It wasn’t dark when my eyes opened. It wasn’t as dark as a night lacking in light, but the shade of light itself seemed unfamiliarly darker than normal. My window on my room faced the morning sunrise, so unless it was cloudy or something…
My eyes flicked around the strange room. I didn’t recognize it at all. Gray cement bricks stained and cracked by various elements and an empty spot where a lightbulb would go in the ceiling. There was a broken window too. That didn’t bode well. Broken things in a rundown place was like a given in horror movies, right?
Not good.
I wasn’t even laying down on a bed. It was just the cold hard floor beneath me. I couldn’t stay–
I tried to move my hands, only to find them bound together at my wrists.
What was going on?
Ugh.
Movement only made the aches within my body worse. My back hurt. My shoulder hurt. My head was starting to pound out an unwelcome rhythm.
Ugh. This was the worst I’d felt physically in a long time.
I closed my eyes again, for just a moment and breathed in slowly, doing my best to remain calm as I wiggled my hands free of the rope.
Success!
And…
Ick.
One thing was for sure, the smell in this place was awful. It was dust and mold and something else that I wasn’t even going to try and identify. The way it seemed to just suddenly slam into my senses was like a tank taking out a flimsy street sign.
My eyes snapped back open when I moved my leg, hearing an odd noise. One that didn’t go with the movement I made.
Sure, ‘rustle’ could have been a noise that made sense.
But…
Clink?
There was no need for deeper inspection after I looked and saw exactly what had made the noise. There was clearly a thick cuff wrapped around my ankle, and the chain connected to it was buried within the cement wall nearby. But hey, if the wall was as run down as the rest of this dump, maybe…
I followed it over to the wall, trying to spot any cracks or weak areas to break, but there weren’t any. An experimental tug told me that it wasn’t going to come free no matter how hard I pulled.
That sucked.
I moved as far as I could, stretching that chain out entirely and leaning more to peer down the hallway at the edge of the room.
Just as I got a good look down the creepy dark hallway, a shadow moved. A person-shaped shadow. Someone was coming. I, as quietly as I could, moved my chain slowly with me, positioning myself in the best spot to use my own abilities, like a surprise attack. Surely, it would catch whoever it was off guard.
As their footsteps neared, I took a deep breath to center myself. I was getting out of here and then I was going home. I already had enough to deal with as it was. Getting kidnapped wasn’t on my to-do list.
The current to-do list right now was ‘knock him/her out’, ‘steal the key’, ‘free my ankle’, and, given that there wasn’t really any other eloquent way to phrase it, ‘run’.
The second a boot appeared in my line of sight, I fired a gust of wind their way, strong enough to knock anyone off their feet. Then, I just grab the key from his pockets and free myself…
At least, that was what was supposed to happen.
The boot appeared. I thrust my hands forward. They stared at me, still standing, untouched.
I stared at my hands in horror.
Why wasn’t it working?
I was born with this ability – the ability to control air, so why wasn’t it working now?!
All that effort to stay calm went right out the window. The broken window.
In my new state of panic, I looked up to see the man’s face twist into that of a grin, smiling in my horror.
What… the hell… did he… do to me?
I shook my hands, like that would help somehow, like I was some kind of ‘shake it and it glows’ kind of toy. Some kind of glowstick madness where you had to break it, to crack it, in order for it to work.
It obviously didn’t work.
Nothing was working.
It was like electricity in a house, and suddenly the power went out, with no chance of coming back on because a tree took out the line.
I didn’t understand it. How – how could my abilities, my powers I’d been born with… just vanish like they’d never existed at all?
Was it all just a dream? My life – had I just hallucinated it all?
By chance, I saw the scar on my hand from when I was five. The scratch on my arm from a few days ago when a tree picked a fight with me… No. this wasn’t a dream. But there still remained no explanation for what was happening to me.
Other than the obvious.
The obvious being… that I was broken somehow.
Before I could react, my wrist was in his tight grip. And by tight, my hand was going numb after just a few measly seconds. I threw myself into a physical attack of any kind. I wasn’t being particular at the moment.
My knee hit him.
Elbow.
Fist.
The longer it went on, the more horrified I was at this situation.
At this rate…
Would I ever get out of here?
I threw another punch to his face, slightly grossed out by my hand touching his face in order to get away and to get out of his grip.
Good god, was this man a brick wall?! Nothing I did, no hit, no kick, absolutely nothing fazed him at all. He just kept dragging me across the room without a word.
“LET GO!” I screeched in his ear.
He flinched, closing his eyes briefly before tossing my wrist from his hand, sending me off balance and to the floor with a thud.
Are you serious?
All that work and I just had to shout in his face?
Given that I wasn’t gagged and I didn’t like him one bit, I did it again. Too bad his hand ended up like a vice-grip on my face, keeping my mouth shut. I couldn’t even bite him, not that I’d want to – gross. I could smell his hand, and there was nothing good about that. I didn’t want whatever he’d touched to be in my mouth.
As I continued to struggle, I was suddenly pulled off the ground and thrown into something solid. It took me a moment to realize he’d let go of me, only to put new restraints on. More rope. Only this time, my hands weren’t together. They were on the armrests of a chair. A solid wood chair. I winced as my wrists and ankles were pulled tight to the chair, the restraints already prepared before my arrival.
“Sit there and pay attention.”
I scoffed as he strode over to another part of the room. Was he serious? Was I just supposed to behave because I was being held captive?
Ha.
I tried to wiggle my fingers, the feeling slowly coming back to the hand he’d grabbed before. It hurt.
“Why would I listen to you?!” I snapped at him, anger flaring up hot and vengeful within me.
Standing behind what looked like a desk, he reached down and opened a drawer, grabbing something from it. I’d noticed it, and unnoticed it earlier. I mean, I couldn’t reach it with the chain on my ankle, so I kind of just filed it away to the back of my mind for later. But now I was curious.
He kept something important in there, didn’t he?
The drawer clicked back shut as he pointed it at me. A chill raced down my spine at the sight of it. I held my breath.
I changed my mind.
I didn’t want to know what he had that was important.
I wanted to leave.
Now.
“I think you should.”
If I’d had my abilities, I could get wounded, minor. I could use a powerful gust and send it off target as he fired. But…
No abilities…
It meant certain death.
Because that was a gun.
I stayed silent, watching him, watching his finger which edged closer to the trigger. My heart was pounding out of my chest as the quiet continued.
Eventually, the gun was lowered and I could breathe again. Even if it was still in sight, no fingers near the trigger made me feel better, if only by a small margin.
“Lynn, hm?”
In an instant, the relief was gone.
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