The concrete was freezing. It smelled of copper, ammonia, and twenty years of buried secrets.
Jane opened her eyes. The darkness was absolute, broken only by a single, flickering fluorescent bulb out in the corridor. It hummed in a flat, irritating B-note. She didn't gasp. She didn't thrash. Her brain immediately partitioned the pain, shoving the throbbing ache in her skull into a clinical, soundproof box.
She cataloged her body. Wrists: bound by heavy, rusted iron cuffs, hoisted just high enough to pull her shoulders out of alignment. Ankles: chained to a steel ring embedded in the floor. Throat: bruised from the enforcer’s grip, but her airway remained clear.
Heart rate: sixty-eight beats per minute. Steady.
She was in the pits. Five levels below the glass penthouses. She was suspend
