A Shrouded World (Book 7): Hvergelmir by Tufo Mark & O'Brien John

Author:Tufo, Mark & O'Brien, John [Tufo, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Post-Apocalyptic
Publisher: DevilDogPress
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

Jack Walker — Chapter Three

Consciousness comes slowly as I rise through the thick fog left by the whistler toxin. The ground is hard beneath my back and my head feels like it’s being squeezed. Looking through squinted eyes, there’s a vertical shaft running straight up, the rough-hewn walls ending at a circle of light at the top. Light from a bleached sky reaches the bottom of the well where I’ve been dropped.

Memory returns as I claw my way through to full consciousness. There is the sensation of struggling to walk through the thin atmosphere, watching as the railgun tore through the night runners who followed. Then there was Trip leaving with BT, yelling out an apology before stepping through a portal. I mean, if he could do that, then for fuck’s sake, why not take us along with him? I swear; I just get back to the point of not wanting to throttle him, and then he goes and does something like that.

I should never have relinquished the relic in the first place. I trust Mike with it, but frankly, I’d rather have fought off the night runners with my bare hands than be stuck on some alien world and, now, seemingly at the mercy of the whistlers. This may not have been our best choice, although I honestly don’t see how else we would have made it through the night runner attack. So, I suppose alive is better than dead. With life, there’s still a chance.

I remember the hovercraft closing in, the whistlers disembarking, and then the jolt of staples slamming into my body…the fading consciousness, and everything going dark. Sitting up, I reach for where the staples had hit, expecting to find them still embedded. Instead, there’s just a bruised ache and the sting of open wounds. Feeling foggy, I look down to see that I’m still in my fatigues but that the vest and my gear have been removed. So, I’m unarmed, which isn’t surprising, considering we were taken.

I wonder where Mike is, and if he’s been thrown into a similar hole. I’m honestly surprised to be alive. That means the whistlers have a plan of sorts rather than just chaining me behind one of their pieces of equipment and dragging me. Do they mean to interrogate me? Find out how to work the waystation portals? Locate the relic, assuming they know we had it? They had to have watched Trip engage a portal and vanish through it. So, are they going to use us, or me, to find Trip and gain access to it?

I sit up, the tightness in my head still persisting. Reaching up, I feel a metal plate on the top part of my skull. I try to pry it off but it seems firmly set. I feel for an edge only to find there isn’t one. The plate seems to meld in with my scalp. As my head clears more, I feel an attached face mask and notice that I’m able to breathe easier.

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