She woke up to pitch black silence. Her head throbbed with pain. 

Her eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness. She was in a dark, windowless room, that was all she knew. In the absence of visual stimuli, she listened intently. There was no sound, except for some faint noises coming from up above. 

Slowly the headache dissipated, until it was a dull throb in the small of her neck, barely noticeable. It had compartmentalised itself. 

Her other senses returned. She smelled the air, cold, sharp, with the slightest hint of damp. She breathed in deeply, trying to take in as much of the surroundings as possible. Her throat was bone-dry. The brief flash of surprise was quickly replaced by a suffocating fear. What had happened? Why was she here? 

She tried to move, as slowly as possible in the all-consuming darkness, aware that there might be something listening to her beyond the margins of the room. The thought disturbed her. Her hand found a wall. Rough concrete. A bunker, perhaps.

She kept her hand moving until it found a corner. And then a door, recessed into the concrete. She felt up and down but she could not find a handle. Her mind groggily returned to what had gone down last night. That call with Lysander. Shit. That had not gone well, in retrospect. She wondered what he would be thinking. Oh well. 

She felt around. Her bag and everything in it was nowhere to be found. The room was threadbare. All she had were the clothes she was wearing last night. 

Why was she here? Did it have anything to do with what she had done? The thought of that was eating her alive. She tried but could not shake the feeling. She had no idea why she was here. And it terrified her.

She realised, with growing dread, that things might never be the same again. She might be stuck here forever. The walls felt like they were closing in on her. It felt as if she could not breathe. The feeling was suddenly overwhelming. It took all her resolve to not fall apart. 

All she wanted to do was scream. But what would happen if she did just that? She didn't want to find out. 

The waves of panic subsided. She couldn't let it get the better of her. Fighting the fear, she stood up and nearly hit her head. 

*** 

After what felt like a few hours, but could have been any period of time, the door opened. A sliver of light was revealed. She could see that the walls of the room were bare concrete, and there was a light switch next to the door. A middle-aged woman in a maid's uniform. There was not enough light to see her eyes or even what she looked like. She laid a tray of food at the base of the mattress and left. The door snicked shut behind her. 

She tried to parse the sounds of her leaving, trying to get her bearings on just where she was, but she could only make out the faintest of vibrations. It was not enough to tell her anything. 

Once it was certain that the maid had gone, she went over to the light switch and flipped the switch. The click of the switch was the most noise she had heard since she had woken up and she flinched instinctively. A naked bulb hanging from the ceiling lit up, bathing the room in a dim yellow glow. 

 She thought of asking the maid about her situation. But surely she knew nothing of it. Even in her panicked state, she knew that nothing good would come of involving her in the situation. 

She did not dare to escape. She could have overpowered her, jumped through the door and gone up, but where to then? Would she just end up walking directly into the path of her captor? She didn't want to find out. 

She looked back on her thoughts, and felt repulsed by her childishness. She was going to get out, one way or another, sometime soon. There was no point in denying or delaying it. It was bound to happen. She tried to tell herself that. 

She looked at the tray left on the floor. There was an oddly quaint jug of water and something on a plate. She drank the water greedily. She did not feel like eating but she forced the food down anyway. It was tasteless. She could not even identify what it was.

Turning the jug upside down, she looked for a clue. Any clue. But the jug had no clues to give her. The label on the bottom had long worn off.