Water splashing on his face was Kade's wake-up call.

He sat up, gasping again, the water in his mouth and nostrils making him feel like he was drowning.

"Wake wake," he heard a voice say.

It was not a Greggan voice, and he blinked, wiping the water out of his eyes before looking at the speaker.

At first glance he might have mistaken the man for rad-baked leather rather than a real human.

Stick-thin, the man simultaneously looked young and old, his skin tanned a deep red, his limbs thin and gangly yet clearly possessing a wiry strength, while his face looked heavily lined from a hard life. He did not have a single hair on his head as far as Kade could see.

"Who are you?" Kade asked, then coughed through a sore throat. The air in here was uncomfortable to breathe and his chest hurt more than earlier.

Just like his head; it felt like the time he had tried excite in a bar with his friends, the drug making him feel like he'd been on a cloud . . . until the next day when he had felt like he'd sunk into the mud.

This was worse, he thought. And he couldn't really remember why he felt this way. He'd met the pirate Captain, then . . . What had happened after that?

"I'm askin questions, not you," the man growled.

He was squatting just outside the crude bars that made up Kade's cage.

After they had taken him off the bridge, they must have put him in here, alone rather than in with the other prisoners.

Turning, he saw that the others were still in their cages, many laying down - hopefully sleeping rather than dead. Others moved, or talked to each other, their faces all portraits of misery.

"Hey, eyes on me!" the human pirate said. "Why did Cap'n Tarsota want you on the bridge?"

Kade looked at him a moment, but then his eyes wandered again. "He wanted to know if I was a writer," he said slowly.

Despite the fuzziness of his mind, he was starting to recall his time on the bridge more, though what exactly happened after meeting the Captain was still unclear to him.

"Is you one?" the pirate demanded.

"Yeah," he replied. He didn't see a point in lying, but he wondered now if there were less people in the other cages than before. He was trying to count, but it was very dim in here.

"Why you looking at them?" the pirate said, banging the bars. "You got a girl or boy in there?"

For a second Kade thought he meant a child, but from the man's lewd smile he realized he meant something else entirely. ". . . no," he said.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The pirate glanced over. "Fancy one? You tell me what I want, I get you whoever you want. Look away while you go at it. Fair trade, you'll be happy, Cap'n'll be happy, and then I'll be happy too."

"I . . . I think I'm fine," Kade said.

"Well don't go expectin' me to crawl in there with you!" the pirate said.

"I didn't want- I mean, no, I'm just fine being alone."

"Flying solo, fits you artist-types," the pirate replied. "What the Cap'n want with a writer?"

Kade decided not to answer. "What do I call you?"

The man scowled, and Kade had a terrible feeling for a moment that he was about to get tortured.

But the man answered. "I'm Surc. Erry'one here just called me so, but I was born Jerall. Surc's better. I look a Surc, dun I?" He turned his head, giving Kade a better profile look at him.

Kade would not have thought he looked a Surc, more like a . . .

Well, all he could come up with was Scrap O'Leather. Not his best writing, he thought.

"Yeah, you do look like a Surc. It's a good name," he said instead.

He pointed. "What are they going to do with the others? Ransom them?"

"Hahaha, nah," Surc said. "Just scraps a' meat."

Kade's shock showed through widened eyes and Surc laughed again. "Not for eatin'. Greggans don't eat us folks. If they could stomach us, maybe this lot would, but we don't sit right in their bellies."

"Then meat for what?"

Surc ignored him. "We're all just meat in its eyes," he said, his eyes glazing over slightly.

A screaming began from down the hall, and Kade jerked around. It was a very distant cage, but he could see someone pounding on the bars.

"I shouldn't be here! I helped you! I let you in, let me out of here, we had a deal!" the man wailed.

"Who's that?" Kade asked, feeling panic welling in him.

A large Greggan came down the hall, holding a metal pole. It shoved Surc as it went past, the man flinching away, but it headed on towards the man at the end.

"That unlucky bastard was our in-man," Surc said, his face turning from cowed to an ugly smirk. "Thought he got hisself his weight in creds. Just got a cage instead. You know how it goes; cheaters cheat cheaters. Way it goes."

The Greggan guard reached the man and jabbed his staff in. The man screamed, a flash suggesting that he'd just gotten a shock.

Kade found himself wondering why he'd bother doing it himself until he heard the strange grunting that he'd realized earlier was Greggan laughter.

The guard came back, and Surc cringed away again, putting up his hands as the Greggan held up his pole threateningly.

After he was gone, Surc looked back to him. "You hungry? Want water?"

"Not thrown in my face," Kade said carefully.

"Nah, nah. Was doin' you a favor, washin' off the blood."

Blood? Kade felt his heartbeat pick up faster at the word, and he touched his face, feeling wetness from the water. When he looked at his fingers, even in the dim light, he could see they were darker. Stained from his blood.

Why had he been bleeding?

"We friends now, yeah?" Surc continued. "Tell me what you want, I get it for ya, you just tell me what you see up on the bridge. You spoke to the big Cap'n himself, right? Tarsota . . ."

The way he said the name was wistful, almost adoring, Kade thought.

"Get me something decent to eat and some clean water," he said carefully to Surc, "and I'll tell you all about it."

Surc grinned broadly. He had only two teeth left in his head, Kade saw.

"You best not be lyin' to me. I'll be back, get you some real good food!"