Page 1 of Reset

CHAPTER ONE

Present day

Location unknown

* * *

For the second time in two years, Ryan Granger woke in a strange place with no recollection of how he got there.

“Not again,” he groaned.

Blinking, he tried to focus his blurred vision on his surroundings. The light was low and flickering, and he spotted a candle placed on a rocky protrusion.

Rock?

Dirt?

What the hell?

He angled his head to look around him, and pain made him grit his teeth until it passed. Gingerly, he felt for signs of head trauma. The last thing he needed was another concussion. His brain was still Swiss cheese from the bullet that’d skimmed his skull.

Skim—it was such a wimpy word. It did nothing to describe the bullet’s impact on his head or the way it’d made his brain slam against the inside of his skull. And it definitely wasn’t a word that sounded like it would cause him to spend seven months in a coma healing from the damage.

To his relief, there were no signs of injury to his head, this time, but the side of his neck ached. There was no mistaking the circular wound his fingertips found. It was an injection site, which meant he’d been drugged.

“Just what I need,” he muttered. “Like my brain isn’t foggy enough.”

Fighting against the weight of his own limbs, Ryan sat up and looked around properly. There was sandy-colored dirt beneath him and hewn limestone walls around him. Hewn. Not natural. So, not a cave. A mine? Maybe?

The walls were rough, although there’d been clear intent in the design of the chamber. A raised stone platform against one wall must have been meant for a bed. And there were nooks carved out for belongings. A miner’s accommodation? If it was, it hadn’t been used for years, which meant old mine.

An old abandoned mine, then.

Great…

The air was musty. The dust coated his lungs with every breath, leaving him with a dry cotton feeling in his mouth. Instinct made him look for water, although he didn’t expect to find any. To his surprise, he spotted a large bottle in a nook high in the wall. It looked full.

“What the hell have I fallen into?”

The walls seemed to shift around him as he struggled to his feet. The ground undulated beneath him. If he didn’t believe his eyes, he’d think he was on a boat instead of in a cavern.

“Damn drugs.”

Slowly, he made his way to the water. The top of his head skimmed the stone above him, making him aware of the weight of the rock overhead. The bottle was still sealed and cool to the touch, which meant it hadn’t been there long. Someone had left it for him. Training made him to check for needle marks or tampering before he cracked it open. There was nothing obvious, and he was desperate for a drink, so he unscrewed the cap.

Years of army experience meant he only sipped at the water, instead of draining the bottle as he wanted. Even foggy, he knew he had to ration. There was no way to tell where he was or how long he’d be there. That bottle could be the last water he saw for a while.

Leaning against the wall, he pulled out his phone and switched it on.

No signal.

No surprise.

It did tell him that it’d been ten hours since he’d walked out of the Department of Neurology after his appointment with his head doc, and that his battery was still pretty much full. He switched the phone off to conserve it and closed his eyes while he tried to remember what’d happened.

The last thing he recalled was opening the door to a hackney cab and telling the driver to take him to Benson Security’s office in Victoria. He’d wanted to get in some last-minute practice at the gun range before taking his firearms proficiency test again. Someone had bumped into him—making Ryan apologize, for some reason—and then the world had faded. Next thing he knew, he’d woken up in a cavern.

Fantastic…