𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐋𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐖𝐀𝐒 almost unrecognisable. Staring into the mirror seemed foreign, but when she frowned, it frowned, when she scrunched her nose, it scrunched its nose, when she bared her teeth, it did the same. Exhaling heavily, she messed with her hair to try and get it to sit right, but there was no denying it.
It was still her.
"You're in the big leagues now, kid," Cady echoed her father's words to her from when she was attending baseball tryouts at the age of nine, eventually lasting less than a season. She pursed her lips, biting at the inside of her cheek. Her heart was pounding, her thoughts were racing, and her hands were sweating. She willed herself to turn away from the mirror and exit the bathroom, touching her fingertips to the framed photograph on her mantle as she passed it, one of the only things she had already unpacked since moving in less than a week ago.
In a total of 24 days, her life had flipped on its head. She wasn't entirely forced to take this on, but after the words of encouragement and a letter of recommendation from Pete, she had made the second major relocation of her life. New apartment, new city, new career; she had to leave everything and start fresh, including the house she had grown up in. She had lived by herself for almost three years, but now, in completely unfamiliar surroundings and almost enemy territory, she'd never felt more alone.
Scooping up her keys from the kitchen counter, she took one last surveying glance over her new apartment, inhaling deeply. "You got this, Cadence..." She heard the words as they left her lips, but it would take far more convincing to ease her anxieties today. She forced herself an encouraging nod as she closed the door behind her, locking it, and finally took her first venturing steps in her new direction.
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𝐀𝐖𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐍 𝐁𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐄 cold and damp cement beneath her calloused hands, the young blonde groaned, her eyes straining against the darkness. "Hello?" she croaked, barely able to lift her head from how heavy it felt. "Is anyone there?"
Met by silence broken only by a rhythmic metallic tapping in the distance, she sighed, her temple pressed to the floor again. Delirium clouded her mind, allowing her memory to only come back in fuzzy patches, itching like an old corduroy. She made an effort to sit up, clutching her hands to her head, but her wrists were bound together by a thick strip of beige fabric, her ankles shackled to a pillar in the middle of the room.
