Stolen Fire
Chapter 3
INGRID
Her head pounded like seventeen elephants were tap-dancing on her forehead, and her mouth was fuzzier than a rabbit’s asshole.
How much had she drank last night? Did she down the whole bottle?
She tried to reach her hand up and put it against her head, but it was trapped by something. Did she fall asleep on it? And why was she so cold?
Oh, right, the power outage. She must have gone back to bed and forgotten appropriate blankets. Her nightgown was not enough to weather a Canadian November, even if she did run hot, or live in the mildest area of the country.
She worked on moving bit by bit, wiggling her extremities and trying to open her eyes, which were gummed shut. That was strange…if she’d slept on her arm it would be asleep, but she could feel it all. It just…was stuck to her body.
And her futon felt strangely comfortable, as if it had molded to her curves. That hadn’t been the case for her bed for years.
She opened her eyes slowly, expecting bright light to shine on her orbs and hurt like hell. It was still completely dark.
Okay, this was getting really weird. Hadn’t she already gotten up once in the middle of the night? Mrs. Wong had knocked on her door and….
Memory flooded back in and knocked the breath out of Ingrid. It hadn’t been her nice neighbour, it had been the creeper from the bar. And he’d done something to her.
Panic made her try to sit up as fast as possible. She bumped her head on — what, what was that? Plexiglass? Oh God, was she in a crate or something?
No. Stop. She had to breathe and think her way out of this. She took a deep breath and counted back from ten, though she only got to five when she heard a strange hissing noise, followed by a ker-chunk.
She opened her eyes and looked above her, and saw the outline of what looked like a lid — a coffin lid — in very dim light. Whatever case she was in was opening up.
And she could hear a man’s voice speaking in the room she was in.
Palms sweaty, mouth dry, Ingrid creeped her body back in the plastic coffin she’d been put into, trying to ease herself up as quietly as possible. When she got some leverage she put her hand over the edge of the box and lifted her head up, quickly checking her surroundings.
There was a man in the room. His back was to her and he was on the phone. The light in the room came from his phone’s flashlight, which he’d obviously forgotten to turn off.
She couldn’t understand what he was saying. It sounded like Hindi, maybe, or Punjabi…maybe Pali?
She didn’t know any of those languages. Not enough to distinguish them. Just to know the sort of general sound of them. How could she not, being a Vancouver girl?
Okay. So she’d been kidnapped by some East Indian dude. Funny. The creeper at the bar hadn’t looked East Indian. If anything she would have said he was….
Alien.
The thought popped up in her head and she dismissed it just as quickly. Aliens weren’t real. Dangerous men were, and she was going to have to figure out how to escape this one’s clutches soon. Before he did who-knows-what to her.
She looked around in the dim room, trying to get her bearings. It seemed to be a large rocky cavern, but she couldn’t tell for certain. If it was, that didn’t help at all, except to tell her she was no longer in the city. The province was a big place and it was full of rocks. A cave wouldn’t be hard to find.
Was there anything she could use as a weapon? She looked around, an edge of panic in her movement. Mr. Kidnapper would be done with his phone call soon, and he sounded agitated. She didn’t want to face him angry without a weapon of some sort in her hands.
Her eyes rested on what looked like the lid to the coffin she’d been in, and Ingrid couldn’t believe her luck, to get kidnapped by the dumbest man on earth.
He’d left his pistol on the lid of the coffin.
Ingrid felt a fiery vigour flood her. She sat up more quickly than she thought possible and slid her legs up, getting her knees under her in the coffin so she’d have better stability. One hand closed on the pistol, which was oddly shaped but hey, a gun was a gun.
The other hand continued to stabilize her by holding on to the edge of the coffin. Her head pounded and her heart was beating a million miles a minute, but she had a weapon now. She’d fight her way out of this.
The man stopped talking and she heard a click. Without waiting she faced him and pointed his gun at him.
“Stay right there, motherfucker,” she said, sounding braver than she felt. “You don’t want to see how good I am with one of these.”
ORIS
“Yasho, I need backup.” He spoke in hushed tones and urgently, though there was no one around. Maybe he was scared he might wake up the woman in the stasis pod.
“Did your hunch actually pay off?” Yasho’s voice was incredulous. She hadn’t believed he’d find anything.
Truth be told, he hadn’t either.
“And then some. Have you secured this line?”
“That serious, huh?” There was a crackle on the line as Yasho used her jiva to secure their communication. “There. Now you want to tell me what’s going on?”
Quickly he explained everything he’d seen, including his suspicion that the woman in the pod was Aradian. “I’m in trouble, Yasho. This is…really bad. I need your help.”
“Where are you?” All teasing was gone from Yasho’s voice. She was deadly serious now.
He pulled his communicator away from his face and sent the coordinates to her.
“On my way.” She didn’t wait for him to confirm before hanging up.
Oris pulled his communicator away from his ear and let out a shaky sigh. He felt slightly better. Yasho would certainly know what to do about this, how to get the woman in the pod help, how to keep themselves from getting in deep trouble with the powers that be. Yasho would know. She usually did. Wasn’t that why she was Adharma, after all? The gods must have known she was worthy of a higher caste.
He turned back to the pod, thinking he’d take another look at the woman inside. There was something about her that drew him back.
Of course, he’d been stupid and left his Disrupter on her pod, and said pod had opened up, which he doubted was planned, but he didn’t have the luxury of investigating it because the offworlder was awake. Awake and pointing the Disrupter at him. She yelled something at him in a language he didn’t understand at all and his discount-rate chip didn’t have in its databanks, but he got the gist.
Oris put his hands up and stayed absolutely still.
The woman shook the gun at him and said more in that strange, harsh sounding language.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
This seemed to anger her even more, and she yelled at him. He caught bits and pieces: “glish” and “uck.” Whatever that meant.
Oris pitched his voice to the same kind of tone one might use with a jumper — it had been part of his training to know how to deal with suicidal people, as there were so many these days. This was only his second chance to use said training, for which he supposed he should be grateful.
“You’ve been kidnapped by some of my people. I’m sorry, but I don’t speak your world’s language. My partner is coming and she will be able to help. I mean you no harm, and that weapon won’t do much to me anyway. You can put it down.”
The offworlder woman’s hand was shaking, but she didn’t put the gun down. She didn’t give any indication she’d understood him. Instead, she began to crawl out of the stasis pod, and fell to the ground on shaky legs.
Oris jerked forward before he could stop himself, intent on helping her. She yelled some more and pointed the gun at him more forcefully, and he made himself stand up straight and move back a spot.
Come on, Yasho. Hurry up. Could use a translator.
Maybe he should start with something simple. A name.
Slowly he moved his free hand towards his chest, inch by inch so she didn’t shoot him. Though he hadn’t been lying — the Disrupter wouldn’t do much to him.
“Oris,” he said slowly, planting his hand on his chest, fingers splayed.
The woman’s eyebrows knit together and she looked at him as if he were crazy. He supposed he might seem it — if she thought he was the one who kidnapped her, trying to introduce himself looked odd to say the least.
“‘Glish! No-u-EEKit.”
It was no use. He couldn’t make heads nor tails of her speech, and she was not interested in communicating.
He would just have to wait for his partner and hope to gods she could deescalate the situation, so they could get this offworlder woman back home.
Once the woman was safe, they’d hunt down the smugglers. In fact, Oris wouldn’t mind seeing to that personally. He didn’t care they were all higher caste than he. They deserved to be punished.
There was a change in the air pressure, and he heard a splash behind him. Yasho’s voice carried over the air a moment later.
“Okay. I’m here. Where’s the Aradian?”
She entered the room and the Aradian — if she was one — pointed the Disrupter at Oris’ partner.
Without thinking he stepped in front of Yasho, blocking her with his body. The Disrupter wouldn’t have done much to him, it was true, but Yasho would have suffered if the offworlder decided to shoot her. He wasn’t about to let his partner go through that.
“I see she’s awake.”
Oris smiled at his partner’s dry tone. She wasn’t totally pissed at him.
“You could say that, yeah.”