Stolen Fire
Chapter 4
ORIS
Another string of harsh syllables came from the offworlder woman, and Oris waited hopefully for Yasho’s translation.
“I don’t think she’s Aradian,” his partner said. “Or she’s not speaking any dialect my chip can translate. Unless she just called us pig-fuckers, which I suppose is possible.”
“Maybe from a distant colony? Their empire is far-flung,” Oris mused.
“Maybe.”
The light in the cavern had steadily risen, and Oris realized Yasho was using her jiva to create glowpods. That was nice of her. She didn’t need them to see properly in the dark, so it was entirely for his and, he assumed, the offworlder’s benefit.
Said offworlder was blinking at the change in lights, looking around for the source — though she was careful to keep the weapon trained on him and Yasho, and her gaze never left them for more than a second. Oris noted that even through this, the offworlder kept trigger discipline with the Disrupter, keeping her finger flat along the side of the trigger guard. She was experienced with firearms, then.
“What do we do next?” Oris deferred to Yasho in most things, but in this case he really didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t communicate with the offworlder, she had a Disrupter trained on them, and she would need help soon. Her legs were shaking and she was sweaty and sick — side effects from cryostasis. She couldn’t hold up the weapon forever, firearms experience or no.
“I don’t feel like getting shot,” Yasho said dryly. “But we need to get your weapon away from her if we have any chance of communicating. And I don’t think you want to deal with the paperwork of your partner being shot with your service weapon, wielded by an offworlder.”
“Paperwork? They’d throw me in jail.” Oris sighed, knowing what was going to have to happen. He didn’t like it, but it was the only option. “Get ready to calm her down.”
The woman looked between the two of them, frowning. Clearly she knew something had just changed between them. Oris gritted his teeth and went to take the Disrupter from her.
He kept his hands up and kept saying soothing words, but he may as well have been trying to discuss philosophy with a samaha. The woman’s eyes were wild; she backed up in fear until she hit the pod and her finger moved from the side of the weapon to curl around the trigger. Just as Oris reached for the Disrupter, she fired.
His hands closed on the weapon, fingers covering hers, in time. Electricity crackled along his arms and the beam hit him point blank in the chest. His assailant gasped, and through his scrunched up eyes he barely saw a look of horror on her face.
The strange urge to comfort her was overpowering, but he couldn’t. She wouldn’t understand even if she did speak their language. His entire body had seized up and he knew any words would come out as unintelligible mumbles.
He collapsed to one knee, still clutching the Disrupter. Her hand released the gun and he felt strangely bereft of the touch of her skin.
As he fell to the blessed earth and tried to mitigate the effects as much as possible, he saw Yasho out of the corner of his eye. His partner approached the offworlder and, in the woman’s confusion, took the chance to give her the Svasikapas.
INGRID
She was starting to get really pissed off. First this guy kidnapped her, and now he was refusing to even communicate?
She knew he understood her. At least enough to not act like he was completely in the dark. And when he’d responded to her, she’d revised her earlier statement. He was not speaking Hindi or Punjabi or any of the Indian languages she heard on a regular basis in her hometown. She didn’t know what he was speaking, but it was something completely different. Similar sounds to those other languages, yes, but she knew she’d never heard this language before.
Unless…maybe he really didn’t understand her. She tried not to think of the implications of that. Being kidnapped by someone who understood your language: possibility of communication, of getting your freedom. Possibility the kidnapping was for ransom or something else.
Possibility you were more than just a thing in their eyes.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered to herself, and wiped the sweat off her forehead. None of this made any sense.
There was no reason to kidnap her. Rumours of human trafficking rings were ghost stories grown adults told each other because monsters under the bed didn’t cut it anymore. Did they exist? Oh, sure, but the odds of Ingrid being targeted by one were astronomical.
No, more likely this was a crime of opportunity: creeper at bar saw her, decided he wanted to keep her, for whatever reason. Found out where she lived. Waited for right moment. Kidnap.
Then…put in coffin and take to a cave, and leave his gun on top of said coffin while he talks on the phone.
Yeah, probably crime of opportunity. Those were not the actions of a meticulous planner.
Though on the other hand…she wasn’t sure this guy was the same creeper from the bar. She’d assumed. It would make sense, and it was honestly dark enough in this cavern that she couldn’t properly see him. Not well enough to make a totally positive ID.
But she could see his height, sort of, and he wasn’t the height of the other guy. Not by a long shot. The other guy had been impossibly tall. He must have had some sort of condition.
So. Either he was standing in a hole in the ground, or he was working with a partner.
Which meant she had to get out of here as soon as possible.
Trouble was, she wasn’t sure shooting him and leaving was the best course of action. She couldn’t see very well down here and she had no idea where she was. Her legs were shaky, she was sweaty, and her stomach had that horrible empty-sick feeling where it was likely she’d vomit at any moment. Ingrid truly hoped these were hangover symptoms and not something more sinister.
Her arm was starting to ache something fierce. She wanted to drop the gun, or to shoot the guy…but something stopped her. He hadn’t done anything to make her afraid.
Well, besides kidnap her, but she was thinking more immediately: once she woke up, he’d just stood there very calmly, keeping his hands up to show he wasn’t a threat. He didn’t try to take the gun from her or even use the phone in his hand, the light of which was making the cavern visible at all, to call for help.
This whole thing was so weird.
There was a splash of water in the distance, and then Ingrid heard another voice seconds before someone else entered the room.
Someone impossibly tall, just like her kidnapper.
Her bravado rushed back and made her speak without thinking.
“Don’t move, you verdomdeding cerdo de mierda!”
Combining Dutch and Spanish swear words wasn’t a common thing for most people, but to Ingrid it was second nature. Her father had been a facile swearer in several languages. She’d picked up some habits from him.
Like how to handle a gun, and how to shoot.
And she would shoot this guy.
It hadn’t escaped her notice that the other guy, the shorter one, had immediately moved to cover the newcomer when Ingrid had trained the weapon on him. He was the subordinate then.
The two of them were speaking in that same strange language. Even stranger, the voice of the newcomer didn’t sound like a man. It sounded like a woman.
But it had definitely been a man who’d kidnapped her. Right?
She shook her head, feeling sweat droplets fly off her forehead. God it was hot in here. She’d kill for a glass of ice water.
Actually, she’d probably kill just to get out of here. The thought wasn’t a pleasant one.
When her father had taught her how to shoot it had been for the express purposes of self-defence. She never thought she might actually have to wield a weapon to save her life — or to kill in order to do so.
But she would. She was prepared.
She thought.
She just really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
The two were still conversing, and Ingrid noticed suddenly that it was much brighter in the cavern. She glanced around, careful to keep one eye on her kidnappers, and saw all over the rocky cavern she was in some glowing, fungal-type pods on the walls had begun to, well, glow.
Huh. What could have triggered that?
She was intensely curious about the glowing fungus, but it wasn’t the time to do amateur botany. Or…microcology. Whatever the study of fungi was. She didn’t know. She wasn’t a botanist.
The phosphorescence was very strong, however — strong enough that Ingrid could finally see her kidnappers.
And neither of them were the creeper from the bar.
Shorty, who was closer to her, was very, very dark in complexion. Skin, hair, eyes. Actually, his eyes flashed gold when the light hit them at certain angles — but otherwise they were brown. His skin was dark brown, almost a true black, and his hair was a rich, woody brown, with hints of green in it — though that could have been from the light within the cavern.
Tall Stuff was even stranger. The voice had belonged to a woman, and she was easily seven feet tall. Her figure was willowy, and her skin had a deep blue sheen to it — that must have been a trick of the light. Ingrid couldn’t figure out what colour the woman’s skin actually was, but there was no way it was blue.
The woman’s hair was done tightly back in a braid and the shades immediately brought to mind a stormy sea: greens and blues and grays, all mingled together. On her forehead, she wore a bindi that looked remarkably like an actual third eye.
Her eyes were also not the unnatural blue of Mr. Bar Creeper. Ingrid couldn’t place the exact colour, but she knew what they weren’t.
Neither of them were the creeper. Which raised even more questions.
Like, were they working with the creeper? Or was he their lackey, more likely. Or were they the rescue team?
She was just about to consider that option when Shorty surged forward and reached for the weapon.