Page 45 of Roar Letter Word

Survival was all part of the human condition. It was her physical injuries that raised Addie out of her unconsciousness first, trying to establish what had happened and where exactly she was. The sensations were distracting and rather heavy in her limbs. But soon enough, just as she felt the strain of her arms being pinned behind her back, the faintest of memories returned.

“Hello, Addie.”

A familiar voice in the dark made her jump. She forced herself to peel her eyes open. Her vision was blurry like her memory, but out of the slit of her eyelid, she could see a tiny filter of light shooting through bars. It revealed a familiar shape. He sat on the ground against a dirty stone wall, and all at once, Addie’s memory crystallized into icy scorn.

“Bruce,” she said in her groggy yet enraged tone. “Bruce, what the fuck is going on? What have you done to me?"

He shrugged, which made her anger even more vehement. She tried to stand but found her wrists tied tightly to a pole that ran up the wall behind her. Plus, her muscles had weakened, and any attempt to rush blood through them was making her dizzy.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” Bruce said, his chin perched into his palm. “Just wait for them. That's all we can do now. Wait and be quiet.”

"What thefuckare you talking about?” Addie bellowed.

He finally looked at her. The man whom she had known for nearly a decade. He looked older than he truly was. He was an odd duck but had never done anything to hurt her. Nothing she knew of, anyway, until the ultimate betrayal of selling her to some alien radical, she presumed.

Profit sometimes won over friendship. She had known it could happen but didn't want to believe it.

“What do you think, Addie? You're not a stupid woman. Take a wild guess.”

She remained silent, her teeth grinding. It sent lightning bolts of agony up the right side of her face. Bruce turned away from her, speaking in a low tone of tormented apathy.

“When Mahes contacted Gerri, Gerri reached out to Franny. I intercepted the call. I didn’t use Gerri’s wormhole, but a governmental one that I obtained by cashing in a few favors. Are you following?”

Addie was following. She hated herself for trusting Bruce so blindly. For not listening to Mahes …Mahes.She gazed down at her hip where he had left his mark, the scar throbbing with intensity through her tights.

Bruce went on absentmindedly. “I came here with the idea in mind of an intergalactic sensation. Can you imagine? Not only are you famous all over the globe of a single planet, but all over the universe. Literally. We can’t even begin to comprehend the enormity of an achievement like that."

He was daydreaming, lost in the abyss of a fantasy that would never come to fruition. He sighed in a lackadaisical fashion that was maddening.

“Alas, it wasn’t to be,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Advertising you as the king’s mate may have been a misstep. I don’t know. Look where we are."

Addie struggled against the pole, feeling the rope sinking into her flesh. She felt her right eye beginning to tear up from the pain like knives pressing against the thin skin of her eyelid.

“You did what?” she seethed. “You’re a fucking moron!"

Bruce remained unaffected. He dropped his chin to his chest and continued on like some Shakespearean actor reciting a sonnet. “It drew the wrong kind of attention. Apparently, Mahes’s throne is greatly sought after. They came to me the day of the show and seized control of the whole thing."

Bruce began to laugh in a flat, toneless manner. Addie realized then that despite the fact that Bruce wasn't tied up like she was, he was just as much a prisoner as her. He had been forced to cooperate by beings much larger and far more powerful than he ever would be.

“Some pathetic manager I am, right?"

Addie didn’t have any sympathy for him just yet. She turned her mind toward any means of escape, squinting up at the small spill of light that came through the bars just over Bruce’s head.

“Let’s get out of here, Bruce," she said, leaning forward, trying to catch his eye. “Untie me, and I can try to fit through that opening there. I’ll come back for you, I promise."

That flat chuckle returned. It was far sadder than the first time.

“Are you joking, Addie? You, of all people, know what these beings are. They aren’t human like you and me. They are fucking animals. Giant versions that could cut off our heads like a guillotine. No, we have no chance. Not a chance in hell.”

She wanted to tell him that he was right. Hewasfucking pathetic, but the sound of a lock shifting and a door clanking open interrupted them. Addie sat up straight while Bruce remained unchanged, utterly indifferent to his demise.

Two rather large men walked into the dungeon. Addie remembered meeting them backstage. The taller one was clearly older and seasoned and had a grisly grin on his face, with eyes as bright as ice and blue as the ocean. He had straggly bits of white hair running down the side of his face, the rest of the skull vacant of any hairline.

He could have been sixty or seventy, but he also could have been thirty or forty. Age was strange on Nova Aurora, Addie had found. But the man standing next to him was undoubtedly younger, with a lush head of hair that was tangled but prominent nevertheless. His eyes were more dead-looking. She wasn’t sure who to be more afraid of.

“Hello, dear sweet Addie,” the man with the ghoulish grin said, inching closer. "My name is Zorrtan, and this is Iasia. You don’t know us, but your man … oh, he knows us well."

They stood in front of Bruce, who looked like he was waiting for a bus. He could have tried striking one of them from behind and gotten a running start. But that required a strand of courage. Bruce, it seemed, didn’t have a morsel.

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