Once Betrayed, Twice Shy

It’s interesting

FARAH

The floor is dirt packed hard enough to read as intentional—someone’s boot heel, someone’s weight, the slow accretion of human traffic worn into something almost level. My hands are behind me, which is inconvenient but not incapacitating, rope rather than restraints, tied by someone who knows the mechanics of it but not the architecture. They’ve left my shoulders with enough range that I can feel my fingers, which means they’ve prioritized keeping me contained over keeping me comfortable, which is actually the more reversible of the two errors.

I catalog this. I catalog the dimensions of the room—eight feet by ten, approximately, ceiling low enough that I’d have to duck if I were standing, which I’m not. Single door, no window, but there’s a gap along the roofline on the east wall where the structure doesn’t quite meet itself, and through it comes the particular quality of cold that means wind rather than still air, which means outside rather than interior corridor, which means I’m on an exterior wall.

East. The gap is letting in starlight at an angle that puts north at my left shoulder.

I add this to the inventory.

There are voices in the next room, three distinct speakers, maybe four—harder to tell when they’re layered, when someone is talking over someone else or when the sound is traveling through whatever wall separates their space from mine. None of the voices are familiar. One of them is making decisions; I can hear it in the cadence, the way the others adjust their volume and timing around him.

Not him. Them. I should be more precise.

The decision-maker is talking about timing. “Before dawn” is a phrase that surfaces twice, which gives me a parameter. I don’t have a watch. They took it at the gallery, along with my phone, my earrings, the small knife I keep in the inner pocket of my coat that Caspian gave me six months ago with the single instruction to “just have it on you,” which I thought was paranoid until approximately four hours ago.

I am revising my position on several of Caspian’s habits.

The bond has been doing something strange since they moved me from the vehicle to the structure, a directional weight that feels less like presence and more like geometry, something pulling northwest and then west and then, in the last few minutes, almost due north. He’s moving. Closing distance. I haven’t tried to reach through it deliberately because I don’t know what that would feel like on his end and I don’t want to distract him if he’s driving, but the knowing that he’s in motion is sitting behind my sternum like ballast, something heavy enough to keep me oriented.

I test the rope. Whoever tied it knew enough to avoid my wrists directly—it’s forearm to forearm, which distributes pressure and makes me less likely to lose circulation, but also gives me more surface area to work with if I can get the right leverage. I need something to brace against. The wall behind me is timber, rough-cut, the kind of construction that prioritizes function over finish. I shift my weight back until my shoulders are against it and feel for irregularities.

There. A knot in the wood, protruding enough to catch.

I adjust position, work the rope until I can hook it over the protrusion, and pull.

The rope doesn’t give, but it shifts—not much, maybe a quarter inch, but enough that I know the knot isn’t structural, it’s just tight. Tight I can work with. Structural would mean cutting, and I don’t have anything to cut with, but tight means patience and repetition and the willingness to spend twenty minutes on something most people would spend two minutes on before giving up.

I have significantly more than twenty minutes of patience available.

I work the rope in small increments, pull and release, pull and release, using the knot in the wood as a fixed point and my own body weight as lever. My shoulders are going to hurt tomorrow. This is fine. Tomorrow is a problem for tomorrow’s version of me; right now I need my hands free before whoever is in the next room finishes their conversation about timing and comes back to deal with me as agenda item rather than holding pattern.

The bond shifts again—north-northwest now, closer, maybe a quarter mile. The knowing of it is so clear it’s almost spatial, the way you know someone is standing behind you without turning around, presence as pressure. He’s close enough that if I were outside I could probably see him.

I’m not outside.

I pull the rope again, feel it give another quarter inch. The knot is loosening. Not fast, but definitively. I have a timeline now: however long it takes the people in the next room to finish their discussion, versus however long it takes me to get my hands free, versus however long it takes Caspian to reach the structure.

I’m betting on the third variable.

The voices in the next room change register—not louder, but sharper, the way conversation shifts when someone is wrapping up rather than continuing. I hear movement, boot heels on the same packed dirt, the scrape of something wooden being moved. A chair, probably.

I work the rope faster. The knot in the wood is digging into my palm now, bright particular pain that I’m filing away as irrelevant. Pain is just information. Right now the information I need is whether I can get my hands free before the door opens.

The rope gives.

Not all the way—I’m not free, but the loop has loosened enough that I can start working my left hand through, slow incremental rotation, thumb tucked to compress the width of my hand. The voices are closer now, just outside the door. I freeze, hands still behind me, rope still technically binding but no longer effectively restraining, and arrange my face into something I hope reads as contained rather than actively working.

The door opens.

The person who comes through is not the decision-maker—wrong build, wrong cadence, this is someone who follows instructions rather than gives them. Mid-thirties, maybe, dressed for cold weather, carrying a bottle of water like an afterthought. They look at me with the expression of someone confirming I’m still where they left me, which I am, technically.

“You need anything?” they ask.

It’s possible this is genuine. It’s also possible this is the opening move in a longer conversation I don’t want to have. I’m betting on the second, but I answer as if it’s the first.

“I’m fine,” I say.

They look at me for another moment, some assessment happening behind their eyes that I can’t read. Then they nod, set the water bottle on the floor near the door—not close enough for me to reach, but close enough to be visible—and back out.

The door closes.

I wait thirty seconds, listening. The voices resume in the next room, same register, same distance. No alarm. They think I’m still contained.

I work my left hand free.

It takes another two minutes of careful manipulation, and by the time I’ve got it clear my palm is bleeding where the knot dug in, but I have one hand loose, which means the other is trivial. I untie it, pull the rope away, flex my fingers to confirm everything still works.

Everything works.

I stand up slowly, testing my balance. I’ve been sitting long enough that my legs are stiff, but not so long that I can’t walk. I move to the door, press my ear against it. The voices are still there, still layered, still occupied with their own conversation.

I look at the gap along the roofline on the east wall.

The bond is north-northwest and very close now, close enough that I can feel the specific quality of his attention, the way it sharpens when he’s about to do something that looks like recklessness but is actually just a very precise assessment of acceptable risk delivered at speed.

He’s about to do something.

I need to be ready to move when he does.

I cross to the east wall, reach up to test the gap. It’s wider than it looked from the floor—six inches, maybe eight, enough that I could fit through if I had something to stand on and if I were willing to bet on the drop on the other side being something I can land from without breaking an ankle.

I’m considering the geometry of this when I hear it: a shout from outside, sharp and urgent, the kind that means something has gone immediately wrong.

Or right, depending on whose plan we’re following.

The voices in the next room stop. I hear rapid movement, boot heels, the door to the outside opening and then multiple people going through it.

The bond flares bright and directional, due north now, very close.

I grab the water bottle they left, throw it at the gap in the wall as hard as I can. It punches through, carries a section of the poorly-fitted timber with it, and suddenly the gap is large enough that I don’t need anything to stand on, I just need momentum.

I take three steps back, run at the wall, and go through it sideways.

The drop is seven feet.

I land, roll, come up already moving north toward the sound of whatever Caspian is doing that has pulled every person out of that structure.

I’m betting it’s interesting.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​