Chapter 14

The first thing Levi noticed when he finally came to was that everything hurt. Every muscle was stiff and sore, even in places where he hadn't realized Lorr had muscles. Unclenching his jaw and moving it side to side, he marveled that none of his teeth seemed broken.

Working slowly from toes to scalp, he contracted and released all his joints one by one. He felt a crackling burn spreading from his neck and decided to skip that part. Finally reaching the part he dreaded, he cracked one eye open and then the other.

His eyelids stuck together, but other than that, he was pleasantly surprised at the lack of pain. It could have been because of the darkness of his cell, but other than a twinge when he moved them, his eyes gave him very little trouble.

Feeling the flat surface beneath him, he ascertained that he was on a metal slab that ended a few inches beyond his abdomen on either side. He had been in precisely one other prison cell before, but he was willing to guess that he hovered a foot or two off a concrete slab outfitted with a paltry mattress of mostly springs and that his "bed" was chained to the wall.

It wasn't worth the movement it would take to find out if he was right. No method of escape there. He felt a pang of emptiness. Without Cora, no escape plan seemed quite worthwhile.

His thoughts turned to her velvety skin, soft curves, slim hips…Get it together, Lorr warrior. Lying alone in a prison cell was no time to think about sex. Then again, what better time was there?

No. Levi had to stay focused if he was going to make his way out alone. Cora's absence was all the more reason to hurry. If she had gotten free, she would be waiting for him. If she hadn't, he had an even greater need for speed.

He gave the cell a visual sweep without moving his head. The concrete construction with no metal or hinges told him this cell had been poured with the foundation of the building. He was in the basement. Drat.

Two shafts of light illuminated tendrils of dust floating in the air. He remembered how dry his mouth and throat were and tried not to swallow. The light came from tiny twin rectangles cut into the top of the wall at a vertical slant. Double drat.

Seeing a reason to haul his sore body off the slab, Levi sat up with effort and inched his way to the vents. The grills opened directly onto street level, which he could view from an angle. Flecks of concrete crossed the bars. Nothing is going my way today.

No outlets nor lack of integrity in the walls meant no breaking out by force. The shafts were too small to squeeze through and seemed to have been set into the concrete when the room was built. Worse, deserts were prone to flash floods. He wondered briefly if they evacuated prisoners in case of heavy rain but doubted it.

He scanned the desert floor for any sign of Cora, but he didn't even see anywhere for her to hide. The brush and tumbleweed littering the landscape offered very little in the way of cover. Even if she had made it away from the guards in time, where would she go? Levi turned his back to the wall and slid to the floor.

Pushing thoughts of floating and sunburned corpses out of his mind, he focused on the task at hand. He was no good to anyone in this condition. The best he could do was wait at least a day, glean the guards' schedule, and maybe heal up a little.

Fighting his way out of a basement was going to be tough. Somewhere, he knew he would have to conquer a stairwell with tight turns and no weapons. He groaned and beat his head softly against the wall.

The impact felt good against his horns. He beat each of them against the wall in turn and felt the ringing die down a little. He stopped when he heard the harried booming noise of a guard pounding on the door.

"Hey! Shut up in there!" A plate in the door slid to the side, revealing a metal grate. Two bulging eyes surveyed him with such ferocity that Levi jumped a little. "No point trying to break out, so let the others get some beauty rest, eh? Heh, heh, heh."

Levi rolled his eyes and continued rubbing his horns on the wall, evoking a scraping noise from the concrete. The vibrations felt good in his aching head, even if the scabbing wounds on his neck smarted.

"Hey! I said shut up!"

"No use talking to him, Breg," a second guard reasoned. "The imbecile doesn't understand Jorvlen."

Levi hoped, for a moment, that they would divulge some ridiculous secret that would get him out of there in one piece. Structural plans for the entire building were probably too much to ask, but shift changes might not be.

"Sure he does. He talked up Juvus and Twolp a good bit before they stung him."

And bang goes that theory, Levi complained to himself. He put a couple of fingertips to his neck wound, gingerly feeling the crispy skin.

"That was a right nasty wound," chuckled Breg. "He'll be feeling that zap for a month."

Unlikely, thought Levi. At any rate, he had no plans to stay long enough for them to find out.

"Lucky for Juvus, those stunners don't work on us," mused the other.

"Yeah. Thank the gods for thick skin, eh?"

Levi would have to pass that little tidbit on to his brothers at some point. At the moment, though, it didn't do him much good.

The guards yammered about their home lives for an hour or two as the sun went down, but then someone brought them dinner and chairs, and they had the decency not to talk with their mouths full. There was no food for Levi yet, but that was to be expected after his escapade from earlier.

The dusty air through the vents floated through the room. After a couple more hours, the breeze was positively chilly, especially compared to the blistering heat from earlier. Levi still didn't move from his place underneath the vents. He was exhausted from the efforts of the day.

Dozing in and out, shivering in feverish dreams, he thought he heard pattering footsteps outside the grill on his left and wondered if he was losing his faculties. It wouldn't have been surprising after the ordeal he had gone through. Mild insanity was normal after something like that. Right?

When the footsteps persisted, however, he woke with a start. They were far too light to belong to a Jorvlen and too measured and loud to be an animal's. For the first time since being shocked, he allowed himself to believe Cora might be coming for him.

"Cora?" he whispered, unaware of whether the guards might be listening, but not caring. "Cora?" He heard nothing but snores. At least that answered the first question.

Standing painfully, he turned to the grill. It had been shut off with something. He couldn't make out what was in front of it because it blocked the light and his eyes couldn't focus.

When the obstruction spoke, he almost cried out in surprise. "Levi?" it said.

"Cora? Is that you?" he asked incredulously.

"It's me!" she answered in exultation. Levi had never been happier to hear anyone's voice. He let out the breath he had been holding since they left the shuttle, and he reached up to stroke her face.

At that moment, Levi had never loved anyone more.