Chill Factor

One thing I could tell-he believed what he was saying. Lewis was speaking from the heart, speaking with unmistakable passion. He wanted me to understand. To become a true believer.

"They're corrupted," he said. "I'm not talking about individuals… there are still a lot of good Wardens, who believe in what they're doing. But it can't last. Power corrupts. You know that better than most anyone; you faced down Bad Bob and Star. You know it's rotten at its heart."

"You're so full of shit." I wobbled up to bare feet and took up a belligerent stance that was only a little compromised by having to lean myself against the wall. My collarbone shrieked a protest at the move, but I ignored it. A shivering coat of sweat broke out on my forehead. "Listen to yourself, Lewis. You think you're the good guys? You stood by while my heart stopped! Qui

"Yeah, but we gave you five grand after," Qui

"You're one to talk."

Ooooh, wrong thing to say. Qui

No, but I was ready to adjust my sails to the prevailing wind. I turned back to Lewis. "What makes the Ma'at any better? They wear more expensive suits? They're all bitter old men too moral to sin?"

"No," he said quietly. "They don't have enough power to be tempted. They're all below the line that the Wardens consider as a material gift."

He walked slowly over to me and put a hand under my elbow. I didn't know why until I realized my knees had started to buckle. He guided me gently back down to the bed, lifted my legs, and got me prone again. My head throbbed so hard I saw flashes of red behind my eyes, and bit back a groan.

"She needs a doctor," Lewis said somewhere beyond the strobe effect of my headache. Qui

"We've got bigger problems. Look, just patch her up and let's get moving. We don't have time for this."

"I said that she needs a doctor." When Lewis got that particular tone, it wasn't worth wasting the breath to argue. "See to it."

I cracked open my eyelids to look through the lashes. Qui

"You don't need to be getting sidetracked here." he said. Lewis didn't answer. "We can't get lost in the details. We're in the game now, and you know the stakes. If she gets in the way-"

"Qui

Qui

"A month ago, I could've fixed this in two seconds," he said.

"A month ago, I wouldn't have needed it," I whispered. "Lewis?"

"Yeah."

"When did being the good guys include contracting murder?"

No answer. He was staring off toward the sunset, his face lit with gold and orange.

The saddest eyes I've ever seen.

"Lewis?"

"You don't understand." He didn't look at me. "Rest."

I didn't want to, but eventually, I slept.

With no sense of transition, I was somewhere else. I was limping, although pain was a distant, muffled sensation. My skin was red and abraded, my white T-shirt tattered and filthy, sweatpants ripped and stained.

I limped along a deserted road, one painful step at a time, and overhead the sun kept staring down. No wind. No birds. No sound at all. It was like being in a dead world, and I was dead too, I just didn't know it yet.

Dust hung like talcum powder in the still, dry air, and everything tasted like burned insulation.

I stopped, turned, and looked behind me. A ragged black ribbon of asphalt stretched toward the dim horizon. It was scoured gray in places by the wind, and there was a wreck of a car thrown off to the side. Paint gone. Nothing but junk.

I knew where this was. In the thin shade of that wreck was the body of Chaz Ashworth, and I couldn't be here; this was past, this was long past… Oh, God get me out of here, I don't want to be here… .

Panic surged along my nerves. It felt both over-amped and slow, dream-terror moving like cold molasses but packing the same intensity as waking fear. I was thirsty, overwhelmingly thirsty, and I ached all over, and I couldn't be here. I had to wake up, wake up, wake…

I turned and kept limping. There was shelter in the distance. A tumbled confusion of rocks that promised darkness and relief from the killing sun.

One agonizing step at a time, whimpering. Crawling, by the time I reached it, my knees and forearms scraping raw on rock and burning on sand.

Time sped up, the way time does in dreams, and I was inside, huddled against the cool darkness, shuddering in relief.

In the dream, my mind didn't know what was coming, but my body did, my nerves were screaming in panic, trying to drive me out of sleep and into the light. Better to die out there, food for ants and vultures and at the end a clean return to the earth, than go into the dark…

But I couldn't stop myself. The part of me that decided to move wasn't the part that knew the future.

I heard the steady, whispering drip of water, and it pulled me on into the shadows. I was too weak to pull water from the dry air; badly injured, I needed to drink to survive.

I crawled for some period of time, don't even know how long; all that mattered was finding the water. Finding something that didn't hurt. I heard the tinkling sound getting closer, and crawled toward it in the darkness…

… and was blinded by a sudden hot flare of light.

Hands. Hands in the dark, dragging me down. The stranger slammed my head into the wall, and things went gray and soft, and in the white flare of his flashlight I saw my burned, bleeding fingers scrabbling at the rock.

Digging for rescue, like the woman in the sand.

What are you doing here?

My throat was too dry to do more than croak.

Who do you work for?

I couldn't see him. He was just a vague shadow behind the light, no particular height, no particular build. A baseball cap and stained blue jeans. The smell of leather and sweat and blood. I knew him. I'd seen him before.

What do you know?

He dragged me over sharp-edged gravel and dumped me facedown in a pool of water so cold it shocked me back to consciousness. I gasped, breathed water, rolled over coughing, and then turned back to suck down greedy mouthfuls of the clean, pure taste.

He was pacing behind me, kicking rocks. The flashlight beam bounced wildly off of rock, off of boxes stacked against the far wall. Off of scuttling insects fleeing a false and unwelcome day.

The mouthful or two of water I had time to swallow wasn't enough to cure me of thirst, and I was weak and exhausted and confused. I didn't even realize he had me until I felt the cold bite of the knife, panicked as I realized it was slicing away the tough elastic of my jog bra.

Cold cave air on my bare breasts.

Tell me how much you know.

His name was Orry. I knew his name, because Chaz had told me in the car. I'd delivered myself to the same fate Chaz had intended for me; of course I had, I'd been less than a minute away from the rendezvous when I'd called the wind…

I fought. The second time he hit me, I fell into the darkness, screaming, weeping, mourning. Trying not to feel what was happening to me. I wanted to leave, to wake up, but it hurt too much, and pain brought me back to the cave, to the darkness, to the knife.