I was brought to consciousness by the sound of metal--the sound of chains. It was one from my nightmares; a sound I didn't think I could ever forget.

I blinked open my eyes, groggy and dizzy, and my head was hurting. It was hurting too much for it to be normal, pressed too heavily onto a hard surface. I felt around with my hands, my fingers rubbing against damp grit and concrete. Concrete.

I heard the harsh panting coming from me first--felt the racing pace of my heart--before I could fully register the chains around my wrists. Chains that were being dragged--

A loud hammering noise made me jerk, made me flinch. My eyes flew open, alarm squeezing my chest. I was on the ground, I realized, as I pulled myself up with horrifyingly weak limbs. My fingers slipped once on the rough concrete, but the need to get up--the suddenly terrifying need to escape didn't let me stop.

The chains, they were holding my wrists, both of my wrists, and I nearly gagged at the sudden rush of nausea--fear--shock. Suddenly, my left arm was pulled by something--someone in front of me, and I think I made a horrified noise.

"You have to be still, dear Alice." An unfamiliar voice spoke from the dark--too close and maybe not that unfamiliar after all. "Stop trying to think of an escape. There is none."

I froze. My mind spun, my body acting on its own as I tried to pull away--away from it all--the noise, the chains, the figure that I could slowly make out in the dark, leaning down not too far from me. It was too dark.

I couldn't breathe.

Another hammering noise came from around me and my breath hitched in panic. I didn't realize I was grabbing my throat until the cold, heavy chain around my wrist dragged roughly against my skin.

"What...what..." I stopped, my words leaving me as I slowly started to remember it all. The gas mask. The fire in my dormitory building.

Santiago.

"No, no, no." I whispered to myself, heart picking up its frantic pace. I looked around, eyes wide. A door--an escape--anything that could get me out. But it was all just too dark. I couldn't make anything out. "No. Please. Please."

There was no response other than that same hammering sound. A frightened cry slipped from my throat when I realized what was happening.

The chains, they were being hammered to the ground.

There was another tug to the chain around my left wrist. I scrambled away from it, pulling up my knees against my chest, shaking my head frantically. "Stop. Stop."

"That should do it." He wasn't even speaking to me. He was speaking to himself.

"S-Santiago."

There was a pause, an eerie silence following the name that left my lips. I could've counted my heartbeat pulsing in my ears.

Then all too suddenly, there was a flick of a lighter, closer than I was expecting, and I flinched back against the concrete behind me. A face loomed into my vision--a dark silhouette with a face I recognized in the foggy corners of my mind. A face I'd seen in a bar once. And then he'd spiked my drink, a thought crossed my mind.

I pressed back into the wall, scared out of my mind.

Shorn hair, eyes gleaming with smug satisfaction. He smiled then and cold, raw fear crawled up my spine--a smile that didn't feel like one--a smile that promised pain and nothing else.

"I've finally got you." His tone was stilted and blank, like presenting an observation to me too clinical.

I squeezed my eyes close, bringing my fisted hands behind my knees, and trying to force space between us. I couldn't think straight. I couldn't think at all.

Please, please, please, I wanted to beg--beg anyone who would listen. Get me out of here. Get me out.

I felt him lean closer and I felt bile rising up my throat. The terror within me tried to escape as cold, too cold fingers touched my face, the side of my face, a touch that was too horrifyingly gentle.

No, no, no.

"You were just trying to run from your end, Alice." He murmured--a reassuring whisper, a friendly jest. I was going to be sick. "No one can escape their fate."

It's not real, I chanted in my head. Hoped--begged--prayed. Please don't let this be real.

But it was all too real. The metal chains holding my wrists firm, the cold concrete digging into the back of my neck, and the stale air I kept inhaling too fast in sheer panic. It was all too real.

You owe me, the man in the gas mask had said to me.

And now I was here.

"Y-You..." I stumbled over my words, my voice too shaky with fear and paranoia and shock. The slow shock traveling through me was an agony on its own. I felt dizzy with it. Pressing my mouth against my knees, I choked out, "You started a fire in my building."

"I had to get to you somehow," he replied.

My breathing shortened. Don't look, I kept telling myself, kept digging my face into my knees. The chains weren't letting me breathe. The dark wasn't helping either.

"People... There were people in the b-building." My voice sounded strange, like it wasn't even coming from me. It felt too far.

He tsked but didn't say anything in response to it. I felt my forehead scrunching as my chin trembled. There were tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. I was afraid of letting them slip.

"I know there were innocents in there." His voice had hardened. I dug my fingers into the underside of my knees. "But you aren't. I needed to take you out."

I was shaking my head, frantic and begging, holding myself too tightly that it hurt. "Please," I begged--sobbed. "I didn't d-do anything."

I can't be here again.

There was an unmistakable flick of a sound again. I didn't want to see the flame of his lighter so close to me.

"You know you did."

"No--"

"Look up when I'm talking to you!" There was the snarl, an unforgivable grip fisting into my hair, and then a rough tug until my head knocked back into the wall, away from the safety of my own knees. I gasped--pain blooming--

"Fuck." Pure hatred. Malice. Disgust. That was all I could hear--feel on my skin as he loosened his hold on my hair, on my scalp, and then caressed my head where he'd yanked. I blinked rapidly. "You're making me turn into him. You're making me turn into your sister's fiance. I'm not like that, okay?Believe me, I'm not. I'm not going to take advantage of your delirious state like he did. All the time. I'm better than that. I'll give you justice that you deserve. That's all I'm here for and that's all you're here for too."

I gulped for air, each breath feeling broken and wrong. I could hear it around us, knew that my eyes were wide with too much fear.

"I," he rasped, getting closer to my face, until I could make his eyes out even in the utter dark, "will serve justice to all your wrongdoings."

"I...didn't do anything w-wrong."

"That's what they all say, Alice." He patted my cheek. I flinched away at the pain. "By the end, they're agreeing with me. You'll accept it too."

I slowly, warily lifted my hands, felt around with them on my sides, along the wall. I couldn't couldn't couldn't stay here--be here--oh God. I needed a way out.

It felt like I was dying.

"You tried to escape from me before. You know you did wrong and yet you still ran from your fate."

"I didn't--"

I felt him get up. "You fucked around with your sister's fiance. That's enough of a wrong for me."

It felt like blows coming at me again and again. My head pulsed with an ache too heavy. My fingers trembled in hope for a way out.

"N-No, he--"

"He got what he deserved. I know who killed him. Ryder Octavio McQuillan." He cut me off, his voice trailing off before he let out a harsh, jagged laugh. I looked around, terrified because I couldn't see where he was now--because the dark wouldn't let me see him. "I guess that's the first time he's bothered helping me. Always been a menace like his father."

Ryder, the name whispered in my ears and then my mind, again and again and again. Ryder. Oh God. Pleasepleaseplease.

I needed to get out.

I needed these chains off of me.

I needed to breathe.

"Please, let me g-go." I was crying--I was begging. But it was only a whisper, a plea. He didn't hear me.

"I will convince you of the wrong you've done." He seemed composed, sure--too sure of it. Like he knew. Like he'd done this too many times before. "I know I will. It's just a matter of time. I won't even have to kill you. You'll do it just fine like a good girl. Like my pet. You'll pull the trigger and blow your brains out. You'll fall off the legde without a push. You'll burn down to ashes all willingly. It's what you deserve. It's what you all fucking deserve."

I wrapped my fingers around one of my chains, tugging at it frantically. Nothing happened. They were nailed to the ground. A desperate, dying sob caught in my throat. Tears blurred my vision--the dark becoming my own oblivion.

"Five...seven...fifteen. You'll be my sixteenth." He said, murmured, laughed in that same sickening way. The manic, feverish edge to his voice as he paced around me, in front of me. Where am I? Where was I? "This will be my fucking salvation. This will fix me."

There were slashes--no, methodical lines carved into the wall at my right. Four lines with one crossing all of them. I counted the tally marks with shaking fingers--with breaths coming out too fast--with bated horror killing me from the inside.

"You call it a mistake," Santiago said. "But you won't be alive by the time you realize it wasn't."

Five. Ten. Fifteen carved lines, I counted. Like he'd said.

I couldn't even cover my mouth--stifle the horrified sound that left me at the sudden realization. Fifteen lives lost. He'd killed fifteen people.

And Brooke would've been the sixteenth one, I realized.

"No." I pleaded, yanking frantically at the chains. My wrists burned with them--horrifying images and memories and nightmares flashing before my eyes.

There were footsteps moving away from me, fading--not even hearing me out. Leaving me alone.

No, no, no.

"W-Wait," I cried out. I couldn't be here alone. Not the dark. "You have to listen to me. Please, listen to me."

There was a scuff of a shoe.

"The only way out is when you choose to die, Alice."

There was no click of a door being pulled shut, no sign of him leaving, no sound of a door being opened on its hinges, or any flickers of light from outside.

There was just silence that greeted me.

Pain flared as I desperately pulled at the chains, horror clawing up its way inside me as I cried. No one listened. There was just me and the dark.

I was trapped in a nightmare, the skin of my wrists scraping with raw metal and blood. Until it was all too much--too much horror to distinguish what was real and what wasn't.

Until it sank into me, like a wound too lethal, that there really was no way out of this.