Core of Stone by King R. L

Author:King, R. L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: R. L. King
Published: 2016-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

When Stone regained consciousness, it was still dark. He lay on a hard, uneven surface, his body twisted. When he tried to move, pain lit up every inch of him, and he bit back a scream.

The memory came back readily: he’d fallen over the edge of something. He remembered putting his arms out in front of him, flailing, having only a moment to be terrified that he’d pitched himself into some kind of abyss and would fall forever before he hit the bottom and everything went even blacker.

Carefully, trying to move as little as possible, he took inventory. He lay on his side, one leg drawn up, one stretched out. His right arm was cradled against his side, his left poking out as if trying to reach for something. Under his head, he felt hard, rough concrete.

So he was still in the Underground, at least. He hadn’t fallen into some pit to Hell or the lair of some unspeakable creature. Far off, he could still hear the place’s various drips and clanks, but no voices, human or otherwise.

How long had he been here? He had no idea. It was far too dark to see his watch, if he hadn’t broken it during the fall.

All right, this was going to be the fun part. Still moving with as much deliberate care as possible, he rolled over on his back. He immediately bit back another scream as the pain flared again, but this time he forced himself to concentrate on where it felt the worst. He had to know how badly the fall had injured him before he could risk trying to get up.

Surprisingly, his head was mostly unscathed. It throbbed a little, and without moving his arms he thought he felt a localized ache in his forehead, but he was fairly sure he’d managed to avoid smacking it into the concrete with the full force of the fall. That was something, at least.

His whole body ached too, but in a general sense. He’d probably aggravated the pulled muscles from getting tossed around back at the bar, and falling into a concrete pit wasn’t going to be kind in any case. But still, probably nothing to worry about too much. So far, so good.

Then he tried to move his right arm.

The world went white. His sharp intake of breath was his desperate attempt to avoid screaming. He lay back down, closing his eyes and waiting for the slicing pain to settle back to a dull roar.

Okay, his arm was messed up. Broken? Cracked? Sprained? He wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to do too much investigation. He decided to table further examination on that front and move on to the rest of his body.

His left arm was undamaged. Both shoulders were still functional. With his left hand, he probed his chest and abdomen, but no pain beyond the ambient arose. That was good. Apparently he’d taken the brunt of the fall with his right arm, which meant he probably hadn’t fallen that far.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.