Roar, Lioness. Roar

The Flesh Collector

Hot sand spays across her face, jolting Latisha into awakefulness. She tries to put up her hands, but they are shackled to the side of her cage. Straining against the restraints is an exercise in futility. Through a half-swollen eye she scans her surroundings. She and four others share a metal cage with tightly placed bars and loops designed to secure manacles. The low ceiling makes it impossible for a full-grown adult to stand and the padlock on the outside of the gate ensures no crafty prisoner can pick it. The jeep hauling them, knifes through the sand dunes splashing more hot sand into the cage.

Never in her life did Latisha ever expect to be on this side of a cage. She'd always known she was destined to take her mother's throne or die in glorious combat. She'd believed her flesh would never rot in a metal box. She and Rebel would fight until their last breath...

Memories of the explosion and flames engulfing Tick and Rebel flood her mind. She remembers Bianca's burning hair and pillars of smoke rising up from Pride Home.

Latisha's face throbs as she tilts her head to study the other prisoners. She recognizes one of the women as a prisoner sold to the slavers by Scorch, but the other two are unknown to her. They are younger than Bianca with sun-burnt skin and barely formed muscles. Wasters from the central Waste. The smaller girl stares forward, unblinking, unbothered by the large desert fly sitting on her nose. The other weeps, tears streaming down her face. Weak.

The huntress tests the chains again, pulling against the metal until her arms feel like dough. Tired, she slumps against the cage. Pain pulses through the soreness of her face in concert with her pounding heart. She takes a ragged shuddering breath and lightning lances up the side of her ribs. The feel of Scorch's boots still linger. Latisha lapses into a coughing fit and the pain becomes worse. Cursing this foul twist of fate, she leans back and focuses on breathing.

Their jeep and its escort move through the desert going east, opposite the sun. Passing a sea of rolling dunes and an expanse of flat even sand that radiates heat like a mirror, they approach a collection of metal walls nestled against jutting rock spires. It's too small to be Market Town, but its size could exceed it one day. A massive truck approaches, its sides are reinforced with wood and metal plates, two harpoon launchers sit on one side and a huge crossbow on the other. A dozen heavily armed and armored slavers ride on its roofless back. This rolling fortress honks twice and the jeeps return a series of response honks. Satisfied, it pulls away, allowing them to pass.

Latisha watches the armored truck roll by and wonders how anyone can hope to match it in battle on the open desert. They approach the gates of the walled off town and pass through a tunnel where snipers watch from platforms above. At the end of the tunnel is a staging area where other jeeps are parked. Three dozen vehicles arrayed under a cloth canopy. Most are little more than frames and engines, but some have the same level of armor as the rolling fortress.

When they come to a halt, a cold shiver runs down Latisha's spine. Watching the gates of the tunnel close feels final, the last bullet in her ambitions to be the next queen of The Yellow Sun. Her captors disembark from their vehicles and linger about, laughing and joking. No one seems to be in a rush. After a few minutes, the slavers are joined by women draped in padding and armed with batons. They greet one another with foul language and insults. To Latisha, they are reminiscent of reavers, but lack a certain commonality tying them together.

The group shares rolled tobacco as they unload the jeeps. It's a task they take at their leisure, again lacking urgency and direction. A pair go around to the back of the cage and chew a bit of gongdo-shrooms in relative privacy. Latisha watches the drug take hold of them, turning them giddy and aggressive.

They ignore the women in the cage, affording them no more attention than one gives a piece of furniture. To the slavers the prisoners don't exist. Latisha listens to their conversations, she listens to the girl cry, and she seethes. She is a huntress of The Yellow Sun and she'll teach them what that means soon enough.