The flight back to Atlas Base passed in a strange mixture of noise and silence.
The Black Hawk's engines roared loudly enough to shake the cabin floor, yet somehow the passengers still managed to sit in complete silence around it. Some stared through the open side doors at the forest disappearing beneath them. Others sat with heads lowered and hands tightly clasped together as if afraid the moment they relaxed, they would wake up back inside the eastern pens of Black Fang.
For the rescued prisoners, reality had become difficult to trust.
One day they had been prisoners carrying stone beneath armed guards.
Now they were flying through the sky inside a metal machine that sounded like thunder and smelled of fuel and hot machinery.
Several still looked convinced they were dreaming.
