Chapter 2
941 Words
2Six hours later…
With her head throbbing from some sort of fall that had left her lying on the dirty cave floor in total darkness, Sugar fought to push her still aching body upright but didn’t get far. She groaned loudly with the struggle. Her hand swept out across the floor and luckily found the flashlight she’d brought with her.
Sugar flicked it on and spun the light around to see where she was. She found she was lying at the bottom of a large pile of carefully stacked stones.
Why in the hell hadn’t her freaking flashlight been on the whole time? Without it, she must have run into the stone cairn in the dark and knocked herself the hell out.
Sugar pushed the rest of the way to her knees and felt her aching body wobble with the effort. Her head felt like it was going to roll off her shoulders.
Then… wow… she put a hand to her forehead as she suddenly recalled a dream she’d had about finding the artifact.
There had been a glowing box with handprints. There had been a golden blade that talked to her in a language she hadn’t understood.
Feeling like a true i***t now for letting her imagination run wild, Sugar groaned in mortification as she knelt on the cold cave floor.
She really, really needed to get some fresh air into her lungs. There had to be carbon monoxide in the cave.
Poisoned air was the only way to explain her having such a vivid, colorful dream like that, especially when she’d obviously knocked herself out on the pile of rocks beside her.
Her disappointment over not finding any ancient artifact was keen, but the flashlight sweeping the cave walls confirmed her search was done. The cave ended abruptly just behind the tower of stacked stones.
Damn it all to hell.
There’d be no Indiana Jones glory for her today.
Sugar checked her watch to see how long she’d been unconscious, but it didn’t seem to be working correctly. The last time it showed was six hours ago. So much for buying a top of the line model. The watch must have broken from shock when she fell.
As Sugar stood on wobbly legs, she inspected the cairn and saw a clean spot on top. Had she touched it before she fell? She reached out her fingers to feel the smooth area. Her brain reached for a memory, but none came.
“Get some damn oxygen, Sugar,” she told herself sternly.
Head hurting, Sugar retrieved her hiking pack, pulled it onto her sore shoulders, and started the dirty trek back out of the cave. She walked head down while fighting hard not to feel super sorry for herself.
Coming into the cave, she’d been so sure that she was going to find something valuable—something that would make her career. Now? Well, now she’d be starting all over again. Failure hurt, but she’d survived that before.
At the cave entrance, Sugar stopped completely. Breathing fresh air, at last, was fantastic, but the sunlight did nothing to ease her pounding head.
Blinking several times to adjust to the brightness, Sugar suddenly felt her entire chest vibrating like it had turned into a giant cell phone.
There was pain too—pain she couldn’t identify. It went deep and radiated to all her bones.
Maybe she’d hit those rocks harder than she thought when she fell. She looked down at her clothes and was shocked to see her shirt was shredded in the front.
“Damn it, Sugar. What in the double-L hell happened to you in there?”
She spat the question as she searched her destroyed shirt for the source of the damage. Then she noticed a golden spear end pointing up to one shoulder. Touching it hurt, but the smooth vibrating metal beneath her exploring fingers told her it wasn’t any sort of tattoo.
She looked on the other side of her chest and found another metal spear-like point matching the first.
Peering down between her breasts, she saw there was one in the middle of her sternum as well, but it stopped midway between her generous cleavage that blocked the view of the rest of it.
It looked a bit like she’d fallen on Poseidon’s trident and accidentally pushed it into her chest. She couldn’t see it without a mirror but she felt some sort of metal band wrapped around her rib cage from front-to-back… and well… it was vibrating too.
Wanting to stop the pain any way she could, Sugar pulled her nearly destroyed shirt together and clenched it closed with her fist. Once all the trident was covered, the vibration immediately stopped, as did the incredible pain in her head. Whatever it was it didn't like the light.
“What the ever-loving f**k happened in there?” Sugar demanded as a fresh panic of biblical proportions swept over her. She turned and glared behind her.
Holding her mangled shirt closed with one hand, Sugar ran all the way back to her rented vehicle, her anxiety growing with every footfall on the ground. It was only when she was driving back to her motel that she realized she’d just run the four-hour hike to the car in a little over thirty minutes without ever once getting tired or winded.
“I’m officially changing careers. Screw having freaking adventures,” Sugar declared. A golden vibrating metal parasite was now taking up residence in her chest.
The science fiction stories she’d loved all her life had never come close to s**t like this in reality. However, memories of every horror movie she’d ever watched were now playing non-stop in her mind.
She couldn’t recall anything about what had happened in the cave before she got knocked out, but for damn sure, she’d found something while in there.
Or something had found her.
Now what was it intending to do with her?
- Writer
