I stood shivering in the immaculately kept Captain's cabin of the ship that I had been thrust aboard just an hour previously. The man, I took to be the Captain, sat behind the desk that was before me. He idly sat there staring at me saying nothing for minutes on end.
Finally he spoke, "Where's the scroll of the ancients?"
I shook my head in my best impersonation of incomprehension, "What scroll?"
"Don't play games with me! We know you had it with you on the island! We haven't recorded such a signal from the scroll since it was last unearthed some fifty years ago! Now where is it?" The Captain said harshly as he rose from the desk and came around to stand in front of me.
I shook my head in mock cluelessness, "Sir, I and my companion just fell into this strange place from the world above! We've been doing everything we can to just survive! What makes you think that we know something, much less anything, to do with this……."
The backhanded slap caught me unexpectedly and I fell backward to the floor my head ringing. I stayed where I was as I waited for my vision to stop being fuzzy and out of focus.
The Captain was squatting on the carpet beside of me and I glanced at him even as the taste of blood filled my mouth from my split lip.
The Captain shook his head, "You shouldn't have made me do that, but I'm afraid I have no choice in the matter of forcing you to confession."
I clearly did not like this man.
Adopting a genial tone at odds with what he'd just done to me the Captain asked, "Our predicament here is dire enough for me to do whatever it takes to make you talk and gain possession of that scroll."
As he spoke his hand reached out to stroke the side of my face and I felt revulsion sweep through me at his touch. I had an intensely powerful urge to let him know just what I thought of him, but I stuck to the plan.
"I don't know what you're talking about! I am an American citizen and you have no right to treat me like this!"
"Tsk, tsk, this is true, but you see we're no longer in America. Instead you're here in this inner hell I call home and you're going to tell us the location of what we need to win a war once and for all or………" His voice trailed off as he gestured to a guard further back in the ship's cabin.
The guard opened the door behind him to reveal a grisly scene. Colt was tied to a chair and covered in blood!