If these people execute me, I'm going to be sooo pissed. Unfortunately, that appeared to be in the cards. At the very least, she was about to be tortured or experimented on.

Hell, maybe then she could find out why anyone would have gone to the trouble of abducting her.

Carrow was a rare three-caste witch, but she was by no means the most powerful, not like her best friend Mariketa the Awaited. Though overjoyed that Mari hadn't been taken, Carrow didn't understand why she'd been targeted....

What would Ripley do? When in a jam, Carrow often thought of how Ellen Ripley, the legendary badasstress of the Alien quadrilogy, would figure her way out.

Ripley would analyze the enemy, take stock of her surroundings and resources, use her wits to defeat her foes and escape, then nuke everything in her wake.

Analyze the enemy. From what Carrow had heard from other inmates, this place was run by the Order, a mysterious league of mortal soldiers and scientists led by a magister named Declan Chase, a.k.a. the Blademan, along with his trusty bitch, Dr. Dixon.

Carrow's sorceress cellmate had told her the Order was bent on eradicating all the immortal miscreations, or miscreats.

My surroundings?  A diabolically designed prison, with cells made of foot-thick steel on three sides and unbreakable, two-foot-thick glass on the front. Each cell had four bunks, with a toilet and a sink behind a screen—and no real privacy. The Order recorded their every action from ceiling cams.

This incarceration was like nothing she'd ever known—and she'd known more than her share of two hots and a cot. Carrow hadn't enjoyed a single shower or change of clothes. She still wore her club duds: halter top, black leather miniskirt, and thigh-high boots.