Tares City

62. Dilemmas

ARROW BERLIN

Arrow wakes with a thudding headache, the back of her skull throbbing with every heartbeat. The pain she felt was nauseating as her brain struggled to catch up with her surroundings. Coming to her senses, she immediately realizes the gravity of her situation.

She'd been captured.

Her hands were bound behind her, behind the chair she sat upon. There were binds at her wrists and another set higher up along her arms, pulling them tightly together. Her legs suffered the same fate, binds tying each ankle and each shin to its respective chair leg. A hard wooden chair that dug into her skin. There was also one along her stomach, keeping her back flush against the chair, with no room for the slightest movement.

Her capturers were thorough, she acknowledged. To Arrow, the worst of it all was the sensory deprivation she was forced to endure. A noise-cancelling headphones covered her ears blocking out all outside sounds. Accompanying that was a thick black sack of some kind that allowed for nothing to pass through. No light, shadows, or obscured shapes. Completely blind, only hearing the beat of her heart and the blood pulsing through her. She was aware of her every swallow, every breath, her thoughts loud in her head.

She thought back to the crash after she was yanked out of the wreckage by the smug-looking Lycan. She'd injected him with a syringe, and his body fell to the ground in a spasming heap. The other two rushed in after that, seeing their friend on the ground. One grabbed her by the neck but she easily got him, stabbing the needle into his fingers. The third was where she faltered slightly. The Lycan slapped her against the side of her head, sending her to the ground. The assault had disoriented her, allowing him to grab her. The needle she had in her hand slipped out at that moment, and the Lycan had assumed that was all she had. He was wrong, Arrow pulling her last from the cup of her bra. Her movements were slow but the Lycan had her on his shoulder, thinking she was weaponless and could do him no harm.

She'd yanked the protective cover off, driving the point into his back.

He was down, incapacitated - but Arrow's injuries came catching up to her the moment she fell off the Lycan's shoulder. Out of adrenaline, pain, and blurry vision had her stumbling back toward her car. Only to succumb to the darkness then and there.

Part of her wondered what she would have done had she been able to stay awake. Who she would have called for help, for her and Nicholas who was worse off than she.

Nicholas. Shot at the restaurant and injured further in the crash, she wondered if he was alive. Had her capturers saved his life so they could torture and interrogate him as well, or did they leave him there to die?

She knew she wouldn't get an answer anytime soon. Her thoughts moved to brainstorm escape plans. However, she couldn't get past a solution to her binds.

Time seemed as if it dragged on, Arrow waiting anxiously for the arrival of whoever took her. She knew what was coming, the torture, the questions. She also knew that had to know she was awake. She waited for what seemed like hours to her, her heart speeding up every time she thought she heard a shuffle next to her. But it never was, all sounds were her doing. The ringing in her ears would come and go, tricking her into thinking it was an outside noise, slowly getting on her nerves. She began to get impatient, wanting something other than the stark darkness and irritating silence.

Arrow began to wonder if an entire day had passed as she battles against the fatigue and aches in an attempt to stay alert and ready for confrontation.

Sooner than she would have liked, Arrow feels her eyelids becoming heavy, drooping close against her will. Every time they close, she gasps, flinging them wide open only to have them slowly shut again.