Far Edge of Darkness

Chapter Three

Up... down... sideways... up and down again... sideways with a gentle, sliding motion... . Hot, sultry air reminded her of... something... . Wet wood, too, and the smell of dead fish... and other things...

A dim sense of pain slowly resolved into a raging headache, a prickly sunburn, and a throat raw from screaming. She stirred slightly and regretted the movement instantly. Pain, combined with the heaving surface on which she lay, brought bile to her throat.

She vomited before she was fully awake and lay in terror of choking to death—especially when she discovered she couldn't move her arms.

Blind hysteria seized her. She thrashed against ropes on her wrists and ankles. That made the nausea worse. She vomited again, then lay still, trembling. Voices rose and fell, much like the surface beneath her, but it was dark where she lay and the sound was dim, as though heard through a thick partition. The voices refused to resolve themselves into words. Like the voices, smells and sounds made no pattern she recognized.

The fear that crept over her this time was quieter.

—And far deeper.

She didn't know who she was.

Or where.

But she was someone's prisoner... .

She tried to remember why. Pain stabbed deeply into her head, bringing on the nausea again. She doubled at the waist. Her empty stomach heaved. Her strangled cries brought heavy footsteps from somewhere above.

A loud scraping sound was followed by a shaft of painful light. She clenched her eyelids shut, helpless to stop the heaves still wracking her. The voices grew louder. Then someone thumped down beside her. She felt body heat near her skin just before firm hands took hold of her shoulders. She was lifted, rolled onto her back across a hard leg. She was held securely in that position; then someone pinched shut her nose. She gasped—

Bitter liquid filled her mouth. She choked and tried to twist aside. They held her, forced the stuff down her, clamped her jaws closed so she couldn't vomit it back up. She whimpered, half-mad with the pain in her head and the confusion in her whirling thoughts. The dizzy, whirlpool sensation worsened. Darkness slithered into the edges of her awareness. She was still fighting to remember who she was, and where, when blackness reached out with questing, powerful tentacles. They wrapped around her, irresistibly strong, and dragged her under.

She woke several times to sensations of movement, nausea, and confusion. Each time, people waiting in the light forced her to drink the bitter liquid that shoved her—reeling—back into unconsciousness. When she roused again, some impossible-to-judge time later, she tried to hold down the nausea long enough to gain some impression of where she was.

Silence wrapped darkly around her. She received the impression she was alone in a small, dark chamber—at least, if the thick, close air were any indication. She lay on her side. Her wrists and ankles were still tightly tied, but she wasn't gagged. When the significance of that sank in, alarm spread cold fingers through her. Wherever she was, her captors weren't worried about her screams.

The world had stopped lurching beneath her. The only light came from two pairs of narrow cracks, one vertical, one horizontal, that marked the location of a small door. She lay on a hard surface. When she moved her cheek, she felt the rough grain of wood. Judging from the angle of the lower slit of light, she was approximately two feet above the floor.

But where? And who was she?

Pain, unexpected and treacherous, stabbed through the center of her skull. She cried aloud and squeezed shut her eyes. Nausea tore her throat. Her stomach heaved, then she was thoroughly sick, onto herself, onto the platform on which she lay. She doubled up, whimpering, and was sick again. When she tried to roll sideways, to throw up over the edge, she slipped completely off. An involuntary yell of fear cut off when she hit the floor with a bone-jarring thud. The slithering fall brought more nausea and the sound of footfalls outside the door.

It opened abruptly. Light flooded the room. She flinched from it and shut her eyes. Someone knelt beside her. She tried to escape, fighting irrationally despite the crippling pain in her head and the knowledge that she was bound hand and foot.

"Shh," a masculine voice whispered, "shh, you've hurt yourself... ."

The monster behind her eyes broke loose again. The man turned her, gently, to lie on her stomach across a hard thigh while she was sick again. He smelled faintly of human excrement and a smelly soap that reminded her of petting zoos full of goats.

"It's all right. Go ahead and be sick, little one. Shh..."

She tried to regain control of herself sufficiently to ask him where she was, or who she was—and the agony in her head redoubled. She cried aloud and was disastrously ill again. He held her until the tremors eased away and the nausea with them. When she lay quietly, he brushed her face with gentle fingertips, working them in circles across her temples.

She flinched, despite the surprising tenderness in that brief contact. More footsteps approached from beyond the door.

"What are you doing in there?"

The new voice was also male, sharp with disapproval or anger. Instinctively she didn't like that voice.

An odd tremor ran through the leg under her belly. Then the man holding her said, "She woke up sick." His voice, now that he wasn't whispering, was deep and very easy on the ears, but the language sounded... wrong... . Or did it? She didn't know. "I heard her fall out of bed," he added to an unknown man in the doorway. "She is very ill, Domine Xanthus."

Domine Xanthus—what kind of name was that?—swore. His voice emanated from the nebulous region above her. "Well, you're in there, now. Get her cleaned up." Domine Xanthus' accent differed from the other man's in a way she couldn't define.

"I will need a bucket." The voice nearest her sounded far more patient than Domine Xanthus', or maybe just a great deal more tired. The leg she rested against was knotted with muscles and about as pliable as steel. But he was very gentle when he eased her down to her back.

A series of impossible-to-identify sounds reached her ears; then she heard a thump and the unmistakable slosh of water nearby. The tired man spoke softly, almost in a whisper again.

"Easy, little one, I will wash your face now. Lie still, no one will hurt you... ."

When he touched her face with a wet cloth, she flinched back.

"Can you understand me?"

She was too afraid of being ill again to move or try answering. He added wearily, almost to himself, "Well, little one, I wish you knew what I am saying. I will try to be gentle, all right? Poor child."

His accent was very strange. She received the fleeting impression he wasn't speaking his native language. Vaguely she wondered what language he was speaking... and decided she didn't really want to know badly enough to risk that agony again.

The wet cloth touched her face again. He cleaned her mouth and cheeks very gently. The water was lukewarm. He rinsed her hair, then paused.

"Your clothes are soiled."

She heard a scrape and thumping footsteps, low voices... . He returned and knelt at her side again. She tried to get a look at him, but the bright light pouring through the open door triggered nausea again. She clamped shut her jaws and forcibly held it down. She kept her eyes closed.

What's wrong with me? she wondered desperately. What have these people done to me?

A knife sliced through the bonds at her wrists. Her benefactor—captor?—chafed her skin until circulation began to return. She whimpered at the pain of needles in her fingers and hands.

"Yes, I know it hurts, little one. Be easy, just lie still, easy... ."

Briefly a hand stroked her wet hair, then returned to her abused wrists. She tried again to get her eyes open and groaned. He'd knelt between her and the light, cutting off the worst of the bright ache in her head.

No... it was worse than an ache. Her brain felt out of kilter, as though something had kicked the world askew. She couldn't focus anything back on track again, and that frightened her more than captivity. Her head hurt too much to keep her eyes open.

The man reached inside the neck of whatever garment she wore, nudging aside a narrow metal collar she hadn't noticed, and grasped the edge of the cloth. The knife cut downwards with a soft ripping sound. She stiffened. His hands bared her naked breasts. She gasped and flinched, an ill-advised move. The sharp point of his blade nicked her. The pain in her head ballooned. She cried out and pulled her arms away, trying to grasp throbbing temples. His weight came down hard against her, pinning her to a cold, roughly tiled floor. His grip crushed her wrists.

"Be still!" he whispered forcefully, holding her immobile. The next moment his voice—if not his hands—was gentle again. "There is nowhere to run, child, and you are very, very ill. Please do not fight me. I do not want to see you hurt. Just lie still, let me help... ." He murmured to her in the same way she might have murmured to a whipped puppy. The pain kept her from understanding his misapprehension for long moments. Involuntary tears squeezed out from beneath her clenched eyelids. She knew her face had blanched white. She felt dangerously close to vomiting again.

But the lurching sickness was only the symptom of something far more deeply wrong. She had to communicate with this man.

"Please..." she whimpered. "It hurts... ." God, was that her voice? What had happened to her?

"You do speak La—" he began in surprise, and immediately eased his grip. "What hurts? Your wrists? I did not mean—"

"Head..." She didn't want to talk anymore.

Very gentle hands explored her skull. He parted the hair, pressed lightly. "I see no bruises, no swelled places. You cannot have struck your head with any force."

"No," she whispered. "It... hurts from inside. When I move, talk..."

There was a long silence. Then he said, "It must be the sleeping drug you were given, little one."

That might explain it. Somehow, it didn't sound right. And when she tried to deny the explanation, the pain worsened. She bit her lip and let him finish cutting her clothes away. He did not free her ankles, which reminded her forcefully that she was still his captive.

But he did wipe sour vomit and sweat from her, earning her gratitude. He rolled her carefully to one side and cleaned beneath her, then wiped down the bench she'd fallen from. Then, just as carefully, he dressed her once more in a lightweight sheath that felt incongruously like homespun linen. He pulled it over her head and arms and eased it down across her nakedness.

She tried again to get her eyes open and managed to keep them open this time.

He was younger than she had expected from the sound of his voice, although she had difficulty pinning down an exact age. Early thirties, maybe even late thirties; or, then again, as sunlight streamed across his face, maybe late twenties. She knew somehow that she'd never been very good at judging a person's age. She blinked slowly. He was not handsome. He was ugly, in fact, with curly red-orange hair cut very short. A hooked nose had been broken at least once. A lurid scar snaked across his jawline and down the side of his throat. Despite the red hair, he wasn't freckled. His skin was extremely fine-textured, just a tiny bit darker than the color of whipped cream. His whole face wavered under the steady pounding in her head.

"Could you tell me..." She hesitated as narrow lips, dry and bitten, with tiny lines of dried blood along the lower one, tightened briefly. Then he sighed and wordlessly encouraged her to continue.

She swallowed, bracing for worse pain in her head. "Who am I?"

His whole face flushed—with anger, she realized muzzily. It crackled in his eyes, deepened the furrows around eyelids and nostrils. Dry, bitten lips nearly vanished into a thin, compressed line. The anger surprised her. It was out of place. He should have said, "Don't you mean where?" She felt instinctively that most drugged captives knew who they were, at least.

He glanced once over his shoulder, as though hiding something. Then he bent cautiously over her. He examined her skull again, peered into her eyes, felt her neck and spine, and was ruthless in pulling aside her hair to examine her scalp in minute detail. She suffered and held back cries of pain. At length he grunted to himself. When he let go of her, she sensed he had reached a decision of some kind. She met his gaze, unable to read anything from it. He spoke, watching her carefully.

"Your name is Aelia."

Aelia?

She tried it again: Aelia.

Tried imagining her face and was faintly surprised when an image floated into her mind, showing her pale, small-boned features framed by reckless dark curls. She tried again, matching face to name.

Aelia.

No. It was wrong... somehow. She didn't know how, exactly, but wrong.

The pain in her head kicked her, as brutal as it was unexpected. She snapped into a fetal ball, gripping her head, trying to force the agony away.

"Gently, gently." His voice, as smooth as good Irish whiskey, soothed. He rubbed his fingertips in whispering circles across her scalp, kneaded her neck and shoulders. "Do not fight it, little one. Relax. Breathe. Again. And again... . Better."

Gradually the pain eased away. She lay still, eyes closed. She was too exhausted to move, mesmerized by the touch of his fingers. At length he lifted her chin. She opened her eyes.

"Better?" His gaze was concerned.

She took a ragged breath, deeply afraid. "My name is not Aelia."

This time was much worse. She tried to vomit, but there was nothing left to bring up. She trembled and wept and waited for the stabbing punishment in her head to go away. When she was finally able to meet his gaze again, his eyes were dark, his expression deeply troubled. The lurid scar that snaked downward from his jawline jumped under tension.

"I think, little one," he said very softly, "that for now, you must not ask who, or even why, but your name had best remain Aelia."

She wanted to rebel, then flinched and nodded slowly. Then she wondered how he had associated the pain in her head with her need to know her identity as rapidly as she had. Had he done this to her?

"Rufus!" The ugly voice she remembered interrupted.

The man beside her glanced up. A face swung across her vision, leaned down through the open rectangle of light. The movement made her dizzy. She closed her eyes.

"Yes, Domine?" Rufus didn't sound like the same person when he answered. His voice came out weary, afraid... . Her incipient dislike of Domine Xanthus intensified.

"Bloody balls, what's taking so long? Is the bitch dead? If you've touched her—"

"She's sick. And I mean sick, Domine Xanthus. Sextus gave her too much of the sleeping medicine." A heavy, sour scent she identified as fear sweat filled her nostrils. Rufus waited for the man's response.

She had never heard swearing quite as colorful as what now reached her ears. Domine Xanthus was inventive. And someone named Publius Bericus was going to be furious if she didn't get better fast... .

Who was Publius Bericus? Who were Xanthur and Rufus? More importantly, who was—no, her head had finally stopped throbbing and she didn't want it to start again. She couldn't remember ever hearing about an injury—or a drug reaction, since that's what Rufus was calling it—that caused pain only when the victim tried to remember things.

Of course, she couldn't remember anything, so how could she be certain what might or might not cause such agony? And despite his nice eyes and the genuine concern he'd shown for her, she decided she couldn't trust Rufus. Not to mention Domine Xanthus the inventive and Publius Bericus the unknown. They'd tied her up and done this to her and Rufus was one of them.

It hurt more than she expected to consider Rufus an enemy.

Xanthus' next words sank through her confusion to capture her full attention: "Listen and listen good, Rufus Mancus. We lose this piece of choice ass and I will hold you personally responsible! You were not supposed to be in here! Bericus is paying a fortune for her. More than you'll ever see. You were lucky once, got the thumbs down before they chopped you into little pieces. If she dies from something you've done to her, what I'll do to you will make that feel like a romp with a fat slut."

Rufus, the red-haired man, said nothing, but the terror in his sweat stank in the close confines of the hot room.

"Sextus! Get in here!"

A third individual arrived with a flurry of heavy footfalls. "Domine?"

The voice was... male? High, light, not quite female.

"I want you to keep her drugged. She's throwing up."

"But, Domine," Rufus protested, "the drug is what—"

"Defiant barbarian! Did I ask your opinion? You are not the man I put in charge of this girl! Sextus is! Now drug her, Sextus, and be quick about it!"

Rufus, sounding desperate, said, "Please, Domine, I beg forgiveness, but the drug is what is killing her! She can't even remember her name or where she comes from, you can't order this—"

A meaty smack jarred Rufus against her. "Don't presume to tell me what I may order in my own household!"

A malignant silence was broken by another meaty blow. Rufus sprawled onto the floor beside her, his mouth bleeding onto dirty, broken tiles.

Domine Xanthus, a dizzying apparition in the bright light from the doorway, stood breathing heavily for long moments. "I give you warnings. Beg you to behave. Curse it, Rufus, you force my hand. Fetch me the cat!"

Another terrible silence fell. Rufus didn't move.

"I said, fetch the cat!"

"Yes, Domine," Rufus choked out. Rage and dread trembled in those two, brief words. She got a look at his face and immediately wished she hadn't. Helplessness... a promise of murder...

Domine Xanthus vanished from her awareness. Rufus scraped himself from the floor and disappeared into the light after him. Aelia—she didn't know what else to call herself—tried to rise and fell back with a moan when her head spun traitorously. The voice Domine Xanthus had identified as Sextus' said, "Back to bed, Aelia."

Sextus was an enormous man. When he picked her up, Aelia received the impression he could have lifted her with one hand, but he used two in order to brace her head. When he pressed a cup to her lips, she struggled.

That high, light voice went steely. "You must drink it, girl."

"No..."

Fighting was useless. It only brought on the pain and nausea again. Sextus forced the bitter stuff down her throat, then tied her wrists once more and left her alone in the hot little room. Aelia was still crying as she slid into unconsciousness.

When the phone shrilled in his ear, Francisco Valdez had been asleep for maybe ten minutes. He groaned and tried to ignore the insistent jangling. It kept ringing with the shrill of a vengeful harpy. He finally rolled over and glanced at the glowing clock face to confirm the time. Francisco muttered obscenities. Three-forty a.m. It had better not be another emergency surgery... .

He groped for the receiver and promptly knocked it to the floor. The solid bang woke him up another millimeter or two. Francisco groped along the cold linoleum.

"Yeah?" he finally mumbled. Lieutenant Kominsky's voice boomed at him so forcefully he winced and held the receiver away from his ear.

"Major Valdez, we have a medical emergency, sir." Francisco bit back a groan. "The patrol just radioed in from the perimeter. They're bringing in an intruder. Said he's half dead from frostbite."

Francisco mumbled something about that not being surprising, considering how cold it was. Kominsky asked him to repeat himself. He grunted and managed to say clearly, "Davis is the doctor on call, Kominsky. Shuddup and lemme sleep."

Before he could recradle the receiver, Kominsky said, "Colonel Collins requested you specifically, Major. I'm sorry, sir. I heard about Kruger's spleen."

Great. Kominsky was sorry. Well, so was he. And when he got his hands on Dan Collins—

"Send a hummer. I'm in no shape to drive." Not when he hadn't gotten out of surgery until 2:45.

"It's on the way, sir."

Francisco hung up, reflecting that if he couldn't drive, he certainly shouldn't be seeing patients. Stifling a whole series of groans, he dragged himself out of bed and into the bathroom. The mirror mocked him silently. He couldn't see any whites in his eyes, just red. He splashed cold water into his face until he felt semiconscious. That exercise in futility burned up nearly ten minutes.

"Uniform," he mumbled on the way out of the bathroom. He tripped over a chair. "Ow."

The uniform wasn't in the bedroom. He found it sprawled obscenely over the couch. By the time he'd struggled into it, the hummer had arrived and the driver was banging at the door. And Private Simms, bless his Anglo heart, had brought a thermos of coffee.

"The L-T said you'd need it, sir." Simms grinned sympathetically as Francisco prepared to deliver a few Hail Mary's into the steaming cup. He refused to budge from his living room until he'd finished the first cup and was glad he'd insisted when he finally stepped outside.

If it had been cold before, the air now was bitter. "How much has the temperature dropped?" he asked as he climbed into the hummer's passenger seat.

"Ten degrees this past hour, sir."

Francisco damned the bureaucratic idiot who'd sent them transport vehicles without heaters in them and huddled miserably into his parka.

Simms offered hesitantly, "It's supposed to be below zero by dawn, but I wish the sun would come up, anyway. It just looks warmer in the daytime."

"Yeah." Francisco was from southern California. Alaska's winter weather still left him feeling shell-shocked. One of his ward nurses had taken perverse delight in telling him this winter was much milder than the previous one—a veritable heat wave, she'd said. Francisco shivered. He didn't even want to think about weather colder than this.

Francisco stared glumly out the window toward a glitter of lights which marked the one building he hadn't ever been given access to, a squat concrete bunker of a structure which represented the reason this base existed. Francisco scowled at it and sipped at his second cup of coffee.

One of these days, maybe even later today, he was going to confront Dan Collins with a whole bellyful of questions. He was tired of his commanding officer dodging him while mystery after mystery piled up on this base. Like how Kruger had managed to rupture his spleen in the middle of the night, on guard, with injuries that looked more like a mauling than a fallen tree?

And whoever heard of thunderstorms in January? Yet Francisco had clearly heard the rumble of thunder, not only during that emergency surgery, but off and on again for the past several weeks. And now Collins dragged him out of bed to deal with an intruder, for God's sake. They were literally centered in the smack dab middle of nowhere, up here. Who could possibly be around to intrude?

The patrol beat them to the infirmary by less than a minute. Francisco gulped the last of the coffee, tossed the thermos cup to Simms with a heartfelt "Thanks," rolled up metaphoric sleeves, and waded in.

The patient was middle-aged, pushing fifty. He was unkempt-looking, with thinning, rusty grey hair and a scraggly cinnamon-and-salt beard. Francisco peeled back the thermal blanket the patrol had wrapped him in and frowned in surprise. He was dressed—except for a bizarrely ugly sweater—as though he'd planned an afternoon stroll down Long Beach, rather than a hike through the mountains of northern Alaska in the middle of January. No coat, no hat, no gloves... .

"Mother of God, what on earth was this guy doing?" he muttered.

"Dying," was Jackson's laconic reply.

"No kidding? Let's take care of him, Jackson. Put him in the fridge." Francisco motioned for the patrol to carry the man into the treatment room which unhappy troopies had named "the fridge." The room's temperature was set considerably lower than the rest of the clinic, to deal with frostbite victims. Frozen flesh needed to be warmed slowly. Francisco had treated more frostbite in the past few months than during the rest of his cumulative medical career.

Francisco met Captain Davis, the duty physician, halfway there.

"Frank, what are you doing back?"

Francisco scowled. "Dan rousted me out. We've got another frostbite victim."

"Frostbite? I can handle simple frostbite, Frank."

He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and nodded. "I know. When I get my hands on Dan Collins, he'll wish he'd let me sleep. But this guy's an intruder. They caught him camping inside the perimeter."

"Camping? In this weather? Up here? Christ, Frank, not even reindeer go camping up here."

Francisco managed a tired grin. "Tell me about it. Let's see what we've got."

Captain Davis ordered thermal blankets and a blood workup as they passed the night nurse's duty station, then they stepped into the fridge. Davis took the intruder's vitals. The duty nurse arrived a moment later with a Mylar survival blanket and a blood kit.

Francisco wrapped the blanket around the victim's torso and legs, careful to leave the frozen extremities uncovered, then glanced at the vitals. Core body temp was 96.1; not too disastrous. He'd dealt with worse. Blood pressure good, heart rate good, nice and regular.

"He's dehydrated," Francisco said quietly, noting the condition of the man's skin. "How long were you out there, hmm?" he asked the unconscious patient. "Better start an IV, D5 one-half normal saline."

Davis nodded.

"How's that blood work coming along?" Francisco called through the open doorway.

"Low on oxygen. Still checking electrolytes, sir."

Francisco fitted the man with oxygen, then carefully examined the frozen extremities. Both hands were nicely frozen, one up to the wrist, the other to the knuckles. Both ears, too... . Fortunately, the frost hadn't bitten too deeply yet. He tugged off incredibly ancient shoes and socks, both pairs held together by the holes.

"Mmm... I've seen worse," he muttered, turning the feet up to peer at the soles, "but they're nicely bitten. He's not going to be running any marathons this week. Whoever you are, you are one lucky son," Francisco murmured to the unconscious man.

"Damned lucky," Davis agreed as he threaded the IV needle into the vein and taped it down.

The nurse came back with the blood work. Francisco glanced at it, then nodded. "Very good. We found him before things got critical. Prepare sixty milligrams of Toradol, John. Whoever he is, he's going to hurt like bloody fire when he comes around. And let's put a steam pad on his chest to help bring up his core temp."

The nurse nodded and vanished in search of the prescribed items. Francisco scribbled on his chart.

The mystery man groaned softly. Francisco glanced up just as his eyelids fluttered. His expression mirrored deep disorientation. He tried to sit up and mumbled something too confused to catch. Davis placed a restraining hand on the man's chest.

When the patient struggled, Francisco helped hold him down. "Hold on there, take it easy. We found you in time. You're going to be fine. Just lie quietly..."

The man appeared to think about that for a moment, then stopped struggling. He moaned again and shut his eyes. Given the fellow's dazed expression, Francisco wondered if he'd walked away from a light-plane crash.

"Let me take a look at your eyes," Francisco murmured.

His pupils responded normally to a pen light. No signs of concussion. Francisco picked up the nearest hand again to examine the webbing more carefully, then noticed a plastic wristlet under the sweater cuff. He tugged it down into view, turned it around—

"What the..."

Francisco glanced up to the man's face. Logan McKee watched him quietly. Francisco stared at the wristband again. VA hospital patient. Mental ward... .

"What'd you find?" Davis asked curiously, looking up from the IV lead he was hooking into the needle.

"An ID bracelet. Mr. McKee," Francisco asked quietly, "can you understand me?"

McKee nodded.

"Good. You're suffering from exposure. Your hands and feet are frozen, but we found you in time to prevent permanent damage, I think. In a few minutes, you're going to start hurting like hell. We'll give you something for pain as soon as we've finished examining you. Don't be too alarmed if you feel a little dazed or confused. Your body temperature has dropped several degrees, but we'll be warming you up nicely in a couple of minutes."

"Okay." McKee's voice was a raw whisper. He shut his eyes and lay still.

Francisco and Captain Davis eased McKee out of his clothing and into a hospital gown. Their intruder couldn't use his hands at all. McKee hissed when the sweater came off over his ears. Further examination revealed no other frostbitten areas. In fact, they found no trace of injury anywhere.

"Is that steam pad ready?"

John was just walking in with it. They draped the heated pad over McKee's torso, then wrapped the Mylar around him again to hold in the heat, taking care not to heat any frozen extremities. McKee started to hurt sooner than Francisco expected.

"Where's that Toradol?"

John handed over a prepared hypo. As McKee's eyes closed under the influence of the drug, Francisco found his thoughts straying again and again to one question. Just how had this man ended up inside their perimeter, dressed for summer, with a VA hospital in-patient wristlet on his arm?

Francisco rubbed his eyes, then the back of his neck. Just one more little mystery to add to the list he'd been compiling over the last couple of months. If Dan Collins hadn't been base commander...

He shook his head. His job, at the moment, was to bring McKee out of danger. He'd tackle disturbing questions later. But he would tackle them. Something decidedly odd was going on. Francisco intended to find out what.

She woke with a vile taste in her mouth and a raging thirst that pulsed through her whole body. Queasiness lingered like ghostly nightmares, along with a half-memory of odd, thumping footsteps and an out-of-balance gait that made the queasiness worse. It took her long moments to remember why she couldn't move and even longer to recall that her name was supposed to be Aelia. A low scraping noise along the floor told her she was not alone. For an instant, all she could hear was a frantic knocking that she finally realized was her own pulse.

Then something splashed with a liquid sound. A moment after that, Aelia distinguished the faint wheeze of human lungs laboring in the muggy heat. She slitted her eyes just wide enough to see a familiar, red-haired man at her bedside. Rufus. Rufus Mancus. The name was eerily familiar, but slid away from her, into a dim, roaring pain in her head.

The door was open again. Pearl-grey light, clear as liquid and smelling sweeter than the air of her prison, slid along the tiled floor. Shadows lay like pencils on edge where broken, dirty brown tiles had tilted up. Other tiles were missing; the floor underneath was packed earth. The floor stank, or maybe the room did, of human waste and stale air. She focused her attention on Rufus. Maybe she could learn something while his back was turned.

Which it was, literally. He faced away from her, intent on emptying a ceramic pot into a wooden bucket. The stink of urine clung in the back of her throat. His coarse brown tunic, dark with sweat, lay molded to his back. Propped against the wall, she found the reason for the odd, thumping footsteps she'd half dreamed: a crude crutch, padded with a sweat-stained bit of fleece. Rufus moved awkwardly without it.

When he straightened, his breath caught a little too sharply. He halted and eased his shoulders under the tunic, then bent to finish filling the bucket. When he moved, nacreous light fell across a ghastly scar along the back of his left thigh, just above the knee. Another scar, lower down, cut across the calf. They were ragged, badly healed wounds, old enough that they'd whitened from the feverish red of new injuries to a sickly pink.

Something about the placement of those injuries tried to ooze its way past the blackness in her mind. She tried, and was at first unable, to grasp the implications of those scars; then cold horror spread through her. Aelia traced the plane of his thigh and saw where the ligaments had been severed, and lower down, along the Achilles tendon—

Her breath choked in her throat. He had been deliberately hamstrung.

Rufus Mancus turned quickly at the tiny sound she'd made. He lost his balance and caught himself against the wall. When he found her shocked gaze on him, a vertical line appeared between his brows. Open puzzlement darkened his eyes for just a moment. Then he said, in that Irish-whiskey voice she recalled so clearly, "I did not mean to wake you."

She licked her lips. "I don't mind." Then, hopefully: "Could I have water? Please?"

He nodded. "Just let me finish this and I will get Sextus." He bent to pick up the bucket.

"Wait—"

He paused.

"I'd... rather not be drugged again. And I don't like Sextus. Couldn't you bring it?"

Rufus' face went utterly still, an alien mask that left her chilled despite the close heat of the room. Deep furrows at the edges of his eyes aged him beyond his years.

"I am sorry," he said stiffly. "But it is not permitted. I should not be here, alone with you, while you are awake."

She tried to sit up and was faintly surprised when she managed it, although nausea in the pit of her stomach rumbled warningly. She rested bound hands awkwardly in her lap. "Why not?"

A film of sudden sweat shone on his battered face. His glance slid away from hers. "Because I am not a eunuch."

A eunuch?

"And I do not want to become one," he added with a low growl.

He left her sitting in darkness and took the bucket and crutch with him. Rufus shut the door with a solid thud. A bar outside dropped into place with a bang that made her jump.

A eunuch? Sextus had been castrated? Dear God...

Where am I?

Aelia closed her fists—but her name, ill-fitting and wrong, galled some inner portion of herself, distracting her from Sextus' misfortune and the implied threat to Rufus. She gripped her temples awkwardly with bound hands, desperate to remember anything about herself. Immediately she felt a warning lurch of pain in the center of her skull.

She drew a ragged, foul breath—and felt a metal band at her throat rise and fall. She explored tentatively. The thing circled her throat completely. The back of it was fastened with a crude-seeming but effective lock. The breath she drew this time shuddered all the way down to the diaphragm.

"I want to go home!" But she didn't have a clue as to what, or where, home might be.

Sextus arrived with a deep wooden cup and an unglazed ceramic jug. She eyed him warily.

"I won't drink any more of that drug," she said with more conviction than the circumstances probably warranted.

Sextus eyed her sidelong while he poured. "If you keep down this water," he murmured in his light voice, "and if you behave yourself, you won't need any more of it."

She wanted to ask what constituted "behaving one's self " and discovered a sudden, sweating fear of the answer. Sextus set the jug beside her on the bench—except it wasn't really a bench, it was more a wooden daybed, without a mattress. Sextus turned toward her with a smile on his lips, but not in his eyes. He held the cup to her mouth. The water was warm and tasted metallic. Drinking while someone else held the cup was awkward. She was thankful when the liquid seemed content to stay in her stomach. Sextus released her wrists, but not her ankles. Then he called for Rufus.

Aelia winced at Rufus' halting, slow-footed approach.

"Yes?"

The light where Rufus stood in an open corridor of some sort had strengthened to a clear, pale gold. Aelia heard the splash of water somewhere nearby. A fountain, she realized, somewhere inside this building. Farther away she could make out the muted sounds of civilization: voices, the rattle and clatter of workshops, barking dogs.

"Watch her while I prepare her breakfast."

Rufus held Sextus' gaze. "I am not supposed to stay with her."

The immensely overweight Sextus grinned. "Dominus is out looking at stock from an estate sale. He'll be gone for hours. Besides, if you don't, I'll tell him you tried to rape her."

Rufus flushed dark red, all the way to the base of his throat. Scarred hands closed slowly into fists. Only his lips, drawn into a tight line, remained pale.

"You do remember how I came here? Don't you, Sextus?"

Aelia shivered at the gently delivered threat.

Laughter drained from Sextus' eyes. "Just guard her!"

Rufus limped aside to give him room to pass. Then he returned to the doorway without offering to enter her cell. During the time he'd been gone, he'd removed his sweat-soaked tunic. Except for a dirty, ragged loincloth and a thick metal collar around his throat, he was naked. Glistening moisture along his chest and in his hair suggested Sextus had interrupted his bath.

Rufus was scarred across most of his visible body: arms, legs, chest, and that hideous burn scar on the side of his neck. It pulsed lightly with the rhythm of his heart. The scar was shaped like the letter F. Something deep in her mind stirred again, but she couldn't grasp it solidly enough. It slipped away.

Despite the exhaustion she had heard in his voice, his body was neither starvation thin nor bowed. He rippled with muscle, every part of him she could see. Whatever had happened to his leg, he hadn't allowed himself to go soft. Given the little she'd gathered about the crazy world into which she'd awakened, he probably hadn't been given much choice.

He stood glaring down the corridor, in the direction Sextus had gone. Tension had tightened Rufus' body into hard knots of muscle. Pale eyes glinted in the early daylight. Aelia decided abruptly she would not want Rufus Mancus for an enemy, no matter how desperately he'd been injured. He turned abruptly toward her. She jumped, then bit her lip.

"I did not mean to frighten you," he said heavily. "And my anger does not lie with you. Dominus Xanthus is a fool to keep that slave. He's worse than I am, in his deceitful way. Cheats Master blind and—"

"Slave?" she echoed, Slow disbelief seeped out from beneath the blackness that held her mind captive.

He met her gaze. Bitterness stiffened the set of his mouth. "Did you not guess? Sextus and I are hardly dressed as freedmen." He gestured with one hand to his near-nakedness and the metal band around his throat. "Perhaps you do not welcome another slave's company?"

The implications—and the band at her own throat—left her suspended between broken thoughts, astonished at some basic level that couldn't quite comprehend slavery as a concept, never mind as a reality for herself.

When he turned his back on her, she forgot everything else. Rufus' back was a mass of criss-crossing scars and welts, some of them so recent they were still bloody. Old bruises discolored his ribs and shoulderblades.

"My God!" she choked out. "Who did that to you?"

He glanced over one shoulder. "Don't be stupid, girl."

The accusation stung, even as it deepened the sense of dislocation behind her eyes. "I'm not stupid!" When his glance begged to disagree, she felt compelled to add, "I'm sick and confused and... Why do you hate me?"

"Hate you?" That brought him around again to face her. Wary surprise colored amber-green eyes. "I do not hate you, child."

"I'm not a child," she said levelly.

At least, she didn't feel like a child. Her body, under the shapeless linen, was certainly more developed than childhood.

He frowned. "How old are you?"

She opened her lips—

And pain struck her down. She cried out and clutched her head. She heard a distant clatter; then he was beside her, catching and cradling her, rubbing her temples and whispering to her. His Irish-whiskey voice was gentle again, soothing. The pain gradually faded, leaving her limp and drained, with a wet face.

"I'm sorry," they said simultaneously.

She looked into his eyes and discovered a slow, cautious smile. That smile was almost beautiful. It lit his eyes until their color lightened into a clear amber with just a wash of green remaining. A moment later, the smile and the clear amber hue vanished without a trace, replaced by the darkness she'd seen there before. That darkness watched the world warily and didn't expect to find anything good in it.

She found herself wanting to trust those watchful eyes and the personality behind them. Now there's an irrelevant thought, she chided herself. Or was it? She needed help, information. And he'd been kind to her.

Rufus eased her back to a sitting position and braced her carefully against the wall, making certain she wouldn't topple to the floor the moment he let go. When he stood up and started to limp back toward the doorway, she lifted bound hands involuntarily and caught his arm.

"Wait—"

He didn't turn back, but he stopped. And waited while she marshaled her scattered thoughts.

"I... Rufus, I'm ... I'm very confused," she finally managed. "I can't remember anything at all. Everything about myself, about... the very world, is black. Empty. Almost... It's like I came from nowhere, to a place I've never been. When I hear you, or that man you called Xanthus— When you talk about things that should be familiar, I just feel lost. And when I try to remember, even little things..." She swallowed too quickly. "You've seen what happens. Please help me, Rufus."

She tightened her fingers on his arm, felt the unyielding muscles knotted like so many steel cables. "At least tell me where I am. What I am. Where I'm going. Who Publius Bericus is. I need to know something."

His sigh was more shudder than exhalation. She felt the muscles beneath her fingers relax again into flesh. "Publius Bericus," he answered gruffly without turning to face her, "is the man who plans to buy you. He will be here again today, to... examine you."

She swallowed a little too sharply and discovered a lump of pain in her lungs that made breathing all but impossible. Examine her? How were... slaves... examined?

"A trader named Antonius Caelerus brought you in, said you were from one of the colonies. Iberia. I think that's somewhere far to the west, but I—" His cheeks flushed, surprising her. "I don't really know where it is. Caelerus asked Xanthus to hold you for a special customer. The sale had already been arranged. Caelerus just needed someplace to keep you, to let you recover from the journey. You were... drugged."

He hesitated, then added woodenly, "And you were—are—beautiful. Yesterday, after Bericus and Caelerus left... Xanthus could not keep his hands off you. He wants to handle your training. Bericus may not permit that. I am sure whoever trains you will enjoy the work," he added bitterly.

She swallowed hard. "Training?" She had already guessed, didn't want it confirmed. But she had to know.

"Bericus owns quite a stable of beautiful women. And beautiful boys." A shudder contorted his shoulders; he visibly fought off some unfathomable memory.

He finally faced her. His jawline was set, his expression grim. "And if you are too ill to please him, Bericus will beat you. And Xanthus will probably kill me in a fit of anger. He has already threatened it. Xanthus can easily afford to replace me."

Her own predicament seemed curiously unreal. A side effect, perhaps, of whatever else was wrong with her mind. "What happened to you?"

His laugh was short and hard. "I'm told I killed a man. The close friend of someone important."

That struck her as an odd way of putting it.

Rufus glared at the wall, avoiding her eyes. "That was before Xanthus bought me, before the school bought me. Before many things..." She shivered, wondering what he was remembering. "Xanthus has uses for me, even though my leg does not work as it should. I can still fetch and carry and clean shit from his slop buckets." Abruptly he straightened and pulled his arm free. "And if I am caught alone in your room again, he will castrate me."

This time, she didn't try to detain him. He limped to the door, dragging his left leg awkwardly, then bent to retrieve his crutch. Rufus leaned against the door jamb, facing out into the corridor, and settled himself to wait for Sextus' return. After several blank moments trying to assimilate everything he'd just said, Aelia finally regained control of her chaotic thoughts.

"Rufus?"

He eyed her from across the room, his expression closed.

She sighed. "I wish you wouldn't do that."

One shaggy, red eyebrow rose.

"I just wanted to say thank you."

He blinked. Started to speak, thought better, then shut his mouth again. Finally Rufus said, more gently than she'd expected, "No one thanks slaves, Aelia."

She stared at the filthy, broken floor, trying to sort through that. At length, she lifted her gaze again and found him staring at whatever lay beyond her prison. His jaw muscles had bunched up under the scar. He reminded her of a feral dog that's been shot at once too often for trust.

Even more gently than his last comment, she said, "You've helped me, Rufus. I owe you thanks for that."

He shook his head without looking at her. "No. I have merely done my job."

"Just your job?" The sharpness in her voice brought a dull flush to his cheeks. "There was no need for tenderness, Rufus. A bucket of water across my face would have cleaned up the mess. And you didn't need to say a single word. But you did. At considerable risk to yourself," she added pointedly.

He didn't answer. She pressed on. "Whoever you were, whatever you have or have not done..." She shrugged. "You didn't need to show me kindness, but you did. You can't know how grateful I am for that. I'm lost in a strange place. I have no memory at all, no idea what to expect. Perhaps it isn't much, but if the friendship of a slave counts, you have mine."

His hands clenched almost as tightly as his eyelids. "May Bericus rot..." His breath came out as a harsh rasp. "You just don't know."

"Then tell me," she said quietly.

His head came up. His eyes had filled with angry denial. "No. It is too ugly—"

"Ugly or not, I'll be the one living in it!"

He blanched and turned away again.

She softened her tone. "If I am to be his... property"—the word was difficult to say, as though the concept itself were utterly alien—"then I have a right to know."

He actually flinched. Then said something in another language. The words seemed oddly familiar, yet brought no recognition. Worse, the warning lurch of pain started behind her eyes.

Rufus finally grated out, "You are right. I... I will tell you what I can." He still hadn't looked at her. "I am sorry, Aelia, but tell you is all I can do. I cannot help you escape what waits for you. No one can."

A chill crept up her spine. He finally looked up. The memory burning behind his eyes was so terrible, she wanted to flinch away. Aelia forced herself to sit still. She held his gaze only through a supreme effort of will.

"I have heard, from slaves who should know," he began heavily, "that Publicus Bericus craved more luxuries than his elderly father would permit him. It is strange, but under Roman law, no grown man with a living father can marry or choose a career or spend money without his father's permission."

His lips twisted. "It is their only real taste of slavery and they hate it. Bericus wanted to make his own career decisions, wanted to buy luxuries he could not afford to buy on the peculum—the allowance—his father gave him. It is said Publius Catellus Bericus murdered the old man to inherit his fortune. What he has done since that day..."

Aelia listened in growing horror.

The longer Rufus talked, the colder her little cell grew.