Read Betrayal: Society Lost, Volume Two for Free Online

the lights in the room, the man began walking toward her. Leina recognized him as the one they had called Barnes. Another strange man, dressed in the same tactical attire, stood along behind him.
    As he walked across the room, he held his finger to his lips and said, “Okay, calm down. There’s no reason to get excited.”
    As he approached her, Leina shouted, “Get off me! Get away from me!”
    Just then, a thundering voice shouted, “Barnes!”
    Freezing in his tracks, Barnes turned to see the one they called “Chief” walking toward him with his hand on his holstered pistol. Shoving Barnes against the wall, staring at him directly in the eyes, the six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound bruiser with a thick brown mustache and a shaved head said through gritted teeth, “What the hell is going on in here?”
    “Nothing, Chief. I was just trying to calm her down. She was in here yelling and screaming.”
    “She had every right to be. What the hell do you think is going through her mind right now after what happened to her out there? Now get out to the main gate and relieve Caldwell. He’s been out there all day.”
    Without muttering a word, Barnes sheepishly scurried out of the room and down the hall.
    The Chief then turned to the other man in the room and said, “Get her another dose. More this time,” as he turned and began to walk out of the room.
    “Yes, Chief,” the man answered smartly as he turned toward Leina.
     
    ~~~~
     
    Beginning to awaken once again, her arms felt heavy as she tried to move. Lifting her head off the floor, she struggled to focus her vision, but everything looked blurry and distorted.
    Startled by a voice, Leina struggled to slide against the wall behind her, her eyes beginning to regain their focus as the figure of a man slowly came into view.
    Kneeling down in front of Leina, the one called Chief said, “Hello, ma’am. I'm sorry about all of this. This has been one hell of a rough day for you. You’ve got to have a thousand questions. First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Ken Perrone. I’m the Chief of Police here in Fort Sumner.”
    Reacting with anger and rage, Leina shouted, “How could the police murder my friends and steal my children? How could you do that, you son-of-a-b—? Where are they? Give me my kids back!”
    “Shhhhh, calm down,” he replied. “The children are fine. Several of our officers shuttled them across town to our medical clinic to have them checked out. They were pretty traumatized by what happened to your group earlier this evening. We are all saddened by your loss and are here to help. You see, you and your companions were ambushed by a group of bandits who owe an enormous debt to the drug cartels. After the collapse and the loss of value in paper currency, the cartels had to shift to operating with physical assets instead of cash. Fuel, weapons, and dare I say it, women and children, are their currency now. The bandits ambushed your group to take you and everything you had to pay their debts. We showed up just in the nick of time and ran them off.”
    “That's not how I remember it,” she said defiantly, her head pounding as she struggled to maintain her focus.
    “Well, you've been through a lot, and you took a pretty hard hit to the head during the crash. You're not remembering things clearly. You need your rest to get your head on straight.”
    “Crash? What crash? We were attacked! You and your men attacked us! You killed my friends!”
    “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but as I explained, we arrived on scene to find you and your group pinned down by bandits. Outside of our well-protected borders here in Fort Sumner, things like that seem to be happening more and more. They know people are trying to reach us for the safety our town provides, and they prey on that. We found you in an overturned minivan. The children were still in the vehicle with you. We struggled, but managed to get them pulled to safety through one of the windows. You must