Chaos

The Princess Saves Herself

Her voice was a low whisper that reverberated with the strength of a goddess. "This knife is pointed directly at your spleen. If I stab it, you will bleed out in a few minutes. You're going to take me to a secret exit, an emergency escape, somewhere where I can get out of here with no one noticing. Don't talk. Nod if you understand."

She couldn't see the man's face because she was behind him, but she saw his slight tremble and Tiamat felt his fear as he nodded. She grinned darkly as she spoke. "Good. Move too quickly, and you die. Move too slowly, you die. Talk, die. Nod."

The guy nodded, and her smirk widened. "Move."

The man moved, taking a confusing route through the warren of tunnels. They walked for long enough that Meri became half convinced he was leading her on a wild goose chase until she felt fresh air on her face, and the two of them kept walking until she found an opening in the concrete leading out into a cold night cloaked forest.

"Thank you." With that, she drove the knife into his spleen, causing him to bend over in agony so that she could pull the knife out and slash it over his throat before he could cry out.

The guy was dead as soon as his body hit the ground, and Meri wasted a few precious moments searching for a cellphone on the man's body. She came up empty-handed and frowned before creeping out and melting into the darkness, which welcomed her like an old friend.

Now to find a way to get a hold of her boys.

***

Meriwa stumbled several times as she crept as silently as possible through the woods. Thankfully, it didn't look like there were many people wherever she was, and she saw no indications of guard patrols or anything in the woods surrounding the derelict shell of a building they had held her in.

After several minutes of mindless, moonlit wandering through the trees, she stumbled across a walking trail with a historic marker proclaiming this to be the sight of "Smith and Company Meat Packing Plant."

She'd never heard of the place, but if there was a walking trail, then that meant there were people to walk on the trail. Lest one of the bad guys see her, Meri slipped back into the trees, but kept the trail on her left as she rubbed her belly and traipsed and tripped her way through the foliage.

Eventually, she came to another sign, this one bearing icons for bathrooms and vending machines a mile ahead. It was then that her stomach grumbled, and the exhaustion revealed by the adrenaline leaving her system threatened to overcome her.

It was night, and Meriwa was fairly confident she'd been gone well over twenty-four hours without food.

Probably forty-eight? Her poor babies were so hungry, and her poor boys were probably sick with worry. Frowning, she absently switched her knife from one hand to the other before the shooting pain in her hand caused her to drop the thing.

Fuck. She'd forgotten the whole getting stabbed thing.

Sighing, she regarded the knife on the ground for a moment before supporting herself against a tree as she squatted so that she could grab it. It only took her a minute or two to get back on her feet before she stumbled in the direction of the sign she had seen had indicated.

It wasn't long before she saw the flickering light of a streetlamp illuminating a set of simple park bathrooms, a couple of vending machines, and one of those emergency buttons that called 911, the kind that they put in parks or on college campuses in case someone needed assistance.

She nearly laughed at the absurdity of it. It looked like a set straight from a crime drama where a hapless jogger might be murdered by some sort of slasher.

Meriwa shook her head to rid it of these thoughts as she grinned while thinking about her good luck. Even so, she knew it was foolish to rush straight into the light, and she waited in silence for several moments before stalking from the darkness, keeping to the shadows as she made her way to the emergency station.

There was a camera on it, and she held her breath, praying the thing would work as she pressed the cold metal button. There was one shrill alarm and a flashing light that soon stopped as the garbled voice of a woman came through the speaker.

"911. What's your emergency?"

She wiped at her tears before doing her best to speak clearly and calmly. "I was kidnapped. I escaped. I'm 7 months pregnant with twins and need non-emergency medical attention. Bad guys are still around here somewhere, but for now I'm alright."

"Where are you?"

She rolled her eyes. "You know where I am, and that fucking alarm was loud enough to wake the dead. I hope they didn't hear it."

"Ma'am—"

"Just send Knight Corp."

With that, she used her knife to destroy the speaker so that the woman couldn't keep talking and alerting whoever might be around to her presence. Her boys would undoubtedly drop from the sky any minute now, so she half-waddled, half walked over a vending machine. It merely contained chips and energy bars, but her mouth watered at the sight.

And, before she knew what was happening, Tiamat was raising her hand and using the butt of the dagger to shatter the glass.

Meri was careful to avoid the shards as she reached in and grabbed a few bags of Cheetos and a couple of granola bars before making her way over to a bench half in the light, where she sat down slowly with a groan.

A glance down at her feet showed her that her ankles were horribly swollen, and when she opened the Cheetos bag, she noticed that blood had already seeped through the horrendous bandage job the shifter had done.

As soon as she shoved the first Cheeto into her mouth, the reality of her situation hit her, and she couldn't fight the urge to bawl in an odd mixture of fear, confusion, and relief. The babies sprang to life once more, wiggling with joy now that Meri was resting and eating.

She smiled before whispering. "Mommy's sorry she took so long to get away, little ones. Don't worry. Daddies will be here soon, okay?"

When the movement of the twins kept going on, she grinned through her tears and rested her non-Cheeto hand on her belly to feel the movement inside her as she ate.

Now, all she had to do was wait and hope the bad guys hadn't even noticed her missing yet.