The Centurion's Woman

Chapter 1

ALEX LAY BACK down on the cold ground. She'd been kneeling on the bottom of the pit and staring out one of the small holes in the planks above for a few minutes, whistling to the little fledgling crow she'd tamed. He hop-flew away as some children passed closely. She was exhausted and, besides, her neck hurt now, anyway.

        As she lay down, she was certain of two things: that at least one of her ribs was broken, and that she was going to die before the end of a week if she started counting days today. This wasn't some conjecture of a mild-mannered lady who'd been living in shock since waking up in what she now believed was the wrong time, this was the deduction of a trained survivalist. Alexandria "Alex" Moldovan had been raised by an ex-military father who'd never recovered from his time in service. The governments of some 'civilized' places they lived had of course taken her away from him – multiple times – but when you're eleven years old and know how to forage and trap, have lived in some of those random countries you color in Geography class, and can go a winter in the Canadian territories without electricity or neighbors, it's pretty easy to get back to your dad from a foster house.

        The truth was, she liked living like that. The noise from towns and cities gave her a headache, and the food always upset her stomach. It was when she was fifteen and her dad disappeared, presumably dead, that she had been forced to join some area of humanity. In teaching her that he'd failed miserably. She didn't blame him, he was terrible at it as well.

        She'd learned a bit here and there for how to deal with civilization from her stints in foster care, but the two years of steady high school were hell. The four years at university were worse. The very long thirteen months of marriage had become a cohabitation, suburban nightmare. At least her job prior to waking up here, well now, had been pretty good – nobody expected a survivalist trainer to be a good 'people person'. Her militant upbringing had given her a good footing for joining many martial arts and kickboxing clubs over the years, and there she had excelled quickly to teaching.

        Fast forward to her latest work retreat, where she and fourteen of her fellow survivalist trainers had been sent to a weekend team building session in Germany. The management of the company employing the trainers had decided it was a good idea for the group to 'bond' ... It was supposed to be a quiet weekend of paintball, horseback riding and camping with a couple motivational speakers thrown in. When they did talk, the team all agreed that it was going to really, really suck.

        They'd arrived on the Thursday, set up camp and called it an early night. Friday had been three motivational speakers and a rousing game of capture the flag paintball. Not as fun as it sounds when everyone prefers to be snipers. Saturday had really melded the group through a genuine dislike of all things social when they each had to prepare and present a five-minute talk to the whole group about why they'd gotten into survivalist training as a career, but at least Alex had gotten a couple chuckles when she said just living didn't pay well enough to survive. Saturday night had been normal, they were all counting down the hours until they'd be on their flights back to their homes.

        Then Sunday morning Alex had woken up now, alone. It had only taken a few minutes to orient herself to her physical surroundings, low northern hemisphere boreal forest, but she'd been pissed about having apparently been drugged and moved – without her stuff – and left out here to possibly miss her flight. She'd called out to see if anyone else was in voice range, and when there was no reply, she'd climbed the nearest tree to get a better view.

        The view was bad. It was the same view, minus the buildings, roads and people, as from the four-story retreat building. Around the same time she noticed differences in the ground layout, although the distant mountains were the same shapes, it finally struck her that the smell of people was gone. Completely.