Read Scratch Monkey for Free Online Page A

lose any trace of Second-sergeant Tor'Jani Mavreen and revert to my old appearance.
    We stop again about a day later, five hundred and eighteen kilometres away if my inertial tracker is still in synch. I look round when the door opens but all I get is a sigh of indrawn-breath. Evidently my transformation is not something they're accustomed to. They shut the door and I hear quite an interesting debate before they open it again to feed me and slop out.
    Finally, a day later -- now a thousand kilometres from where I touched down, and I don't flatter myself that they've come all this way just for me -- there's a new sound beneath the wheels. Instead of the jounce and sway of the endless dirt tracks there's the hollow booming of a true road, and then we're sliding downhill at a positively reckless speed. I smell smoke through the slats of the floor as the train screeches to a halt outside some kind of checkpoint, and boots patrol slowly down the carriages. Bolts slam home and doors open: many feet pass my refuge.
    The door opens an admits a draft of musty-smelling air. "Alien spy," says a presence in the doorway; "you will come with us." I cast about, trying to sense where he is by the rustling of the creases in his uniform.
    "Where?" I ask. "I can't see."
    "Bloody mess," says someone else. "Damned butchers couldn't find their brains with a spoon --"
    " -- Probably didn't get the orders," says another voice quietly. "Okay, get her out of there."
    Two of them get in and untie me from the floor; then they pick me up lightly and carry me to the edge of the door. When they put me down I freeze, listening for movement. It's eerie, like being a child again. Then two of them take me by the arms and lead me slowly into the complex.
    When nobody is taking any notice, I turn my head about. The train has come to a standstill in a vast underground space; I can hear the dank sound of water dripping somewhere distant, the echo of footsteps on slime-encrusted stone or concrete. A cold draft blows down from above, hinting at distant caverns.
    My escorts steer me past walls of metal and wood (other vehicles, perhaps) towards a doorway. Suddenly the sounds from behind are cut off, as if we've entered a tunnel. It's cold in here, and it smells of the bitter rock beneath a mountain; the clack of their boots on the smooth stone floor is the only noise. We come to a guard post where they pause, restraining me, while someone rubs a pole-like device that emits a brief humming noise all over my body. Then we're going down a tunnel, past numerous openings from which blow turbulent currents of air. We make so many turns that even with my inertial tracker I'll never get out of here unaided. We come to a door in the wall, and they push me through it and shut it behind me.
    I freeze, listening carefully. It smells close. There's a lingering odour of stale urine and despair, a miasma of decay that seems to hang in the frigid underground air so that I expect at any moment to put my foot into a nest of mummified bones. I shuffle forwards and carefully stretch my hands out in front of me; I reach the wall unexpectedly soon. It's chilly and rough, hewn from stone blocks. I trace the grooves between them with a fingertip. Strange marks are cut into the surface. Perhaps they're grafitti from long-dead prisoners; it doesn't matter to me. I can't see to read them. Even if I had eyes I probably couldn't read them. The script is as alien as my situation.
    I map out the boundaries of my prison with a growing sense of bleak despair. The floor and ceiling are as rough as the walls, the only difference being that the flagstones are larger; there is no window, and when I work my way back round to the door I run my hands over it. It takes me a few minutes to realise that the bars curve together in the strange geometry of a human rib cage; I am, indeed, in the belly of a beast.
    Presently I sit down and bury my face in my hands. An iron ring digs sharply into my thighs, but I