"We"

[Balance]

Unknown Location

Boeser sat shivering in a bare metal room. A single, small steel table and two steel chairs were bolted to the floor...as were the shackles attached to his wrists and ankles.

There were no windows--only a single steel door which appeared to lock and unlock only from the outside. Boeser had tried for the pistol while in the whale's cargo hold but two mechanicals had quickly shattered the glass of his canopy and sprayed a bluish gas into his face. After that, all he remembered was waking in the room.

"Am I infected?" His chest tightened with fear at the thought. He imagined this was an Order base and that he would soon meet an officer of the organization who would explain the terms of his ransom back home. Boeser grasped at any thought other than the obvious one--that the Wild had not yet even begun with him. He wiped sweaty palms on his flight vest and felt a small bulge in one of the pockets. Reaching in with his shackled hand he managed to extract the object. It was his rosary. Born to a Catholic family, Boeser had always had an awed sense of a present God and the rosary always accompanied him on combat missions.

The rosary was an immediate comfort. It suggested that there were things beyond the reach of the Wild and a world where good was valued along with the soul and well-being of man. Not like this loathsome place. He fingered the rosary hoping beyond hope that some miracle would deliver him. Perhaps he could escape--after all, the Wild were alien but still in human bodies. They could make a mistake and he might be able to capitalize on it. The comforting fingering of the cool wooden beads helped push the fear in the back of his mind farther back. Boeser began to wonder not what would happen to him but what the Wild wanted from him. There had to be a reason he was still alive and apparently unpossessed. perhaps God was granting him mercy after all!

His thoughts were shattered by the sudden loud clank of a bolt outside the door being swung back and the shrill squeal of metal hinges grinding as the door began to swing open. The terror quickly returned.

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