Daniel doesn’t sleep for most of the night.He drifts between exhaustion, the ache of his body, and panic induced alertness, half sprawled on the cot, half sitting upright every few minutes when he swears he hears footsteps outside the door, but all through the night, it's just his scared mind playing horrid tricks on him.He’s counting the seconds now. Watching the light bulb flicker on its rhythm, buzz, hum, silence.Buzz.Hum.Silence.It’s the only way he knows time is passing, the only way he keeps himself conscious and not into a row of panic being locked up. He thought he'd escaped but now he's locked up all over again.As though he's being passed around like the world's most beautiful Fabergé egg.Then, somewhere between four and five a.m., he hears the lock clang in the silence of the night.This time it’s not the teasing click of last night, it’s a firm one, whoever is there is not at the peephole but at the door's lock exactly as the sound is louder and noiser.He stiffens
The first thing Daniel notices is the smell, that's the first thing that he realizes when he comes to, at least, closest to opening his eyes. It's not the kind you'd expect after passing out in front of a stranger's car.It's not an antiseptic smell, nothing like the regular hospital disinfectant.No, it smells like iron and damp wood, like rusting hinges and something stale, and that's what forces his eyes open, closely followed by the ache of his back and side.He blinks, his vision swimming. The ceiling above him is uneven with wooden beams, not tiles. It, very obviously, is not a hospital ceiling, that much he knows.He turns his head slowly, and it feels like his skull is packed with sand.A flickering light bulb dangles from the ceiling, its clicky sound loud through the silence. The walls are stone, painted over with layers of grime. There’s a small, square window up high, the kind that’s meant to keep light out more than it lets it in, and in there is warm, too warm that Danie
The night is colder than Daniel remembers nights being, and even though it was nice initially, it has become a nightmare as he's currently running against it, trying to make his way out of this dark nightmare.Not the kind of cold that sinks into skin, the kind that digs straight into bone. The kind that whispers you’ve been out of your comfort zone for far too long.He doesn’t know how long he’s been running. Time has lost its meaning, carved out of him by months of stale air and concrete walls. He stumbles again and again, sometimes into branches and hanging sticks and different cold leaves and their even colder liquids.Now, every breath tastes like freedom and blood, freedom because he’s outside, blood because the wind scrapes down his throat like razors and has rendered his breathing sharp and unbearable.His bare feet slap against the wet dirt road, leaving uneven tracks behind him. His shirt, if it can still be called that, hangs barely off his shoulders, torn at the seams. He’
The first thing the man hears is the sound.It's dark outside, barely able to see anything but with the night seeing cameras installed around, things outside, ordinarily hard to see with the naked eyes, are very easy for anyone behind the camera to see.The loud sound that brings his eyes back up to the images is not the clatter of the door unlocking, that part was deliberate as he'd watched it happen, but the sound of a faint shuffle that follows shortly after his henchman pulls back. It’s small at first, tentative, the sound of someone afraid to believe in their own luck as the door slightly opens.The man in the shadows smiles faintly. Good... He took the bait.He’s standing in the surveillance room, one hand in his pocket, the other lazily holding a cigarette that’s almost burned down to its filter. On the screen in front of him, six grainy monitors flicker with different angles of the underground hallway.There he is, within a matter of seconds, he pokes his head out and looks
At first, Daniel thinks he’s dreaming again, that's been mostly what he's been doing lately. Sleeping, waking, sleeping and waking all over again. It's been a while since his captor has come to say hi, and without his visits, means no food nor water.It happens sometimes now, half-dreams that feel real enough to hurt, where he’s free, running somewhere with wind in his face and not four concrete walls pressing down on him. He wakes up each time to the same stale air, the same rusted pipes, the same flickering bulb that hums like it’s mocking him.But this time, it isn’t a dream.He really hears something.A loud clock in the dark.The sound is small, barely a whisper, but in the silence of that cramped basement cell, it feels loud enough to make his heartbeat stutter. He sits up fast, every sense stretching thin. For a moment, nothing happens. The darkness settles again. He wonders if he imagined it.Then he hears it again.Click.The soft metallic sound of a bolt sliding free.Danie
The city outside his window hums with that strange late-night rhythm, not quite dead, not quite alive at the same time ever since he drove himself back to his residence after meeting Cooper Vale earlier. Alec Steele leans back in his chair, the glow from his desk lamp slicing shadows across the side of his face. His study is quiet except for the faint tick of an antique clock and the low hum of his computer cooling fan. He hasn’t slept. He doesn’t remember the last time he did, and if he did, he didn't sleep enough for it to register as one.There’s a half empty glass of whiskey on the table beside a pile of reports he hasn’t read in days. Instead, he’s been scrolling through encrypted messages, flipping between business dealings and… her name on his mind, stopping him from thinking anything logical for days on end.Raees Graham... Lovely name for a lovely woman... Unusual name for an unusual woman...The name sits there on his screen, taunting him like a secret he can’t bury. It’