I wrap the foil blanket tighter around myself. I press my back against the valve cover.
The heat seeps through my clothes. Not much, just a few degrees above freezing, but compared to the air outside, itfunctions as a furnace. It radiates into my spine, thawing the ice in my marrow. I curl my knees to my chest and pull the foil over my head, creating a small, shimmering cocoon.
Fifteen minutes.
I count the seconds.
One. Two. Three.
I focus on the rage. I feed it. I visualize the faces of the men in the SUV. I visualize the leader. I visualize what I’m going to do to them.
I’m not the prey anymore. I’m hunting them now, and when my team lands, we will burn that mountain to the ground.
I shut my eyes, picturing Iris’s face.
Hold on, Doc.
I grip the SIG P226 in the dark, my thumb tracing the safety.
The wolves are coming.
15
The Glass Cage
IRIS
The world dissolvesinto a blur of motion and nausea.
My head bangs against the window of the SUV, hitting another rut in the logging road. The impact rattles my teeth, sending a fresh spike of pain drilling through my skull. My hands rest zip-tied behind my back with the plastic biting deep into the soft tissue of my wrists, cutting off circulation. My fingers turn to numb, swollen sausages currently detached from my body.
I don’t know how long we’ve been driving. Thirty minutes. An hour. Time blurs into a rhythmic thudding of tires on frozen mud alongside the smell of stale cigarette smoke and wet wool.
I focus on the anatomy of my fear.
Tachycardia pushes my heart rate to a hundred and forty beats per minute, while vasoconstriction turns my extremities cold to preserve the core, and a cortisol dump knots my stomach with rolling nausea.
I analyze it. I label it. Naming it equates to controlling it. I’m not a victim. I’m a clinician observing a physiological response to trauma.
Whoever waits at the end of this drive understands what I’m worth. I’m only worth something if I remain intact. Dead, I trip the switch. Broken, I lose the sixty-four characters living in my mind, and those characters are the one thing they crossed a mountain to take. I’m a package that has to arrive whole, and that need is the only wall I have. I spend the rest of the drive making it thicker.
The SUV slows. The tires crunch over gravel, transitioning to something harder involving concrete and metal.
“We’re here.” The driver taps the steering wheel, his flat tone implying boredom. Just another job. Just another package to deliver.
The vehicle stops. The engine dies, leaving the ticking of the cooling metal as a syncopated rhythm in the sudden silence.
The back door opens.
The wind rushes in, violent and freezing, carrying a new scent far removed from pine or snow.
Sulfur. Rust. Old, wet earth.
“Out.” A hand grabs my parka.
A soldier drags me backward. My boots hit the ground, slipping on a patch of ice. I stumble, unable to balance with my arms bound, and fall to my knees. The impact jars my spine.
“Get up.” The soldier hauls me to my feet.
