Page 39 of Dark Chains: First Link
"Don't sound so enthusiastic. It's a significant step in your rehabilitation."
"A significant step would be walking. A wheelchair means that walking is not imminent."
"A wheelchair will allow you mobility and get you out of this bed. Stimulating your mind is just as important as stimulating your muscles, although I'm not sure we should do that." She adjusted the machine's angle by a degree and checked the straps around his feet. "Your mind is twisted and devious enough as it is. Still, you should be pleased."
Her compliments lifted his mood a little. "Where exactly will I go in this wheelchair?"
Gertrude straightened. "I'm not sure yet. I guess it will be okay to take you to the corridor outside the clinic so you will have a stretch of distance to cover, but we need to get authorization for that."
"The corridor," he grimaced. "How thrilling."
"It's a start. Farther along in your rehabilitation, I might get permission to take you to the swimming pool. Water therapy would be excellent for rebuilding your leg muscles."
He blinked. "There's a swimming pool down here?"
"There's a swimming pool, a gym, a rec room, a kitchen, a movie theater, and a great deal more. The underground complex is extensive."
He filed that information away the same way he filed everything. He wasn't planning anything, but the information might become useful in the future.
"I didn't expect a swimming pool in an underground bunker," he said.
"It's not a bunker. It's a keep." Gertrude removed the dinner cover from his plate. "Eat while it's warm."
"What's the difference?"
"A bunker is a small place to hide. A keep is a stronghold, a place to live and protect."
She was in a talkative mood today, so maybe he could glean some more information from her. She wasn't usually so forthcoming.
"Does your entire clan live in this underground?"
"No. We don't live here."
"So, what do you use this place for?"
She looked at him, and he saw the deliberation in her eyes. "We used to live in the building that sits on top of the underground. Now we live in a much nicer place where we have homes instead of apartments. I can grow herbs in my garden now."
"That's nice, but you still didn't tell me what you use this sprawling underground complex for."
"To hold prisoners like you." She pointed at the tray. "Eat."
He ate, not because he was hungry but because his body needed the nutrients to heal, and the chicken was getting cold.
The nurse hadn't told him the truth, not all of it anyway, but he knew that he had reached the end of what she was willing to share. She hadn't denied that the underground complex was sprawling, and that was important information as well.
The question that bothered him the most, though, was why no one came to see him anymore.
Annani and Kian had previously been visiting him regularly with the clear purpose of extracting information from him, and he'd been playing the game with them skillfully, negotiating the best he could given his precarious position. It had been quite entertaining and stimulating. If they wanted to keep his mind engaged, they should come see him more often.
Khiann was his strongest card, the mate Annani had been mourning for millennia, who he had been holding in a booby-trapped glass enclosure precisely for this kind of situation. This was his last-resort bargaining chip if he ever fell into the clan's hands, but it hadn't worked as well as he had planned.
He had parceled out the information in fragments, enough to keep them coming back, but never enough so they couldcontinue without him. The only way Annani could get her mate back was by promising to free Navuh.
Then Losham triggered the booby traps, the enclosure collapsed, and the clan must have figured out a way to get Khiann and the other four immortals in stasis without Navuh's help because no one had come to see him in days.
He tried to console himself that the lack of visitation could mean many things. The removal of debris and excavation could have hit an obstacle, and they were waiting for conditions to change before resuming their questioning. It could mean that they were preoccupied with other matters and would return when their schedule allowed, but it could also mean that they had found another way to reach the chamber and extract the chests.
That was the possibility that kept him awake at night.
