Playing With Fire (EDITING)

Kidnapped?

I was sore and dizzy when the blackness cleared from my vision and a room came into focus. My wrists were painfully tied behind my back to a lightweight metal chair. The floor was also metal, as well as the walls and table in front of me. Directly across from where I sat, the wall was built with a large reflective piece of glass, tinted grey, belying shadows shifting on the other side. I knew where I was--an interrogation room. I'd had some experience with interrogations before. Groaning, I sat up, took a deep breath, and strained briefly against the bonds to be sure I had full use of my muscles. Something outside the door crashed against a wall, and the jarring sound dredged up the memories of the previous night.

I had been with mon père on a raid to derail an underground train and destroy cargo. We had almost finished when I heard my father shout. As I struggled to decipher the reverberating words, he disappeared into the shadows of a utility alcove. Then the train roared into sight. I hauled myself off of the tracks in time but slipped on a wet tile and fell to my knees. Before I could stand, a woman grabbed me by the front of my jacket. I scrambled to get away, knowing my father would punish me for getting myself caught. The woman's precise hits and lethal style betrayed her years of experience. We had fought until I felt a sharp pain pierce my right side below my ribs. Darkness had closed around my vision and I'd lost consciousness. Now I was in this chair, and from the gentle swaying motion, we were on board a ship. How long had I been unconscious? How far out to sea was the ship? What kind of ship had an interrogation room?

Jiggling my arm, I eased a knife out of my sleeve and into my hand to snip the bonds. The fighter from the previous night had been experienced, but whoever tied me up was an amatuer if they forgot to pat me down for weapons. There was a possibility leaving my knife was intentional and the captors were playing games. I folded the blade once I was free and slipped the knife back up my sleeve. Reclining my chair, I rested it against the wall and propped my boots on the metal table, crossed at the ankles. If no one was coming for me yet, I might as well get comfortable. A large hole had been ripped in the knee of my jeans and the skin beneath was bloody, but the pain was easy to ignore. The necessary motion of breathing, however, made my ribs ache as if I had been kicked by a horse. A folded piece of gauze was stained with dried blood at the base of my rib cage. Peeking under the gauze, I could see the wound was small, clean, and as accurate a shot as any sniper could make. But it wasn't a bullet wound. I hadn't heard a gunshot. Too round to be from a knife, too accurate to be from a broken rod, and too shallow to be from a screwdriver. Could it have been made with a special kind of arrowhead?

As I replayed the memories of the fight, trying to remember an archer, the door swung open. A woman dressed in black entered first, followed by a man with a quiver strapped to his back. An archer--wonderful. The way he passed me without a second glance confirmed he was the man that shot me and tied me up in this room. He'd known I was here and was comfortable in that knowledge, meaning he could get away without a second look.

"I can do this alone," the woman said.

"One girl didn't do all that damage," he answered, resting his hand with his thumb tucked in the quiver's strap.

"We'll talk about it later but for now, I have an interrogation to conduct."

The man leaned against the far wall to the left of the one-way mirror and rested one foot on the wall behind him with his arms crossed. The woman sat in a chair opposite me and leaned forward.

"Who are you?"

I ignored her, staring a couple inches above her head at the seam where the wall met the ceiling.

"Where are you from? How did you get to the train tracks last night?"

Silence.

"Told you, Natasha, she won't talk," the man said. He was staring intently at an invisible spot on the floor so that the top of his sandy blond head was aimed at me.