Escape

Also by Bernard Wilkerson

  The Worlds of the Dead series

  Beaches of Brazil

  Communion

  Discovery

  The Creation series

  In the Beginning

  The Hrwang Incursion

  Earth: Book One

  Episode 1: Defeat

  Episode 2: Flight

  Episode 3: Maneuvers

  Episode 4: Insertion

  Episode 5: Envelopment

  Episode 6: Ambush

  Episode 7: Feint

  Episode 8: Counterattack

  Episode 9: Withdrawal

  OR

  Get the Omnibus edition (episodes 1 thru 9)

  Hrwang: Book Two

  Episode 1: Confined

  The Hrwang Incursion

  Book Two

  Hrwang

  Copyright © 2016 by Bernard Wilkerson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, with the exception of short quotes used in reviews, without permission from the author.

  Requests for permission should be submitted to [email protected].

  For information about the author, go to

  www.bernardwilkerson.com

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Cover photo courtesy of NASA.

  Episode 2

  ESCAPE

  7

  Faces swam in Eva’s vision and she saw more light than she’d ever remembered seeing before.

  She shut her eyes.

  At least nothing hurt.

  She opened her eyes again and saw that one of the faces staring down at her wore white.

  Eva decided she was dead.

  But she didn’t remember going through a tunnel. Wasn’t there supposed to be a tunnel?

  The images in front of her confused her and she closed her eyes again.

  “It’s going to start hurting very badly, very quickly, so we have to talk fast,” a familiar voice urged. It sounded like Visitor.

  With his words, the pain began. Perhaps it was just in her mind, perhaps it was just due to his suggestion, but Eva felt sharp pains growing in her chest and stomach. Her head began aching. Intense nausea swept over her and she squeezed her mouth shut to keep from vomiting.

  She wanted to cry out.

  “I have to say I’m impressed,” Visitor continued, apparently oblivious to her distress. “You killed the guard in your cell. It took three more to subdue you. You injured one so severely, he’s in a coma. You broke a second’s arm. But the third guard was too much. He beat you with a nightstick. Quite badly, I’m afraid. He didn’t stop after you were unconscious.”

  Visitor said the last almost apologetically.

  Eva tried to look at him, but her vision blurred.

  “Where am I?” she wanted to ask, but the words came out thickly. Her tongue filled her entire mouth.

  “You never could have escaped, please understand. But luckily for you, you were injured severely enough to be brought to the hospital wing. It was probably the only way you were ever going to leave your cell. Quite ingenious.”

  “Uhh,” was all Eva could manage. The pain grew worse.

  “It’s clear to me now, to us, that you aren’t who we thought you were. The person who I thought you were wouldn’t have been capable of doing what you did to those men. The person who I thought you were would never even have conceived of attempting such a thing.”

  He paused. Eva sensed his face move close to hers.

  “Who are you?” he whispered harshly.

  Never confess. Never give in. Never give up.

  This was simply a ruse to get her to admit what she’d done. The pain probably wasn’t from being beaten by a guard. She was probably hallucinating, under the influence of some drug slipped into her food. She was probably back in her cell.

  But it hurt too much to be merely a hallucination. She couldn’t breathe. Every time she inhaled, knives stabbed her in the chest. Her right arm was about to fall off.

  And her right eye felt like someone had removed it and replaced it with hot lead.

  “The doctor I paid to back off on your medication says you’ve probably suffered brain damage. He won’t know for sure until he scans you; you know how doctors are. They never commit to anything. But if you do have brain damage, you probably don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you? I should just have you returned to your cell.”

  Panic gripped Eva and forced the pain back momentarily. Her tongue felt a little smaller.

  “I understand,” she croaked in Est. She couldn’t go back. She couldn’t suffer any longer. She had to tell him whatever it took to make him rescue her.

  Or kill her.

  “Then understand this.” His voice was close to her ear, his words hard as iron. “I want to know exactly who you are and what you are and if you are not completely open and honest with me, you’ll be returned to your cell and allowed to die without the benefit of anesthetic. I’m told that what you’re feeling now will be like snuggling with a puppy compared to how it will feel in a few moments.”

  Eva had lost.

  She was going to die on Hrwang and there was nothing she could do about it. She gasped as knives continued to tear her insides apart and there was nothing she could do about it. More hot lead poured into her eye and there was nothing she could do about it.

  There was nothing she could do about anything.

  She didn’t want to give up, but what was the point? What did she have to gain by keeping her mouth shut? Maybe if she simply confessed, Visitor would have her executed quickly and her suffering would end.

  Maybe Visitor would even throw who she was and what she had done into the Lord Admiral’s face.

  She desperately wanted to hurt the Lord Admiral now. To make him pay for his crimes. To make him pay for her suffering. If a moral victory was all she could achieve, then that’s what she would try. It wasn’t much, but it was something. All she had. It was a mouse flipping a bird at an onrushing hawk. Eva would commit her last act of defiance. She’d humiliate the Lord Admiral. She’d confess who she was with her dying breath.

  And she could finally tell the truth.

  It made her feel better despite the hot lead pouring into her right eye.

  “I’m a...” and she didn’t know the word in Est. “I’m a spy,” she said in English and the pain overcame her and she couldn’t speak again. She couldn’t fight it. Darkness flooded her mental vision and perhaps, finally, this was the tunnel. The pain receded and she felt warm. As the darkness closed around her, she heard Visitor’s voice again.

  “I knew it,” he exulted. “I knew it. I told you so. I knew she was more than just his girlfriend. And what she did proves it, doesn’t it?”

  She heard more words without comprehending them as she gave in and entered the dark tunnel in front of her.

  8