Taken By Terror by Lolita Lopez
Chapter One
I have to get out of here.
Shivering wet, Maisie ignored the constant spatter of raindrops and the muddy water swirling around her bare, cold feet. Intent on finishing her makeshift weapon before sunrise, she let the numb fingers of her left hand guide the work of her trembling right hand. The storm raging overhead had blocked out any moonlight. More than once, she had cut or smashed her fingers with the rock she was using to chip away at the animal bone she had uncovered in the muck of the outdoor cell. The pain kept her awake and alert, and she welcomed it.
The metal shackles around her wrists had started to rub nasty wounds into her skin. She feared they would grow infected if she spent much more time in this part of the prison camp, ankle deep in filth. After her fourth escape attempt, she had been chained to a tall metal pole in the center of the yard. The small uncovered area was surrounded by metal fencing at least three times her height topped with razor wire. Even if she could scale the fence, she wouldn’t get over it without inflicting a great deal of damage to her body, damage that would slow her down and make an escape impossible.
She glanced through the darkness to the other poles. All four of the others were empty now. The prisoners who had shared the space with her had either been sold or had finally succumbed to starvation and beatings. Alone and painfully aware of her situation, Maisie knew that her days were numbered. She either escaped, or she died.
Her next—and hopefully final—escape had to be soon. She wasn’t sure she had another attempt left in her. The constant exposure to the elements and the lack of nutritious and filling food had weakened her. Hunger gnawed at her belly. The rash that had erupted on her feet and lower legs itched mercilessly. She couldn’t sleep so her head throbbed relentlessly.
Her hands maintained their steady pace, sliding and scraping, but her thoughts ran wild. She had lost track of time at least nine, maybe ten, days ago. When they moved her between camps, from the larger prison camp to this smaller, more isolated one, she had been burning up with a fever. Her memories from that time were so fuzzy, and she wasn’t entirely sure how long she had been deliriously ill.
Her thoughts turned somber as she wondered what was happening back at the secret Splinter base her stepfather commanded. After that terrible night when Devious had been uncovered as a double agent and she had been taken into custody, the clock had started ticking down on the next midnight move. The mine had probably been cleared out by now, their illicit organization whisking away everything and everyone inside under the cover of darkness. She had seen it numerous times. Her entire childhood was nothing more than a series of frantic moves, dangerous firefights and temporary quarters in dingy closets or damp basements.
It wasn’t the life her mother had wanted for her. Of that, she was certain. Her mother’s death had been slow and agonizing as the cancer in her womb destroyed her from within. In those last few weeks, when she had still been able to lift her hands, she had assured Maisie that everything would be all right. She had promised Maisie that her stepfather would look after her and keep her safe.
Begrudgingly, she could admit that her stepfather had done that. He hadn’t loved or cared for her, but she was still alive. Somehow, through all the danger and risk of being part of a Splinter sympathizer’s family, she had survived. While he may have smacked her around a few times and let others treat her roughly, he had never allowed anyone to molest her. Not exactly praiseworthy behavior, but she supposed it was something.
Of course, her stepfather’s connections were the reason she was here, fighting to survive and escape before she was raped or killed or sold off to the highest bidder. Once he had seen the proof of her duplicity and her work with Devious, he had handed her over to the government thugs for safekeeping. Until he got word from higher up on the chain of Splinter command, he had wanted her miserable and suffering and far away from his base of operations.
Why Randy had decided to throw their family’s considerable wealth and power behind the Splinter movement was still a mystery to her. Communicating with him was almost impossible, mostly because he never made any effort to understand her. He was always irritated by the paper and pencil she carried and reduced their interactions to little more than gestures and lipreading.
Maisie still didn’t quite understand how things had gone so wrong. One minute she had been in bed, sleeping as peacefully as one could in a damp, musty mine, and the next, she had been tossed out of her bed onto the floor. Her stepfather hadn’t even tried to stop the Splinter asshole who had knocked her around and dragged her out of the room by her hair. Unable to hear what the men around her were yelling or to see their mouths, she had been completely blindsided and confused.
Until she saw Devious, bloodied and unconscious on the floor of the interrogation cell. Someone had bashed him to bits, and she had known then that he wasn’t getting out of that mine alive. In that moment, she had been sure she was going to end up right there next to him, bloody and dying. Instead, she had been tied up, hooded and hauled away.
And now I’m here.
And Devious is definitely dead.
And that meansTerror is never getting rescued.
Terror. The high value prisoner in the most secure cell in the mine. The man with one eye and terrible scars. The man she tapped out coded messages to while tending to his body and his cell. The man who had spit orange pulp in her face that first day and later seemed to look forward to her visits in much the same way she did. The man who had invaded her dreams and her thoughts and left her a confused mess.
Devious had intended to let Terror remain in captivity a little while longer. He never shared all of his plans with her, but when she had asked him how long he would let the torture and interrogation continue, he had admitted it wasn’t up to him. Someone above him had ordered Devious to stand down and wait.
That was the moment she had understood how truly stupid those men were. Devious just blindly followed his orders, trusting that someone else, someone more highly ranked, had made the correct decision. Even after Devious had confided in her that Terror had saved him more than once and that he owed him his life, he was willing to let Terror hang in that cell, starving and suffering.
Once she had realized that Devious was just as bad as the rest of them, she had made her choice. She was going to break Terror out, hide him in the woods with Red Feather friendlies, and get him back to his people. She had planned to hitch a ride with him and trade the information she had tucked away in her head for money and a ticket as far away from this sector of the galaxy as she could get. She didn’t care if she had to clean toilets on a space casino. She was done with her family and the war.
But the universe had other plans for her.
Plans that included someone betraying Devious and fingering him as a double agent and then exposing her as his accomplice. Not that anyone had ever asked her if she wanted to be his accomplice. No one ever asked her what she wanted or what she thought. They all ran roughshod over her and used her for their own benefit.
Irritated by the feeling of helplessness, she checked the sharp edge of the bone she had been honing against a rock. It seemed a bit macabre to use a bone in this way, but the materials available to her had been slim pickings. Satisfied with the edge to the bone knife, she started wrapping the handle with a long strip of fabric she had torn from her shirt. She needed to have a good grip when she attacked the guards. Cutting her hand deeply would only slow her down if she made it out of the camp and into the woods.
And then what?
She didn’t know. She had no idea where the camp was located or how far she was from a settlement. She would have to survive in the woods, try to navigate by the stars, and make her way to The City. After that, she needed to get off the planet, maybe to the colonies or even farther away.
Sound waves vibrated through her chest, and she paused her work for a moment. She couldn’t hear the thunder—couldn't hear anything, actually—but she could feel it. It seemed like an ominous warning, as if this deluge wasn’t a simple passing thunderstorm but something much more dangerous.
The claps of thunder continued, gaining in strength and frequency as the sound waves rippled through her body. Rain fell harder and faster, and she cursed the idiots who decided to build the camp at the bottom of a valley between two rows of high, sharp mountains. Her worried gaze drifted to the murky water rushing through the camp and across her outdoor cell. In a flash of lightning, she could see the shoddily built cells where the rest of the prisoners were kept. All of the prisoners inside—a mix of men, women and even young children—were standing on whatever they could find, desperately trying to get out of the quickly rising water.
She couldn’t hear them crying out for help, but she could see the panic in their eyes as the lightning flashed and thunder rumbled through the valley. A pair of headlights drew her attention away from the cells to the cinderblock building where the guards lived. Men in uniforms, most hastily dressed, were fleeing the building and piling into the vehicles parked nearby.
They’re abandoning us to die here.
Realizing this was about to get really bad, she tucked the makeshift knife into the back pocket of her dirty and ripped pants. Her worst fear was happening. It was a flash flood. All that rain was flushing down the mountains into the valley. She had seen floods like this before and knew how destructive they could be. There was a good chance the camp would be wiped off the map before it was over.
The storm raged, growing stronger and more violent with each passing minute. She kept a wary eye on the rising water level and tried to estimate how much time she had before the water was high enough to drown her. Frantic, she tugged on her chains, but it was futile. She couldn’t get loose.
The wind kicked up, swirling around the camp and flinging water and trash. She covered her face with her arm, shielding herself from the stinging water and garbage flying through the air. The water was over her ankles now, inching up her calves, and she started to shake with adrenaline and fear. The temperature of the water didn’t help matters any. She hissed as the frigid water soaked through her pants.
A pair of headlights suddenly beamed right in her direction. She peeked out from the cover of her arm to see the last two guards at the camp outside the fence. They seemed to be arguing, shouting and gesturing angrily. It became clear that one of them wanted to take her, probably because she was worth more alive than dead, and the other one wanted to get the hell out of the valley as quickly as possible. The one who wanted to take her won the argument, and he unlocked the gate and ran toward her, his boots sloshing water and mud in his wake.
When he got close, she tried to evade him. He was taller and stronger, better fed and rested, and he made quick work of snatching her by the arm and shoving her against the pole. He pressed his forearm to her throat, daring her to move, and she relented. While he fumbled with a keychain, she slipped her right hand into the back of her pants and gripped the shiv. Once she was unchained from the pole, she had to strike. It was the only chance she would get, and one against two were the best odds she could face.
He unshackled her cuffs from the longer chain attached to the pole and threw the chain aside. With a burst of energy, she struck, driving the sharpened tip of the shiv into his chest. By some miracle, she missed his ribs and slid straight into his heart. She felt the muscular organ give, and the shiv kicked back into her palm as his heart began to beat frantically. As flash of lightning revealed his shocked face, and she felt a small pang of guilt for taking his life.
But only a small one.
Taking his weapon from his hip holster, she kicked him in the gut with her bare foot and sent him tumbling backward into the filthy water to die. Without a second of hesitation, she turned toward the guard now rushing into the pen, flicked off the safety and fired four rounds, burying each one in his chest and gut. The second guard crumpled, grasping at his chest and belly as he dropped into the mud.
All the years of training with her stepbrothers, all the firefights she had narrowly escaped with her life, had all led to this moment. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t hesitate. She moved. Quickly. Pausing just long enough to strip the second guard of his weapon and keys before rushing out of the pen.
She glanced toward the cells packed with prisoners. She held up a hand as if to tell them to wait and dashed into the abandoned guardhouse. Evidence of how quickly they had decided to leave was everywhere. There was uneaten food on the tables and spilled drinks puddling on the floor. Whatever was coming, they must have decided it was better to face charges for abandoning their posts than to die.
She searched the guardhouse and found the security room. The door had been left open, and the green glow of screens drew her attention. Inside, she found keys to the cells on one wall and snatched them. Her gaze lingered on a radar image, and she tried to make sense of it. The storm on the radar looked huge and swirled evilly across the screen.
Spurred on by that discovery, she raced out of the guardhouse, across the prison yard and slid to a stop in front of the first cell. There were easily twenty people crammed into the space. She tried three keys before finding the correct one and jerked the door open, gesturing for all of them to flee. She ran to the other cell that seemed to have a similar number of prisoners, including children clinging to their mothers, and freed them, too.
One of the women, an older lady who had been kind to her the first day and who had assumed a leadership role among the camp, hugged her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. Maisie pressed the keys to the heavy trucks with the large canopied cargo areas into the woman’s hands and urged her to go, to take the prisoners and leave. The woman seemed confused, and she could barely make out the woman’s lips in the lightning as she questioned why Maisie wasn’t coming. Unable to explain, Maisie drew a target on her chest with her finger. The woman seemed to understand as she nodded slowly and backed away, holding Maisie’s gaze a moment before turning, grabbing a child and running toward the crowd of freed prisoners.
Maisie watched them load into the large trucks that had been left behind. Certain she had done all she could to help them, Maisie rushed back to the guardhouse and hastily changed into the smallest pair of pants and a shirt she could find. The only boots left behind were at least two sizes too big, but she layered on socks to make them fit better. A jacket and cap finished her stolen ensemble.
She wasted only enough time to grab a pack, stuff it with essentials like packaged food, a canteen, first aid kit and socks. Once she had the bare essentials, she searched the security room for maps and found a set of folded, laminated field maps jammed into a dusty corner on a shelf. There were tablets and other navigational tools that would have been more accurate, but she couldn’t risk being tracked by the devices syncing up with the government or Splinters.
Out in the storm, she stretched her jaw to ease the dull ache building in her ears. It was the same thing she experienced when flying, especially when leaving and entering the atmosphere of a planet. It hadn’t ever occurred to her that the same kind of pressure could happen with a storm.
A hard pellet of hail smacked her right in the forehead. Wincing, she put her arms up and tried to make herself the smallest target possible as she dashed into the woods. The intensity of the storm grew exponentially worse. The small hailstones morphed into larger and larger icy balls of pain. They whacked her hands and arms and pinged off her head and chest. The sting of the impacts left her on the verge of tears.
But she kept moving. The storm and its aftermath were the best cover she could ever hope for, and if she didn’t use it to her full advantage, she would regret it.
Instead of moving downhill, she trudged up the mountain, cutting through the heavy woods and finding some shelter from the hail under the thick canopy overhead. When the ground started to rumble underneath her boots, she grabbed onto a tree trunk and held tight as the mountain shook violently. The flashes of lightning lit up the sloping side of the mountain, and she watched in fascinated horror as a river of mud, water and broken trees rushed down into the valley. The destructive force of the flood shocked her.
With each bolt of lightning, she watched the flood move lower and lower until it crashed into the prison camp. From her vantage point, she could see the buildings blown off their foundations and the cells crumpling in on themselves. If the guards hadn’t decided to take her, she would have been caught in that maelstrom of debris and water. She would have died along with all of the other prisoners. She could only pray that they had made it far enough away and up to high enough ground not to be swept away in the crush of floodwater.
The mountain shook so violently that she fell forward onto her hands and knees. She grasped for purchase, grabbing handfuls of leaves and mud until she caught hold of a tree root. She held tight as the entire mountain seemed to tilt. Pressed against the ground, she could feel the incredible vibrations. She closed her eyes and hoped that she wasn’t about to take a ride down the side of the mountain.
As the rumbling passed, she staggered to her feet, leaning heavily on a tree. Her head ached, and she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. Each flash of lightning revealed the horror that had just occurred. The entire side of the mountain had sheered right off in a gigantic landslide. It was just...gone.
Determined that her life wasn’t going to end here on this godforsaken mountain, she turned away from the violent flood swirling below and shoved away from the tree. She didn’t care how far or how long she had to walk, she was getting off this mountain and off this planet—or she would die trying.
