Page 2 of Taken for Granite
Frelinray, always wanting to be calledRay. What an ugly, human-sounding name.
Remorse and fury and a long-buried desire for companionship swirled inside him. Both held captive by the Rose Syndicate, the chance to escape arose when the Germans firebombed the building. As dumb luck had it, the blast collapsed a wall and freed Ray from his chains.
Tas had not been so fortunate; his chains remained firmly in place and he urged his friend to flee, to seize that chance. Frelinray did so with reluctance, escaping minutes before a devastating barrage.
Tas barely had time to shift to his stone form as the walls of the building crumbled and flames surrounded him. He would not have been surprised to learn Frelinray perished in the bombing, but Tas hoped. And waited.
Eventually, the rubble shifted. His captors brought him to a new prison, underground and far away from the blitz. He always hoped Frelinray would come back for him, though—not to abandon him for nearly eighty years.
If Tas ever meet Frelinray again, he’d punch him in the face. First, for insisting on a dumb, human-sounding name. Second, for leaving Tas to rot in captivity for eightygrackingyears.
Perhaps Frelinray had not escaped. In the chaos of the bombing blitz, he could have easily been struck down again.
Tas stayed induramna, his stone form, for decades, drifting along in a half-awake state. The Rose Syndicate eventually dug him out. They moved him from facility to facility, but the view never changed: always a flat concrete wall.
Duramnawas strange. The first level allowed a warrior increased strength and resistance. The deeper levels resembled hibernation, allowing his body to heal rapidly, and kept pain at a distance, easily ignored. His body, desperate to replace the energy expended in shifting, would burn off excess fat and eventually muscle mass if he did not find sustenance. Perhaps it was different for those in the warrior class. Tas gathered information as a scout, and his stone form always remained aware, even if in a dream-like state.
Over the years, they tested his stone form, applying diamond-tipped drills and acid to see how much damage he could take before waking. They scratched and scored his eyes. They shattered his right foot. What finally stirred him was when they snapped his wings.
When he awoke, the accumulated pain of years of torment came crashing down: his eyes, his foot, the chemical burns, the drilling, the chipping away, and finally the bones snapping in his wings.
He roared in agony and grabbed the nearest human by the throat.
The male was never the same.
Now they purposely kept him starved and weak. He could not shift to his stone form and slip into a trance, and his body lacked the nutrients to heal properly. It took every ounce of energy to just to maintain whatever kind of life this was.
Time became meaningless. After the crash that stranded him on this primitive mudball of a planet, he’d overheard the general, Zaek, mutter to himself about time dilation. Time flowed differently back home on Duras because of gravity or something. Tas hadn’t paid attention, being more concerned with helping the injured, but he had centuries to ponder Zaek’s meaning.
If time did move slower on Duras, that meant the surviving crew could wait years—centuries—for a rescue. It also meant that Tas’ parents, brother and little sister remained unchanged. They were fixed points. They did not age and they did not know of the disaster that befell Tas’ ship, leaving him stranded and so many dead. Perhaps enough time had passed that they wondered, but their home planet was at war and Tas served in the military. Periods of silence were to be expected. They did not know how he barely survived, and it comforted him.
His time in captivity was insignificant. He grew older, but his family remained the same. Days bled into one another, blurring, and he could suffer the never ending torture because what was one point in time?
Nothing.
His sigil had pinged him. Rescue was coming at long last.
Tas had nothing but time to turn that information over. The hours stretched into days. He had no way to judge the time in his crate, sleeping when he wanted and ignoring his hunger.
Blinded, starved and chained, his captors made a mistake. They left him alone too long. He’d show them exactly how much of a threat he could be.
As thin as he was, he could slip out of the manacles on his wrist and work his feet free. He had located the weak spots in the crate and could use the last of his strength to smash it open.
He waited.
He’d suffer the indignity of captivity for a little longer, until they reached land. Then he’d shed his chains and snap the neck of the first human he encountered.
2
Juniper
“Juniper, come to my office when you get a second.”
“Sure, boss. Let me finish this up.” Juniper made the rounds past her tables, topping off coffee cups with a smile. The smiles didn’t guarantee a good tip, but they sure didn’t hurt. Enticed by the rich aroma drifting up from her carafe, she realized she could use a fresh cup of her own. The morning shift never bothered her, but she’d started to drag after the lunch rush.
She grabbed two cups, one for herself and one for Jack, and loaded up both with cream and sugar. “What’s up?” she asked, setting the cup on his desk.
He accepted the coffee with a nod. “Get the van gassed up. Got a catering job for you.” A set of keys landed on the desk.
