared her side. At first she could only twitch and gasp, dizzy and nauseated by the pain. When she came back to herself, Garth loomed over her, Pierce still in hand.
“Please,” she said, her voice coming out high-pitched and infuriatingly meek.
He grinned. “Oh, that’s nice. Beg some more, woman. I like it.”
“Don’t hurt him.” She sat up, gathering her feet beneath her, trying to think of something aggressive and useful to do.
Garth’s black eye glittered. “What will you give me in return, babe? Obedience?”
“Yes.” She noticed Rowena behind him, watching avidly, the purloined belt sagging at her waist.
“Respect?” Garth demanded.
Callie swallowed. Nodded. The belt was fastened only by its Velcro tabs—Rowena hadn’t snugged it down, nor had she fed the end into its finishing slot.
“Will you give me your love?”
“Garth, please.”
“Love?” Rowena grabbed his arm. “What do you mean by—”
Callie charged, driving her shoulder into the woman’s side and carrying them both into Garth. He staggered, losing his hold on Pierce, as with a bellow, he flung both women off. By then Callie had her hands on the belt, swinging Rowena around to make her fall first. One yank on the Velcro, and the object was hers, though no one noticed because Pierce and Garth were now grappling with each other on the ground. Fastening the belt around her waist, Callie sprang for the fire curtain, whirling inches from the undulating membrane. Garth had Pierce pinned on his back, a knee in his belly, hands once more on his throat.
“Let him go!” Callie screamed. “Or I’ll blow this thing out of existence.”
She sought the link and power flooded through it, igniting the field in her clothes. Behind her the curtain flickered and crackled with its interference.
Garth’s face peered over his shoulder, blazing yellow-green. “Do it, and I’ll kill him.”
Coldness clenched her middle, but she hung on to the connection. “Don’t you get it, Garth? You can’t kill him. You can only send him home.”
“Fine, then. I’ll send him home!”
But during the distraction Callie had provided, Pierce had grabbed a rock with his free hand and now slammed it into Garth’s ear. He reeled backward, shook his bloodied head, and then lurched at Pierce with a roar. But something flew out of the prisoner’s stall—Whit’s rock?—to hit Garth square in the forehead, toppling him like a felled tree. Simultaneously Callie was tackled by one of the others, crushed into the ground by his weight. Rocks dug into her side, and pain flashed outward in nauseating waves. She couldn’t breathe. Dirt filled her mouth. Then the weight lifted. Light flared, and twisted currents zapped between the fire curtain’s poles.
“Get him!”
“Aiee! I can’t see.”
“He’s got a gun.”
She forced herself up and crawled toward the shadows, pain wracking her body with every breath. She must’ve cracked a rib.
One of the curtain’s poles popped like a Fourth of July sparkler, fountaining a plume of blinding sparks and white smoke. Dark figures scrambled about, shielding their eyes and yelling for weapons. She heard a zip-zip-zip and crawled faster, flinching under recurring showers of sparks. The tang of ozone burned her nose.
She was certain she was crawling undetected, but at the margin of shadow someone grabbed her arm, hauling her over a low wall. As she recognized Pierce, she stopped struggling and collapsed against him. They hid there in the shadows a few minutes, catching their breath, then set off for the interior. He had one of the short-barreled riot guns, and she bent down to pick up a good-sized rock, wincing at the pain in her side. Together they stole around a partition into deeper shadow.
Garth’s people had their weapons out and were clustered into groups, one backed around their fallen leader, another guarding the fire curtain and the two men repairing it. A third group blocked the stairway leading topside, their hand-lamp beams stabbing wildly through the darkness. Apparently all their prisoners had escaped.
Callie crawled after Pierce as they inched toward the hub’s center, but they’d not gone twenty yards when a commotion erupted on the stair, and new, more powerful lights speared the darkness. Then the rapid, high-pitched zips of weaponry overlaid the sputtering fire curtain. Someone screamed. Someone else started shouting, but the words were lost in a thunder of footfalls.
“Splagnosians!” Pierce muttered. “Come on.”
A glance back showed Garth’s men running, their wounded slung over their shoulders like sacks of grain. The Splagnosians clattered after them, shouting and firing, as Pierce and Callie picked their way through the darkness in the opposite direction, moving as fast as they could with bare feet. They soon met up with Whit, LaTeisha, and John, and shortly thereafter, the rest of the group joined them. Between them they had two weapons, no boots, and one belt.
“We’ll find a place to hide,” Pierce said. “If Garth was right about his reputation, they should be satisfied with him.”
The chamber’s center was a maze of thick, slanting beams, half buried in mounds of earth and stone. They found a series of pockets—crawling with mites, but better that than Splagnosians—and portioned the group into three of them, Callie cramming with Pierce, John, and Tuck into one five-foot-long cavity. Pierce took the belt and sat on the outside with the riot gun, staring into the darkness. Callie huddled beside him, her rib aching dully. She was not at all worried. This was like on the mountain when the goats had distracted their mutant pursuers, only now it was Garth who would provide the distraction. They might have to wait a while, but she was confident they had weathered the storm.
In the darkness she could see nothing, but she could hear Pierce’s heart beating under her ear. He smelled of sweat and dirt, the odor strong but not unpleasant, because it was his. Around them the mites chittered and began to move again. She flinched as one crawled over her foot, clenching her teeth to keep from squirming. The shouts, thumps, and zaps faded to silence as the mite, leg-tips pricking through her trousers, explored her hip. She wanted to brush it aside but had nothing to do it with, so she shifted slightly, hoping to discourage it from further exploration.
Pierce’s arm tightened about her, and he whispered, so faintly she could hardly hear him, “Something’s out there.”
In an instant her confidence evaporated. What was it? Some monster of the dark? They had no weapons, no boots. How would they fight it off? And if they did, wouldn’t that draw down the Splagnosians?
She pushed away the fears and touched the link, feeling calmness return.
Suddenly voices and footfalls erupted in the darkness, stunningly close. Light pierced their burrow, sending renewed alarm firing through her. It was only reflected light from a lamp they couldn’t see, but it seemed bright as day. Pierce held her tightly, and beneath her palm, his heart raced. Why had the Splagnosians come back when they had Garth to chase?
From somewhere close a deep voice said, “We’ve got the exits covered. Must we come in after you, or will you do this the easy way?”
No one said a word.
Low voices conferred. Then the original speaker said, “You will not be harmed if you cooperate. If you resist, however, I can make no promises.”
How can we resist with two riot guns and no boots?
Pierce’s chest rose and fell with a resigned sigh. Then he crawled out of the hole. Reluctantly she followed. Whit, Gerry and the others were already emerging from their respective hiding places. One by one they stepped into the light, and when Pierce stood up, squinting before their visored, armored captors, a visible start went through them.
“That’s him!” one of them hissed.
Soft laughter followed. “We’ve got him,” the one who appeared to be the leader said, apparently into some communications link. “Looks like we’ve got his whole bunch.”
There was a pause. Then, “No. We’ll get them at the other end. These are the ones we came for anyway.” He turned to someone standing in the shadows behind him. “Rest assured, you’ll be well compensated.” As his men surrounded their captives, light played across the figure’s face—Rowena.
With a satisfied smirk, she turned away, escorted into the darkness by one of the Splagnosians.