As the two cruel criminals herded Cody through the quiet, shadowy house, she imagined that this must be very much like how being marched to the gas chamber might feel. Preceded and followed by armed, remorseless keepers, with no hope of escape or release, and an uncertain but frightening fate waiting at the end... Once again, tears stung her eyes, and her legs felt so rubbery that she was afraid they would give out with every step. Even in that basement-turned-deathtrap, Cody didn't think she had been this afraid. And that had been the worst moment to that point in her young, too-often-eventful life.

Of course there was no evidence of Bryn yet, nor of any sign that the men had done anything to him - no signs of struggle or ruckus anywhere in the house that she could see - so she had one thing from which to draw some comfort. While part of her hoped against hope that he would somehow notice what was happening and either call for help or come to her rescue - and she considered the second possibility far more likely, knowing Bryn - the greater part of her simply hoped he would remain oblivious and asleep; safe from the cruel attentions of these two cold-hearted miscreants. That they wanted Cody alive if at all possible was obvious, and it gave her a strange, thin sort of reassurance to know that; but it seemed equally apparent that they had no interest in Bryn, and she suspected that would make him all-too expendable if he were to become a problem for them.

And so she walked, wrapped in the night-silence of the house, the dark, and her own crushing fears. Until finally, the leading villain opened the wooden interior door which led into the house's garage. Bright light spilled out from within, and after the walk through the darkness of the night-time house, the glare made Cody squint for a moment in discomfort. But despite that, the march didn't slow one bit, and her captors drove her onward with unfeeling, malevolent purpose.

The garage was as it always was, save for one rather large, frightening detail: A dull-gleaming white van was parked inside, its nose pointing toward the closed outer garage door, its own rear doors yawning wide like the maw of some monster that was about to gobble up the young, captive catgirl. As Cody was marched toward that gaping portal, the earlier impression of being led to the gas chamber increased a hundred-fold. The reality that these people really did intend to take her away suddenly became a stark, indisputable fact. She had no real idea who they were or what they wanted - though she was beginning to form some fairly solid suspicions of who they might be "friends" with - but neither of those questions occupied her mind just then with quite the quality of terror as the more important ones: Where were they taking her? And what were they going to do to her?

The shorter man climbed up into the van, turned around, and reached back down beckoningly, clearly intending to help his awkwardly-bound captive up into the metal cavern. Cody balked then, on the brink of the end of her nightmare journey's first stage. "C'mon, kid. Up ya go," the man said, reaching out more forcefully, "The boss is waiting..."


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On to Rude Awakening, part 6