Time Sensitive Target

Part 2 - Taken

"Smile for camera," an accented voice echoed as blinding flashes illuminated the pitch black in strobes of disorienting images. I couldn't even make out a full silhouette, but somebody was stood before me unknowingly close, and with the haze of light fever it was difficult to distinguish anything now my eyes were beginning to adjust. Unlocalised pain radiated through me, the same deep ache I'd suffered for however many days of being transported across land in the back of containers. As steadily as I could I began to piece together a picture of everything I knew. Somebody was in front of me, a wall was behind me. I could feel the damp meeting point of ground and wall and edged my fingers towards the fold, seeking comfort in the safety of absolute shelter for at least part of my body. I huddled as close as I could until my back was pressed fully up against it, making sure my arms and head felt the resoluteness of concrete. If I got close enough maybe it would swallow me up, and whatever lay in store for me next would simply disappear. 

Murmured conversation began, and I strained my ears to distinguish words, phrases, anything that could tell me what their native tongue was. Throughout the days we'd spent as human cargo I hadn't heard a word; the container had been opened and miserly scraps of food and water had been passed in, but nobody had spoken. We had changed hands once, hooded and bound, immediately transferred into another truck, smaller and filthier than the last. I didn't remember arriving here, wherever that was. How we got from the truck to this location was a complete mystery to me, and all I could be sure of was that I'd been conscious and in the same spot for no more than an hour or so before whoever was now in the room had entered. 

There was something final about this destination, I knew that much. The hood had been removed; my skin exposed to its surroundings without so much as a hint of a breeze to curb the relentless dry heat. I'd been sweating and shaking in the stifling torridity of the trucks for the duration of our journey, and the humidity had been unforgiving. 

As voices pricked up again I desperately tried to capture their conversation. Turkish, I realised, they were Turkish. With that sinking knowledge I swallowed down a lump in my already dry throat. Their nationality pieced together fragments of our journey through fractured memories, starting with the rocky shoreline in Lesbos. We'd been knocked unconscious, and the next heady awareness brought me to the steel confines of a container being hauled across land on the back of a truck. They'd almost certainly dragged us into the dinghy and on to the trawler across sea to Turkey, and after days of travelling across land, we had been moved a fair distance. No sane Turkish freedom fighter would keep Western hostages in Turkey, so we would have been moved across a border. There would be no sense in moving us East, far from their presumed cause; so, we were south. Syria. 

Lights blinked on with an audible judder and I jumped with a lurch of fear. The sudden physical jolt made my already aching bones groan and I gripped my fingertips hard into the corner of the wall, desperate to cling to something. I winced my eyes closed, white specks of light racing across the blank inside of my view until I prized them open little by little. 

"Smile, sexy one," a voice echoed. Amid bleary adjustment I attempted to glace at the surroundings. A laptop sat on a table directly in front of me- of us, I realised, as I noticed Jas slumped a few feet away. She was out cold, her sandy blonde hair splayed across her face. Where were the others? There had been five of us at one point, but on the transfer from one truck to another our hoods had been removed, and only Wajid, Jasmin and I remained. 

A prickle of heat raced down the back of my neck and I kept my breathing steady as I glanced, unmoving, around my surroundings. My heart raced deafeningly in my ears, and I fought against the urge to panic until I was trembling with tears with every shred of conscious thought I had. We were in what looked like a basement- concrete walls and floor, no windows, only one door. What lay beyond that was unknown to me, were there stairs? Were we in a city, or somewhere rural? Was anybody looking for us? Did anyone even know we were gone?