As Sterim woke up, he could taste sand in his mouth. He was lying on his back on a hard floor while an engine was rumbling in the background. And when he opened his eyes he could not see a thing.
For a while he tried to remember what had happened.
He tried to use the Words to prevent weird things from happening. He tried to use a sect-like, people-abducting mercenary gang because he found some stones in a mine. And now they abducted him.
He was an idiot.
With a sharp exhale tried to put his hands over his eyes. This turned out to be quite impossible with his hands tied behind his back.
"Stop moving.", a seemingly bored man on Sterims right said.
A fast tapping noise of fingers on the metal started shortly afterwards on Sterims left.
"Both of you.", the same bored voice said.
The tapping stopped.
Sterim tried again summarized his current situation. He got kidnapped by the Words, was put in some truck to some place and two guards were watching him while he was lying on the floor with hands tied and a bag over his head.
He was a dead idiot.
As a result of this realization, he stared at the inside of his head bag for some time.
Then the ridiculousness of this situation hit him. He was just some foreman that tried to do something great by building a place for people to live. Now he will be tortured and killed because he had a reflection in some new kind of mineral. He did not even get to reach his goal.
And this Curie woman was still an asshole.
Suddenly he felt some drops of water hitting the exposed skin of his throat.
That seemed strange to Sterim. Maybe the Words had a leaking cooling system on the top of the truck. This would explain why the air was getting cold.
He heard two thuds. One to his right and shortly afterwards one to his left. Then silence.
After some time Sterim returned to his thoughts.
This Curie woman was still an asshole.
"You seem pretty worked up about something.", a Curie's voice said in front of his face.
Sterim went through some possibilities in his head. He could just be insane. This would explain everything that happened so far. Another possibility was that Curie was a Word. But why did this Markus guy not recognize her when they met.
Oh, at this point why not just ask.
"Are you real?", Sterim asked hoping he would get a sensible answer.
"Sure.", Curie replied.
"Are you a Word?"
"No. Neither literally nor metaphorically speaking."
"Shouldn't you be gunned down by the two guards?"
"They are not capable of shotting me right now."
"Did you kill them?"
"I just knocked them out and gave them a severe nose bleed. Now I want to make some conversation until their blood reach your legs. Then I want to ask you a real question. But you are right. Killing them would have prevented this embarrassing waiting period."
Sterim was pleasantly surprised by all of these sensible answers. Maybe except the points about the blood, his legs, the 'real question'.
“Okay, that's it,” said Curie with a certain satisfaction. She apparently sat down in front of Sterim's head. "Do you want to go fishing?"
Once again Sterim tried the asking approach.
"What?"
"You can stay here with the Words or you can help me fishing. A sensible person like you would be a great help on a fishing trip."
"Sure. Why not." Sterim was done with questions for today.
"Great. That went a lot easier than I expected. Take a deep breath please. In these situations, it helps to take a deep breath."
The floor beneath Sterims lower body gave out and he slid into some kind of fluid. He took a deep breath in order to scream.
The scream never came.
Only the rumbling truck remained which drove without Sterim or any further incidents onwards to the Words headquarters.
