Sergei.
I force my eyes open, blinking against the harsh glare of a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The room is small, maybe ten feet by ten feet, with concrete walls stained by water damage and age. No windows. One door—heavy steel, no handle on this side. A drain in the center of the floor, rusted around the edges.
My hands are bound behind me with zip ties, the plastic biting into my wrists. My ankles are free, but when I try to move, I realize there's a chain attached to my left wrist, running to a bolt in the wall. Just long enough to let me sit up or lie down. Not long enough to reach the door.
I'm trapped. Completely, utterly trapped.
The panic rises in my chest, hot and suffocating. I can't breathe. Can't think. The walls are closing in, the ceiling pressing down, and I'm going to die here in this concrete box and no one will ever find me—
Stop.
I force myself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way I learned in my first anatomy lab, standing over a cadaver, fighting the urge to faint.
I am not going to panic. I am not going to fall apart.
I am going to survive.
The first thing I do is take inventory.
My body first. I'm sore everywhere—my shoulders from the awkward position, my wrists from the zip ties, my head from whatever they used to sedate me. There's dried blood on my face, probably from when they hit me, and my lip is swollen and tender.
But nothing feels broken. Nothing feels seriously damaged.
I press my bound hands against my stomach as best I can. The nausea is there—faint but present, that familiar queasy feeling that's become my constant companion. A strange sort of comfort. If I'm still nauseous, the baby is probably still okay.
Hold on,I think to the life inside me.Just hold on.
Next, I examine my surroundings. The cell is bare—no furniture, no objects, nothing I could use as a weapon or a tool. The walls are solid concrete, cold and damp to the touch. The bolt that holds my chain is set deep into the wall, immovable no matter how hard I pull.
The door is my only way out. And it's locked from the outside.
I have nothing. No weapons, no tools, no way to escape.
All I can do is wait.
Time moves strangely in the cell.
Without windows, without any way to track the sun, I have no idea how long I've been here. Hours, maybe. It feels like longer. Every minute stretches into eternity, filled with nothing but the flickering of the light bulb and the distant drip of water somewhere beyond the walls.
I try to stay calm. Try to think clearly. But my mind keeps circling back to the same questions, the same fears.
Does Misha know I'm gone? Is he looking for me? Does he even know where to start?
I think about Anna. The last thing I saw before they drugged me was her body crumpling to the floor. They said she was alive, said they weren't there for her. But what if they were wrong? What if she's—
I can't think about that. Can't afford to let my mind go there.
I think about the baby. This tiny cluster of cells that has become the center of everything. I'm only a few weeks along—early enough that anything could go wrong, especially under this kind of stress. The sedation they used, the rough handling, the fear coursing through my body—any of it could be enough to end this pregnancy before it really begins.
I press my hands against my stomach again, as if I could protect the life inside me through sheer force of will.
I won't let them hurt you,I promise silently.Whatever happens to me, I'll find a way to keep you safe.
It's a promise I don't know if I can keep. But I make it anyway, because the alternative is despair. And despair is surrender.
***
The door opens without warning.
