Chapter 2
Michelle snapped awake to slimy, wet bark cold against her cheek.
Her wrists burned where thick vines bit into her skin, the bindings looped around a rough post that scraped her shoulder blades. White-hot pain detonated from her broken leg, and she bit down hard, tasting copper.
Harsh male voices cut through the blur of agony. Laughter first, then crude promises.
"I go first. Hold her still."
"Keep her breathing till we're back. Then we break her."
Pain slammed her back into memory…
The second construction site, three hours before dawn.
The hum of the generator and the diesel stink thick in the humid air.
Survey cables snaking over churned mud like black veins.
She'd been checking the sensor readings when a shadow fell wrong in the corner of her eye…
one that didn't fit with the others. Too long… moving against the light.
The bald head had emerged from the treeline first. Black plating crawled up half his face like an oil slick, crusted and gleaming.
His elbow bent the wrong way as his arm scissored toward her—extra joints that flexed spider-smooth.
Instinct driving her, she'd yelled a warning to the others and grabbed the first thing she could reach.
The drill had felt heavy in her hands, twenty pounds of steel and torque.
The feral had burst from the treeline like something unleashed from hell, twisted limbs eating up distance in impossible strides.
Liam and Caleb had tried to stop him, shouting warnings and grabbing tools.
But it swatted Liam aside with a casual backhand, sending him sprawling.
Caleb lasted only a few seconds longer, swinging rebar that clanged uselessly off black plating before he was thrown into a concrete barrier.
The sickening crack echoed across the site.
Then those burning red eyes had locked onto her—she was the target.
He reached her. Loomed over her, and all she could do was look up at him.
When he'd twisted her leg, the snap had sent white light exploding behind her eyes, bile rushing up her throat.
She'd screamed as she rammed the bit straight into his plating. It had penetrated deep; rust-colored blood splattering across her clothes, scalding and metallic as it dotted her neck. She’d gasped as the drill bucked in her hands, vibrating through her arms as it ground against armor.
Heat saturated the cloth, making her fingers slippery.
She retched, squinted through the splatter, and pushed deeper regardless.
He'd laughed. Actually laughed. Then yanked the drill from her hands and lifted her like she weighed nothing, slinging her over his shoulder. A vicious twist to her leg had dropped her into blackness.
Now her vision cleared and she saw she was in a clearing ringed by dense forest. Three figures moved in the corner of her eye.
The abductor was the same… bald skull gleaming, black armor crusted over half his face and chest. His limbs stretched too long, joints bending in places that didn’t make any sense.
His eyes burned a sick, inflamed red in the growing dusk as he looked over the fire toward her.
Grim satisfaction filled her at the rust-brown flecks still dotting the black-thickened skin of his armor where her drill had found its mark.
She didn't look at them. No eye contact. No talking. That would only make it worse. She scooted around, curling up as though she were leaning sideways against the post instead of having her back to it. To anyone looking, she was curled up and terrified.
Which, to be fair, she was, but it didn't mean her brain had stopped working.
Her gaze dropped to the thick vines binding her wrists. Three loops wrapped tight around the post behind her, rough bark scraping her knuckles as she tested the bonds. Shit. The knot was just out of reach.
She twisted more until her arms screamed. And… there… she just managed to brush the knots with her fingertips, enough that she could work the angle out by touch.
Crap. No way was she undoing them, not from this angle. She needed to cut the vines.
Her eyes swept the area for anything sharp. The ferals lounged too far away to matter, and from what she could see, they didn’t have any blades anyway. Why would they need them? Those claws did all their cutting for them.
Then she saw it: a sharp-edged rock half-buried in the loam, just within toe reach if she stretched.
Inching her boot toward it, she waited for their laughter to spike and the wind to gust through the canopy.
Pain exploded through her leg at the movement, and a small whimper slipped out before she could stop it.
Three heads snapped her way.
“Scream, little meat,” the mean one crooned, standing and taking a few steps closer. His voice was like gravel in a blender. “The rain eats it.”
She went statue-still, her eyes fixed on the dirt between her knees. Shit, shit, shit. Don’t react. Don’t give them anything.
She held her breath, every muscle locked in place as seconds crawled by like hours.
The jumpy one’s eyes lingered on her face, then dropped to scan the disturbed earth around her feet again.
Her lungs burned. Her heart hammered so hard she was sure they could hear it over the rain drumming on the leaves above.
Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t even think too loud.
The feral’s nostrils flared as he tested the air, head tilting like a predator catching an interesting scent. One step closer and he’d spot the rock’s absence, see the fresh scrapes in the dirt where she’d dragged it toward herself.
Finally, he turned away with a dismissive grunt, wandering back toward the center of the clearing where the other two waited.
Shit... she let go of the breath she’d been holding and uncurled her fingers, revealing the rock in her palm.
It had split cleanly down its center. One half was smooth river stone, the other a jagged blade where something had cleaved it apart.
She tested the edge. Not much, but better than nothing.
Dropping her hand between her body and the post, to where the vine wrapped around the wood, she began tiny, silent strokes, cutting when the wind masked the sound and pausing whenever it went still.
The outer fibers fuzzed and shredded under the makeshift blade, but the core strands held tight.
The jumpy one—all twitching limbs and darting eyes—had taken to the edge of the clearing.
She froze as he headed her way again. His gaze swept the ground by her feet, noticing the scuffed soil, but she had the rock carefully hidden.
Snarling, he kicked a rock into the brush.
Like her abductor, his body moved differently, with extra joints and muscles that shouldn’t be there.
“Pretty little thing,” he muttered, looking at her in a way that made her shudder.
The leader didn’t even glance their way. Watching the treeline, he flared his nostrils as if he were tasting the air.
“Touch her and I take your hand,” he snarled, his voice low and menacing. “Told you. She’s mine first.”
The words sent ice down her spine. She kept her gaze down as the jumpy one huffed and wandered off.
Keeping at the frayed place with what remained of the rock shard under her palm, she carried on cutting.
Wet heat bloomed where the fibers cut into her wrists, turning the vines red. Good. Blood meant a marker.
“Humans scream so pretty,” the mean one chuckled. “And imagine what she’ll sound like after I’ve had her for a day.”
The others laughed, a grating sound that shattered the quiet night.
“Gonna make it last,” he continued, his voice filled with malice. “Break her real slow.”
“Bit by bit,” another agreed, smacking his lips in anticipation. Their words painted ugly pictures, each more disgusting than the last.
The leader’s wrong joints flexed as he stood up. “Others near. We go.”
Others. Her blood turned to ice. Shit. How many more were there?
The ferals closed in with predatory grace.
She had three seconds before they’d be on her.
Her fingers scrambled against the rough bark, palming the jagged stone shard.
The sharp edges bit into her skin as she folded her fist around it, tucking it tight against her palm just as calloused hands reached for the bindings at her wrists.
The stone felt pathetically small in her grip, but it was all she had.
She needed to keep it hidden. Keep it safe.
The leader's fingers brushed her arm as he worked at the knots, and she forced herself to stay limp, not flinching away from his touch, even though every instinct screamed at her to fight.
As the leader reached down to yank her to her feet, she squeezed hard to well blood between her fingers, letting it drop down the post in trails of bright red.
Not an accident. A sign.
The leader crouched down in front of her, his dull red eyes fixed on her face as he wound the coarse rope around her wrists.
His breath washing over her face smelled metallic and wrong, like sucking on pennies and the rope bit deep into her wrists.
The coarse fibers scraped raw against her skin, but she kept her face blank, even as the leader pulled the binding tight enough to make her bones creak.
"Think she can even understand us?" The mean one leaned closer, his breath hot against her ear. "Maybe she's too stupid to be scared. Some of these humans are dumb as draanth."
The scratchy vine came next, wrapping around her ankles with jerky, violent motions that yanked her legs together. Her broken leg screamed, but she bit down hard on her tongue. Blood pooled in her mouth again.
The leader's head tilted as he studied her. "Smart meat," he murmured. "Knows when to keep her mouth shut."