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Drying her tears and filled with new resolve, Cora lifted her head above the rim of the pit once more to count the number of guards around the facility. She beheld the lump that must have been Levi, motionless on the ground just inside the fence.
Were they just going to leave him there to rot? That Jorvlen filth treated the dead bodies of their enemies with no honor. Cora wondered how she would manage to bury him before she left. She couldn’t just leave him like that.
Sudden movement attracted her gaze. She couldn’t be sure, but it appeared that the lump was edging its way slowly toward the chain link. Levi’s alive! Her heart thrilled, and relief welled up in her eyes. The wealth of a thousand worlds mattered nothing to her. Her love was living.
Four shapes exited the prison, and she heard a faint pop and sizzle as blue arcs of electricity encompassed Levi’s body, now motionless again. A stun gun. Of course. They picked him up and carried him into the facility.
Cora’s mind reeled from the mounting list of complications she would have to handle to help Levi now. She had no idea how she would rescue him, but she knew she would do it and that it had to happen fast.
Ducking beneath the rim of the pit again, she tried to think ahead one step at a time. First, she would have to wait for nightfall. She had a good vantage point from which to watch the changing of the guard, information that would serve her well over the next few days.
Checking her surroundings every few minutes, she confirmed that no one seemed to be out looking for her. That was good. It meant she wasn’t important enough to track down, and that meant they didn’t know about her hacking work on the mothership.
Or they think I’ll die before I can do anything with it. The dark thought slimed its way into her brain, but she smashed it before it could stay. If they assumed she wouldn’t survive long enough to make them pay for what they did, she would just have to prove them wrong.
Night fell quickly, and with it came the cold. She had been too frightened to notice the change of temperature inside the cylinder, but as time passed and she calmed down, a cool breeze against her legs made her shiver in her sweat.
Climbing out of the pit on stiff muscles, she edged her way closer to the facility, avoiding the pools of brightness released from the security floodlights. This is going to be a challenge, she thought with a smile. Cora loved a challenge.
Chapter 14
The first thing Levi noticed when he finally came to was that everything hurt. Every muscle was stiff and sore, even in places where he hadn’t realized Lorr had muscles. Unclenching his jaw and moving it side to side, he marveled that none of his teeth seemed broken.
Working slowly from toes to scalp, he contracted and released all his joints one by one. He felt a crackling burn spreading from his neck and decided to skip that part. Finally reaching the part he dreaded, he cracked one eye open and then the other.
His eyelids stuck together, but other than that, he was pleasantly surprised at the lack of pain. It could have been because of the darkness of his cell, but other than a twinge when he moved them, his eyes gave him very little trouble.
Feeling the flat surface beneath him, he ascertained that he was on a metal slab that ended a few inches beyond his abdomen on either side. He had been in precisely one other prison cell before, but he was willing to guess that he hovered a foot or two off a concrete slab outfitted with a paltry mattress of mostly springs and that his “bed” was chained to the wall.
It wasn’t worth the movement it would take to find out if he was right. No method of escape there. He felt a pang of emptiness. Without Cora, no escape plan seemed quite worthwhile.
His thoughts turned to her velvety skin, soft curves, slim hips…Get it together, Lorr warrior. Lying alone in a prison cell was no time to think about sex. Then again, what better time was there?
No. Levi had to stay focused if he was going to make his way out alone. Cora’s absence was all the more reason to hurry. If she had gotten free, she would be waiting for him. If she hadn’t, he had an even greater need for speed.
He gave the cell a visual sweep without moving his head. The concrete construction with no metal or hinges told him this cell had been poured with the foundation of the building. He was in the basement. Drat.
Two shafts of light illuminated tendrils of dust floating in the air. He remembered how dry his mouth and throat were and tried not to swallow. The light came from tiny twin rectangles cut into the top of the wall at a vertical slant. Double drat.
Seeing a reason to haul his sore body off the slab, Levi sat up with effort and inched his way to the vents. The grills opened directly onto street level, which he could view from an angle. Flecks of concrete crossed the bars. Nothing is going my way today.
No outlets nor lack of integrity in the walls meant no breaking out by force. The shafts were too small to squeeze through and seemed to have been set into the concrete when the room was built. Worse, deserts were prone to flash floods. He wondered briefly if they evacuated prisoners in case of heavy rain but doubted it.
He scanned the desert floor for any sign of Cora, but he didn’t even see anywhere for her to hide. The brush and tumbleweed littering the landscape offered very little in the way of cover. Even if she had made it away from the guards in time, where would she go? Levi turned his back to the wall and slid to the floor.
Pushing thoughts of floating and sunburned corpses out of his mind, he focused on the task at hand. He was no good to anyone in this condition. The best he could do was wait at least a day, glean the guards’ schedule, and maybe heal up a little.
Fighting his way out of a basement was going to be tough. Somewhere, he knew he would have to conquer a stairwell with tight turns and no weapons. He groaned and beat his head softly against the wall.
The impact felt good against his horns. He beat each of them against the wall in turn and felt the ringing die down a little. He stopped when he heard the harried booming noise of a guard pounding on the door.
“Hey! Shut up in there!” A plate in the door slid to the side, revealing a metal grate. Two bulging eyes surveyed him with such ferocity that Levi jumped a little. “No point trying to break out, so let the others get some beauty rest, eh? Heh, heh, heh.”
Levi rolled his eyes and continued rubbing his horns on the wall, evoking a scraping noise from the concrete. The vibrations felt good in his aching head, even if the scabbing wounds on his neck smarted.
“Hey! I said shut up!”
“No use talking to him, Breg,” a second guard reasoned. “The imbecile doesn't understand Jorvlen.”
