AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The darknessonly seemed to grow as I sat, alone once more. I tried to clear my head, to remind myself of all of my brave words, but terror gripped at every part of me, vicious and unrelenting.
I had to move past it or my brain couldn’t function.
Relax, I tried to command my body, using the techniques we’d been taught during training. Deep breaths, counting backwards from a hundred by threes, anything to push away the overwhelming anxiety.
I could do this. I had been trained to do this.
My deep breaths turned into panting.
Why did it feel like the darkness was closing in on me?
Quit it, Aria!
My inner shout snapped me out of it, if only for a second. My brain momentarily cleared and I knew what I had to do: embrace the darkness. I couldn’t change it, so how could I make it help me?
In the dark, no one could see me, even if they had cameras.
The option of night vision cameras came to my mind, but even with those, they couldn’t pick up nearly the detail that a camera in the light would. I could hide so much more in the dark.
Encouraged by that one thought, I continued to brainstorm. How else could I use my situation to my advantage?
This stupid brain monitor. I wasn’t exactly sure how it worked, but I was guessing they had been measuring my brain waves to see when I awoke. Again, it was a sign that there were probably no cameras in the room. A mistake on their part.
I doubted they could deduce much more than that from the monitor. Maybe they could see a lot of activity, but wouldn’t anyone in this situation be thinking frantically? That wouldn’t give me away. I had yet to think of a way to use the monitor for my own purposes, but I wouldn’t let it hinder me either.
Metal chair, tight ropes. They’d been smart to avoid anything with a key. They had to know that Aurora had trained all of us to pick locks within seconds. Granted, I would have needed a tool, but I could feel the bobby pin in my hair, keeping it away from my face. Count on a man to forget one of the very greatest tools a person could have on their body. Then again, I would have had to somehow get my hands to my hair, which seemed impossible at the moment. I wasn’t sure why I was considering all of these possibilities, since I wasn’t constrained by handcuffs, but I was beginning to feel more grounded. Now I just had to move my thoughts in the right direction.
The ropes were thick, probably about two inches in diameter. Apparently the men had chosen extra strong cords to keep me from busting through them. Good. I wanted them to be worried about my strength. Again I felt a little more powerful, taking control of my situation slowly but surely.
The problem with thick ropes was that they were much harder to maneuver. They could seem tight for now, but if I shifted, maybe I could loosen them up enough to start working at the knot.
I’d always hated my scrawny wrists. They felt like a liability when throwing punches, but now as I twisted them back and forth, grimacing as the rope rubbed against my already raw skin, I felt a tiny bit of give.
Heart surging with hope, I maneuvered my wrists again, trying to turn them a complete ninety degrees. My wrists were long and flat. If I could make room for the length where there had only been space for the width, maybe I could push my arms in a bit more, giving myself room to reach the knots.
I glanced around as I worked, trying to take note of my surroundings. Still darkness. Nothing had changed, so hopefully no one could see me either. I had to hope that if there was an infrared camera, whoever was watching on the other side would just assume I was shifting positions. I had been in this seat for a long time.
Even as I concentrated on the ropes, I kept my other senses alert. The dripping of water was still my only companion. Granted, I would take water over scurrying feet. To say I wasn’t a fan of rodents would be the understatement of the year.
Was the room soundproof, or was I really so far away from all other life that I couldn’t hear a thing? I’d have to figure that out soon, and the instant I was out of these ropes I would have to find a way out of the room, but for now I was taking one problem at a time.
There! I had it. My wrists had the tiniest bit more space and I slid my arms in as far as they could go, working on the knots.
In training we’d learned to pick locks, handcuffs, and all sorts of other devices. We’d spent a little time learning how to untie knots, but most of my training had come earlier in life. I’d grown up with three little sisters and I’d had to untangle many kinds of jewelry. We sometimes even liked to set challenges, to see who could untangle a web of chains faster.
I imagined that was what I was doing now as I focused on one loop and then another. It was just a group of chains I had to untangle before I could finish putting together my outfit.
My ridiculous fantasy worked, kind of. In my mind’s eye I was sitting cross-legged on my bathroom counter, cursing myself for allowing my necklaces to become such a tangled mess. But I was good at this. I’d have them undone soon.
I felt the knot give just a little. My heart leaped in excitement and I was glad that my captors were monitoring brain activity and not heart rate.
It wasn’t quite loose enough for me to free myself yet, but I was getting there. Just a little more and I could pull my scrawny wrists out of their constraints. As I continued to loosen the ropes, I noticed something I hadn’t even hoped for. The cords around my feet now had a little more give as well. They’d somehow thought it was a good idea to use a single rope to tie both my hands and feet. So if I could undo my hands, my feet would be free as well. These men may have been some of the most dangerous in the world, but they were still human. They were fallible . . . and they made mistakes. Big ones.
My long fingers, again something I’d cursed in the past but would never do again, worked quickly on the loops and knots. It was just like those necklaces—find the key piece to loosen and the rest would follow suit.
As my hope of escaping my bonds rose, I knew I had to keep thinking. Freeing myself from the chair was only the first step. If there was a camera, and I had to assume there was one, I’d be noticed as soon as those ropes fell away.
Granted, if someone rushed into the room that would solve the problem of picking whatever locks they had on the door. But I would take a locked door over live combatants. Especially because I knew that as of thirty minutes ago, there had been at least ten men here.
