What have y ou done to him, you assholes?
Her first suspicion was that they’d given her N arcosm, an illegal narcotic that sedated a mage’s spirit. Narcosm was difficult to come by and dangerous to use, since forcing a witch or warlock to drink too much could potentially send their spirit into a slumber so deep they’d never come out of it. She’d been forced to use some on Cross to quell his murderous spirit, and while there had really bee n no other way to save his life she still regretted it.
That might even be the reason why he can’t wake up.
Aside from Ilfesa Warfield — a black marketer who had doubtlessly provided Cross with the dose they’d found in his possession, a matter Danica intended to take up with the witch if they ever made it back to Thornn — the only people that Black knew of who ma d e regular use of Narcosm were T he Revengers.
“You might as well come and talk to me,” she said loudly. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
No answer. She hadn’t really expected any.
It was possible she was on a n airship, but in spite of the rumbling floor and shaking walls she didn’t think so. T he heat and utter darkness made her wonder if she ha d n’t been shoved into a boiler room or a storage container.
For all I know I’m in a giant lunchbox that’s been thrown to the bottom of the ocean and covered up with concrete.
She’d be alon e for a while… perhaps even a long while. Keeping her in the dark and surround ing her with noise so she couldn’t pinpoint her own location was all part of the process of breaking important captives. Had she been a common chattel slave she would have been crammed into a box with forty other prisoners and shipped straight to the prison, where she would toil and die in the red diamond mines.
Oh, no, that would be too simple for a “traitor”, wouldn’t it?
They had her. And that meant sooner or later she’d have to face Rake.
Black had no desire to confront the Head Warden of Black Scar. Even for the brief span of time when she’d completely bought in to T he Revenger’s mercenary lifestyle without question, Rake had always struck her as a highly dangerous man. He wasn’t as excessively violent as some of the other enforcers like Mauser or Crane, but in his own way he was more frightening. Rake was cold and calculating, possessed of a quiet and confident sense of authority. Between him and his right-hand man, Geist, hundreds of prisoners had been tortured to death in Black Scar, and many more had been killed.
She had no doubt he’d taken her defecti on personally. There was a cold reception waiting for her, if indeed the y plan ned to return her to Black Scar.
They weren’t in Blacksand just looking for me, she told herself. They had to have been in the area on other business, searching for new prisoners or making a prisoner drop. But they did go through an awful lot of trouble to bring me in once they realized I was here.
Something didn’t add up.
Her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. There was actually a subtle trace of light, so faint and dim it was all but impossible to tell where it came from. She could see her hands, but only barely.
Danica saw the outline of a bulky metallic structure close by, so she cautiously walked over to it, moving her feet carefully as she tread through the dark for fear of tripping o ver something. T he anticipation of running into anything in her near-blind state put her nerves on edge.
The object was cold and still, and Danica guessed it was an old boiler or a generator. She put her back up against it and slowly edged along its face.
Danica found a short piece of broken metal sticking out of the equipment. She set her bonds against the edge and quietly sawed up and down to cut herself free.
Danica couldn’t begin to count how many people had died by her hand or on account of her orders in Black Scar. It was a corrupt and utterly deadly place, a repository for the lost. Prisoners of all races, ages and creeds suffered i n inadequate living conditions, where they were kept malnourished and exhaust ed. They were f orced in to the deep mines where they search ed for the elusive red diam onds; marched through underground fields of decaying matter to meet slave buyers from the renegade necropolis of Koth; put to the test in gladiator games or races. Whenever the prison ran out of room, surplus inmates were slaughtered.
She saw the faces of the dead when she closed her eyes. Their voices haunted her dreams. Danica had spent over two years trying to empty her soul of guilt, but there was no escaping the past.
There never is. You just learn to live with it.
Time passed. She had no idea how long it was, but she guessed a few minutes went by before she’d managed to snap the rope binding her raw and bloody wrists. H er entire body was sore, and h er spirit remained just out of reach.
She stumbled through the dark. There was absolutely no way to see in the sweaty shadows, and she couldn’t locate the walls. Once she left the piece of machinery behind she might as well have been wandering through a black desert.
Danica walked slowly. She couldn’t even hear her own footsteps. T here was a nasty cut on the left side of her face from her battle with the Talon, and it stung when she so much as put a finger to it. Her shoulders and arms ached, and her head felt light from lack of food or water.
She walked. Someone would eventually come and make sure she hadn’t tried to escape.
Unless I’ve been left for dead somewhere… now there’s a refreshing thought.
With no sight of her surroundings, Danica continued to walk cautiously, and held her hands out in front of her. She was all but defenseless without her spirit, and the fact that she couldn’t reach him was driving her crazy.
She passed through metal noise, half- expect ing to crash into an obstacle or fall into a hole. Danica chided herself for moving so slow and tried to increase her pace, but she still flinched with every step.
Just get down and crawl, you dumb shit.
Danica dropped down and leopard- crawled a cross the floor. The ground was slick with what smelled like oil, and she struggled to make good time, but she no longer worried about crashing into anything.
She went what felt like a considerable distance. Her elbows and knees grew sore.
Remember Krul. Nothing was as horrible as that place. Just keep it together. If you made it through that, you can make it through anything.
Stench filled her nostrils, a different smell than the industrial bile and smoke haze she’d encountered thus far. This new miasma clung to the back of her throat, and after a moment she identified it as rot and body waste. The smell was so strong she nearly gagged on it. Danica steeled herself, clenched her fists, and kept crawling.
Oil became something more viscous, gummy and thick. Danica knew she was in the presence of dead bodies. She pictured the corpses in her head, festering and piled on top of one another. She smelled innards and dried blood, oozing wounds that had gelled over. Blood and urine and brains and opened stomachs had spilled on to the floor.
She froze, and held herself still. Something stirred in the dark.
Awesome.
Danica froze. The scrape of m etal tore through the air, and a sudden blast of light sliced out of the darkness to her left. She was blinded for a moment until her eyes could adjust.
Silhouettes moved in the grainy white haze. A rmored men marched towards her. She heard the whir of machinery gears and the sizzle of industrial juices as they struck the ground.
Gaunt armored bodies like black iron skeletons approached. They were g rinning a nimated corpse s with glowing diamond eyes, heavy 20mm rifles and gangly claws. Each metal — clad corpse stood at least seven feet tall and walked on cloven feet. Cold steam peeled away from their armor ed hides.
“Well y ou’re new…” she said, and one of the iron sentries reached down and forcefully hauled her to her feet. “Let go…”
Danica saw a mound of corpses. She’ d crawled to within just a few feet of a putrid pile of mangled bodies. The room was some sort of massive container, a metal repository for the dead. The bodies had been cut and mutilated by hammer and blade. She saw crushed skulls and open chest cavities and discarded limbs. Pools of congealed blood and intestinal juices covered the floor.
Black closed her eyes and willed the image away. She’d been near mass graves before. She’d never wanted to be there again.
The skeleton sentries pushed her out of the container and into the light. Dank wind stung her face. She heard
