Page 82 of Dark Rebel's Mystery

There was a cluster of them. The sound of muffled shouts came from too far away for her to decipher what was being said. Then, a clatter of something hitting the floor. Something big. She could hear tense voices echoing down the hallway, and the hair on her arms prickled with foreboding.

She realized with a start that her pendant was gone. They had taken away the amber stone that had guided her for so long, and now she was blind without it. The people outside could be herfriends coming to rescue her, or it could be even worse monsters than the doctor, and she had no way of knowing.

Kyra wanted to cry out in helpless anger but clamped her teeth shut. No sense in attracting attention. If it was the doctor or someone even worse, she didn't want them to remember that she was there until she recovered at least a sliver of her strength.

Her mind was a little clearer, and it occurred to her the drugs were slowly loosening their grip on her, and no one had come to administer more.

Perhaps those were the people outside?

But then, why the commotion?

She heard someone utter a vile Farsi curse, then another voice lashed out in a foreign language that she recognized from her earlier disastrous infiltration. The enhanced soldiers and the doctor spoke it.

The words echoed off the walls, and she could only catch snippets of sound, but the cadence and aggression suggested fear.

Suddenly, footsteps pounded right outside her cell.

Kyra went rigid, expecting the door to burst open, but nothing happened, and she exhaled shakily. They weren't coming for her.

Then came a voice—the doctor's—clear and ringing with arrogance. "The betrayer's whelps have come to play," he said in accented English. "And who are these two? Have the betrayer's daughters stooped to breeding with monkeys?"

What was he talking about? Who was the betrayer whose daughters were breeding with monkeys? Did he mean ugly men? Or was it some kind of a racial slur?

There was a mocking quality in the doctor's tone, as though whoever he was addressing was beneath him.The betrayer's whelps. Maybe he was referring to some old grudge or vendetta. He sounded angry but also wary. Almost as if he felt threatened.

The blood in Kyra's veins pulsed faster.

"I'm not about to engage in a game of insults with you." The answer was delivered in what was clearly American English. The man's voice was smooth, calm, and strangely familiar, even though she was sure she had never met him.

Something about his inflection and the timbre of his words awakened an ache deep in her chest.

Kyra closed her eyes, the lack of visual input sharpening her hearing. The thick door muffled the sounds, but she could pick out the anger that laced the doctor's voice, while the American sounded almost bored with the hostility. The rest of the words became a jumble of half-caught phrases.

"Annani's spawn are as pathetic as the humans they coddle. I'll enjoy dissecting your friends' corpses for whatever secrets they hide."

"Tell your dogs to…"

"Fangs and claws."

"You want to fight me?" A pause. "It would be…to kill you with…"

"Kill the monkeys."

Kyra tensed. Someone barked something in that foreign dialect again, and then the corridor erupted with the sounds of struggle—the distinctive crash of bodies hitting walls, the grunt of someone absorbing a heavy blow, and the sharp scrape of boots pivoting on the floor. Then came gasps and strangled curses in English.

By the commotion, the number of people engaged in combat outside her door was significant. The doctor's voice rose, though she couldn't discern the words, and another man—maybe the same American or a companion—let out a hiss of pain or exertion. A loud metallic clang reverberated as if a piece of equipment or a weapon had dropped. She pictured them grappling, maybe fists flying or knives clashing.

Kyra jerked at her shackles, and the heavy cuff around her right wrist tore into already raw skin, sending rivulets of warmth trickling over her palm. She bit back a cry, cursing herself for doing something so stupid. Pain flared, sharpening her senses, but even with adrenaline pumping through her, she was pinned like an animal in a trap.

A muffled shout—a shot—someone's strangled exclamation—then silence.

Kyra's pulse thundered in her skull.Did the doctor kill them?

She imagined the doctor's twisted sneer or that unnamed American lying in a pool of blood. She had no reason to care about the stranger with the smooth voice, and yet her chest tightened at the thought.

If he was on a mission to take down the vile doctor, maybe he was also her chance of survival. But if the American died, she'd be left at the mercy of a monster that had none.

Another wave of terror and despair gripped her, intensifying the ache in her battered body.

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