She reaches for the top of the cage, unable to locate the light source illuminating her.
She lowers herself to her knees. Calming her breathing as Joe instructed, she reaches into her own thoughts before she arrived in this cage.
Knowing her last memory was in the roach-infested bathroom in the slums of Summersun’s capital city, she deduces capture. The growing list of enemies includes those after Queen Aurora’s bounty. None she knows of requires they be taken alive.
Unless—
Smerth’n hell!
Bait.
Bait for Reynard to rescue in order to capture him. I won’t allow my lapse into the arms of a stranger to bring down my love. I’ll escape the cage and foil whoever was stupid enough to capture me.
She runs her fingers along the inside of her thigh to the top of her boot. They confiscated my concealed dagger. She caresses the leather, slipping a finger inside. These boots lack her hidden sheath. Why switch my boots? Why change my attire? Amye tugs at the uniform IMC colony students wear. I’m too tall for such a uniform. She pats down her frame. Nothing. They took anything useful for escaping.
Amye grips a bar in each hand and pulls. Her deltoids strain. No movement—not even an indication of movement in the bars. She rubs her fingertips against her red palms to soothe the presses she exerted on them. Her nails have been painted with purple moon clouds.
I haven’t painted my nails since I was fourteen. Confusion to keep me off-balance while they restrain me as bait for Reynard. Why spend so much energy in confining me in such attire. A sealed cargo hold with no access to the electrical system would prevent my escape.
Despite complete darkness beyond the bars, she detects movement from a humanoid figure hovering just beyond the blackness.
If my captor expects panic, I’ll disappoint. Folding her hands in her lap, resting her bottom on her heels, Amye draws in cleansing breaths. Sealing her eyelids, she opens her ears to listen past the deception the eyes present to the brain.
She lacks any rating on the telepath scale. Through proper discipline, Joe’s trained her to utilize her senses to detect beyond eyes.
Nothing.
Not a hint of mind scan. No breathing other than mine. Something outside the mind’s eye informs her that beyond the light hovers a darkness. Unable to detect it further, she recalls the events in time she remembers.
Cheap, unclean, the hotel bathroom was some hovel maggots would refuse to stay in, and yet the Merc I dragged there to bed—
No, I didn’t.
We passed out from excessive drinks. My high alcohol tolerance means—drugged? Somehow I made it to the bathroom to pass out again. Celebrations everywhere as the Mokarran fell in defeat. Celebrations over the legal annexation into the UCP.
What possessed me to celebrate? Reynard. Reynard—stolen by a Sandman. Creatures not as mythical as frightened children’s fairy tales would taunt. Something angered me about the cat? Kymberlynn? She said I was the only one able to save William. How could she? Kymberlynn’s dead. No, she’s been part of the Dragon’s crew with me.
As she trained on the path to perfection under Joe’s tutelage, she leaned to control her breathing. She decides she’s not ready to attempt the slowing of her vitals to create the near-death position. It has a name. I can’t recall the Calthos name for the technique.
Passing out to draw in a guard might be the oldest trick in the book, and effective—if they want her alive. They must have, or she’d have added to the uncleaned stains in the hotel room.
Therump! Lights click on. Hovering at the captain’s station on the Dragon’s bridge, a Sandman activates the main view screen.
Amye hops to the balls of her feet from her kneeling position. Her fingers are still painted in the style IMC teen girls thought was fashionable ten years ago. The view screen displays the Dragon’s cargo bay from impossible perspectives.
Someone must use an ocular contraption to have sound, but the image lacks the slight blur barely noticeable but present when receiving a live transmission. This is something else.
“You’re alive,” Scott’s voice booms.
The camera pans to glance at Scott before flicking back to Reynard.
“How did you know where to find me so fast?” Reynard asks.
“Fast. It took us two weeks. We had a dry dock delay.”
Amye’s unsure whose voice speaks from behind the camera, but it’s eerily familiar.
“I was gone two days. It seems to be the limit a person lasts in an alternate reality,” Reynard says.
“Time differential from crossing the in-between realities. But I’m guessing.”
She knows the female voice speaking.
“Everything I went through was a guess. We know nothing about these Sandmen,” Reynard reports. “We’re going to need Samantha more than we thought.”
“Better explain it to Amye. She attempted to shoot the cat.”
Amye!? I’m right here. I never shot at the cat. Amye wrenches her fist, but the cage bars still refuse to move.
“I just wanted to scare the feline. I know how important she is, and I knew she knew your location.” The familiar voice echoes around her.
“We need Samantha.”
“We need a way to fight these creatures,” Scott advocates.
Reynard removes a few half-melted bullets from his pocket. The azure caps flake into dust. “Fuck!”
Scott snags one. “What’s wrong with them?”
“They are from the other reality. They wound Sandmen. The same as a disrupter beam.”
He offers it to the holder of the camera. A recognizable hand waves it away.
“The tips appear like the opal in JC’s headband,” Scott notes.
“Ki-Ton’s people found a way to trap them.”
“Only one way to test your theory.”
“There’s a Sandman on the bridge. Bash him in the head with one of those stones,” Amye screams through the bars.
“I don’t know where Samantha ran off to. Get her to give us a lead on the next orb fragment. We’re going to need more information on the Sandmen.”
“Commander, we need to recover Australia and spend some time
