56. Max
56
MAX
J asmine glared at Yamanu. "Fine. But we should contact the rebels and tell them to come for their people."
It wasn't a bad idea, but it also wasn't something they could do. Perhaps Turner had contacts who knew someone in the Kurdish resistance.
Yamanu relented. "I'll see what I can do. But first, we are getting out of here."
They continued down each cell, time becoming critically short.
Ell-rom shifted Kyra's weight in his arms, and the sudden movement must have jolted her because she moaned. Max was immediately there, nearly pushing Jasmine aside, and then Kyra's eyes opened, but her pupils were so dilated that Max could barely see the whites.
Kyra's lips parted. A shallow, raspy breath. She tried to raise an arm but only managed a weak twitch of the hand.
"What is it?" Jasmine asked.
"Twelve," Kyra murmured, and then, with a surprising surge of strength, she twisted in Ell-rom's arms, and her eyes focused on Max. "Twelve—get the woman in cell twelve." The words tore out of her in a desperate rasp but in perfect, nearly accent-free English. "Take her."
"I will," Max promised.
Now that he knew there was another female prisoner, there was no way he was leaving her in this place, especially if she was in the same state as Kyra.
It complicated things, but his conscience wouldn't let him leave a woman behind.
Kyra's mouth opened again, but no sound emerged, and her eyes rolled, consciousness flickering out like a candle. She slumped, limp again in Ell-rom's arms.
"You will have to carry her to the helicopter," Max told Ell-rom.
"I'm well aware of that. She weighs very little."
Max wondered if she'd lost weight in captivity, and his anger rose at the way she'd been treated by the so-called doctor. He was looking forward to interrogating the bastard where he could return the favor a thousand times over.
The satisfying music of doors being swung open continued, and when Max turned to look at the next prisoner liberated, he was surprised when, a moment later, one of the Kra-ell who was helping them to expedite the process emerged with a half-conscious young woman in his arms. The captive sagged against Anton's hold.
Just like Kyra, the woman was wearing a thin shift that used to be white but had turned a dingy gray from overuse. She was pale, her skin covered in goosebumps from the cold, but he'd already given his sweater to Kyra, and he had nothing else he could offer the woman.
"Why is she so heavily drugged?" he asked no one in particular, but the Kra-ell must have thought that he was asking him and shrugged.
"How should I know?" Anton said. "What do you want me to do with her?"
Was this the woman in cell twelve that Kyra had asked him to take?
Max released a resigned breath. "We're taking her with us. Which cell number did you free this one from?" he asked, just to be sure.
"Six," Anton said.
Damn. So now they were taking three females with them. Kyra was coming back with them to the village or the keep, but they had no reason to take the other females all the way to California.
"You will have to carry her to the helicopter. We'll figure out the rest once we're airborne."
Anton's brows rose, but before he could answer, Yamanu emerged with another limp young woman in his arms.
Max sighed. "Please tell me that you got her from cell number twelve."
Yamanu frowned, looked back the way he came from, and then shook his head. "All the cells in that part of the corridor are single numbers."
Damn .
What had they been doing in this place? Trafficking?
That actually made perfect sense. It explained why the Doomers had bothered with this outpost in the middle of nowhere.
But why here?
"I think we should heed Jasmine's request. Kyra gained consciousness momentarily and emphatically had me promise that we would liberate the woman in cell number twelve as well, and I promised her I would. I think we should take all the females we find in these cells with us."
Yamanu nodded. "Of course. We can't leave them to fend for themselves." He looked down at the young woman in his arms. "They are so severely drugged that they are barely conscious. I've already told the pilots to be ready to pick us up from the courtyard."
Anton looked at the girl and shook his head. "What if we run out of space in the helicopters?"
Max wasn't going to leave any women behind. "We have enough room. These girls don't weigh much. In the meantime, put her down next to the wall." He turned to Yamanu. "We should also alert the pilots for the extra cargo."
Yamanu set the girl down next to the others and moved aside to contact the pilots.
Max flagged Rishba over. "We need to find some blankets to cover the prisoners with. They will freeze outside."
"I will look," she said and then headed to search.
The next two to emerge from that side of the corridor were thankfully men, and their rescuers pointed them in the direction of the stairs.
A few moments later, the Kra-ell female returned with a stack of thin gray blankets and, without waiting for directions from him, wrapped each of the young women sitting on the floor with a blanket.
Jasmine took one to cover Kyra's legs, tucking the blanket all around her.
"Let's go to cell number twelve." He motioned for Anton to come with him.
He followed the numbers until he reached the right door and peeked inside through the small window to verify Kyra's information.
The woman inside was in a similar situation to how they had found Kyra, chained to a bed.
Max opened the door and strode inside.
Anton followed him. "It stinks in here."
He wasn't wrong, and Max grimaced at the stench of old blood, sweat, and fear.
The single fluorescent light revealed a metal-framed bed, identical to the one Kyra had been strapped to, and a woman, whose arms and legs were chained the same way Kyra's had been. Her dark hair spilled over the pillow in a disheveled mess, and her face was turned away from the door despite all the commotion outside.
Panic gripped Max. Were they too late? Was the woman dead?
He stepped closer, and then he heard it.
The faint sound of her heart beating.
The woman was alive.
She was either drugged out of her mind or had suffered so much that she'd turned apathetic and stopped reacting to anything.
He intended to say something, to reassure her, but he only knew a few words in Farsi, and he had a feeling that this time his tone of voice would not be enough.
Anton walked over to the bed and gripped the thick chain. Muscles bunched beneath his uniform as he threw his full Kra-ell strength into a savage pull. Metal screamed against metal, and with a sharp crack that echoed through the cell, one of the links twisted and snapped apart.
The woman remained partially turned away as if nothing had happened.
Maybe she couldn't move?
What if her muscles had seized up from being forced to lie in the same position for Fates knew how long?
Anton let the broken chain drop to the floor and started on another one. "Except for Kyra, the other women weren't bound. The men weren't either."
Something about this prisoner was different, important enough to keep her under extra restraint, just like Kyra.
Max slid a hand over the heavy padlock chaining the occupant's left wrist and shot a quick questioning glance at Anton.
"I've got it." The Kra-ell walked over, and Max moved aside to give him room to work.
Curiosity getting the better of him, Max walked around the bed so he could take a look at the woman's face, and then froze, feeling his blood turn to ice.
He would have recognized her anywhere, even thin and abused, he knew that face so well.
"Fenella?"
Her lashes parted, revealing familiar dark eyes that seemed to widen in the same moment they locked on to his. Pain, confusion, and a flicker of terror waged across her expression.
She sucked in a breath. "Max?" She stared in disbelief. "Am I dead?"