Chapter 029: Gamble

Getting down, Lucas, after looking around one last time, approached the figure he had recognized as a woman from her curves after driving closer.

His first reaction as he saw the face, was a dizzying shock, followed by wrath then heartache.

'Her!?!'

If not for the tragic sight, he would have loved to appreciate the sight, the beauty, those lips, the endearing bust that was not too big but above average in size, just enough to spill out of one of his hands, the flat stomach that must have been smooth while unmarred, those leg whose appeal were increase due to training that did give ungainly muscles that would her decrease the femininity.

Unfortunately, she was sporting knife wounds, stabs and cuts, that avoided the arteries and the organs but were deep enough to sever the tendon and produce bleeding that would have killed if not for the cold that slowed blood circulation and froze the exsanguinated blood.

Her hands were tied together and secured above her head on a stake driven into the ground. Her legs were spread in a M position and secured to two other stakes. The wounds started from her arm, severing tendons and muscles, with cuts on her face, cuts and stabs on and in her breasts, her stomach and her thighs. The only thing he could be thankful for was that she was not missing any part.

Her jaw was dislocated, with a recognizable whitish liquid on her cheeks and chin. Those same liquids were mixed with blood on her crotch and in the middle of her butt cheeks, completing the macabre scene.

'With the amount of bodily fluids, there must have been more than one man.' Lucas thought as he gritted his teeth and clenched his hands into fists.

He was disgusted, not by her tragic showing, but by the kind of honorless beasts that did this to her.

'I'm a soldier, trained and conditioned to inflict pain and death, and I can do it just fine. Even in cold blood I can kill, with hands and heart steady and, while bathing in blood, I can eat just fine. But this, this I can't do, and I hope never being able to. I'd rather castrate myself.'

He took a deep, cold breath to calm the small heat that was starting to rage, before taking a knee beside the woman and, very carefully, touching her to check if she was alive. Though he was doubtful since her eyes were glassy, her breathing non-existent and she was not reacting to the cold despite being void of protection.

He felt her carotid for a moment with the result making his heart plummet a little. Unconvinced, he mentally apologized to her before placing his hand just beneath her left breast. Not even able to appreciate the softness amidst the deceiving firmness in the small contact, he became impatient and replaced his hand with his head.

Soon, he heard it. It was full of struggle and lacking in strength but he heard it: her heart was still beating, she was alive.

Overjoyed, he stood up and was about to free her of her bindings, before he froze. He backed up slowly and stopped less than two meters away before taking in the details of the scene once again. He observed the ground and even crouched down to confirm his speculations, putting his head on the ground level. He looked around and fortunately, the irregularities were only in the immediate vicinity of the one he wanted to save.

He stood there and, after a moment of pacing around anxiously due to the most likely theory he locked onto, he turned around while leaving a "Wait for me.", hoping to give her hope and not let her feel abandoned. As for whether she was conscious and could process things, it didn't matter. Better work with that assumption than not and kill her with despair brought by dashed hope.

And, she, for reasons only Lucas would know if he noticed, made him lose that absolute calmness he had when he assaulted a town of armed and trained men.

In his car, Lucas took a heavy sheet and a cylinder that could hold about three liters of liquid with a little shovel and came back. He spread the sheet a few meters from her and started talking:

"I'm back. I feared for a moment that you would have run away when I was not looking. Haha. Alright, jokes aside, I really want to help you but there is a trap under you. I guess I used quite a bit of my luck when I came closer to you previously. The thing is, if I'm careless, either you die or, depending on how nasty human trash can be, we both die."

While the one he was talking to was not reacting, Lucas' attention was not on her at all. He was focusing on the small shovel that he was using to push the snow aside slowly, like a minesweeper doing his job in a minefield.

As he cleared the way, he advanced until he came across a part of what he felt beneath his feet as he was about to free her. It was nothing too sophisticated. With what he was seeing, it was like some military men used the supply they had on themselves to put together something they were not prepared for.

He followed the wires while going around and was careful not to be misdirected into setting off the IED through a hidden part. It didn't respect any geometric figure and the main or central part of it seemed to be beneath the woman, making it seem like she was trapped in a web, the six ends of which had buried IED interlinked with wires.

"It is professional enough. While I'm not into making or diffusion bombs, I can recognize that much at least. I already have a way to take you from the trap but it is a bit unconventional so you will have to bear some discomfort, okay? We are in this together, if it goes boom, 100 % disintegration within 2 meters, 100 % death within 5 meters and very serious injuries then death within 10 meters. I don't know who they are using you to bait but I can feel the hatred and hostility."

Now, if not for his imbalanced body, if he was in a mild tempered place climate wise, his hands would have been clammy, his sweat, cold and all over his body and he would have been exerting efforts to steady his irregularly beating heart so as to not have his hands trembling, upping the risks of his already risky endeavor. Even joking couldn't accomplish the job of relaxing him. The only reason he didn't make the trap explode previously was because it was planned around her being the bait. It was mostly waiting for her to be moved to do its work. Semi-seriously, he tried to chase the tension away with a smile:

"Don't tell me a friend of yours will be coming, thus all of this. I don't really want to make new acquaintances here."

No matter the potential the old man talked about, it had not been developed yet so he certainly wouldn't survive a blunder here. Unfortunately, he didn't have his ear on her chest, nor was it sharp enough. He would have noticed her heart reacting differently if not, when he talked about her possible friend, and would have known that she was not totally unconscious, with a part of her still outside.

He freed the part of the trap he had access to from the snow around it, then made some trenches that went beneath the bait.

Heaving a sigh of relief for not killing himself with all those manipulations, even if he was meticulous about touching the buried killer, he went to the cylinder and opened it carefully. It was a back-up of his, in case the conditions he theorized for his second baptism were not met.

In the torrid desert, there was heat primarily then temperature change. So the opposite must be cold and constant, at most colder at times. And the cylinder had liquid nitrogen in case the cold was not enough where he was going. The first baptism was a happenstance but the next ones must be planned or only death would happily welcome him back.

His plan was simple: use the liquid to freeze the trap and, if it still managed to explode despite that, well, at least his family was safe from a life of difficulties and need now.

He carefully went about his plan while avoiding using too much and failing to freeze all or at least the really important parts. He prayed that since it had not been planned and specifically created, its creator wouldn't have had the means to make it sensitive to the integrity of all of its parts. He then froze the threads used to connect the different contraptions and, seeing that they were still alive, he went to the last and most difficult part: preventing the central part beneath the one he wanted to save from exploding.