TRAIN [FIRST DRAFT]

Chapter 1: Underground

"Abba!" the name escaped Aimee's mouth.

Aimee was upset and had been solitary for the past nine hours - although, she had slept through the last six. She could not see anything, although her eyes were wide open. She was so over the terror of it all. It was her fourth kidnapping, unofficially. As usual, there was nothing she could do.

The familiar situation had become annoying to her, but she could not even act as if she knew how to escape with the AIM tentacle still hugging her limbs. Her formerly clean body was now covered in dust and mud and she was no longer aromatic. But she had stopped complaining about her new smell no more than six hours ago - after bleating about how being dragged underground was the worst method of kidnapping her yet, especially since there were so many rocks along the way. She definitely cried, the evidence showed on her cheeks: parallel stripes as light as the colour of her skin under all that muck. She did nothing; she had no choice but to wait and listen to her sobs echo through the underground cave.

She was all she could hear.

A single tear fell onto the metal arm around her. All she wanted was to be out of the dark, even if it meant sitting with Abba at her dining table.

"Abba! I'm sorry for offending you, but you can't keep me here! This is crazy stupid," she murmured the last part for her own ears.

All of a sudden, there were footsteps. She gasped and looked up, as though she would be able to see who was there. She almost grinned, in the hopes that it was Stefan, but then she realised that he did not know she was there, underground. It could only be Abba - finally. Aimee shut her eyes; she thought it might help her tell which direction she was coming from, and it was difficult to lock-onto Abba's position, until she began their French dialog. It translated:

"Good morning, my darling."

Aimee put her French dialect to the test and asked: "Why don't you turn the lights on and look me in the eyes?"

"I am looking you in the eyes," she smiled through the dark. "Or I would be, if you would open them. No, keep them closed. You won't be able to see me anyway. I don't want this to be weird."

"Then turn on the lights!" shouted Aimee, and the words became an echo.

Abba's voice switched to a deeper tone. "We're in an underground tunnel, there are no lights," she affirmed. "I thought you would have established that by now." Aimee rolled her eyes. They were a vibrant red through Abba's goggles. "I saw that, Aimee."

"Bonne!" she barked, before her American tongue returned. "I'm glad you can see me because that means you know how angry I am right now! Get this freaking tentacle off of me!"

Abba laughed, "Que si vous comportez."

'Only if you behave.'

Aimee glared, her face red-hot, at what she hoped was Abba's silhouette. She tried to wriggle out of the tentacle, but gave up after a short while. She had made numerous attempts before - in those nine-or-so hours - and knew that it was pretty useless. So she inhaled and let out a scream. The cave walls were like a microphone, an amplifier to the sound.

"I think there are other ways to release stress," Abba still spoke in French. "And that is not very good behaviour if you ask me."

"The only thing I asked was that you let me go... and I don't care about what you think," she tested.

She could feel the tension at the bridge of her nose, between her eyebrows. That tension was becoming a frequent thing as of late. She breathed in again – and fortunately, for everyone and everything in that cave, she did not let out another piercing scream. She breathed out. Abba had come to a noiselessness that made it easier for Aimee to calm her nerves. But once they had calmed, she realised how starved she was (and that she really had to pee). And it was as if Abba could read her thoughts when she asked, in her French, malevolent tone: "Are you hungry?"