Three long, painful days melded together as Krys’s cybernetics assessed and repaired the damage as best as they could. At first, she had a headache that she had thought would make her head explode, but thankfully it drifted away, albeit just as slowly as her cybernetics repaired, although it did come back in lancing jabs that had her nearly blacking out at least three times. This, her cybernetics gleefully informed her, was from a malfunction that needed to be addressed as soon as possible by external equipment.

In other words, whatever those weapons had done had seriously screwed her up.

Her senses and normal functions had finally returned to her completely, although she considered that a mixed blessing. The metal floor underneath her was cold and uncomfortable, especially on limbs that had halfway atrophied and needed to be moved desperately. Krys’s entire body seemed like a mass of needles. A desperate thirst made her throat feel like dust, and hunger seemed to be eating its merry way through her stomach.

But training overrode need, so Krys stayed still and avoided making noises at all costs. But she couldn’t keep her stomach from growling.

By the end of the third day, Krys was about to abandon all guises of still being unconscious just to get food and water. It seemed that food and water were all she could think about. She half-dreamed about diving into a huge lake and drinking as much as she could, then eating a feast for four by herself. At these times, she wondered why she was still lying on the cold, hard floor, not moving at all, by all appearances still unconscious.

Then her cybernetics would give her a report on the progress of the repairs, and she would remember and lie still for a while longer, until thoughts of food and water made her half-dream again.

Finally, after what had seemed like an eternity, her cybernetics told her that they were as repaired as they were going to get without external equipment. New thoughts of food and water rose in her mind, but she shoved them away and ordered a scan of wherever she was being kept.

It took a lot longer than usual, but the results finally came in. Cameras, infrared monitors, and very sensitive microphones perched on the walls of her cell at regular intervals, making any attempt at stealth or hiding impossible. Underneath her, weight sensors and more infrared devices hummed contentedly.

Krys had to hold back laughs of desperation. There was no way in hell she was getting out of this one anytime soon. Or ever. Not without outside help. And in a ship full of hostiles, that was as likely as her getting food and water before she passed out from dehydration.

Now that she finally knew what she was up against, Krys blinked her eyes open and surveyed her surroundings visually. She was in a decently large room, lying across from the single door that looked to be reinforced multiple times with multiple metals. There was a single dim light next to the door, casting a small pool of soft light and throwing most of the door into deep shadow.

Krys took a deep breath and began to tentatively move tingling limbs, to try to get proper blood flow to them.

Before she had moved her leg an inch, lights above her popped on. She could vaguely hear an alarm going off outside of her cell. Krys frowned, but merely continued to gently work her muscles. Very high security. Her chances of escaping were getting slimmer and slimmer.

She tried and failed to work moisture into her mouth. Thoughts of escape paled beside her need for water, and she knew it. She couldn’t last much longer without water.

The door to her cell abruptly opened, showing a huge figure looming in the doorway, still in the shadows. Krys, still stretching muscles that desperately needed the activity, watched with half-hearted interest as the figure stepped into the now brightly lit cell.

The man was huge in every dimension. He had amazingly broad shoulders, beefy biceps, and sausage-like fingers. His torso was just as thick, leading to huge legs, each as big around as both of Krys’s put together. His neck was indistinguishable from his head, which seemed overly large, just like the rest of him. He stood right next to the doorway, holding one of those curious wire-weapons. Though it wasn’t pointing at her, Krys had no false beliefs about him even hesitating to shoot her if she made any moves toward the still-open door.

Krys didn’t even bother sitting up, knowing that the effort would tax what little energy she had. She needed food and water. Water first.

As if in answer to her thoughts, women began to enter the room, carrying bowls and covered baskets. They were a shocking contrast to the man. All of them were slender and graceful, moving easily into the room to surround Krys.

If she had any saliva, Krys would have been drooling from the smell of warm food coming from the covered baskets that the women began setting down around her. She could almost feel the water in the bowls. So intent on the smell and feel of water and food, Krys barely registered the door closing as the last of the women entered.

One of the women smiled gently at Krys. “Can you sit up?”

Krys again tried to work moisture into her mouth in order to speak, and failed. Instead, she weakly shook her head.

The woman nodded and moved so she was behind Krys. She gently lifted Krys’s head and settled it on her lap as she sat. The rest of the women sat down in a circle around Krys, setting their bowls and baskets in front of them.

One of the women closest to Krys lifted the bowl in front of her and tipped it toward Krys, letting a thin stream of water trickle into Krys’s mouth. Krys drank greedily, but kept herself from drinking too much. She knew better than to drink too much water after so long without any. When the women began feeding her, she only took small bites, despite the near-agony of hunger. She needed to regain her strength, not kill herself gorging.

The women seemed to understand this, and fed and watered her slowly. The first woman held Krys’s head the entire time, as the others patiently tipped water and food into Krys’s mouth. Krys could almost feel the energy returning to her with each swallow, but she didn’t dare to even try to sit up yet.

Half of the women still had full baskets in front of them when the woman holding Krys’s head called for a stop. Krys was still both hungry and thirsty, but she knew that if she ate or drank any more, she would gorge herself.

The woman holding Krys’s head gently smiled down at her. “We will be back later. You must have time to digest. Rest until we return.”

With that, the other women began to stand. The one holding Krys’s head gently put it back on the floor, then stood herself. The door opened, and the women filed out, the guard following them. The door closed gently behind them.

Krys, feeling exponentially better, began to again methodically work her muscles, flexing and relaxing them rhythmically. She still did not attempt to do anything more strenuous than that, knowing that her new energy would not last through much else.

Four hours later, Krys was still rhythmically flexing her weak muscles when the door again opened. The women streamed in again, holding the same bowls and covered baskets, though the food smelled fresh and all of the bowls were full. Krys stopped flexing.

The same woman sat behind Krys. “Can you sit up?”

“I don’t think so.” Krys frowned at the dry croak that was her voice.

The woman smiled gently. “That is alright. Your strength and voice will return to you with proper nourishment.”

Krys felt her head being lifted again, and there was no talking as she was fed and watered.

The women again left with about half of the food and water left in the bowls and baskets, and Krys went back to flexing. She felt much better now. The leading edge of the gnawing hunger had faded, and her thirst was nearly gone.

Krys was growing tired when, four hours later, the women came again. This time, Krys lifted her head on her own, but could do no more than that, despite resting her head on the same woman’s lap between bites.

This time, when the women left, Krys dropped into a light sleep.

The routine continued four hours later, when Krys woke to the door opening and the inviting smell of warm food.

Each time the women returned, Krys had gained more strength. At first, it took great effort to even sit up, but by the end of her second day fully awake, Krys could stand with ease, although not for long. Her energy was back, but the strength she was so used to was still lacking. Her muscles had taken a harder beating than she had thought.

She now ate all of the food the women brought, and they left what water she did not drink. They took longer to return every day. When they left, Krys would get up and force herself to walk around her cell until her legs would simply buckle. She got stronger with each passing hour.

By the fourth day, Krys was almost back to full strength. Instead of walking around her cell when the women left, she did simple martial arts, building her strength further. She was back to eating only three meals a day, though they were each large.

The door opened on the fourth day for her lunch, and again the women streamed in with their bowls and baskets. The ever-present guard followed them in and took up his post next to the door, keeping a wary eye on the standing Krys.

Krys smiled at the women as she sat on the floor with them. They all seemed excited for some reason. Though they still did not talk, she could see the excitement in the way they moved, and in the way they urged their baskets and bowls at her. Krys focused her attention on the food, ignoring the fidgety women as she ate hungrily.

Once she was finished, Krys dusted her hands off and thanked the women. The leader, the woman who had held Krys’s head when she had been too weak to help herself, smiled.

Krys glanced at the other women as they began to collect their baskets and the empty bowls quicker than usual. “Why is everyone so excited?”

The leader stopped halfway to picking up an empty bowl. “You do not know?”

Krys frowned. “Know what?”

The woman’s eyes lit. “The War Leader has said that he will be visiting you today.”

A chill ran up Krys’s spine as the past ten days slammed into her. She was in enemy territory, and the leader was about to talk to her. Crap.

As soon as the door closed behind the women and the huge guard, Krys began pacing. RaJef was coming to “visit” her. She would be meeting him in person for the first time, and she wasn’t quite sure yet what to expect. If he was just going to kill her, why have her fed? Maybe he wanted to kill her himself. Maybe he thought she would cooperate with him if he kept her alive. Maybe…

Krys shook her head. There were too many possibilities. She stopped pacing and instead began a stretching routine that had always relaxed her. It didn’t work very well this time.

She was about to start the routine again when the door slid open. Krys stood from the beginning stretch as three guards only slightly smaller than the first she had seen walked into the room. Behind them came the man whose face she had only seen twice, and that over some sort of comm feed.

RaJef was tall, and nearly as slender as the women that had been feeding Krys. He was more muscular, though, and his skin was a deep tan that looked a lot like leather. His eyes were the same as they had been on the two occasions that Krys had seen them before. Cold and hard. Krys saw the flash of hate in his blue eyes as he met her gaze, but they cooled again so quickly that Krys almost believed she had imagined it.

Then RaJef did something that Krys never expected: he smiled.

It was an awkward, forced smile that never reached his eyes, but it was a smile with some semblance of warmth. Krys tilted her head, but kept her confusion off of her face. Why on earth was he smiling? She was his enemy.

Awkward silence stretched in the cell. Krys refused to be the first to speak.

Finally, RaJef got the hint. “I trust you have been comfortable?”

Krys’s brow lifted. “The food is good and the water’s fresh, but this floor is pretty hard.”

Krys could tell that RaJef was having a hard time keeping that smile on his face. “You will have pillows brought to you.”

She nearly frowned. What on earth…? He’s making sure that I’m comfortable? I’m his prisoner Krys mentally shrugged and decided to play along. She forced a smile onto her face. “Thanks. So tell me, War Leader-”

“You know who I am?”

Krys mentally frowned, but kept her smile in place. He had almost sounded…disappointed. “No,” she lied, and was relived when he visibly relaxed. She had chosen correctly. “One of the women giving me food told me that the War Leader was coming to visit me. I’m assuming you’re him.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Okay, so tell me, what am I doing here?”

The smile on his face widened and became triumphant. Krys’s smile widened, too. Here we go. Let’s see what this leather bag is up to.

“You were just about to begin a training program for my fleet when your ship got lost. When we found you, you were nearly dead. We had a time bringing you back to life.”

Krys was astonished. Train his fleet? That’s what he wanted? She couldn’t help herself; she laughed out loud, and decided to drop the guise. “Wow. If I really was stupid, I would have believed you. So, what was your plan? Wait until I woke up, hope I had brain damage, and trick me into training your fleet? Smart plan, I must admit, but you underestimate me.”

The smile slid off of his face, and the hatred came back full force. The three guards stiffened, though they made no moves toward their weapons.

In response, Krys relaxed into a position from which she could defend against almost anything they threw against her. “So. I imagine that you’re smarter than you look, which means that you had some sort of backup plan.” The guards stiffened more at the insult to RaJef, and their hands twitched toward their weapons. Krys nearly grinned. So predictable. “Let me guess. Have a few of your goonies beat the crap out of me, until I agree to train your fleet.” Now Krys did bear her teeth in a vicious smile. “A snowball has a better chance in Hell than that plan does of working.”

RaJef bared her teeth at her in a mirror to her own snarl. “It seems you are stupider than you look, human. Did you not think I would know that you violated our agreement?”

Krys snorted. “I told you. I’m not stupid enough to waltz into enemy territory without weapons. That was never part of our agreement.”

RaJef’s snarl widened into a cold smile. “You may believe so. However, it was part of our agreement that you came alone. That is a condition that you agreed to.”

“And I did come alone.” Krys shrugged her shoulders. “So you’re just talking in circles.”

“Wrong, human. If you came alone, then how did we find another on that thing you called a ship?”

Krys’s eyes narrowed as her mind raced. Surely he was lying. There was no possible way that someone had hitched a ride on her hypership. “I don’t believe you.”

RaJef’s smile was vicious now. “So now you call me a liar. My men do not take kindly to that. You will find that I am anything but a liar.”

And with that, RaJef spun and left, one of the three guards following him. The two that were left behind had faces that were carefully kept neutral as one unstrapped his weapon. One guard nodded to the other, and they both advanced on Krys.

Krys mentally cursed and dropped further into her defensive stance. “Two on one. Well. Those aren’t very fair odds, now are they. Are you so afraid of me that you have to come at me together?”

Both guards’ faces remained completely neutral, and they both continued to advance at a measured pace.

Krys began to circle. The guards followed her footwork, advancing still. Krys tensed, then loosened her muscles. This was not good. She wasn’t yet back to full strength, and she would have been barely able to take these two had she been at full strength.

She glanced toward the door, hoping that it would e propped open even while knowing it wouldn’t be. Then she saw what she needed. A leg up that the two huge men wouldn’t expect. The problem was, the guards were in front of it. She would have to go right between them, which really didn’t appeal to her. But her only other option was to be beaten to a pulp. Which appealed to her about as much as giving RaJef what he wanted.

Krys unfocused her eyes, not wanting the guards to know what she was planning. She stopped circling and let the two advance even further, instinctively tensing to strike as they drifted within range of her legs. So she did strike, but not in any way the guards could have imagined.

With amazing speed, Krys dove between the two men, pulling her feet in at the last second so their fumbling grabs caught only air. She rolled with her momentum, watching her goal get ever closer. Just before she reached it, she leapt into a handspring, landing upright with her prize in hand, facing the two men, who were still turning to catch her.

They both froze when they saw what Krys held: the weapon that the first guard had taken off. The second guard still had his weapon, and began to reach for it. But Krys had been expecting something of the sort, and quickly glanced down at the weapon to see how it worked. It seemed that pulling a small lever on the side of the barrel released the wires.

Krys pulled the lever, jerking backward a little from the recoil as the wires released.

The second guard’s face was no longer neutral. Fear played across it as he dropped his own weapon and tried to protect himself by raising his arms across his body, to no avail. The wires slammed into his bare arms, dropping him to the ground. He twitched a couple times, then lay completely still.

Krys threw the weapon to the side and rolled the other way just as the first guard crashed into where she had been standing. She backed away quickly as the guard recovered, dropping again into a defensive stance. She could feel her legs begin to wobble a little. Not good. She wouldn’t be able to pull off anymore moves like that, and the other weapon was across the room.

At least the other guard wasn’t moving toward the weapon, either. Instead, his entire focus seemed to be on Krys as he, once again, began advancing on her. But she had obviously shaken him. His face was no longer carefully neutral, either. Anger twisted his features, combined with an almost frightening determination.

Krys could tell that he wanted her dead.

She didn’t much feel like obliging. Instead, she rolled to the side, hoping to get closer to the weapon. When she righted herself, she saw the guard barreling at her.

Krys’s heart pounded. This was not good. She wouldn’t be able to reach the weapon before the guard mowed her over. Her eyes darted around the room as she turned to face the oncoming guard, hoping to find something, anything, that would keep her from getting killed.

She instinctively took a step back as the guard continued to rush toward her.

And she tripped on the dead man.

She knew, even as she fell, that she was as good as dead. The guard was still rushing toward her with murder in his eyes.

The impact with the ground knocked the breath from her in a grunt. Then she felt the tip of a boot dig into her side before she was thrown across the room, slamming into the wall of the cell. Her left shoulder popped out of place at the sudden jarring, and she felt a few ribs crack. She couldn’t breathe. It felt like she was choking, like someone had a hand around her throat, squeezing the breath out of her.

When she opened eyes she hadn’t realized she had closed, she found that that was exactly the case. The guard had caught up with her, and was choking her. Krys grabbed his huge wrist, and tried to twist his hand off, forgetting about her shoulder until it sent a wave of pain through Krys’s body that left her with cold beads of sweat running down her face. She would have screamed, but she didn’t have the breath.

The guard lifted her by the throat until her feet barely touched the ground. Krys’s vision began to narrow and blur. Her ears began to ring.

The guard shoved his face close to hers. “This is what you get for insulting my War Leader, human bitch.” He then pulled away, cocking back his free hand and fisting it.

Krys closed her eyes. She knew what was coming, and didn’t want to see it.

The next thing she knew, she was on the ground, her ears ringing even louder than before. Her eye ached, and her head was pounding. But at least now she could breathe. She took in huge gulps of air, despite the twinges from her cracked ribs. Her popped shoulder ached like nothing else. But she was alive. She would have a nasty black eye, her ribs would ache for a while, and she would have to pop her shoulder back into place, but she was alive.

She once again opened her eyes to find her cell empty. Groaning, Krys lifted herself and crawled slowly over to the wall of the cell. She settled back against it, catching her breath. She then pushed against the wall, getting a decent amount of traction with her feet and pushing with the strength of her legs. She grabbed hold of her left shoulder, which in itself sent a wave of pain rolling through her.

Krys let out all of her breath, gritted her teeth, and shoved with all of her remaining strength.

Her shoulder popped back into place with a sickening crack and another wave of pain that nearly had Krys retching. She sucked in air, and let it back out on a low moan. The cell spun in front of her, making her head pound harder and her stomach heave. Once again, Krys closed her eyes. She sat, controlling her breathing, until the dizziness and nausea mostly passed, along with the pain.

She heard the door open again, but didn’t pay it any attention. Instead, she focused on settling her heart rate.

What had RaJef meant that she hadn’t come alone?

Voices sounded in the cell, followed by the door closing again. Krys sighed and opened her eyes.

And found Theo staring back at her.