Michelle was out there, and he was trapped here by protocol and procedure while she faced hell alone.
The waiting would destroy him long before any feral got the chance.
2
Michelle snapped awake to slimy, wet bark cold against her cheek.
Her wrists burned where thick vines bit into her skin, the bindings looped around a rough post that scraped her shoulder blades. White-hot pain detonated from her broken leg, and she bit down hard, tasting copper.
Harsh male voices cut through the blur of agony. Laughter first, then crude promises.
"I go first. Hold her still."
"Keep her breathing till we're back. Then we break her."
Pain slammed her back into memory…
The second construction site, three hours before dawn. The hum of the generator and the diesel stink thick in the humid air. Survey cables snaking over churned mud like black veins. She'd been checking the sensor readings when a shadow fell wrong in the corner of her eye… one that didn't fit with the others. Too long… moving against the light.
The bald head had emerged from the treeline first. Black plating crawled up half his face like an oil slick, crusted and gleaming. His elbow bent the wrong way as his arm scissored toward her—extra joints that flexed spider-smooth. Instinct driving her, she'd yelled a warning to the others and grabbed the first thing she could reach. The drill had felt heavy in her hands, twenty pounds of steel and torque.
The feral had burst from the treeline like something unleashed from hell, twisted limbs eating up distance in impossible strides. Liam and Caleb had tried to stop him, shouting warnings and grabbing tools. But it swatted Liam aside with a casual backhand, sending him sprawling. Caleb lasted only a few seconds longer, swinging rebar that clanged uselessly off black plating before he was thrown into a concrete barrier. The sickening crack echoed across the site. Then those burning red eyes had locked onto her—she was the target.
He reached her. Loomed over her, and all she could do was look up at him.
When he'd twisted her leg, the snap had sent white light exploding behind her eyes, bile rushing up her throat. She'd screamed as she rammed the bit straight into his plating. It had penetrated deep; rust-colored blood splattering across her clothes, scalding and metallic as it dotted her neck. She’d gasped as the drill bucked in her hands, vibrating through her arms as it ground against armor. Heat saturated the cloth, making her fingers slippery. She retched, squinted through the splatter, and pushed deeper regardless.
He'd laughed. Actually laughed. Then yanked the drill from her hands and lifted her like she weighed nothing, slinging her over his shoulder. A vicious twist to her leg had dropped her into blackness.
Now her vision cleared and she saw she was in a clearing ringed by dense forest. Three figures moved in the corner of her eye. The abductor was the same… bald skull gleaming, black armor crusted over half his face and chest. His limbs stretched too long, joints bending in places that didn’t make any sense. His eyes burned a sick, inflamed red in the growing dusk as he looked over the fire toward her. Grim satisfaction filled her at the rust-brown flecks still dotting the black-thickened skin of his armor where her drill had found its mark.
She didn't look at them. No eye contact. No talking. That would only make it worse. She scooted around, curling up as though she were leaning sideways against the post instead of having her back to it. To anyone looking, she was curled up and terrified.
Which, to be fair, she was, but it didn't mean her brain had stopped working.
Her gaze dropped to the thick vines binding her wrists. Three loops wrapped tight around the post behind her, rough bark scraping her knuckles as she tested the bonds. Shit. The knot was just out of reach.
She twisted more until her arms screamed. And… there… she just managed to brush the knots with her fingertips, enough that she could work the angle out by touch.
Crap. No way was she undoing them, not from this angle. She needed to cut the vines.
Her eyes swept the area for anything sharp. The ferals lounged too far away to matter, and from what she could see, they didn’t have any blades anyway. Why would they need them? Those claws did all their cutting for them.
Then she saw it: a sharp-edged rock half-buried in the loam, just within toe reach if she stretched. Inching her boot toward it, she waited for their laughter to spike and the wind to gust through the canopy. Pain exploded through her leg at the movement, and a small whimper slipped out before she could stop it.
Three heads snapped her way.
“Scream, little meat,” the mean one crooned, standing and taking a few steps closer. His voice was like gravel in a blender. “The rain eats it.”
She went statue-still, her eyes fixed on the dirt between her knees. Shit, shit, shit. Don’t react. Don’t give them anything.
She held her breath, every muscle locked in place as seconds crawled by like hours. The jumpy one’s eyes lingered on her face, then dropped to scan the disturbed earth around her feet again. Her lungs burned. Her heart hammered so hard she was sure they could hear it over the rain drumming on the leaves above.
Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t even think too loud.
The feral’s nostrils flared as he tested the air, head tilting like a predator catching an interesting scent. One step closer and he’d spot the rock’s absence, see the fresh scrapes in the dirt where she’d dragged it toward herself.
Finally, he turned away with a dismissive grunt, wandering back toward the center of the clearing where the other two waited. Shit... she let go of the breath she’d been holding and uncurled her fingers, revealing the rock in her palm. It had split cleanly down its center. One half was smooth river stone, the other a jagged blade where something had cleaved it apart. She tested the edge. Not much, but better than nothing. Dropping her hand between her body and the post, to where the vine wrapped around the wood, she began tiny, silent strokes, cutting when the wind masked the sound and pausing whenever it went still. The outer fibers fuzzed and shredded under the makeshift blade, but the core strands held tight.
