The side of my neck tickles.

I struggle to shoot my hand up and clasp it, scratch it, induce some kind of relief that numbs the heaviness that clots there. I struggle and it hurts. It digs into my wrists, cutting and severe, and something warm and liquid runs down to my fingertips.

My hands are bound.

I blink but there is still nothing. I blink and blink and blink but the darkness stays and I am more alone than ever. I tug harder on my restraints, the rope groans and the pain thickens.

I test my feet, but they are bound too, so tightly my ankles dig into one another. I am in a chair, I know that much. It’s hard and cold beneath me. The air is cold too. It feathers the skin on my arm until my hairs rise. And then it bites, and I feel the chill in my bones.

“Hello?” I shout, the words like razorblades on my throat.

Silence. Darkness. Nothingness.

“Hello?” I don’t know what response I am expecting. I don’t know if I want a response. “Somebody! Help me!”

Still nothing.

I push and tug and yank and drag. The pain shoots through me like an electrical current. The chair squeaks as I drag myself forward. I can’t see. I don’t know what I’m doing, where I’m going – nothing.

A door closes; the sound is soft, without resonance.

Footsteps ripple through the air – am I in a warehouse? I try to focus on collecting these details – maybe I can try to map together the environment and work out an escape route? Someone to call for – my Optics Display!

The footsteps trickle closer and louder.

I twist my wrist and try to give my fingers access to my forearm. The bindings sting, but it doesn’t stop me. I can’t reach. What was the back up voice recognition activation key?

The footsteps stop.

My blouse is soaked in sweat. My heart pounds. Breathe, I tell myself – I can feel the dizziness trying to reach out. The spot on my neck itches.

The contact is electrifying. Static electricity jolts through me. I flinch. His – hers, its? – fingers trail down my jawline. “Who are you?” my voice shakes, fear hides within it and maybe they know. “Let me go – please.”

I stare up at them, through the blindfold. The fabric digs into my skin; I can see a line of florescent lighting through the bottom. I squint and I can make out his boots: cheap, likely disposable, an inconspicuous black.

Terror seizes me. My breathing hitches. But when he touches me again, I focus on his touch – he is wearing gloves, surgical maybe. His gloved hand trails down my arm.

I don’t expect it. I don’t know who he is or what I am expecting, but I don’t expect it. I expect his rubbery touch that pulls lightly on my skin, but I feel the cold metal of a blade pressing deep into my cheek.

And sliding down.

Maybe it is my own anticipation and tension that amplifies the pain, but I scream. I thrash and yank against the rope; it salts my wounds and my throat feels coarse and dry. He lifts and presses somewhere else…is he carving into me? I push back but the chair doesn’t topple.

“Please,” I try to say, try to reason. “Why are you doing this? Just let me go.”

He ignores me. Or maybe he doesn’t hear; my voice is soft and weak and expended. The knife – with its thin blade – clatters to the ground. I breathe a sigh of relief. “Let me go – I won’t tell anyone,” I lie. “We can pretend this never happened.”

There is no reply.

Shit, shit, shit – no, Viktor will find me. I know he’ll find me. He knows I was at The Painted Rose. He knows. He will know when I don’t come home. He will. If he doesn’t notice…I wrack my brain…then Ita Ru will. Our appointment is in an hour…or now…or passed – I have no concept of time. How long have I been gone? How long was I unconscious?

The door opens and closes again. Voices murmur. I lift my head and try to peek through the edge of the blindfold. A new man enters. He is wearing military grade nanoboots – I know them. I approved them. I flinch back; is this a coup?

“Who are you?” I say. “Where am I?”

Footsteps wax and wane in resonance. A heaviness engulfs half of me as the black shadow of one of the men leans over me. My bindings start to loosen; the rope falling slack against my bleeding wrists and ankles. It gives me one last sting as its pulled across my open wounds. This is my chance. I act.

I push against the man; he is like a steel wall sheathed in fabric. I bounce back and topple into the chair. I don’t let this stop me. Adrenaline pulses through my veins and I try again. There’s too much at stake. I stumble to my feet and sprint forward. Someone’s arms darts out and around me, hoisting me up. I fumble and kick. The heel of my foot collides with my attacker’s kneecap and in a startling crack! that tintinnabulates through the room.

He shoves me to the floor. The concrete meets my nose and pain shoots through my body. Don’t focus on it, I tell myself, but it is still there, numbing and distracting. Warm liquid trickles out.

I dig my palms into the ground, determined to stand. The foot of his boot descends on the centre of my back. I buck instinctively. There is only pain; blinding and white. It captures my focus – and it is all I can see. I can’t think. It hurts too much. Everything hurts. I try to arch my back – and fall slack onto the cold ground. I heard the snap! and I think they did too.

One of them yanks me to my feet. My bones feel weak and disjointed – I don’t think I can walk. They aren’t expecting me to. His hands grasp my hair and pull! I shriek and punch the air – something, however futile the action, is better than doing nothing and just enduring.

He drags me by the base of my skull over the smooth concrete. Every nerve in my scalp begs for mercy, for relief. I smack at his hand, holding tight to my hair. I hit and strike and thrash. He is unaffected. He does not laugh. He does not ridicule me. He is silent. Only my own screams meet my ears. The second pair of boots trails after us.

Once more, I am roughly elbowed to the floor. My strength wanes, my energy depleted, my willpower still burning somewhere beneath my aching muscles and broken bones. One of them pulls my hands over my head and the salt of the rope digs into my wrists once more. I try to fight it – I do. But between the pain and the fear, I cannot even find my own thoughts let alone the will to survive.

He hauls me up and I can feel the muscles contract in his back – military service? There is more tying and loosening as they work above me, hanging me like a carcass at the butcher’s. I am humiliated; the ignominious rite of their torture is not lost upon me.

They take a step back – maybe to admire their handiwork, and I dangle from the ceiling or from a beam or a hook – I do not know. Terror seizes me – is this how I am going to die? No, I tell myself, I deserve a better ending…no one deserves this end.

They do not speak. All I can see through the tip of the blindfold is their infuriating combat boots. What is this? Why is this happening to me? Tears threaten; I console myself in that they will not see them. No one will. They will be absorbed by the blindfold as they drip out and it will be as though they were never there. I wouldn’t mind being discovered crying – if it meant I’d be free from this.

Then the pain comes in flashes. He lays a blow to my stomach. Once. Twice. And then he smacks the side of my head and the rope groans in response. I singe on the surface of consciousness, pain reverberating through me.

He leans in next to my ear and clicks his fingers against something plastic. “You were good,” he says. There is something wrong with his voice. “Just not good enough.”

A switch is flicked.

A sole drop of water dribbles onto my forehead. It runs down and dissolves into the scratchy fabric. What was that? Is the building being flooded? That’s not possible – too many variables. I wait and their footsteps recede. “Wait!” I rasp; my mouth is dry and sour. “Please, just let me go!”

They don’t hear me or they ignore me.

The door – likely on the far end of the room – slips shut with a barely audible click!

I am alone.

A drop of water trickles down onto my forehead in the same spot as before. I turn my face upward and everything is still black. I pull against the rope and my shoulders scream. My arms are tied upward behind my back, the full weight of my body passed onto my extended and rotated shoulder sockets. If I move, too rapidly, with too much force, I run the risk of dislocating both my shoulders. But if I wait, patiently and hopelessly, they will dislocate anyway as the tension builds and the tendons snap.

Think, I tell myself, yell at myself, plead with myself. Think, think, think. Then it hits me – along with another drop of water. I attempt to peer up again, but the result is still the same. Empty blackness.

I hang there, pendulously swaying back forth lightly. My thoughts are rapid-fire, and I cannot decipher a single one. They scald when I get too close. What can I do? My heart is pounds in my chest. Another drop falls. What is that?

There has to be a way out of this. Maybe I cannot get myself out but perhaps someone else can? My Optics Display! There’s a way to voice activate it, I know there is. I just can’t remember it – what would it be? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. My shoulders sting and ache. Tears continue to brim. Another drop falls.

I wait and so does another.

I wait more and it does again.

I begin to count, chanting numbers like a calming mantra and the drop falls when I reach fifteen. I count again and again and again. Religiously, at every fifteen second interval, a drop of water drips down into the exact same spot on my forehead.

It’s unnerving. Frightening. Is something there? Something not quite water? It doesn’t leave a burning sensation or an acidic trail. It is soft and cool and innocent. I can feel it ricochet in my skull, even though it slips externally down the bridge of my nose. There is something there – something insidious, lurking within the confines of my skull. I know it. I can feel it.

My arms are numb. They feel empty and loose, like wet, rubbery noodles drooping from the rope around my wrists. I cannot feel anything. I cannot move them. There were pinpricks at first – little painful dots of needles sinking in and out of my arms. They faded and only the nothingness remained.

I don’t know the password to the voice activation. It is fleeting and slippery and just when I think I have it, it drips away. Drip. Drip. Drip. On my forehead. Driving me insane.

There’s something there. It’s doing something to me. It’s harrowing into my skull. Something is happening to me. I cannot stop the tears. They slip down my cheeks – they are warm and that is the only comfort. My blindfold is sopping wet; a culmination of droplets of water slowly guiding me to the brink of madness. Why can’t I remember the password? The sequence? Anything?

Frustration and desperation wells within me. Another drop falls.

I think of Viktor and Ita Ru and Midhurst. Then I just think of Viktor and his smile. His fresh mint scent every morning. The warmth of his head of my chest as he falls asleep and I am awake, reading through edicts. I think of Ita Ru and his pulsating intelligence and the wild gleam of revolution that glimmers in the depth of his black eyes. I think of home, of comforting cups of coffee and late nights watching old movies from the early 2000s. I think of the things I’ve done and the things I’ve yet to do. I think of Ita Ru’s hand on my arm, motivating and forgiving. I think of them and maybe a bit of them lives within me. I think of the water dripping steadily onto my forehead and the darkness burrowing into my brain. The frantic worry chokes me and I try to calm myself with the memory of Viktor’s lips pressed to my forehead.

And somewhere between all those thoughts, I die.