Freedom

Chapter 30

Though I didn't know it at the time, midnight had come and gone. I awoke to day six, finding myself hanging upside down over black water. The blood had gone to my head, which hurt already because it had been hit with something very hard, and I was groggy – so it was several moments before I was prepared to take in my surroundings.

The place was pretty big; it must have been the ship's cargo hold at one time. Half of it was submerged, but that left plenty of space, vertical and otherwise. I could clearly see the rock the ship was hung up on, and it was suitably enormous. There were enough lanterns strung up that most of the chamber was visible, and hooded figures were moving around on the various walkways that networked the chamber.

The ship groaned. So did I. So did someone else. I wasn't alone up here. Grimacing, I looked to my immediate left. Let's see, Sagaris was strung up – still alive, by the look of him. Purple – er, Tyrian – and Russet, too. And there was the Biker.

We were all hanging from chains. It wasn't very dignified, especially for Tyrian, because they'd taken her coat, and she was wearing a skirt. Russet and Tyrian weren't moving, but I didn't see any blood. I was willing to bet our captors had chloroformed them – or maybe just hit them over the head, like me. If they'd been conscious, I was sure they wouldn't be so quiet.

My hands were bound behind my back with what felt like duct tape. I wiggled my wrists a bit, but I didn't think I'd be able to get them loose any time soon. I kept at it, since there was nothing else to do.

I could hear the rain drumming on the hull, and water dripped from the darkness above. Some of the people down there were talking, but we were high enough up that it was only a murmur. I wasn't even sure what language they were speaking, but it didn't sound like Russian.

"Anybody else awake?" I wondered aloud.

"Keep it down. I have a headache." Indeed, Sagaris didn't look so good. He didn't bother to open his eyes. Either the Biker wasn't conscious, or he wasn't feeling talkative. I looked down at the people below. Many were wearing hoods, but not all. They didn't look like stalkers. Stalkers carry weapons, and you usually see bandoliers, goggles, masks, helmets, armor – these people just seemed to be dressed for the weather. Who were these guys?

Well, we were hanging upside down. There was a catwalk nearby, and I could see where this was going. I remembered the scene in the room beneath the facility we'd spend the previous night in.

I was moving. The chains were turning, very slowly – I'd probably gotten it started when I woke up. My field of vision rotated with it. A body came into view. His throat had been cut, and the blood had been used to draw a crude picture on the bulkhead behind. I was too far away, and the lighting was too poor for me to see it clearly, but I thought it looked sort of like a squid.

My gaze drifted down to the people again. I counted them. There were eight that I could see, but there had to be more. The one I'd knocked out wasn't there, and one had left the cargo bay, and another had come in. A precise count wasn't possible.

Velvet had to be dead or incapacitated; the girls wouldn't be here otherwise. Where did that leave the Merc?

I continued to rotate, wondering what it would feel like to have my throat cut. The water below didn't look very inviting. A guy on a high walkway came into view. He was leaning on the railing, staring out at us. Or maybe just at Tyrian. He was one of the few without a hood. Thin face, olive skin. Messy goatee. He reached up and touched his throat, his fingers coming away red. Puzzled, he looked at me, and slumped over without a sound. That was interesting. I looked down to see if anyone had noticed. It didn't look like they had. The chains squeaked, and I continued to turn lazily.

One of the hooded figures in the cluster below broke away. I watched him for several long seconds. He went to the end of the walkway, looked over the railing at the still water, and turned back. Maybe he was listening to the drumming of the rain on the hull, which filled the cargo hold with a hollow, hypnotic sound. Then he clutched his throat and dropped. Nobody noticed. I took another count.

I kept going with the tape on my hands, but I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere.

Two people entered on the third level, and both immediately collapsed. Someone below heard it and looked up, but seeing nothing, said nothing to his companions. A portly guy in a parka – with the hood up – was making his way down the lower walkway. In a moment he'd see the body of the fellow who'd died there. Except the body was no longer there. I frowned; I hadn't noticed anyone moving it – but my bird's eye view was continually changing. When that stretch came back into view, the fat guy wasn't there anymore. Now there were only five people left – and they were all in a rough group, clustered around something I couldn't see. They still didn't realize someone was trimming them down – but it wouldn't be long now.

No – I was wrong. Velvet and the Merc didn't give them the chance; they just attacked. It seemed like the Merc had been hiding in the shadows on one of the upper levels, and Velvet had been below, concealing the bodies of those he shot down. Now he appeared, a big black pistol with a big black suppressor in one hand, and his UMP in the other. With apparent nonchalance, he extended the submachine gun toward the people below, and squeezed the trigger. It was loud.

Velvet also burst from a doorway on the other side of the hold. Her MPL wasn't quite as deafening, but between the two of them, they had the metal walls buzzing, and everybody's ears ringing. The sudden shooting brought people who hadn't been initially visible out of the woodwork. They hadn't shot at us in the dark, but that was because they'd wanted to take us alive – I'd wrongly concluded that they didn't have guns. They did – though it was a motley assortment, and not very impressive.

One moment, silence. The next, firefight, with close to twenty participants. And us just hanging there in the middle of it all. It jerked Sagaris from his stupor, and his sudden motion got all the chains moving. We began to swing in a sickening circle, like the dangly things you hang over a baby's crib. I spotted some people sneaking up a stairway behind the Merc, but he turned and shot them down with his suppressed pistol. Below, the shooting slackened off for a moment – then Velvet finished reloading, and opened fire again. She was behind the door of a steel cargo container, firing blindly. Something zinged off the ceiling overhead. The girls weren't reacting at all, and I had to wonder if they were still alive.

Rather than reloading the UMP, the Merc let it drop on its harness and raised his AWM. It boomed, and a hooded figure toppled from a walkway I hadn't even seen – he had been way up in the rafters, apparently with a knife. The place was swarming with these creepy guys – but it seemed like they were better at being creepy than at fighting.

Somebody's revolver went empty, and as he tried to figure out how to reload it, Velvet heartlessly charged him down and knocked him over the railing. He hit the metal floor two decks down with a crunch, beside a pair of guys ineffectually firing shotguns at the Merc. Velvet's MPL clicked empty yet again, and she pulled her pistol and leaned over the railing to shoot them both in the back. The Merc's rifle dropped one that had been lining up a shot on her, and she ducked into a doorway and out of sight.

A man went over backwards with one of the Merc's bullets in his chest, and he fired his shotgun on reflex. The blast hit something above me, and I felt my chain slip down, then jerk to a halt. This couldn't be good. The support we were all hanging from began to groan. A bullet struck Sagaris' armor, and he winced, bumping into me as we both swung wildly.

"Someday," he said, eyes still closed. "I will look back on this and laugh."

I wasn't listening. Below, a guy running from cover to cover tripped and toppled into the water. The Merc fired three deafening shots so fast that you really had to wonder at his ability to work a bolt. I hadn't heard Velvet's MPL in about ten seconds, and that meant she had to be completely out of ammunition.

Real life isn't like video games – you can only carry so many magazines, and when you're on full auto, they go fast. Another one had gotten behind her, but a moment later he was being used as a human shield. A crash of thunder reverberated through the ship, only slightly louder than the Merc's AWM.

The man in the water had grabbed the grating and was attempting to haul himself up. Velvet and the Merc were occupied, and I was the only one looking – but I clearly saw him dragged back in by something hidden by the black water. The chain chose just that moment to slip and drop me toward that same water, hands and feet still bound.