I’m just another in a long line of those he’s tortured and forced.
This man. Thiscop.
He’s someone I should be able to trust. He’s supposed to help me.
Instead…he’s going to take what isn’t his.
The cuff clicks open.
Relief rushes up my leg so fast it makes my vision gray out. The absence of pressure is dizzying. I could kick. I could run. I could?—
He doesn’t give me long.
Keeping his hand wrapped around my ankle, he reaches for the leather cuff attached to the bottom rail, the one that will keep my leg where he wants it. His fingers are confident, the motion more routine than anything.
I let my body go slack, let my limbs lie heavy and limp, letting him believe he slapped the fight out of me.
I stare past him, at a rust spot on the wall the exact size of a coin. I count my breaths.One. Two. Three.I imagine the screw in my palm is a needle on a compass, pointing not north butout.
When he begins to wrap the cuff around my ankle, leather brushing skin, the buckle cold against my bone, I move.
I yank my leg back and drive the heel of my foot into his mouth with everything I have. All the terror, all the rage, all the days of waking up in metal and not knowingwherepour themselves into that one strike.
The sound is meat and bone and shocked breath. A thick, ugly thud.
He grunts, more outrage than pain at first, hand flying to his face. Blood blooms across his lip in a bright, obscene smear. His eyes go wide in animal surprise—prey shouldn’t kick this hard.
Before he can form the first swear word, I’m already moving. I slide down, grab momentum, and bring my knee up, driving my foot through his chin this time. His teeth click together audibly, a sharp, satisfying clack. His head snaps back.
His eyes flash something I haven’t seen on his face yet:fear.
I roll hard toward the side of the bed, jam my free knee between us, and shove with everything I’ve got. He staggers back into the chair; it skitters. The lamp bounces; the bulb flickers.
For a heartbeat, his face is a series of snapshots: blood at his mouth, fury in his eyes, a dark smear on his chin where my heel caught him.
I don’t wait to admire my work.
I drop off the bed, landing hard enough to jar my teeth, and lunge for the only direction that isn’t him.
The door.
He charges. I hear the roar, the rush of air as his weight surges after me, the skid of his boots on concrete. He’s bigger, stronger, used to people folding.
I’m not folding.
I drop low, my shoulder brushing the floor, and thrust the screw out of my palm the way I practiced in my head a hundred times: short, mean, no hesitation. A punch with a point.
It sinks into the meat of his forearm as he reaches for me. The resistance is horrible and thick, like pushing through gristle. There’s a half second where my brain tries to refuse the reality of it, and then it gives, plunging in.
He yells, real this time—a ripped sound forced up from the bottom of his lungs. His arm jerks back on instinct. The screw tears a jagged line out of him on the way, and hot blood spills across my knuckles, slick and sticky, nothing like in movies.
I smell copper and sweat and something chemical. My stomach flips, but there’s no space for nausea.
His fingers scrabble at my shoulder and slip. He loses purchase.
Two seconds. Maybe less. It’s just enough.
The door.
