Free Cradle of Solitude by Alex Archer

hours of practice, was something else. Rather than move in and press his advantage, her attacker turned and ran, his footfalls echoing off the stone around them.
    Annja took off after him.
    He only had a few seconds head start, and so she should have been able to catch up to him quickly, but her head was still pounding and the lack of a light source quickly had her steps faltering and slowing to a stop after only a few dozen yards. Getting lost in the dark was not something she wanted to experience, no matter how badly she wanted to know who it was that had followed her down here or why they’d attacked. Wandering for hours through pitch-dark tunnels until she fell down an unseen chasm or died of thirst was not on her list of happy endings.
    In the distance, her attacker’s footfalls faded away to silence.
    She took a moment to catch her breath and gather her thoughts. She realized, with no little surprise, that her left hand was still clenched tightly around the ring that she’d picked up off the floor.
    Thank goodness for small favors, she thought.
    Not wanting to lose it after all this, she slipped it into her pocket to look at later. With her hand against the wall to use as a guide, she made her way carefully back down the tunnel until she could see the thin beam of light from her flashlight spilling out of the entrance of the antechamber.
    She stepped into the room, retrieved her flashlight and decided that she’d had enough excitement for one day. Sword still in hand, she cautiously retraced her steps back up to the subway tunnel and from there to the station itself. She kept on the lookout for any sign of her attacker, but didn’t see or hear anyone along the way. Before entering the station she released her sword back into the otherwhere, for coming out of a dark tunnel carrying a sword in hand didn’t seem like the safest way to reacquaint herself with the police officer on duty.
    As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. The guard was nowhere in sight.
    That’s not a good sign, she thought uneasily.
    He wouldn’t have left on his own without being relieved; at least, she couldn’t imagine him doing that knowing full well that she was in the tunnels. That meant that something had happened to him.
    He probably ran into the same bastard that I did.
    If that was the case, he could be lying somewhere unconscious, perhaps even seriously injured. She couldn’t leave without looking for him.
    It didn’t take very long. She found the police officer lying against the far side of the ticket booth, a thick trickle of blood leaking from the swollen lump on the side of his head. His breathing was steady enough, she was relieved to discover. Annja used his radio to make an Officer Down call to headquarters. When they asked her to identify herself, she broke the connection. The officer was starting to stir so she got up, and walked off without a backward glance. It wasn’t the most Good Samaritan–like thing to do, but all she wanted was to return to her hotel and take a hot bath to ease the aches and pains out of her muscles. She wouldn’t get that if she had to spend the next three hours downtown answering questions.
    Back at her hotel, she had room service send up hot chocolate and some croissants. While she waited, she took the ring from the pocket of her jeans, cleaned it off and held it up to the light for a good look.
    It was a man’s signet ring, just as she’d thought. The stone set in its face was a deep crimson in color that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. It hadbeen gently cut, with a beveled face and eight short sides. The gold itself was unadorned. She suspected it was Parker’s, but it could also have belonged to whomever he had been meeting there. There was no way of telling at this point. She slipped the ring into a little glassine envelope and then tucked it inside one of the zippered pockets of her backpack.
    Her snack