I stepped toward her, and she took a step back.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I said, raising my hands. “I’m here for the girl. That’s all.”
“The supreme leader will be available shortly—”
I held both her feminine hands in mine.
She was shaking like a leaf.
“Listen to me,” I said. “I know a lot of bad things have happened to you. Help me, and you’ll be able to escape.”
The girl looked at me.
Her eyes were bloodshot and filling rapidly with tears.
“This… This isn’t a test?” she said.
“A test? No. I just need to find Agatha. And I need to find her now.”
The girl’s attention flickered back and forth between my eyes.
“You care for her.”
“With all my heart.”
It was what the girl needed to hear.
She smiled and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“I haven’t heard anything like that in a very long time.”
The other girl placed a hand on her arm.
“Jixa, don’t,” she said. “This won’t reflect well on you if you help him.”
The friend’s words of advice had an effect on Jixa.
I placed a hand on her other arm.
“Please. Help me.”
Jixa was torn between the two of us.
I could understand her friend’s concern.
I could only imagine the ordeals they’d been put through.
They likely hadn’t received a single kernel of kindness in a very long time.
The same way Agatha and the other Prizes hadn’t.
Jixa came to a decision.
“Follow me.”
Her friend looked on helplessly, holding the tray in her hands as she watched us head down a hallway just off the main entrance.
I held the rifle close to my chest and followed Jixa as she rushed through the hallways.
There were so many doors that fed into other corridors that there was no way I could have found Agatha without her help.
The longer we traveled, the more scared I grew that I might be too late.
I tried to memorize the twists and turns we made but after a while, they mixed into a heady daze.
We would have to find another way to get out or else ask Jixa to help us.
Then again, heading back the way we had come wasn’t the best idea when Draw’s guards were out there waiting for me.
“How much further is it?” I said to Jixa.
“Only a little. Just up here.”
I kept a close eye on our backs and the hallways we’d already traversed.
I didn’t want the guards crawling up our ass.
Finally, Jixa came to a stop outside a door a plush walnut color and polished to a high shine.
“In here?” I said.
Jixa nodded and backed away from the door.
I reached for the handle, causing Jixa to whimper and turn away.
“Wait,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”
“How are we supposed to get out of here?”
She had no answer for me as she turned and ran back the way we’d come.
I pressed the handle and shoved the door open with a firm shunt.
The door swung open and didn’t emit so much as a squeak.
I peered inside and eyed the room beyond carefully.
It was dark but there was light from a single source.
Daylight, I thought.
It streamed through a long series of windows along the back wall.
More light could have gotten through if it wasn’t for the fact they’d been greyed out, giving the room a tint the color of a turgid nightmare in the dead of winter.
I moved behind a set of blinds and listened carefully.
The room filled me with terror.
It wasn’t the kind of place where good things happened.
Arranged along one wall was a long row of machines.
They were bizarre devices with straps and handles, cranks, and protruding nails.
The blood fell from my face.
It was a torture garden?
I swear, if he hurt so much as a single hair on her head…
“Ohhh,” a ragged male voice said. “Yeaaah. That’s good.”
“Do you like that?” Agatha said in a teasing voice.
I couldn’t bear to hear her say that.
Not when she was saying it to someone else, at least.
The situation, everything about it, didn’t make any sense.
I couldn’t bear it any longer and stormed around the blinds.
I aimed with the plasma rifle, prepared to unload into the evil beast at a moment’s notice.
I came to a stop and stared in disbelief at what I was looking at.
Let me rephrase that.
I came to a stop and stared in disbelief.
What in the Creator’s name am I looking at?
In all my expectations of what I would encounter in this room, especially after seeing those evil-looking devices, I had feared the worst.
But never this.
Draw was strapped into a machine.
His stumpy arms and legs were held down by leather straps that pinned his considerable girth in place.
Agatha stood perched over him armed with a candle that dripped wax.
She wore a pink outfit of a fluffy creature with long ears that I’d never seen before.
They turned to look at me.
Suddenly, I felt self-conscious about being there.
“You?” Draw said. “What are you doing in here? Guards! Guards!”
“Egara?” Agatha said.
She dropped the candle and ran to me.
She threw herself into my arms and I swung her around.
“You came for me?” she said.
“Of course I came for you. I thought he was going to hurt you. Instead…”
Draw struggled against the straps in an attempt to pull himself free.
He growled and pulled so hard the machine rocked on its struts.
“Guards! Guards!” he yelled.
I ignored him and felt the gorgeous woman in my arms.
She was warm and soft the way I remembered.
Our lips joined and the fear melted like ice.
“How about we get out of here?” I said.
“Guards! Guards!” Draw continued yelling.
“Your guards aren’t coming!” I snapped at him.
I approached the figure strapped to the bed and wasn’t sure what I was meant to feel.
All I could manage was pity.
Of all the things he could have done with Agatha, he chose something anyone could have done.
He didn’t seek to take advantage of the true beauty she was.
I was relieved and appalled at the same time.
“Unless you want your guards to see you strapped to the machine like this, I suggest you quit shouting,” I said.
Draw shot me a glare.
“Set me free,”
