Clay had stayed there on the floor for a good thirty minutes before he’d picked himself up and poured some water into the small wash basin on the dresser. A dresser that had seen better nights. It leaned at an angle, and Clay saw one of the feet had snapped off. He’d cleaned up, visited the bathroom, then risked venturing out into the house.

  Zeus found him instantly and led him back outside to the veranda and the table, which was laden with eggs, bacon, steak, milk, coffee, toast, pastries, and an assortment of canned fruits. Hansen was sitting there, her back to the landscape, staring at him as he slowly took his seat. He felt like he was one giant bruise. He refused to look her directly in the face.

  He poured some coffee, sipped it slowly, set the cup down, then sucked it up and looked across the table at the woman who had done whatever she had done to him the night before.

  He winced as he saw the dark purple bruise that was on her left cheek and how swollen her right eye was. It was nearly closed. Her bottom lip was split and her throat was bruised.

  She looked about as bad as he looked. He’d confirmed his appearance in the bathroom when he’d cleaned up before leaving his room.

  Yeah. Breakfast was awkward.

  “Sorry I’m wearing the same clothes as yesterday,” he said as she stared at him. “The rest of my gear is in my mech.”

  “Which should be here in an hour or so,” Hansen replied. She leaned forward and rested her arms on the table. “You agreed.”

  “I what?” Clay asked. “Hold on. At first, I didn’t agree to a god damn thing.”

  “Not that,” Hansen said. “I’ve thought about that. I forced you. At first.” She put a finger to her bruised cheek. “I paid for what I did. I’m sorry.”

  Clay took another sip of coffee. He was swimming in deep, murky waters. He honestly didn’t know what to say. The night had been a complete mess. He was more confused than ever.

  “You agreed,” Hansen said again. “To fight for me in the tournament. You said it last night. I will not allow you to take it back.”

  “I’m thinking there may have been some coercion,” Clay said.

  “There was always coercion, so don’t use what I did to you as an excuse to break your word,” Hansen said. She pointed at her face, her neck, then unbuttoned her shirt a couple of buttons to show the bruising on her chest. “You gave as good as you took. All I have to do is say one word to my people, and they will string you up by your nuts and let you suffer for days.”

  She reached under the table and produced a shiny chrome revolver. Solid .45 caliber. She set it by her plate and tapped it with her fingers.

  “Or I could just put a bullet between your eyes right now,” she continued. “So I suggest you say you will keep your word.”

  “I’ll keep my word,” Clay said. “Relax.”

  Hansen studied him for several long, tense minutes, then withdrew the revolver from the table and tucked it back where it had come from.

  “Good,” she said.

  “You are one crazy woman,” Clay said. He hadn’t meant to say it, but the words wouldn’t stay locked behind his lips. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’ve seen a lot, some things that no person should ever see. I’ve been around crazy, insane people. You are on the tops. I just want you to know that.”

  “Fine,” she said, glaring. “I know that. Feel better for saying it?”

  “Not really,” Clay replied. “I just feel hungry. Can I eat, or is this all for show?”

  “Eat,” Hansen said. “Fill up, because as soon as your mech gets here, you start going to work. Not only are you fighting for me, but you’ll help train my other pilots.”

  “I didn’t agree to do that,” Clay said, slathering butter across a piece of toast. “I know last night is a bit of a blur, but I sure as hell didn’t agree to train any pilots.”

  “You’ll train them, or last night becomes every night,” Hansen said.

  “I don’t think either one of us will survive that,” Clay said. “I’m surprised you can sit.”

  “It’s not easy,” she snapped at him. “You are training my pilots.”

  Clay shrugged. Hansen glared.

  They both started to grin at the same time, then both wiped the grins from their faces simultaneously.

  Clay was equal parts terrified and somewhat hopeful that what had happened the night before would become a regular thing. That brought up a mix of shame and rage then exasperation, followed by complete and total confusion. He ate more toast as he tried to work out some sense of what he was feeling, other than the pain from his bruised and scraped-up body.

  The sound of a roller pulling up in front of the house finally got Hansen to turn her laser gaze from him. She cocked her head and frowned as voices were raised, coming from around the house out front.

  “Excuse me,” she said as she stood up.

  She was wearing a short skirt instead of trousers, and Clay could see purple and blue bruises on her calves and shins. She had zero intention of letting him forget the night before. She was shoving it right in his face. She walked around the table and her hand slapped his shoulder as she passed by. It hurt like hell.

  That was the moment Clay realized he was the General’s bitch. Or at least she thought he was. He piled eggs onto his plate and pushed them around with his fork as he pondered the weight of his realization.

  Two days earlier he’d stopped his mech on a ridge, set out to find some grey, and instead he’d ended up a prisoner of some crazy lady he was incredibly attracted to. It made his head hurt.

  Clay pushed his uneaten eggs away and stood up. He refilled his cup with coffee, walked off the veranda and out into the hot morning sun. As soon as he was a few meters away, he could hear angry voices on the wind, coming to him from the front of the house. He decided that was the last place he wanted to be, so he set out across the dry dirt toward a small stone shed that sat directly in front of him, maybe thirty-five meters off.

  The shed looked like maybe it had been an old smokehouse or something similar a few decades earlier. Hell, it could have been a century old considering how well things stayed preserved in the hot, dry air. Clay approached it cautiously, just as he approached everything in life. The building was maybe eight feet tall and six feet wide. He couldn’t tell how deep it was, since he faced it straight on and the sun was bright in his eyes, blocking part of his view.

  What he could tell was that the shed was used. Maybe not often, but enough for there to be recent boot prints in the dirt in front of it, as well as scuffs from the old wood door that looked like it could use a new hinge or two.

  Clay set the coffee down on a stump set by the side of the door. He grabbed the handle but didn’t open the door right away. He listened hard, his head tilted to the side and down, his ear aimed at the weathered wood. The sounds from the front of the ranch house had gotten louder. They echoed out across the land, making it hard for Clay to hear if anyone was in the stone shed.

  Tired of waiting, and certain he wanted to be out of sight if things got worse out front, Clay pulled the door open and took a step inside the shed.

  But it wasn’t a shed so much as it was an entranceway. Wide stone steps led far down into the darkness, twisting around so Clay could only see a dozen or so before the remaining stairs were lost from sight. In Clay’s experience, a spiral stone staircase leading down into the dark was never a good thing. He began to step back out of the shed, but a harsh shout and a strangled scream from the front of the ranch house changed his mind. He had a feeling that if he faced Hansen right at that moment, she wouldn’t be near as tender as she’d been the night before.

  Clay found a torch and dipped it into a bucket of sticky liquid that sat at the top of the stairs. He fumbled in his pocket, but realized even if he had matches they would have been taken from him the other day. Luckily there was a strip of steel next to a hunk of flint hanging from leather thongs on the wall. Clay tucked the handle of the torch in his armpit and grabbed up the flint and steel. He struck them together twice before they produced a spark.

  The torch caught and flared to life, hot and bright. Clay let go of the flint and steel instantly to keep the torch’s flames from setting his arm on fire. He obviously hadn’t been the only one to ever do that, hence the leather thongs keeping the flint and steel secured to the wall.

  He held the torch out and down and peered into the darkness of the stairwell. He heard something. It wasn’t sounds from outside, he was certain of that. He took a few cautious steps and waited. There. A man’s voice. Weak and pleading.

  Clay took the stairs one at a time, making sure his boots didn’t slip and send him tumbling to the bottom in a broken heap. Twenty, thirty, fifty steps later he was at the bottom of the staircase, and he quickly realized it was the absolute last place he wanted to be.

  “Help me,” a man whispered from a small cell set into the stone walls of the room Clay found himself in. “Please. Help me.”

  It was a torture chamber. No other way to describe it.

  Clay’s eyes went wide as he stared at the long wood table that was set in the center of the room. It took up most of the space and had so many dark stains on it that Clay couldn’t identify the wood at all. Hanging from hooks in the walls were instruments of torture that very few people ever saw in their lifetimes. Clay had been unfortunate enough to have been in a room similar before. That had been much larger, but no more lethal.

  “Please,” the man whispered again from the cell.

  There were two cells, and only one was occupied. The other was wide open but looked like it had only recently been vacated, as there were fresh stains on the stone floor, as well as a bucket in the corner that looked like it hadn’t been emptied yet.

  “Who are you?” Clay asked as he squeezed past the huge table and approached the man in the locked cell. “Why are you here?”

  “Because,” the man said.

  He was rail thin and his skin had oozing sores all over it. There were putrid lash marks across his bony chest and his eyes wept with pus from their corners. His teeth were gone, some broken, some yanked right out. And the hands he used to grip the cell’s bars only had five fingers total. Five fingers. Half the number that should have been there. The rest were only scabbed-over nubs.

  “Because why?” Clay asked.

  “Because she wants me here,” the man said. He started to sob, and he reached one of the incomplete hands out through the bars at Clay. “I am her toy. We are all her toys.”

  Clay realized he was subconsciously rubbing at the bruises and scratches that covered his body.

  Her toy… we are all her toys…

  “Hell,” Clay said. “Holy hell. How long have you been down here?”

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “Days. Weeks. Years? I don’t know. She comes at night and puts me… there.”

  Clay turned to where the man pointed, back to the table. There were deep knife marks and gouges in the table. The stones below were stained almost black. She had been at her game, whatever it was, for a very long time.

  “He taught her,” the man said. “Before he died. He taught her. I watched him do it.”

  “You watched him? Who? Who taught her?” Clay asked.

  “General Hansen,” the man said. “Before she became General Hansen. She never liked me. Never. Brought me here when he died. I’ve been here since. I’ve always been here.”

  “Yeah… okay,” Clay said. His guts twisted hard, and he thought he’d crap himself right there. He took a couple of deep breaths and started back for the stairs.

  “Wait!” the man called out. “Help me! Set me free!”

  “Brother, I have no idea what has been going on and I plan on not finding out,” Clay said. “Sorry. But I’ve learned that when you find a person’s nasty secrets, it’s best to pretend you never found out. I’d help you, but she’d know. And if she’s been doing all of that to you, then I do not want to find out what she’ll do to me.”

  “You will,” the man hissed. “You will find out. Eventually. Everyone does. No one is safe. No one!”

  He doubled over, a coughing fit incapacitating him. Clay took that opportunity to bail. He hurried to the steps and took them two at a time as he raced his way back to the surface and the sunlight. Torture dungeons were not his thing. He’d take uncertain rape and a hard beating from Hansen, but he wouldn’t wait around to get the skin flayed off his thighs. Which he knew could happen. He saw the knives hanging on the walls.

  He was at the last bend in the stairs when he realized there was a lot more light above than just what his torch was putting out. Two more double steps and he found out why.

  “I was afraid you’d find this place,” Zeus said. He had Clay’s gunbelt and pocket watch in hand. He held them out. “You are too curious. I could see that about you when you first walked in the house. Too curious. She punishes curious, no matter how valuable. Time for you to leave, Mr. MacAulay.”

  Clay didn’t ask questions. He didn’t hesitate a second, just traded the torch for his gear. He strapped on the gunbelt, tucked the watch in his vest pocket where it went, and looked at Zeus.

  “My hat?” Clay asked.

  “I couldn’t get it from the closet,” Zeus said, shaking his head. “She’d have seen me.”

  “Why are you helping me?” Clay asked.

  Zeus looked toward the stairs.

  “Because you’d be next,” Zeus said. “That man down there. He’s my son. I can’t help him. Too late for that. But I can help you. Run, Mr. MacAulay. Run and keep running. Do not look back. If you head west for about twenty kilometers, you’ll come to a farm. It’s small, but there are people there who can help you. Tell them Zeus sent ya.”

  Clay patted his vest pocket. “I need my mech,” Clay said. “I’ll be taking that. No need to run.”

  “Your mech ain’t here, Mr. MacAulay,” Zeus said. “That’s what has General Hansen so upset. Why she shot Bandt through the heart. Why she’s ordered the Captain to whip Volker and the others. The mech was gone.”

  “Gone? Where?” Clay asked.

  He started to pull his watch from his vest, but Zeus reached out and clamped a hand on his wrist.

  “No time to worry about your mech,” Zeus said. “Run. You can find it later, although I am fairly certain I know where it may be.”

  “Where?” Clay snapped.

  There was a shout from outside. Too close to have come from the house. Way too close.

  “Zeus!” Hansen’s voice reached them through the shed’s walls. “Where the hell are you? You better not be pampering my toy! ZEUS!”

  “Oh, god,” Zeus said as the shed’s door rattled.

  Clay threw a wicked right hook and clocked Zeus across the jaw. The old man cried out, then crumpled. Clay had his pistol out and aimed at the door just as it was pulled open. The silhouette of General Hansen filled the door. Clay could see a few men and women standing back by the veranda, but none close enough to be an immediate problem.

  “Mr. MacAulay?” Hansen asked, legitimately confused. She looked down at the unconscious form of Zeus, who was just a tangle of limbs on the stone floor. “Zeus? What have you done to Zeus?”

  Clay waved his revolver at Hansen, but she ignored it, just kept staring down at Zeus.

  “You care to move out of my way?” Clay asked.

  Hansen looked up and focused on the revolver for the first time. She narrowed her eyes and stepped aside.

  “What are you doing, Mr. MacAulay?” Hansen asked.

  She didn’t give him much room, so he jammed the barrel of the revolver into her belly as he pushed past and out into the sunlight. She locked her eyes onto his and glared at him every step of the way. When he was out, he backhanded her across the face with his free hand. Hard.

  Hansen stumbled and went down on one knee. She put a hand to her face and wiped the blood away from the broken skin on her cheekbone. She looked down at the blood on her palm then looked up at Clay, wiping her hand clean on her trousers.

  “You are playing this all wrong, Mr. MacAulay,” Hansen said. “We had a deal.”

  “Yeah, I think the deal’s off,” Clay said. He nodded to the shed. “Last night was freaky, but it had its moments. What you have going on down there? That just ain’t for me. I’m getting out while I can.”

  Clay heard the distinct click of several hammers being pulled back on several pistols. He reached down and yanked Hansen to her feet, spun her about so he had his revolver jammed into her kidney and his free arm wrapped around her neck. He put her in front of him and turned to face the guns aimed at him.

  “Tell them to back off,” Clay growled, his mouth pressed to her ear.

  “First man or woman who kills this son of a bitch gets clemency!” Hansen shouted. “No whipping for your failure to find the mech!”

  Clay watched as half a dozen pistols were raised and aimed at his head. He ducked back behind Hansen even more, one eye watching Hansen’s people, one eye obscured by Hansen’s short hair. The smell of her soap brought back memories of the night before, and a wave of confusion hit him.

  “Put the gun down and stay with me, Mr. MacAulay,” Hansen said, her voice that soft, welcoming tone that had greeted him yesterday. “We could build something together. Take down the Mister. Have more land and resources than anyone has had in these parts in centuries. By my side, you would be a king. You would be a ruler men and women fear.”

  “Yeah, not for me,” Clay said as he shoved the revolver into her back as hard as he could. She cried out in pain and he smiled. “I just want my mech and want to be gone. That’s it. A little grey to tide me over until I find a geothermal pocket. Then I’m off up to NorthAm. You’ll never see me again. Better yet, I won’t see you again.”

  “You loved it when I took you,” Hansen said. “Admit it. Having me on you, forcing you. It thrilled you beyond anything else ever. For the first time in your life, you felt alive.”