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He'd killed leopards and three trained gladiators even before receiving training at a school, had said the one thing he'd known was fighting. That hinted at quite a bit of training of his own, but he hadn't mentioned what it was. She wondered what he'd been, before the murder accusation had landed him in the arena. Why had he been in this particular city in the first place, if he couldn't speak the language?
He'd said nothing to indicate he'd been anything but a free man until the arena. Try as she could, Aelia couldn't come up with a good reason for a man who couldn't speak the native language to have traveled voluntarily to a place like this. He couldn't have been a merchant, not without the ability to negotiate trade terms.
A soldier? That made more sense than anything else she could come up with. A mercenary might not need significant language skills to make a living. Of course, after what had happened, Rufus didn't have many career options open to him, even if he did manage to obtain his freedom.
Something about that statement reverberated oddly through her. She closed her eyes and chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. Career options... Something about loss of career options... Instead of chasing it down, she tried letting her mind go blank. The first thing that came into her head was a voice.
"In light of this scandal, you will be dropped from the degree program."
Degree program? That almost made sense.
She swallowed against reflexive nausea, trying just to clear her thoughts again, and waited to see what might bubble out of her dark memory. Her own voice replied to the half-remembered statement.
"You can't! I didn't do anything wrong!"
Whoever had spoken, he wasn't present. At least, she couldn't see him. But she could hear his voice, over the instrument she held. Something familiar about that instrument. The chill in the man's voice reminded her of something hideously unpleasant that had happened to her—recently, if the impression were correct.
The disembodied voice said, "Just because there was insufficient evidence to convict does not mean this department absolves you of guilt. The reputation of this university must be maintained. You have seriously jeopardized it."
"What happened to i
The voice said icily, "You are out of the degree program."
A faint, remembered click told her he was gone.
So was the memory, except for a lingering impression she'd discovered something terribly important about the man called Bartlett. Whoever he was. Just thinking his name caused pain to mushroom inside her head and sickness to rise like a tidal wave toward her throat.
In the dark cell, Aelia wrapped arms around herself and shivered. For long moments, she did nothing but breathe and blank her thoughts. Nausea rumbled, then reluctantly subsided. Clearly, she had enemies, dangerous ones, who had smashed up her life even before... this.
"Who am I?" she whispered in the darkness.
And who had hated—or feared—her enough to damage her mind and sell her into slavery? Aelia had no answers, not to that question or to any of the others buzzing angrily through her numbed brain.
She realized with a sinking sensation that getting those answers might be the most important thing she ever did.
Logan woke up in a cell.
The first thing he did was groan. The second thing he did was wish he hadn't. His mouth tasted vile and his head throbbed. A raging thirst drove him to try and sit up. For a moment he swayed drunkenly and nearly toppled off a narrow bunk. He stared at it for a moment, wondering who had dumped him on it and when, then managed to put out hands to steady himself. The room still lurched in front of his eyes. He shook his head, which only made matters worse.
Drugged...
Logan dug fingers into a rough wool blanket and mumbled an oath around thick fuzz on his tongue. He remembered needles, sweating dark faces... No, that was wrong, he wasn't in Ethiopia, hadn't been there for a long, blurry span of years.
"Gotta think..."
Someone else had ordered him drugged this time. He scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands and tried to remember. A face hovered just beyond the edge of consciousness, a face with an implacable, angry voice attached to it. An American, a uniformed colonel...
Collins. The man's face swam more clearly into his memory. Then he remembered the needles, the struggle to escape, the questions and his helpless, babbling answers... .
Logan snarled softly and shoved himself to his feet. At least they'd taken off the manacles. He rubbed his wrists, which ached and throbbed all the way to his fingertips. His feet were swollen inside his te
He relieved himself first and fumbled awkwardly with the buttons on the coverall. His fingers were so swollen and painful, they didn't want to function properly. He slaked his thirst at the sink and doused his whole head in an effort to clear away the lingering fuzziness in his mind. Slowly he wrung water from his hair and beard, then just as slowly straightened and leaned against the wall. His legs wobbled. He wondered if his captors intended to feed him, or pla
He dragged a dry sleeve across his wet face and worked on ignoring the emptiness in his belly. It was one fine mess he'd gotten himself into this time, that was for sure. From a Florida thunderstorm to a military lockup somewhere in the Arctic, and not even a halfway lucid explanation as to why.
No, things weren't looking good at all. He wondered with a flush of dull anger what they'd learned while he was under the Pentothal. Not much, he'd wager. He couldn't divulge secrets he didn't possess. Which brought him to the logical question of how he had gotten here. And where was "here"? Obviously some sort of high-security installation. Collins had threatened to charge him with espionage and attempted sabotage. Somebody had one helluva secret to hide.
Logan wondered if his little accident could somehow be tied to it, then shook his head. Not likely. He'd just as soon believe Martians had taken over the U.S. military as believe the government—any government, for that matter—had access to something powerful enough to scoop him up and dump him through both space and time.
Which brought him back to the question of where he was. Greenland? Alaska? There weren't very many other places the U.S. could put a military base as far north as he suspected this place was. And Logan didn't think the terrain in Greenland matched what little he'd seen of his "landing zone." Too mountainous and too wooded. Greenland was mostly just one big glacier.
Logan swore and lurched back to bed. There had to be some sort of explanation for all this. He had a sinking feeling that unless he came up with one, he was in for more sessions with the needles. And since he might never come up with the answer... . He rubbed the lingering ache in his biceps and the crook of his arm, where the needles had gone in, and fought a shudder that wanted to crawl up his spine. The very best he could hope for was a return to the hospital. He shut his eyes and leaned back against the wall. Bleakness tasting of death settled over him, heavy and shroud-like.
Once they put him back in, they'd never let him out again.
He was only marginally aware of the harshness of his breathing as he struggled with memories of straitjackets, isolation cells, drug therapy... . Unconsciously Logan wrapped arms around himself and squeezed his eyes more tightly shut. Why had he been allowed to taste freedom, if he had to give it up all over again? He'd almost adjusted to... that... once. He didn't think he could do it a second time.