Once It Gets Dar

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Hi everybody, thank you so much, for your patience, your enthusiasm, your comments, and your feedback!

Just a little warning: since we are nearing the climax (no pun intended), this chapter is a little tense.

There is also

NO SEX

in this chapter, so if you are looking for a bit more of eroticism, I recommend having a look at Ch.1;

Ch.3; Ch.6; Ch.8;

Ch.9; Ch.11; Ch.13; Ch.14;

Ch.15

instead (personal recommendations in bold).

As always you can find a list of vocabulary in my profile.

TW:

Rebels in underground structures; heartbreak.

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CHAPTER 17--UNDERGROUND

Light. Bright white light. Blindness and a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I protected my head with my legs, ignoring the nausea that rose in my pregnant belly. Explosions. Pain. The smell of iron and burning rubber. Shots. Screams. Somebody grabbing my arm and yanking me out of the car. More pain. Veril soldiers on the ground--injured, dead. Then everything went black, and I was gone, floating in merciful darkness.

After a while (was it minutes or hours?), the pain returned, getting stronger and stronger, tugging on my consciousness. Pain, pain, pain, gripping my whole body with force; agony clenching each of my cells, so all-encompassing that it was impossible to tell what was causing it. But as my foggy brain was pulled out of its stupor, I got gradually better at identifying the source of my suffering: my left side, my arm--my wrist. I grunted in a desperate attempt to make it more bearable; I felt as if my veins and sinews were being plucked out one by one, each fiber of my muscles getting shredded.

I gasped, and my eyes sprang open. I was in a cool, dark room with smooth walls. Dizzy and sweating, I turned my aching head. My movement triggered some kind of sensor, and there was the light again, blazing and so bright that I couldn't see. I covered my face and instinctively reached inside myself to summon my darkness for protection, but I found nothing.

When my pupils had finally somewhat adapted, I saw that the entire ceiling of my tiny chamber was made out of glass and fluorescent tubes as if it were one brightly glowing lamp. Everything else, the walls and the floor and even the tiny cot and sleeping bag I was lying on, were the clearest white, reflecting the light from above back at me.

Clenching my teeth and shaking, I looked down my left arm, half expecting to find my hand amputated, but there were just some scrapes on my skin, usually quite tan, but strikingly pallid in the artificial light, and, as the haze left my head, the mind-numbing pain in my wrist faded along with it as quickly as it had come, until I was not sure anymore if it had ever been real.

I moaned in relief and assessed the rest of my body for injuries from the explosion but found nothing too severe, except for a stained bandage covering my upper right arm. I moved my shoulder tentatively and flinched at the dull ache.

My baby! Panicked, I looked down, but there was no trace of blood on my thighs, and I still felt the tight heaviness on my womb--I placed my hand on my belly and reassuringly ran my thumb over it.

The glowing ceiling was emitting an annoying high-pitched whirring that was muddling my thoughts. Was I really awake? Slowly, like in a trance and with my hand still on my belly, I got up and pressed my palms against the smooth, cold walls, and then, with a shock, I noticed that there was no door. Had I lost my mind? Was this a mental hospital? Had everything just been a fabrication of my mind? I turned my hands around--there were the markings: four dots, a three-pointed zigzag, and three lines encircling my left wrist; the Veril number thirteen around my right. But they were dull and pale like scars; no shining blue magic was smoldering underneath my skin, and for some ridiculous reason the sight sent a sharp and poignant sting through my heart. I needed to get out of this bright hell before I went insane.

I patted frantically against the walls; the room was so small that it was almost possible to touch each of them without having to move. The stale air was making my head throb, and even though I was breathing rapidly, it felt like I was getting no oxygen.

I called out for help, but my voice was swallowed by the thick material around me. I slammed my fists against it with ever-increasing strength until my knuckles were red. Suddenly something touched my foot, and I jumped back. A piece of paper had been pushed through an invisible slit between the floor and the wall in front of me.

Step away from the door. Hands up,

it said in German.

I took two steps back until my butt was pressed against the cold panels behind me and realized for the first time that I was naked except for the plain standard underpants that were part of my Veril uniform.

"We said hands up!" A male voice barked in German.

Without any further warning, the wall in front of me slid open, gliding into its counterpart to the left, and I realized that the edges of the door had been hidden in the corners of the tiny cell. About five figures covered head to toe in white hazmat suits stood in the entrance, pointing enormous spotlights at me. They were definitely human--German men. I really

was

with the rebels, then. I squinted, the room filled with the smell of ozone and the buzzing of their gadgets, and I quickly raised my arms.

"What's all this about?" I asked through gritted teeth.

"Contamination control," came the muffled voice from underneath one of the gas masks. "Turn around, knees apart."

"Contamination?" My stomach clenched anxiously as they ran their uncomfortably warm lights over every centimeter of my skin.

"Making sure there's none of those monsters' spells sticking to you."

Pretty certain that this was not how magic worked, I rolled my eyes, but then I remembered my dull markings, and a shiver ran down my spine. Had the FMD really found a way to deactivate Veril powers?

After taking their sweet time, making sure I didn't even have the hint of a spell hidden under my armpits or the soles of my feet, one of the rebels grunted, and something landed with a soft thud on the tiny cot beside me. I turned my head just a little bit so I wouldn't anger them and saw a bunch of wrinkled clothes and a cheap-looking pair of white tennis shoes. Even more carefully, I glanced over my shoulder.

"May I at least have some privacy while I get dressed?" I said, failing to mask the sarcasm in my voice.

For a moment the men looked at me, then one of them shrugged and made a beckoning gesture at his companions, who followed him outside. As soon as the door clicked shut behind them, and I was closed inside the claustrophobic cell again, my heart started racing, and tiny beads of sweat formed on my forehead. I quickly grabbed the first item that lay atop the pile. It was a simple white cotton shirt. My eyes fell on the label at the back of its collar: the two-letter logo of one of Germany's biggest stores for affordable clothing. I pulled it over my head and was relieved to find it loose-fitting, comfortable, and clean, smelling faintly of laundry detergent.

I was not as lucky with the pants--a pair of blue jeans into which I barely managed to squeeze my butt, and when I tried to close them, they cut so sharply into my belly that I simply left the top button open, covering my exposed skin with the hem of my shirt. I thought longingly about the practical cut of my Kirtim Shenk uniform, but the rebels had probably put it in the sun and burned it with a magnifying glass in case there were spells hidden in one of the pockets, or something of that kind.

"Okay, I'm ready," I called out and exhaled in relief when the door opened again; I hated this room with every fiber of my being.

"Against the wall, mishtz'in. Hands behind your back."

What had he just called me?

I was so puzzled; I simply did as I was told, but as they closed handcuffs around my wrists, I remembered that the word

mishtz'in

had taken on a different meaning in German than in Veril; I balled my bound hands into fists; he hadn't called me his sweet--he had insulted me.

"Los geht's,"

one of the guys said, pointing his rifle ahead of us while pulling me into a long corridor by my cuffs.

Not a corridor--a tunnel. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized that I was underground again. I had feared as much in the windowless cell, but now that I had the confirmation, my heart started racing, and I already felt that tightness in my chest making it harder to breathe.

It's all just in your head; the air in here is fine.

I tried to calm myself. This passage was a lot newer and in better shape than the one the General and I had explored with the barkeeper, Elis; instead of old and basement-like, this one was almost futuristic; a stripe of bright light ran along the floor, and the curved ceiling, guiding the way as well as providing illumination. The walls were clad in shiny white PVC panels that made me wonder whether the architect had maybe watched a few too many science fiction movies.

I ran the index finger of my cuffed right hand over the General's mark on my left wrist. The lines stuck out a bit, but there was no pain, pressure, or humming.

I can feel where you are

, he had told me, and I half expected him to break through the plastic walls at any moment in a burst of electric power, to wash away the rebellion for once and for all in a river of blood and carnage.

The Butcher, I feared, had thrown me out into the water like a worm on a fishing rod, and like a gullible carp, the FMD had bitten down. Now they were stuck on his hook without even knowing it yet.

One of the men's carelessly held lamps shone into my eyes, and I turned my head away, making an annoyed sound with my tongue. "Mind pointing that somewhere else?"

"Can't take a little bit of light, Neumann?" the rebel said from underneath his mask. "Has he turned you into demon scum already?"

I let out a joyless chuckle, which earned me a full flash of light straight to the face, and in my imagination I replayed the same image as before: the Veril breaking through the tunnels and slaughtering each and every one of the men they found here. But this time, as I was forced to press my eyes shut in pain, I couldn't deny that the idea was starting to have a certain appeal.

We reached a round metal door with a small window; the gray varnish was partly chipped, and it looked oddly out of place in the sleek and shiny tunnel.

"Mi comandante, tenemos la chica," one of the men said in broken and highly accented Spanish, gently knocking twice before he turned the wheel-like lock to the left and pulled the door towards himself with some effort.

It opened with a creak of old, unoiled steel and slammed against the plastic tunnel wall with a heavy thud. Two of my escorts tucked in their gas-mask-covered heads and stepped over the threshold; somebody shoved me from behind, and I stumbled after them.

Inside, I instantly felt the relief under the pleasantly warm light of a regular lamp and relaxed my eyes. We stood in a relatively big room with straight walls and a slightly arched ceiling made out of simple, beautiful bricks in darker and lighter shades of red and ochre that the builders had arranged in a simple geometrical pattern. I tried to hook my cuffed hands into the upper part of my pants to relieve the strain in my injured right arm. The architecture of this room confirmed my suspicion that this chamber must be older than the tunnel we had come from, maybe a

Luftschutzbunker

from the Second World War?

The walls all around us were covered in maps and flyers; a big wooden desk dominated almost the entire back of the room, and behind it, his broad back towards us, stood a man--a human judging by the color of his hands. His neck and head were covered with a black ski mask, and he was wearing a dark green uniform with a button-up shirt and unicolored pants, slightly dusty and wrinkled, as if he had come straight out of battle.

"Gracias." He made a gesture over his shoulder, and one of the hazmat suits threw something small to him--the keys to my handcuffs. The man behind the desk caught them in with impressive ease and without turning around. "Se pueden retirar."

His voice was warm and a little hoarse, and his Spanish had the beautiful, clear, and melodic tint of the Andes regions. I kept my face blank lest someone might notice I understood every word they were saying.

With a metallic clank, the door fell closed behind my guards, and like that I was alone with the leader of the FMD, the very man the General had been so desperate to get his hands on. For a moment he just stood there, his back towards me and arms crossed in front of his chest. I was just about to say something, to break the silence, and jumped backwards when he suddenly turned around and slammed his scar-covered hand on the table with a loud bang.

"Where is the Butcher?" he barked at me in accent-free German.

I raised my eyebrows. Tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular, he was an impressive man. His movements were athletic and controlled as he leaned over the table towards me, dark brown eyes glaring from between the slits of his black ski mask with the red letters FMD embroidered on his forehead. He was intimidating even without the assault rifle leaning carelessly against the wall behind him, even without the knowledge that he had just come back from fighting the Veril's superhuman warriors. Just a few weeks ago I would have been shaking with fear, but one month with the Kirtim Shenk had steeled my nerves, and his strategy of masculine aggression did not impress me as much as it should have.

I looked straight at him and said calmly, "As far as I know, General Tsul is in Baden-Württemberg, but I would expect you to be better informed than I am about what he is doing there and where exactly he is." I pressed my lids shut for a second, not wanting to think too much about the atrocities the Veril were committing in my home state.

His eyes narrowed, and he said in a lower tone, "Where are the other portals?"

"There are other portals?" The General really was a genius manipulator; he had kept me busy with so many other things, it hadn't even occurred to me to ask the really important questions.

The rebel glared at me, trying to find out whether I was bluffing or not. The ticking of a big clock to my left was distracting, but my aching head had started wondering: Was there possibly a portal in Berlin? Was that how the Counselor seemed to be able to travel back and forth so quickly?

Not keen to share my thoughts, I kept my expression blank and focused on the wall behind his desk--it was decorated with a collection of knives and swords from different regions and time periods.

After assessing me for a long moment, the rebel leader nodded, but his voice was still as aggressive as before when he fired his next question at me. "What are the Butcher's powers?"

At this, I huffed out an unamused laugh. "I think you are

severely

overestimating my insight into General Tsul's plans and abilities." I inhaled and added through clenched teeth, "I can tell you how he folds his clothes after he gets undressed, about the scars on his body, about what he wanted me to whisper into his ear, but if you ask me about his weapons, his plans, or strategies, I have no idea--he kept me for one thing only, and it didn't involve much talking." My heart stung as the truth of my own words hit me like a slap, and I practically spit the last bit out. "Believe me, if I could, I would do anything to help you to defeat him."

He gave no indication if my little speech had moved something in him; instead, he scrutinized me for a while longer. "You say you have no insight, yet you managed to send us a confidential map and its translation."

"I got lucky." I tried to keep my tone bitter and my pulse steady while I linked the fingers of my cuffed hands behind my back. What would the rebels do with me if they found out I had been a double agent, albeit an unknowing one? "But please don't ask me what I had to do to distract him enough."

My eyes watered from anger, humiliation, and a pain so deep in the center of my being that it shook my whole existence, as I remembered that doomed night in the General's tent, when he had shown me just the tiniest glimpse of his real self and I had cowered.

I was almost grateful to the rebel for snapping me out of it with his harsh bark. "And the translation? Do you speak Veril?"

"He made me take lessons, so I..." I swallowed and sniffed, now grateful for the tear that was running down my cheek, as it gave me a pretext to pause while my brain was racing, trying to fabricate a plausible story. "In every session I asked my teacher for another word from the map until I understood the meaning."

The FMD leader straightened up and walked around his desk in leisurely strides, combat boots clicking on the red brick floor, hands crossed behind his back until he stood right next to me. He really was exceptionally well built, not as tall and broad as the General, of course, but still very impressive for a human. His dark eyes burned into mine before he firmly placed a strong hand on my shoulder and turned me around in a brisk movement, so that I was with my back towards him. I opened my mouth in surprise, but then I heard the jingling of the keys and felt his calloused fingers on my wrists as he undid my handcuffs.

My face was burning, and I quickly inclined my head in gratitude. For a moment he kept standing halfway behind me, examining me as if he were trying to see through my skull and read my thoughts. My back was prickling, as his presence made me strangely nervous. Then he gestured at an old wooden chair in front of me.

"Take a seat, Neumann."

I raised my eyebrows, rubbing my hands to get the blood flowing again, and he added in a sharp voice. "I've heard they call you differently now, but I'm not going to insult you with the name your rapists gave you. Here we use your human name."

He didn't move; he was so close, I could sense the warmth radiating off his body, and to my surprise, it was not an entirely unpleasant feeling. Flustered, I quickly took a few steps away and sat down stiffly. I could still feel the burning memory of his hand, where he had touched my shoulder.

He returned to the opposite side of the desk, reached into one of the drawers, and took out a pack of cigarettes and some tissue papers--the same brand as the ones I had used to hide my phone. With a swift motion he tossed them to me, and I, unprepared, tried too late to catch them and had to lean down to retrieve the blue and white packet from the floor.

Amusement flickered in his eyes when I came up again; he pulled his mask slightly up, revealing a shadow of dark stubble on his chin, lit a cigarette, and I quickly shook my head when he offered one to me, too.

"Neumann, I'm sorry for the unpleasant welcome; you deserved better after all that you did for us." Now that his tone was slightly less gruff, I heard just the faintest hint of the Berlin dialect in his German pronunciation.

I discreetly turned my head as I wiped my nose with a handkerchief. "It's fine," I said nasally. "I get it; you have to make sure I'm not a spy."

His eyes narrowed. "Comrade Haase said your name was Anna?"

I nodded, while my heart fluttered with uncertainty as I heard Tim's last name. "And you're the Peruvian, I suppose."

He chuckled at that; it was a nice and friendly sound, very much at odds with the frightening, stern rebel sitting in front of me.

"But you're also from Berlin?" I asked carefully, having guessed from his pronunciation that he was probably born in the capital.