We were in trouble.

Ed stood in front of the cabin's button panel, arms crossed, his smile still anchored to his beard.

"We have to get out at the ground level." Theresa's voice was cold.

The smile hid in the bristles. "I don't think so."

I glanced at the second thug. He was tall, thin, and his greasy hair clung to his forehead. Seeing me watching him, he gave me a lopsided grin that was even greasier.

The cabin descended, and we were approaching ground floor. In a swift motion, I reached around Ed, trying to get at the buttons. His left hand clamped like a vice around my wrist, twisting it, and, with his right one, he shoved me against the wall. "You'd better behave. You and me... we still have a bill to settle." The hair of his beard was too close for comfort, and his breath was stale.

I remembered the kick I'd landed between his legs. There wasn't enough space here for a repeat.

We descended in silence, with me trapped between him and the wall like a rare insect about to be stabbed by a giant needle.

"Let her go!" Theresa tugged at his arm with little effect.

Ed ignored her.

I considered shouting for help. But who would hear us, let alone understand what was going on. We were already below ground floor level.

The cabin stopped, the door opened.

Ed let go of me. "Out," he hissed.

The lamps of the cabin cast a pool of illumination onto a rough floor of concrete. A switch clicked, and reluctant fluorescent lighting awoke along a corridor stretching left and right—bare concrete walls, pipes and cables running along the ceiling, none of it able to show its true colors in the fake-white light.

The greasy guy exited last, and the doors of the elevator closed behind him. He dug into his jacket and brought up a gun.

A fucking, bloody gun—its barrel of dull-gray metal pointed at me.

It looked as real as on TV.

"This way, please." Ed extended a hand along the corridor.

We walked.

This was TCorp headquarters, for heaven's sake, the pleasant but slightly boring place where I had spent most of my days for the last years. Yet now it was something else completely. I closed my eyes and opened them again.

It still was something else completely.

"You see..." Ed said, ahead of us, his voice resonant with echoes bouncing off the hard walls, "it's always good to have security in a company such as TCorp. You wouldn't believe what kind of creeps try to sneak in. Fortunately, Bob Burleigh had the good sense to alert us."

Bob. He must have called them as soon as he had been back in his office.

"Ed, let me phone my brother," Theresa said.

He laughed. "Don't worry, Miss. I'll do that for you."

Doors branched off the corridor at irregular intervals. Ed stopped before one of them, opened it, and entered. Beyond, there was another corridor, this one veined with even more pipes and ending in a single metal door. Ed used a key to unlock it.

"Help!"

The shout was unexpected and made me jump. It came from Theresa.

"Shut up, woman," Ed said into the deafening silence that followed the cry. His voice was calm. "No one ever comes down here. No one will hear you."

The room on the other side of the door was empty except for a table, some chairs, and a cancerous, organic growth of black and chromium tubes, orange cables, and angular metal boxes against two of the walls.

"Welcome to the pipe room, ladies," he said. "Please." He gestured towards the installations while he pulled something from his pockets—cable ties.

When I didn't move, Ed gave me a push, and I stumbled against the installations. My head banged into something hard.

Before I could check for damage, Ed gripped my arm and pressed it against a piece of cold metal.

They used the ties to bind us to the pipes.

I ended up standing with my back facing the wall, arms spread beside me, both my wrists tied. Theresa was at my side, in a similar stance, out of reach.

Ed contemplated the results of his handiwork and nodded. "What a nice catch. Mr. Thorne will be very happy. He loves his fish fresh." 

He picked up Theresa's purse that stood at her feet and upended it. Its contents hit the floor with a clutter. One of them was her phone—he put it into his pocket.

Then he approached me. 

I didn't have a purse and stared at him, daring him to search me.

He did just that, tugging at my jacket and reaching into its pocket. The first thing he found was the list of expenses. 

He nodded. "Ah, the list... just as Bob Burleigh predicted. The copper delicti."

I didn't care to correct the man's Latin.

He continued his search, found my phone, and pocketed it, too. "And one more thing... bitch." He grabbed my hair and yanked my head to one side, making me wince. "As I said, we still have that bill to settle." With that, he punched me in the solar plexus.

Agony rammed from his fist into my body, shocking it with its sheer physical impact and its raw violence. The pain made me bend forward, the ties stopping me from doubling over. My lungs locked up and refused to take a breath.

Grabbing my hair once more, he pulled my head up to face him. "And there's more to come."

"Leave her alone!" Theresa shouted.

He let go of me. I sagged forward once more, gulping for air but failing to make my lungs work.

"You want some, too?" he asked.

"Thierry won't have any of that." Her voice was distant in my yearning for oxygen, in my desire to make my body work again.

Threads of spittle hung from my mouth.

"Mr. Thorne will love that... As I told you, I'll call him right when we are finished here."

My throat finally unclamped, and sweet air entered my body with a rasping sound.

A hand took hold of my spittle-smeared chin and lifted my head. Ed stood close. "I'll leave you now, darling, but don't worry... I'll be back. Until then, here's something to keep your mind busy. I'm looking for a word, you see. Starts with an R, followed by something like a chimpanzee."

He let go of me and studied the fingers that had just held me, then he dried them on my blouse—moving them from my shoulder over my right breast to where he had hit me. He stopped there and prodded me right where I was still hurting.

I gasped.

The men turned to the exit, switched off the light, and left. The door closed with a thud, and we were in utter darkness. A key turned in a lock.

Silence, except for my labored breathing and a hum from the pipes behind me.

"Are you okay?" Theresa asked, worry in her voice.

My stomach still hurt from Ed's blow. Drawing breath was painful. "I'll live."

I tried to stand straight, to release the pull of the ties cutting into my wrists. "What... will Thierry do when he gets here?"

Theresa was silent.

I didn't like the sound of her unspoken words. "Tell me."

"Anne... I really don't know."

~~~

The pain found space to grow in the hours of darkness.

Pain in my center from Ed's punch. Pain in my wrists from the bite of the ties. Pain in my legs from muscles yearning to relax. Pain in my bladder from holding back.

Theresa whimpered.

"They won't let us rot here," I said. What I didn't say was that rotting here might be preferable to what they had planned for us.

The dread of what our fates might be was as dark as the room we were in. I refused to let it invade my thoughts and concentrated on the mundane, such as what time it might be. That was when I heard footfalls muffled by the closed door. A key turned in the lock.

Light seeped in and, with the flick of a switch, flooded us.

I squinted. A man's stocky frame was before me. Ed.

"Hey, sweetheart." A Stonehenge of stained, irregular teeth stood in the clearing of his bristly beard.

His greasy companion loitered at the door behind him, tapping his gun against his left palm.

"I need a washroom," I said. My bladder was killing me.

The teeth in front of me grew in numbers. Ed reached into his jacket, retrieving a tool—a wire cutter. He held it close to my face. "You rather need some beauty surgery. Don't you think your nose's too large?"

I bit my lips to keep myself from sobbing. I wouldn't do him that favor.

He grabbed my arm, pulling it against the manacle, making the plastic tear into my skin. I cried out.

Suddenly, the ache in my wrist lessened, replaced by more pain in my shoulder as my arm came loose.

He turned to the other wrist, cutting the tie there, too.

My exhausted legs collapsed, and I fell.

He kicked my side. "Get up!"

I got onto my hands and knees, sobbing.

Another kick, more hurt. "Get up, I said."

I pulled myself up on a pipe. My legs were shaking.

"Let's go." He pointed to the door.

I looked at Theresa. Tears were on her cheeks. I tried to give her a smile, not sure if I succeeded. The corners of her mouth twitched upwards, briefly.

Ed seized my arm and pulled me away.

"Where are we going?" I asked as I shuffled along the first corridor.

"Somewhere nice, just you and me."

I looked back. Greasy wasn't with us.

We reached the second corridor, and he yanked me to the left, away from the elevators.

"You'll enjoy it, I promise."

————

A/N: I know, this chapter is much darker than most of those before it. But Anne had it coming, didn't she?