Dream Killer: Book One in the Nadia Chronicles
Chapter 15: Open to Leave

She was confused and disoriented, but for the time she was in control. She ran in the direction, she hoped, was away from her captor. It was also toward a dim light she could just make out at the end of the hallway. Nadia turned and almost smashed headlong into a tall man. The man was not as large as the numbered henchmen, but he was cladded in a lot of leather. He looked like an executioner from old movies. The man was caught off guard by her sudden appearance. It gave her just enough time to smash a torch, the source of the light she had seen, over his head. He fell limply to the ground. Nadia froze listening hard to hear if anyone had heard the sickening crack the torch had made when it collided with the man’s skull. When Nadia felt confident she had not raised new suspicions she took in her new surroundings.

She was in the walk way of some sort of dungeon. She saw three or four dozen iron barred cells lining both sides of the walk way. Using the touch for light Nadia searched the man she had just rendered unconscious for keys and found a large, ancient looking set dangling from his thick, leather belt. She reached over the man trying to not even breathe for fear of waking him. Gripping the keys so they would not make any noise, she tiptoed down the hallway. Nadia was determined to free any, if not all, of Sergei’s captives before replaceing her own freedom.

Nadia reached the first cage and was shocked to see a little girl of twelve lying quietly on her bed. “Hey,” Nadia started to say, but the little girl cut her off.

“It is you,” she looked at Nadia with her bright eyes. “I knew you would come.”

“How could you possibly know me?” Nadia tried to fit each of the twenty keys into the cage door lock.

“I see possible futures. It is my gift. That key,” she pointed to one of the last keys Nadia would have tried. When she finally got the right one the girl ran out and hugged Nadia. “I must go,” the girl said. “But I know we will meet again, Nadia of Earth.” Nadia was taken aback by the girl’s statement, but was downright floored when she disappeared.

Dream worlds, Nadia thought shaking her head. With no time to worry about the new discoveries, Nadia moved to the next cage. It held a man in his mid-thirties dressed similarly to the girl. They both wore peasant clothing made of sturdy materials that were meant to be comfortable and last, not to be fashionable. The man ran out and disappeared as the girl had.

Nadia continued down one side of the cages and was just starting on the other side when she heard footsteps. “Quickly,” the woman in her early seventies was saying to Nadia. “Quickly Nadia, before they come for us.” The woman was gripping the hands of two younger women and all three were terrified. Nadia unlock the woman’s cage and two others that held a mother and child and a very small woman. All thanked Nadia by name before disappearing as the others had. Nadia hoped, not for the first time, that they were waking up some place safe. Nadia stopped unlocking cages and hid in the darkest corner of the hallway and waited when the footsteps came to a sudden stop.

“Nadia?” Sergei’s voice was saturated with malice. “I know you are here, Nadia. I also know that you are injured.” Nadia had not thought about the injuries she had sustained in the river at all since she had entered the dream world. As Sergei spoke the memories came crashing down on her. She was acutely aware that up until that moment she felt none of the pain she should have in her back, ribs, head, and her ankle. With only some of the pain back, Nadia could no longer stand up fully. The pain was steadily growing. She barely stopped a groan of agony that would have given away her position as Sergei spotted the first empty cage. “You little thief,” he screamed, jumping up and down like a child a few times. “How dare you release what is rightfully mine. I was considering letting you live even after that display, but now you are more trouble than you are worth.” Sergei crossed to the man Nadia had knocked out and kicked him. “Wake up, you idiot.” Sergei kicked the man again and he stirred. “How could you let an injured little girl get the best of you?” There was a long pause full of mumbling and shuffling before Sergei spit, “Never mind, you moron! Go and get her.”

Sergei’s outcry did more for Nadia’s pain and determination then a pain killer would have. She had hobbled over to the next cage and was unlocking it as the men argued. She had at least four or five more cages in the pitch blackness. She intended to release all the captors she could before she was caught.

“What?” Nadia said before she made the decision to speak. “Too afraid to come get me yourself?” Her words were colored with pain, but she was glad they still sounded sarcastic.

“Do not tempt me Nadia,” Sergei struggled to keep his voice even through his rage. “You are a small challenge, what with your shoulders being torn open by those rocks.”

Nadia had just unlocked another cage door when she felt the back of her shirt rip open and warm blood dripping down her back. “Go,” she whispered to the older gentleman in the cell that was torn between helping her and waking up. “I can manage. Do me a favor, if you can, when you wake up. Find Dimitri the guardian. He is traveling with a woman named Althea.” He exchanged a dark look with the younger man that also occupied the cell before they nodded once and disappeared. Raising her voice so Sergei could hear, Nadia said, “you are foolish, Serg, can I call you Serg?” She tried to put as much sarcasm in her voice as the pain would allow.

“No,” was Sergei’s simple response.

Nadia crossed to the next cage as she spoke. “Ok, Serg. You are foolish to think a little pain can bring me down.” She was trying to keep him talking so she knew where he was and to take her mind off the pain. She nodded to the two teenage boys as they left the cage she had just unlocked. Nadia’s head started to spin from the blood loss, but she shuffled to the next cage anyway.

“Oh, Nadia,” Sergei sounded amused. “It is not a little pain that you must endure. After all, you have a broken rib and internal bleeding on the right side of your rib cage.”

She gasped as she fell onto the cage door she had just unlocked. Sergei chuckled and as he started to walk toward the sound of her labored breathing. She swung open the door to allow what she thought was an entire family of five to leave. Sergei heard the door and growled, “Clearly, you need to be reminded of your head injury. You know the one that is a giant bruise with an open, bleeding, and now infected wound on the back of your head.” Nadia’s knees buckled and she fell all the way to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the next cage of people.

“Do not be, Nadia of Earth.” An older woman smiled down to her though tears were in her eyes. “Take heart in those you have saved as we do.”

The older woman and all the rest of the cell’s occupants faded to the back of their cages as Sergei approached. He strolled casually up to Nadia grabbing the keys that Nadia had dropped. Sergei spun the keys once around his fingers and tossed them to the prison guard. Then Sergei bent down and pulled Nadia up by her shoulders. “Don’t forget the internal bleeding in your lower back, the water that is still in your lungs, and your broken ankle.” He started to laugh as Nadia started to gasp for breath.

She heard for what she thought was the last time, Dimitri call out her name. She struggled to consider Sergei’s eyes unafraid of death and realized he was no longer there. “Dimitri,” she whispered before everything went black.