Page 1 of Girl, Reborn

PROLOGUE

Ricky Toledo clawedhis way out of the blackness, the sticky, drooling nothing of a bender-inducedcoma. A marching band stomped through his skull and the vinegary tang ofgarbage squeezed his throat, like he'd spent last night rummaging throughdumpsters mouth-first. Christ, how much rot-gut had he guzzled last night?Brain cells fried on rocket fuel masquerading as whiskey.

Snapshots flashedbehind his eyes, all blurry round the edges. Pounding shots at the bar untilthe wee hours. Laughing with those fat-cat donors he called friends, facessmeared like greasepaint. Then getting the bright idea to take the party to thestripclub, hooting and hollering and smashing bottles. Drinking until the starsspun, unable to tell up from down. So pickled he couldn't feel the breeze.

Yeah, that was hislast clear memory before the world slid sideways into oblivion.

He must've really donea number on himself this time – even for him. He felt like someone had switchedhis bones for cinderblocks. Either that or he’d been flattened by a truck andthis was some kind of between-world dreamstate where he couldn’t move his limbsbut could still feel pain.

Ricky tried to shiftagain, but nothing much happened. Just a twitch of the shoulder. His eyelidsresisted fluttering open, glued together with some devil's-brew combo ofhangover sweat and eye boogers.

The first thing thatstruck him was the chill. His sodden clothes, usually pressed to perfection forcouncil meetings, clung to him like a second skin. It was August the last timehe checked, and unless he’d been unconscious for a month, he doubted Virginiaever got this cold in the summer.

Gooseflesh prickledhis arms, and his teeth chattered. Where the hell was he? Did he leave a windowopen, pass out half in some alleyway? His mouth felt like it was stuffed withsteel wool, and his tongue probed around for an answer. Came up with nothingbut the stale film of too many cigarettes.

Slowly, othersensations filtered in: The rock-hard surface digging into his back. The smellof mold and damp concrete. And everywhere, the cold, settling deep into hisbones. What the hell was going on? None of this added up to any kind of sense –not even by the whacked-out mathematics of his usual binges.

Ricky willed his eyesopen, lids creaking apart like a rusty gate. He blinked water out of them ashis vision adjusted to the darkness. Pitch is goddamn black. Couldn't see hisown hand in front of his face. But he could feel rough stone under his fingers,chilly and slightly damp to the touch.

This was not his bed,nor his office at City Hall.

He tried to moveagain, straining with all his pickled might. But his arms and legs were deadweight. Leaden. Pinned at his sides by some unseen force. Ricky's heart ratesurged into overdrive as adrenaline rose to chase away the last dregs ofhangover. Something was very wrong here.

And then he heard it.

Water.

Echoing off closewalls. The sound burrowed into his eardrums, insidious as a rattler's hiss.

Where was it comingfrom? His head lolled, neck muscles creaking, as he tried to get his bearingsin the black. But it was everywhere and nowhere, impossible to pinpoint.

Then, a new sensationregistered: pain. Sharp, stuttering bolts of it, arcing up his legs. Rickygasped, then bit back a whimper. What the hell? Did he bust them up somehow,falling down drunk? Christ knows he'd taken plenty of headers in his misspentlife, but nothing felt right about this.

Another noise joinedthe steady drip of water: a low groan, ragged around the edges. It took Ricky aminute to realize it was coming from his own throat.

His tongue probed asplit lip, the coppery tang of blood mixing with stomach acid.

This was not a dream,nor some drink-induced hallucination. The pain, the restraints, the water athis feet – this was his reality.

As his eyes adjustedto the dark, vague shapes swam into focus. Walls, close and curving around him.A high ceiling is lost in shadow. And just at the edge of his bleary sight, twohulking objects. One looked like a basin, something bulky and solid squattingover him. The other – his own legs.

But not.

His feet disappearedinto a mass of something at the bottom of the basin. Solid and greyish in thegloom. It was recognizable as a human, man-made shape, but the rationale partof his brain struggled to accept what his eyeballs were telling him.

His feet were sealedin a block of solid concrete.

A lance of pure,gut-wrenching terror shot through him. Icy comprehension crashed over him in afrigid wave. He didn't bust up his legs, didn't injure himself in a drunkenfall. Someone had done this to him. Knocked him out, dragged him here, to thisdank hole. And they’d done this to him.

Ricky thrashed againsthis bonds, bellowing hoarsely into the blackness as the water continued totrickle in steadily from above. But the hard stone encasing him held fast,immovable and impassive. His ankles ached fiercely where the cement blocksqueezed, but Ricky couldn’t command any control of them. He craned his neck,searching desperately for an exit, an escape hatch, any goddamn way out ofwhatever the hell this was. But there was only the suffocating blackness of atomb.

‘Help!’ The word torefrom Ricky’s throat. ‘God, help me. Someone! Please!’

But his criesdissolved into the ether. His pleas were drowned out by the dripping water.

Nobody was coming.

The water was up tohis chin now, and the gnawing fear in Ricky’s gut solidified into sureknowledge that was he going to die in here.

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