I turned to see a huge mass of spotted fur and claws and teeth. A jungle cat. It held one of the men down on the ground with its huge front paws and had sunk its teeth into his shoulder. His screams of agony ripped through me and I stood frozen in the chaos that ensued.
Shouts mixed with the zaps from laser pistols and Kozienko shouted out orders over the top of it all. The men changed positions and focused on bringing the monster down.
The cat roared in pain and took a swipe at another soldier with one of those deadly claws, knocking him sideways. He landed with a thud against a nearby tree root with a sickening crack, then slumped down onto the ground.
My mind replayed the last time I’d seen one of these nightmares that resembled a sabre-toothed tiger up close. I’d narrowly missed being its next meal and the native I was with, Anjou, had killed it with a spear through the chest.
Finally coming to my senses, I threw out my hands and pushed with my mind just as the cat was about to take another chunk out of whoever it was on the ground. It flew backwards and landed on its back, but quickly flipped over and stepped forward.
The lasers focused on its head and chest and it finally crumpled to the ground, thrashed around and gave a last attempt at a roar before going still.
I was surprised it took so long to go down, considering one spear through the chest had killed the other cat. No wait. Anjou had leapt on it once it was down and had cut its throat. And I had turned away to throw up, so I didn’t really see how long it had taken to kill it.
The men were now an organized team. Some checked to make sure the cat was dead and others tended to the injured men.
My brain was still trying to process what had happened. Their voices seemed far away. Someone said that it was Lazuli and Private Rowton that had been hurt. I gasped in horror as I saw that Lazuli was the one lying at my feet in a pool of blood.
No, no, no, no, no!
Lazuli was a good friend. He’d only just recovered from a fever.
Blood was everywhere and as I stared at the shredded flesh of his shoulder, I thought he had to be dead. How could anyone survive that?
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see if he was breathing. Tears sprung to my eyes.
“He’s alive!” someone called out. “But he’s in bad shape.”
I rushed forward and fell to my knees by his side, not knowing what I could do to help. I wished I was a Healer. We’d applied to the company for one because of how dangerous the jungle could be, but that wouldn’t help Lazuli. He needed someone right now.
Tears streamed down my cheeks and my stomach roiled, threatening to spill over at any second. I swallowed hard and realized that I was kneeling in blood.
Kozienko carefully put Lazuli in the coma position and pressed a couple of gauze pads from the first-aid kit on his wound, holding them firmly while another man put a cushion under his head. Lazuli must have passed out from the pain.
I looked around. Darion and Braydac were attending to Rowton.
“What’s the damage over there, Andiyar?” Kozienko asked.
“Rowton has a broken arm and some deep lacerations to his chest,” Darion reported.
“Can you port them both at once?” Kozienko asked.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Good. Lazuli is bad. If you don’t take him now, he’s a dead man.”
Darion stood up from where he’d been leaning over Rowton. “I’ve let them know we’re coming…”
I got to my feet and immediately felt light-headed. Darion’s voice faded away. The blood was everywhere. I had to get away from it.
If I hadn’t leaped out of the way in time so that Anjou could kill that other jungle cat, I would have been ripped open like Lazuli. And probably worse.
My knees were buckling and darkness clouded my vision. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.
Darion had teleported the injured men to Jannali. I needed to be away from the blood on the ground.
Out of nowhere, Nykolar appeared by my side. “You don’t look so good.”
Well, I don’t feel so good either.
“Let me help you. Let’s go to the river and wash the blood off and you can have a drink.”
I looked down at myself. I’d somehow gotten blood on my hands and the blood on my knees was running slowly down my legs and into my fur boots. My loincloth thing had soaked up a lot of it too as I’d knelt next to Lazuli.
Oh no. The lightheadedness increased.
“It’s okay.” He put an arm around my shoulders and it helped to keep me upright. “Come. I’ll help you.”
He steered me away from the mess and the people who were all talking at once. We would need to stay here until Darion returned from the base.
We ducked around a few large tree trunks and made it to the riverbank. “Just a little further. We’ll get you sorted out in no time.”
I looked back and couldn’t see the others.
“Don’t worry. I took you down this way so you couldn’t see what’s going on up there. It will help you to feel better if you can’t see it.”
That made sense. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thank you.”
I looked into the depths of the water as I knelt down to wash myself, checking for any lurking predators. I could see a lot of submerged rocks and a sunken branch under the fast-flowing water, but no crocodile look-alikes or anything else that might want to eat me. I let relief flow through me and I started to wash my hands and arms.
I hoped Lazuli would be okay. He didn’t look okay. He was probably dying or maybe even dead already. My chest tightened at the thought. I needed to think about something else.
I couldn’t help wondering how we were going to locate Janssen with our Finder gone.
Then guilt crashed down on me for only thinking of him as our Finder. He could be dead and I was worried about our mission? Gah!
I was too hot. I thought about just diving into the water, but decided against it. I splashed water on my face instead. Then I moved my long hair away from the back of my neck so I could splash water on it. It was such a relief to feel the coolness and the droplets of water running down my back.
“Feeling better?” Nykolar asked.
“Yes,” I answered, and I was. The lightheadedness had mostly subsided and my heartbeats had slowed. This was a good idea. “Thank you for helping me.”
After a few moments of silence, he spoke again. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly.
I frowned. I didn’t turn around while I washed the blood from my knees, but was hurt to hear him say it. “Why would you say that? I’m capable of carrying on with this mission. I just needed to calm down, like you said.”
“I’m not talking about the mission. You shouldn’t be alive.”
There was a sinking feeling in my chest. Something cold touched the back of my neck and caused a weird stinging sensation that made me jump.
My hand automatically went to the back of my neck. “Ouch! What was that?”
Thinking I’d been bitten by something, I spun around, only to see Nykolar holding a stunner. What the?
He gave me a creepy smile. “I’ve disabled your tracking device.”
“What? Why?” How did it zap the tracker without zapping me?
His eyes filled with hate and his voice became flat and hollow. “So no one can find your body and bring it back to base for further study. You’re an abomination. Made in a lab. You don’t deserve to live. You have no soul.”
My stomach pitched. He flicked the switch on the stunner to the highest setting, which was strong enough to kill a person. My first thought was that it needed to be set back to stun. As he squeezed the trigger and pain shot through my body, I could only hope that I’d switched it back in time.
My whole body seized up and I couldn’t control my limbs as I fell backwards into the cool water, and as pain exploded across the back of my head, everything went black.
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Author's Note: This is the end of the free sample of Enigma. If you’re loving this story and want to find out what happens next, you can choose to pay for the entire story, pay by chapter (the story is 55 chapters and is complete), or you can subscribe to support me. Subscribers get access to all my paid content.
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