Stolen Lives: A LitRPG/GameLit Novel (The Underhill Chronicles Book 1) Keith Ahrens (best e reader for epub txt) 📖

to Miles when we return to our small group, and we all share what little food and water we have between us, and for a brief few minutes, we almost relax.

Except for Olivia.

“How many people were in your wagon, Olivia?” asks Miles.

She says nothing for a few moments, and I'm not sure if she will answer.

“Too many,” comes her short reply. Then she gets up and walks away from the rest of us. We leave her be, letting her grieve her own for now. They were all that had been left of her squad, the people she was closest to in this horrible place. There's nothing any of us can do or say that will make that better.

The remainder of our party continues to take advantage of our short respite. Even Haynes has forgotten about his five-minute rule for this break. I momentarily doze off. We know we are still too far from safety to really let our guard down and truly rest, but for right now, we'll take what we can get.

19

We load our wounded, including Olivia and Thirax, back into the wagon. Her armor had protected her from the direct burns, but the same armor also trapped a lot of heat, kind of slow roasting her in the process. Between that and the road rash, she's decently banged up right now. Of course, I have no healing stones left. The best I can do is give her a little morphine from my kit to take the edge off. She accepts it with a grateful smile. Her Hit Point tattoo indicates her wounds look a lot worse than they really are. I’m pretty sure they're still painful, just not life-threatening.

Haynes and Grayson had taken a few minutes to begin collecting the bodies (and parts) of the dead elves to put into Jesse's wagon. Why not? It already has a few dead elves in it; what’s a couple more? Sarge says it’s a good tactical move, taking the dead bodies. This way, the enemy doesn't know who is alive or dead or what happened to them. Makes them uneasy and prone to second-guessing their next move.

While they're sorting through the bodies, we take one of the less skittish horses from Olivia's lost wagon and add it to Jesse's team, bringing it back up to four.

“Sylvia hasn't come back yet and that other wagon just left us, huh?” Haynes asks while we load up the rest of our group.

“You think there's a problem?” I ask.

“I don't know Sylvia that well, but she came highly recommended by a few groups. I think we can trust her. It’s the other group I'm more worried about.”

We mount up and hit the road again. Thorn is still in a light trance trying to keep Nian stable, but Vince is on his feet and doing well. He hangs onto the bow and sits by the back door with one foot dangling out as he keeps watch. I spend some time in the wagon, talking with Olivia while I clean out some of her wounds and burns. We don't have much fresh water left, but I use what I can sparingly, not wanting to leave her road rash with pebbles and dirt embedded in the skin. I offer her a little more morphine before we start, but she declines.

She tells me she's suffered worse from various 'on the job' injuries and a few recreational motorcycle accidents.

“What year were you taken?” I ask out of idle curiosity.

“2009, I got sent home in the middle of my shift after an Emergency Room visit. I got a little stabbed while disarming a 'perp.'” We share a chuckle when she mentions being 'a little stabbed.' “When I got home, I took a few painkillers they'd given me. Next thing I know, something had walked through the mirror in my bedroom. You know, one of those full-length mirrors you can check your outfit in?”

I nod, vaguely knowing what she is referring to. I'm a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, so I've never needed to 'check my outfit.’

“We fight, but I'm so whacked out on the painkillers, it’s not much of a struggle. I was too doped up to even grab my Glock. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in a cell, chained to a wall. Kinda ironic, now that I think about it. I guess that was about a year and a half ago, as best as I can tell,” she finishes and hisses in pain as I debride a bad patch of skin on her calf.

“Sorry. I'm trying to be gentle.”

She replies with a quick little smile, “I know. It’s okay.” We hold eye contact for a moment, and I feel a little jolt. She has really pretty eyes.

Whoa! Where the hell did that come from? This is not the time nor place for that kind of thinking. Gotta stay focused, stay in survival mode… at least until we get out of here. Ahem… time to change the focus.

“What about you, Vince? What’s your story?” I ask, directing my question to one of our fellow wagon-mates. Olivia's mention of the mirror has got me thinking there's an obvious connection here.

He stays quiet for a minute, deciding what or how much to tell us. He decides to be brief, which kind of fits his personality so far.

“It was 2003. I was working as a bouncer in some hole-in-the-wall strip bar in upstate New York. I'd tossed out a few guys who were giving this new girl a hard time. After my shift, she and I took a little walk. It was a great night, full moon, nice and warm. We stopped on a small grassy hill next to a pond in the woods. She disappeared for a minute, next thing I knew, the hill kind of opened up, like a sinkhole, and dropped me here. I've been here just under two years. Thorn over there has saved my life many a time.”

I try to think back. Was it a