"No, Mark; they don't!"
"The thrill-mills—"
"I don't care about the thrill-mills! Maybe someone else developed them. To the Kel, we're only a lower life-form, not worth the bother of that much study. We're laboratory animals, adaptable organisms to use as we'd use rabbits or guinea pigs or hamsters. I know; I've been four years with them, ever since that day on Bejak...."
She began to sob, then; a soft yet somehow desperate sobbing. Bleakly, I stared down at the hands I couldn't see for the blackness of this dungeon ... the self-same dungeon in which I'd lain alone such a short time earlier, except that in the interim our captors had stripped it bare of sacks and thrill-mills.
It wasn't the kind of ending I'd planned. Not here; not locked away, waiting out the hours till the Kel should strike, and win, and end the game.
And me not even on the field.
I cursed under my breath; hammered one clenched fist into the other palm.
"Mark—" It was Celeste again. "Mark, give up. Don't fight it so."
"I won't give up! I can't!" Choking on my own words, I lurched up and stumbled blindly along our prison's walls. "If I knew anything—even where we were—"
"I don't know myself, Mark. These weeks, I've been a prisoner here—a prisoner talking on a voco. They've never let me come or go."