Indentured (Book 2 of the Dana Halliday series)

KOLQOR'S PROPHECY. RIGHT BLAMMIN FOON. DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE.

"Doctor," Dross greeted me after we were taken, minus our bags, to the other side of the amphitheater. "Can I suggest thinking before you speak?"

I glared at the back of the rock, where Hanover was sermonizing further about the Fallen and Kolqor's Prophecy and other apparently nonsensical things. "He was going to put us over here anyway."

Tem gave a low moan, quickly suppressed. I glanced at the pregnant Sturv woman, getting only a warning glower from Hul.

"What's he talking about, Dross?" I indicated Hanover. "What's going on in his head?"

One of our guards grumbled as he walked by, and Dross sighed. "I'll tell you later."

Eventually, a decade or so later, we were loaded back onto the hovercraft. I watched out a window, dread fermenting in my stomach, as we flew back over the dam and landed next to the embryonic River Luss. Here was the back door to the cavern we'd seen from the cliff above.

The light was fading when we were herded off the vessel, and into what turned out to be a tunnel. Flickering electric lights blinked on from the low ceiling.

I still have nightmares about that tunnel.

It was a wide, solid hallway leading back to the cavern and the men's living area. It was chilly, and damp enough to make one want to ask—again—about the qualifications of the electrician who'd installed the anemic lights.

It was also lined with hanging corpses.

I stopped short, long enough to cause one of the men escorting us to poke me in the ribs with his shotgun. I managed to walk on, fighting to hold back a scream and hyperventilating instead.

"Just look at the floor," Dross advised from behind me, in an oddly gentle voice. I didn't have enough cognitive function for any sarcasm; I could only whimper like a puppy.

The corpses were dried-out husks still in clothing, but they were perfectly recognizable. There was an Oploki woman in civilian clothes, and a Tirzen in dusty, forest green robes and an ebony mask. There were all four races of Bruttar, feathers dull and disheveled. There was a huge Pemlo'hban woman, now a rug of golden-brown fur. A tangled mass of shriveled appendages dangled from a concave shell: an Eisk. There was a Cennett, a woman with rosy skin and four breasts. There were a few others I hadn't yet seen.

I was just feeling a crazy pinch of relief that the Cennett woman wasn't Kleathanna—the corpse had black hair in a pixie-style cut and was wearing what looked like a military uniform of some kind, so the unfortunate woman hadn't been a Gratifier—when I got a closer look at the red-scaled Bruttar body.

It was Perineb Ollo.

I couldn't be totally sure—I really only got a few seconds' look—but the body was wearing Kez's prison grays.

I flashed back to my search for Perineb after the earthquake, Fid the Gardener telling me she'd been sold to the monsters in the mountains.

The insane little creep had been telling the truth.

And after that, there was a bewildering variety of bodies my reeling mind finally decided were Sturv, but many were like none I'd seen: all had the round heads and huge eyes—dull and dead and sunken—but one had external ears, one had a rather bulbous nose, another had ivory skin and wispy white hair...

It only took a few minutes to run the gauntlet of the dead, but it seemed to take hours, horror-movie slo-mo hours. When we finally arrived at a row of four cells on either side of the tunnel, I allowed myself to be locked into the largest one without protest. I was too numb.