Shadowkill

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Shadith woke in the hold of a ship.

She was lying on a pallet, canvas, something like that. Naked. Half frozen.

Sometime before… while she was out… she’d been beaten… raped… brutally… she was torn, septic, she could feel the heat of the infections, the blood oozing from the wounds.

She lay in filth and stench, she hadn’t been catheterized, just left where they threw her.

She’d been fed, watered, there were tubes taped to her face, running into her nose.

They wanted her alive, but broken.

They. Who?

Ginny?

She shifted position slightly, felt feces squishing under her.

When she had her stomach in order, she looked around. Stasis pods, dozens of them, hundreds, all around her. She reached.

The lifesparks in those pods were dim; most of them she couldn’t recognize, but Rohant was there, nearest her. Azram. Tolmant. Nezrakam. Kinefray. Tejnar. Ginny.

Ginny?

She looked more closely at the strangers, picked up a faintly familiar “smell,” connected it to one of those clients she’d watched glide past her when she was in that corridor.

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