Closing her eyes she whimpered in pain, she just wanted it to go away. It wasn’t the worst she’d had; but it wasn’t fun either. Drawing her knees up she held her arm close to her chest and wished the pain away. At least the bleeding had stopped. And it was a good thing she was in too much pain to be hungry. After all she had lost her pack in the fall down the cliff face after the bullet had hit her elbow. Or was it the shrapnel that had got her elbow. It hurt to think.

She had managed to crawl into a dark damp cave to get away from her assailants. She just hoped the imbedded GPS in the skin behind her right ear was working and she would be picked up soon, either that or dead. At this point she wasn’t fussed with which came first.

Through her pain she could hear the drip dripping of water on the stones; it was driving her insane and brought back memories of her training and the ‘fake’ torture camps. Oh the best part was the sticks under the finger nails.

“Connie snap out of it;” it hurt to use her voice. And she quickly bit her lip from saying anything else; she didn’t want to give away her location.

Instead of concentrating on her pain or the annoying drip dripping she expanded her hearing to listen to the heavy rain falling outside the cave. The good thing about the rain was that when she got over this bit of intense pain she could rehydrate without having to leave the seclusion of the cave.

Taking a calming breath in through her noise, she whimpered again, and thought to herself ‘not so deep next time Connie’. Once she had breathed her way through the pain she ripped a length off her shirt to make an improvised sling for her wounded arm.

Once the pain had receded again she made her way over to the small fresh water streaming in from one of the gaps in the rocks ceiling. It tasted mossy, but it was good clean, fresh water and it would hydrate her enough so that she could start healing.

After a few more handfuls of the fresh water she went back to her corner and curled up for a short nap, hoping the water and rest would help her to feel more alive.