When my eyes opened, the first things I saw were long and yellow. It was a moment before my vision focused enough to reveal it was my lap I was staring at.

I was sitting on a chair. My head felt like a ton and half of cement, throbbing away till my ears rang with the sound. Throb, throb, throb. I tried to lift it and assess my surroundings, only to find my neck as weak as a new born baby's. I tried to touch it, to rub some sensation into it.

That's when I finally realised that I couldn't. I couldn't move my hands.

My head shot upward so fast my eyes crossed. No, no... This couldn't be happening. I couldn't move my hands. Why couldn't I move my hands?

I looked around, it dawning on me with painful clarity that I wasn't exactly in my bedroom anymore, not in Mr. Rodwell's home or my own.

The room I was in was dark, the only thing lighting it a lone caped white bulb hanging over my head. I couldn't see what it was that the corners of the room hid, but blinding fear was more than happy to fill all the voids as best it could. The floor under my feet was dusty, old brick. I squinted at the ceiling. At the edges of the bulb it was just possible to see cobwebbed rafters and beams.

Where was I?

Something shuffled in the shadows. I twisted my head toward the sound, my heartbeat picking up speed. My breath was ragged.

"Who's that?" I yelled, remembering that yelling was just the thing a person was supposed to do when in a bad position. And how much worse could a position get after all the ones I had been in? I could see the signs and recognise them with my eyes closed.

I had been kidnapped. Again. I would have rolled my eyes if I hadn't been so terrified.

"Who the hell is it?" I yelled again. "Come out!"

And out of the shadows the person did come. It was a man. A very large, very hairy, very disgusting man, looking almost like a walrus with two legs. He was grinning from ear to ear. With a completely bald head and hanging jowls, he stood at higher than seven feet. His white vest was so tight around the middle that, through a little round tear on the side, a generous amount of stomach flopped out. He wore khaki cargo pants wrapped around his legs like a second skin, the waistband buried somewhere under the premonitory of his stomach. There was a half-eaten sandwich in his hand.

He looked ridiculous. Wait...this was the man who had kidnapped me? I was faintly embarrassed. "Who the fuck are you?" I shrieked. "And what do you think you're playing at?"

He was enjoying my writhing more than any sane man would. That wasn't a good sign. Only a certain class of animal—they didn't really qualify as human beings in my eyes—enjoyed somebody else's distress. One: psychopaths. Two: well... He didn't look like either; too happy for the first and too absurd for the second. "Keep squirming, little girl," he smiled viciously, an evil sea lion. "You aren't going anywhere."

My brow furrowed. I couldn't believe this. He actually thought I was scared. Which I had been, I admit, when he had been in the shadows. But now, after actually seeing him, all I felt was irritated. "I can see I'm not going anywhere, you big bozo!" I yelled. "This isn't a game! Let me go." I squirmed some more. The sharp edges of zip ties dug into my wrist. I stopped moving, unable to contain a wince.

The man laughed harder, almost like he was at a circus. "I can't let you go," he informed me, like I hadn't figured that out on my own. "Not till Master gets here, at least. He could release you if he wants to." He shrugged, like this was brilliant logic he had shared with me out of the goodness of his heart.

Master? Master? Okay, I was starting to get scared again.

"Master who?" I asked quietly, in my best tell-me-your-secret-because-I-am-just-a-little-helpless-girl voice. "What master are you talking about?"

The man laughed again, my specially altered voice bouncing off his thick skull. "I can't tell you that. Bwah-ha-ha!"

I gritted my teeth. "But why? Why can't you tell me?"

He shrugged. "Because I don't know," he said simply.

I stared at him, not able to comprehend that some men had kidnapped me, walked away, and apparently left me with a body guard with pudding for brains.

"How can you not know? You work for him," I asked calmly, trying to make my voice sound like I was only making conversation.

He shrugged some more. The light from the bulb reflected off his shaven head in a swath of brilliant white. He took a giant bite of his sandwich. "I am only new. I guard. No one tells me nothing." He frowned. "Some don't think I have brains for it."

Ouch. "But you must know something." I tried. "Who brought me here? Where is this place? What do they want from me?"

He knit his brow. "That's a lot of questions."

Oh, come on! "Alright, here's one, then. Where am I?"

The big man looked at me, his smirk back on. "Can't tell you!"

I was sweating now. "Why? Don't you know this too?"

"I do know," he whispered conspiratorially, using his sandwich to hide his mouth. "But I am not supposed to tell you," he giggled.

"Why ever not?" I moaned. I didn't have time for this!

"They told me not to tell you anything. You see," he confided shyly. "I do tend to talk a lot sometime. It's a defect, they say."

My throat was completely dry. It seemed whoever had kidnapped me and left me this guard had told him in quite explicit terms to not tell me things. "If they told you all this, why didn't they just tell you not to talk to me at all?" I asked.

"Oh, they did," he reassured. "But I always somehow end up breaking that promise."

Figures.

I twisted my wrists again, trying to find a comfortable spot. The cuffs dug in deeper. If they had been any tighter, I would have lost all feeling in my hands by now.

I had to keep him talking. If he broke this promise, maybe he would break some others too. It was only a matter of finding out which ones he was more inclined toward breaking.

"What's your name?" I asked sweetly. I didn't smile. I wasn't that stupid. I was a captive. A smiling prison would have been kind of a dead giveaway. "Mine's Zara."

"I know," he said cheerfully. "Little girl's name's Zara."

"Yes it is. And what's yours?" I asked again.

He pulled a face. "I can't tell you," he reiterated.

I feigned pouting. "But why not? How can your name help me escape? Surely they didn't tell you to not tell me your name too, right?"

"The—they told me not to talk to you."

"But what are you going to do all the time they take to come here?" I asked, making a concerned face. "How long will they take?"

His brow knit again. "Yes..." he agreed. “They might take long." He frowned. "Or short. Who knows?"

My feelings of frustration and utter helplessness were growing by the second. He was making me want to rip my hair out and he hadn't even told me anything. My legs were numb and my shoulders hurt. How long had I been sitting here? What time was it? Did Mr. Rodwell and the others even know what had happened? Were they looking for me right now? Where were they looking? In the city? Was I even in the city anymore?

I looked at the man again. He was my only hope. The only way I could get out of here before whoever this master was came. But he isn't responding!

Then you just have to make him.

How? He won't say anything!

Well, I sure can say that a better step toward accomplishing your goal would be to talk to him and not me.

Smartass.

He was busy taking another bite of his sandwich. I wondered what he had inside it. Which then led me to think about my own forgotten sandwich lying on a plate in Mr. Rodwell's kitchen. And that led me to think about how I hadn't eaten anything for so long. Funny how the train of thoughts runs.

"What's the time?" I asked.

He had been chewing a bite when the question hit him. He completed the morsel before beaming. "I can't tell you."

"Come on!" I said in frustration. "I thought you liked to talk. I just want to talk. I am really bored."

He was silent for a long time. Then he vanished into the shadows again. Wait...was he leaving me? Maybe I could find someth—

Nope. He was back, this time carrying a chair. He placed the chair beside mine, a little to the side and front, and then sat down facing me. The sandwich, of which only a little bite was left, vanished into his mouth. "I do like to talk," he said, swallowing. If my stomach hadn't been full of nerves, I think I would have been drooling by now.

I grabbed at the few straws he threw with flailing hands, as a drowning man might a life line. "Then tell me about yourself," I invited. Anything. Please give me anything that could lead to what I want. "What's your name?"

He hesitated only a moment longer before making up his mind. "McKenzie," he said proudly. "Alan McKenzie."

"That's an impressive name," I complimented, distracted. I twitched my hands again. Could I squeeze out of the cuffs? I had had a lot of small sized bangles in Pakistan. When you think something's pretty, who cares about the size, huh? So, I knew how to get my hand out of thin circles. But with bangles, I usually had lubrication. What could I use to lubricate my hands here? And besides, the cuffs were only free enough to not hamper my blood supply. Was it even possible to be able to squeeze my hands that thin? It seemed the cuffs were threaded through a bar in the chair’s back, hampering my mobility even further. "Who named you?"

McKenzie's eyes were dreamy. And just a tad bit sad, I think. "My mother," he said.

Double ouch.

"How old are you, Alan?" Maybe I could break them? They were only plastic, right? I could twist hard and break them. But I had no place to move! If I could at least see what I was doing, it wouldn’t have seemed such a daunting task. But I couldn't, and the frustration only grew.

"Nineteen," he said with a boyish little smile, shifting slightly. The chair under him groaned.

"Young, aren't you, for all this?" The cuffs were digging deeper and deeper. Suddenly, I felt something warm between my palms. The pain was swift. Shit.

"Of course not!" he scoffed. "I am old. Boys from my orphanage come here to work when they are only eighteen. I was just too scared to try it out until now."

Wait...was I getting somewhere with him? "Really? And do you like it here? It doesn't seem your friends treat you well, going off and leaving you to babysit me."

"This is a test," he told me. Wow, his mouth really was opening. I made fists with my fingers and brought the insides together, hoping further movements wouldn’t cut something vital. The ties strained against my skin. "They test you to see if you're worthy. There's a lot of money here. And work. There's work. I like it here."

"You kidnap innocent people," I informed him. "How's that work? If you were looking for work, won't it have been better to look in the city?"

"Innocent people?" He snorted. I did not like the look he sent my way. "Who are you talking about? You are innocent?" He laughed. "None of you are innocent. If you rich ass bastards actually cared enough, you would have taken care of us with all your money, not just throw us away to fend for ourselves!"

The words left his mouth, but sounded eerily not his own.

"If you rich people had cared," he continued, spitting in earnest, leaving me blinking and trying to figure what button I had pressed, "you would have helped us before. We had no one, us orphans, and what did you do? You clumped a lot of us together in one hell of a building and fed us and clothed us, and left us to rot by ourselves. This is our city too. Why do we have to be stashed away like dirty laundry? And why is it that you remember our morals and upbringings only when we have our hands around your throat, demanding what is ours?" he enquired.

I stared at him, ceasing the movement of my hands. "When did I question your morals and upbringing?" I asked. Goodness, did he even know what he was talking about? He sounded like he was reading a paragraph off a textbook. Or maybe the words someone else had put into his head. "And who the hell are you calling rich? I struggle every month to pay the bills and you think I am rich? Are you sure you even picked up the right person?" I was really annoyed now. Rich indeed. I snorted.

"Of course you are rich," he said derisively. "You live in that big apartment with Alexander Rodwell. You're his toy, aren't you?" He smirked.

My heart plummeted. "You think I live in that apartment because I am with Mr. Rodwell?" My voice was climbing higher and higher. "You think I live there because I have money? Are you out of your mind?"

He was starting to look concerned. He said, "Well...yes, of course."

"And you think you can ask him for ransom?" I asked, not quite able to believe what I had gotten myself into.

"Well...I don't know, of course. They tell me nothing. But what else could it be? Why the hell would someone bring you here?"

"Oh, God..." I groaned, slamming my head back against the chair. The white light above shone into my eyes like the doors to another world. "I can't believe this." I brought my head down again and looked at him. For a moment there was only white glow, the bulb on top having effectively fried my pupils, before finally the potato of his face came into view. "Look," I said, "listen to me. There's been a mistake. I am not Mr. Rodwell's girlfriend! I am just his secretary, if even that. There's just som—"

Car wheels could be heard outside. McKenzie's eyes widened in shock. I guess he had gotten comfortable only after planning to get up and put everything right the moment there was even the slightest of sounds from outside. But, as it always happens, a plan only seems to work when it's in your head. In reality, your body plans to betray you all along. So, as tires rubbed against what-ever-it-was-outside, he just sat frozen in his seat, hands curled into fists, face pale and shiny with sweat.

Doors slammed outside. The sudden sound finally broke him out of his trance. He sprang up from his seat like a puppet on springs and, picking it up, threw in back into the shadows. It crashed against other debris, making enough noise to wake the dead. I frowned. He really was not cut out for this life. I would have to advise his Master, whoever the hell he was, to let him go.

After I explained explicitly the fact that I wasn't Mr. Rodwell's girlfriend and that he needed to get his research done before he went ahead and kidnapped someone.

The front of the shack, or whatever this place was, was just as much in shadows as the sides and back, and I could only hear the door open and the sound of footsteps against brick as people came inside. My breath hitched in my throat.

Alright, then. It was now or never. There was nothing to be scared of, of course. This was just a kidnapping for ransom. Nothing more. People weren't harmed in these if they didn't resist—usually. If this Master didn't acknowledge my plea of being the wrong person, I would just have to beg Mr. Rodwell to pay the ransom and then spend the rest of my life paying him back. But then again, maybe not the rest of my life. I couldn't possibly be that expensive. Maybe about ten years.

On that cheerful note, I waited for the people to come closer so I could actually see them. McKenzie was shrinking away in the corner, which, in some distant corner of my mind, made me a uneasy. Why was he scared? Simple kidnappers couldn't possibly be that scary, could they? I could feel apprehension spike in my blood, but I ignored it.

The first man that came into the circle of my own personal lamp was exactly the same as the second and the third. Not that a threesome of identical triplets had walked in, by any means…it was only that they were so unremarkable.

One of them had his hair shaved into a crew cut, one had it worn long and unruly—lice's paradise—and the third had no hair at all. All of them wore basic cargo pants and vests, just like McKenzie. The only difference between them was that while McKenzie carried a sandwich, they carried long guns. And the guns weren't a joke either. They carried them like a mother would her baby. With care. With affection and familiarity. The guns meant business.

That tiny little detail made me gulp.

But when the last man stepped into the lamp light, I did not gulp. Why? Because I had nothing to gulp. My mouth went completely dry.

Ever imagined how it would feel if the devil, with his red eyes, visits you?

That's how meeting Frank Rodwell felt like. Like the devil with his red eyes.

Master... Master Frank.

All thoughts of ransom and explanations vacated my mind. My hope shattered.