'Rude Awakening' - part 2

It was amazing how quickly things in life could change sometimes. One second Cody was sleeping contentedly, and the next... A leather-clad hand crushed down across her mouth, instantly tearing the shocked young lady from whatever peaceful dreamland her mind wandered, depositing her into a waking nightmare. She let out a muffled gasp, and would have screamed, but her voice froze in her throat at the sight of a gun's barrel yawning before her terrror-widened eyes. In spite of herself, she followed the rest of that gun back up its length, along a black-clad arm, finally arriving at a barely-visible face, mashed and ugly behind the covering of a dark stocking mask. She could still read the expression in the terrifying intruder's face, despite the shrouding, and what she saw there nearly made her heart stop.

"Shhh..." the invader hissed softly. "Make a noise and you won't make another."

Cody twitched her head almost imperceptibly in the affirmative, green eyes shimmering with unshed tears of sheer terror. That terror pitched higher still - impossible as that would have seemed, just a half-second before - as she saw a second, identically-dressed intruder step up behind the one muffling her. This man was a little shorter, and carried a buckled satchel, but she could see a gun tucked into his waistband as well.

Fear nearly stole away all of Cody's capacity for coherent thought, but one dreadful train bubbled up from the maelstrom: Was Bryn still okay? Or had these fearsome interlopers gotten to him as well? And if so, what had they done to him?


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On to Rude Awakening, part 3