CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Aurora
Time feelswrong in this place. It stretches and folds in on itself, measured in breaths and footsteps and the moments when the door opens, and I remember what fresh air feels like.
Right now, it’s quiet.
Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that settles into your bones and makes every small sound feel too loud. My own breathing. The faint shift of fabric when I move. The distant, hollow echo of something outside… metal, maybe. A door somewhere else. Or just the building settling.
I sit with my back against the wall, knees pulled in slightly, wrists still bound tight behind me.
The zip ties have left grooves in my skin.
I’ve tested them enough times to know they’re not going to snap with brute force. Not like this. Not with my hands numb and shaking and already starting to swell where the plastic bites too deep.
So I stop trying to break them and start trying to outthink them.
Slowly, carefully, I shift my weight forward and twist my wrists, feeling for any give, any angle that changes the pressure even slightly.
It hurts.
Everything hurts.
My shoulder from when he shoved me into the car. My head from where I hit something on the way down. My wrists most of all, the constant, biting reminder that I am exactly where he wants me.
Still, I keep moving.
I drag the edge of the plastic against the rough seam of the concrete behind me, searching for something sharp enough to catch. A ridge. A crack. Anything that might wear it down, even a little.
I test the angle again. Slower this time.
Not brute force. Friction. Repetition.
Wear it down. Millimeter by millimeter if I have to.
My hands are trembling, I don’t stop, because the alternative is sitting here and letting the fear swallow me whole, and I refuse to give it that.
The concrete scrapes against the plastic. A faint, useless sound. No immediate give.
Doesn’t matter.
I keep going.
Because this is something I can do, even if it doesn’t work, it keeps me from drifting too far into my own head, into the places where everything spirals and nothing feels solid anymore.
After a while, minutes, maybe longer, my arms start to ache in a deeper way, muscles burning from the angle. My fingers have gone numb at the tips.
I ease the pressure just enough to keep circulation, then start again.
Try a different angle.
Shift.
Scrape.
Breathe.
