Page 11 of The Prisoner's Gambit
Maureen watched but said nothing, letting the poor woman get her legs under her before she swept them out again with the reality of their situation. Darla rolled her shoulders and looked around, her eyes much clearer than before.
“Better?” Maureen asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good. You’re not going to hurl, are you? If you do, do it over there.”
“No, I’m okay.”
“Well, all right then. So, Darla, tell me what’s the last thing you remember?”
Darla scrunched her brow a little as the memories cleared in her mind. “I remember driving. I had just picked up some coffee from the gas station. There was this cute guy there, but I blew him off and was heading home. And then—then I don’t remember. That’s weird.”
“Yep, weird, but that’s pretty much how it works.”
“What is?” Darla asked, the alarm clear on her face. “Hang on. You said it would take a minute to wear off. Take a minute forwhatto wear off? Did that bastard roofie me? But there’s no way he could have spiked my coffee—”
“It’s not roofies.”
“Then what? And where are we? What is this place?”
Maureen slipped into mother hen mode. She’d seen this part before plenty of times. “Well, you may want to sit back down for that part.”
Darla did not like the sound of that. Not one bit.
“Maureen, what’s going on?”
She gave Darla the most reassuring smile she could, but that wasn’t saying much. “Look around us. Not exactly like anything you’ve seen on Earth before, is it?”
“You talk as if we were on another planet or something.”
“Or something, yeah.”
Darla’s eyes widened. The impossible illumination of the metal, the strange design of the chamber. And her winding up here with no memory of how she’d gotten here. It was insane, but it was all starting to add up. Add up to an impossible answer.
“I was abducted?” she gasped.
“Now she gets it,” a deeply tanned man with broad shoulders and several days scruff on his square jaw growled.
“Be nice, Victor.”
“Iambeing nice, Maureen,” he snarked, turning his attention back to the newcomer. “Youwere abducted.Shewas abducted.Iwas abducted. All of us were snatched up in one way or another. Get it, new girl?”
“Okay. Jeez, you made your point. There’s no need to be a dick about it.”
“Baby, if you think I’m an asshole, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He flashed a look at Maureen. “You wanna tell her about the Raxxians?”
Several of the other captives seemed to shift uncomfortably at the mention of the word. It was unsettling to say the least, but Maureen had seen far more than the newcomers combined, though she’d spared them the grisly details.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s a Raxxian?”
Maureen shook her head. This part always sucked.
“Fine,” Victor scoffed impatiently. “I’ll do it. You see, hon, the Raxxians are the scaly green bastards who took us.”
