“Tara,” Corey objected.
“No, hear me out, Corey.” She held up a hand. “We lost her and then we jumped for nine months, we’ve been sitting here twiddling our thumbs for two weeks. We don’t know how long it’s been for her there. We were gone all of thirteen hours and we spent two centuries in there. People do change, Corey.”
“It doesn’t matter, we go for Kate,” Trip growled.
“Not Kate, she can’t possibly—” Corey began.
“We were given that vision for a reason!” Tara debated as they sputtered and argued over her.
“HOLD IT!” Dirk bellowed. “Enough! We will do reconnaissance and we will know when the time comes. We can’t second-guess ourselves. Kate is an important member of this team and we don’t leave our teammates behind. We go for Kate. We stay smart and flexible, but recovering Kate is our primary mission. Got it?”
Tara mashed her lips together and gave a curt nod.
Thick tension broiled in the room. Trip and Corey could barely look at each other. Tara bounced her foot, ready to crucify Kate. Kate remained a definite unknown in the whole picture. And Mel was obviously pregnant, she didn’t know it yet, but Eunavae could tell. She had spent 170 years as midwife to her 68 live births. The signs were there for Mel and the Keepers. This team strained at its seams, on the edge of breaking apart. Eunavae almost wished herself back with the Chartreuse team, playing communication games. Almost.
“I have a question,” she ventured.
Dirk worked his jaw, clearly still agitated and turned his intimidating glare to her. She cleared her throat and hurried on. “What does the Quantum Field do to pregnancies?” She glanced at Mel. “I mean the only one I know of who went through pregnant is Mel, but she was coming back from our two century jump, not going in.”
Mel creased her brow in confusion, the loss of the baby still difficult for her.
“I, uh, I don’t think it’s ever been tested,” Dirk stuttered.
“It’s fine. No issues going in. The Quantum Matrix just won’t allow foreign particles to come back through. It has a scan of what we were genetically when we went through and it resets us to that scan. The fetus will go back to the previous level of development,” Corey explained.
“But Corey, what if the baby is born on the other side? Will it ever be able to cross over to our side?”
“Theoretically, no,” Corey answered, then snapped his attention to Eunavae. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I’d bet my shiny new title as Healer that Mel’s pregnant.”
They all turned to gawk at Mel. She dropped her jaw, putting her hand to her womb. She looked at Donnie and they beamed at each other.
“Crap!” Dirk tapped his cell phone. “Chaps! We gotta put Mel on infirmary status now!”
Chaps buzzed over the phone.
“Why does his cell work?” Eunavae asked Corey.
“QM fields are off for another,” he glanced at the clock, “two and a half minutes.”
“Yeah, now. We can’t risk her going in.” Dirk snapped his cell shut. “Mel get out of here. Chaps doesn’t know how long it will take for the request to go through. You can’t be here when the sphere falls, just in case.”
Mel jumped up, kissed Donnie and ran out of the screen door crying happy tears.
“Congrats!” Eunavae called after her.
Donnie’s shocked face broke into a wide smile.
QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): DONNIE DUDGEON
A dad! I’m a dad, again!
The idea of having a family on this side of the Quantum Field filled Donnie with hope and joy. He wanted to follow Mel out of the screen door and walk away from all of this. Go make a life somewhere and be a family, but he stayed, committed to this family, this team of brothers and sisters—that is what they had become, somehow. They fought and had disagreements, but that just made them stronger. No one held back. Honest people have different opinions and aren’t afraid to state them. Donnie trusted this group of people with his life.
When the sphere took them out of First Cabin just a minute after Mel ran out, it set them down on Crescent Bay again. No one acted surprised. Instead of making camp on the beach like last time, they decided to explore the cave system. They hiked to the cavern that Trip and Corey had explored on their last jump to the dragon world. Divided into teams, they investigated.
Three corridors branched off of a central cave area with a smooth sandy floor. Dirk decided they would make camp there to have quick access to all three exits. They all agreed to the perfect setup for surveillance.
Trip and Eunavae trailed down the corridor to the right. Dirk and Tara took the left passage, and Donnie and Corey grabbed flashlights and began the steep climb of the third.
They walked in silence for a while saving their breath and energy for the stiff climb. When the ascent began to level out, Corey breeched a subject that Donnie had given a lot of thought to.
“Have you noticed the way Tara and Mel treat me since their Scriptorium experience?”
“Yeah. Like a friend who is dying of cancer or something?” Donnie said.
“Exactly.”
“I’ve never seen Tara be so touchy-feely,” Donnie interjected. “She’s downright mushy with you.”
Corey snorted, but he had noticed it too. It made him a bit queasy at times wondering what they had actually seen in their Scriptorium experience. “I think she got all maternal on me in Poland.”
“Maybe.” Donnie let it drop. But her actions toward Corey surprised him. After witnessing his death in the Scriptorium, Tara evidently decided to savor every moment she had with him. Donnie noticed the same behavior with Mel toward Corey. They didn’t hold back any affection or kind words from him. It made him realize that despite Mel’s comforting words to Kate about it all being a metaphor, she believed it just as the dream predicted. Tara believed it too.
It made Donnie fearful of losing him. They trudged side by side and Donnie gave him a sidelong study. Corey felt like a brother to him and was vital to the team, but Corey had secrets that he hadn’t shared with any of them. Donnie had suspected as much since Kate’s family funeral. He wondered how losing Corey would affect the village, their team, everything.
It just can’t happen. I won’t let it happen.
Daylight filtered through dust particles at the cave opening. Pressing against the sides of the cave wall, they peered over a ledge into a sheer drop. A ravine sliced between two cliff walls, and at the bottom, a thin sickly stream passed through a slave camp. Humanoids were prodded into service by the strange beasts that Trip labeled the ‘Rhinodudes’.
Donnie grimaced as a slave stumbled forward, shoved by a guard. The slave turned and lifted his bucket as if to strike the Rhinodude. A stiff prod to his stomach, and a neon green flash of electricity shot from the tip of the prod. The slave slumped forward, lethargic, but upright. The guard barked orders, and the slave placidly turned around, picked up his bucket and fell into the long queue lumbering up elaborate scaffolding erected on the far cliff.
Emaciated, they strained under the load of labor inflicted on them.
“The skinnier ones have more tattoos,” Corey observed.
“What does that mean?”
“I think it suggests that the tattoo process occurs over time,” Corey said, tension lacing his tone.
Donnie snapped his attention to his friend. Corey’s face, sketched with a mixture of horror and holy zeal ticked. His hand gripped the pom of his sword, fingers blanching.
“Come on. Let’s go back and report what we’ve seen.”
They had a much easier trip back to the campsite, downhill the entire way.
The first back, Corey sorted through supplies to cook the evening meal. Donnie started up the camp stove and put on a pot of coffee.
The other teams both trickled in over the next thirty minutes and they gathered in a circle to share what they had seen.
“Our tunnel branched off. One direction ended in a cavern full of
Rhinodudes. Talk about stench! Ugh!” Trip started. “We backed slowly out of that one and took the other branch that led upward a bit.”
“Yeah, it came out on the face of the cliff about six feet from the ground.” Eunavae picked up the story when Trip took a swig from his coffee cup. “They keep the slaves in bamboo cages. Just before we left, they started packing them in like sardines. Not even room for them to sit down, except in the last cage, there were only four people.”
“You would think they would spread them out for comfort, but no.”
“Sad. Their faces were so hopeless.” Eunavae gulped and set her plate down, barely touched.
Trip picked up. “The Rhinodudes seemed to take orders from a green dragon.”
Dirk nodded. “Tara and I saw that too. Our tunnel came out on top of the cliff by some outcroppings and boulders.”
“It’s exactly what Mel and I saw in our Scriptorium,” Tara choked out, and reached over to touch Corey. “The scaffolding, the slaves, the dragons, everything.”
“Don’t worry, Tara. I don’t have any plans of dying up there. We are here to get Kate and get out, okay?” Corey took her hand to reassure her.
She didn’t look convinced, but she kissed his cheek and gave him a big hug for the effort.
His face registered surprise and concern and he made eye contact with Donnie.
“We will set up a regular stakeout and watch them. Find out their routines, changing of the guard, gather any information we can. The rest of us will spend our time combing these caves for Kate during the day and take shifts sleeping at night.” Dirk laid out the plan. “Any questions, suggestions?”
The Keepers shook their heads.
“I’ll take first watch,” Trip volunteered. The rest of the team broke up to find a place to sleep.
They watched the site at night in shifts from the middle corridor exit. With no easy way to reach the ledge from the outside, they were safe there. It had the best view of the cages and camp site of the Rhinoguards. Four days and five nights, they watched, combed the caverns, searching for Kate.
On the fifth night, Donnie settled into his usual notch in the opening of the cave to keep watch. Not much happened at night, the humans, locked up like animals in cages, slept soundly. The Rhinoguards stood watch, one between each cage. Donnie’s stomach churned at the stench of decay, excrement, and filth rising out of the gorge.
Donnie watched for his normal three hours and expected Corey to spell him any minute. He didn’t arrive at his scheduled shift. Donnie figured he’d slept in. He and Tara had trained pretty hard earlier. Determined to whip Corey into his pre-concussive state, she relentlessly worked him. Donnie huffed, in his mind Corey had fully recovered. Tara saw some weakness that Donnie didn’t and put Corey through his paces without mercy. He probably needed to sleep in.
After a couple of hours he began to get droopy and stood up inside the shadow of the cave opening. He swung his arms and flexed his legs to get some blood pumping. Tara would come to spell Corey in another hour. He could wait that long.
She didn’t come.
Officially worried!
Donnie crept back down the corridor toward the cave where they had made camp. The fire had burned out and all of the sleeping bags were empty. He threw back the flap of the tent where Tara and Eunavae should’ve been sleeping. Empty!
He swept his flashlight across the site and examined the dirt on the cave floor. No sphere blast on the ground, footprints still evident of their habitation, Donnie’s anxiety grew. Then he saw them.
Footprints that were not human!
Enormous cloven hooved prints led to the corridor at the base of the cliffs. Donnie hurried to the highest observation point to get a different angle. Sure enough, there sat his team tied back to back at the feet of a large green dragon.
QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): COREY CHASTAIN
I stared into the whirling eyes of the green dragon. “Dagan? Is that you?”
The dragon lowered his head dangerously and looked me up and down with his right eye. “You!” He roared in my head as well as my ears. “You stole The Mother! You must die!”
“It’s Dagan,” I murmured to the team. I heard Trip crack his knuckles and swear under his breath.
“Where is Kate? You filthy rotten kitty cat, if you’ve hurt her I’ll kill you!” Trip struggled with the ropes.
“Trip, stop it! The ropes are just getting tighter around the rest of us. Quit moving!” Tara commanded.
He settled down but kept up a stream of curses.
“The stinky one is back.” Dagan still projected his thoughts to me.
One of the Rhinoguards jabbed Trip with his electrode spear and Trip went limp behind me. We were close enough to the cages to catch snippets of murmurs. The people in the cage spoke the language of Jewel City.
“Are they speaking Ampelese?” I murmured to Tara. She nodded with a pointed arch of her brow.
As dawn broke, the slaves were let out of their cages one at a time per guard, fed a soupy gruel and tattooed in a different place. The tattoos were paints, not permanent, more like henna paintings in blues and greens, meticulously applied. Up close I could see where earlier markings had faded and the newer tattoos layered over them.
I kept watching for Kate but couldn’t find her. “Dagan, you once liked me. Do you remember that?”
“You stole The Mother. You must pay.”
“I did help Kate to escape, but she didn’t want to be The Mother. She wanted to be my wife, Dagan. I married her. Not the stinky one. Do you remember that you once wanted her to choose me?”
“Lies! She was Mine. She was not for you.”
Okay, that is obviously the wrong tactic. Dagan never liked Trip. Kate said because he had killed so much in the arena, Dagan could smell death on him. He did like me, though. He used to call me the funny one. I guess I’m not so funny anymore.
The Rhinoguards herded the slaves off to work on the scaffolding. “Dagan, do these creatures work for you?”
He snorted, and static electricity charged the air. Tara’s hair began to rise.
“They work for The Mother.”
“So you got a new Mother after Kate left?”
“No. She was Mined. She is The Mother.”
My heart sank. He stole Kate and put her back to work on that chair, drained as the source battery for the psychic energy of the dragons. Desperation lanced through me. I had to get to her.
“Dagan, can I see The Mother?”
“She has plans for you. You will see at her command.”
Again my stomach lurched. I didn’t know what to think. If Kate was the Mother again and intended us to be her slaves, tied up and pressed into labor, then I didn’t know what we would do.
“Tara, Dagan said that Kate is the Mother again.”
“Corey!” Her tone warned. “You know how that thing changed her the last time, and she only stayed hooked up to it for a few hours. If she has been attached to that chair for weeks, months even, then she is no longer Kate. She is lost to the Mother.”
“I don’t know where she is exactly.” I didn’t want to hear of Kate being lost. I couldn’t bear the thought.
Two of the Rhinoguards approached us and released Dirk from the ropes and then secured his hands behind him again as they shoved him forward.
They stripped him naked and forced him to his knees for the first tattoo. They painted a design on his abs and led him off to the work line.
They came for Tara next. She gave me her characteristic arched brow and pressed her lips tightly together.
“Tara, I’m so sorry,” I whispered, embarrassed for the nakedness she’d endure.
“Corey, I’m used to being naked in front of people. The arena took care of that. You and Eunavae need to hold your shoulders back and clothe yourselves with pride. Don’t let them take your dignity.”
Eunavae whimpered beside me.
“She’s right.” I finally understood Tara’s fascination with pr
ide.
“Corey, I spent the last 50 years hiding my burn scars from public scorn. The scars on my skin may be gone, but the scars in my heart remain. I can’t do this.”
I turned to her as much as the restraints would allow. “You’re the strongest woman I know, Eunavae. You’re a healer. Nudity is not a problem for you. Remember that.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “Thank you, Corey. I’ll try.”
The Rhinoguards came for Eunavae, then Trip, and they saved me for last.
“You have watched the humiliation of your friends, no? Now see what you have done to Kate.” Dagan thought spoke to me.
A commotion arose, and two Rhinoguards strode from the cave towing heavy chains behind them. At the end of the chain came my wife. Naked and covered in the vile tattoos, she stumbled forward, head and shoulders down.
“Kate!”
She lifted her head. “Corey?” Her face broke into a look of hope until she saw my restraints. She ran to me and flung her cuffed arms around my neck.
“Corey, Corey, I have worried about you so much.” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she kissed my face.
“Kate, thank God, you’re okay.” I kissed her, struggling with the ropes around my wrists. I wanted to hold her, locking her to my side.
“Kate,” Trip screamed from where three Rhinoguards held him down for the tattoos. “Kate!”
She stepped around me and stood in front of Trip. I wanted to cover her nudity and protect her. “Trip,” she whispered lovingly and sliced a piece of my soul away.
“Oh my God, Kate, what have they done to you?”
“It’s okay, Trip. It’s okay,” she crooned as she approached him. The Rhinoguards released him and she pressed him into an embrace. I gnashed my teeth. The sight of their naked bodies mashed together made me sick.
“Kate, Dagan said you are the Mother again.” I called her back to me, sounding hollow and distant. “What is he talking about? You don’t seem like the Mother. You seem like one of the slaves.”
She turned around and sidled back over to me. “I am a slave, but they haven’t put me to work, yet. They’ve just been painting my body. I don’t know what they’ve been waiting for.”
The Keepers Book Two of the Holding Kate Series Page 19