Gasping for air, I took another right turn through the maze of hallways. Pressing my back up against the wall to remain hidden as long as possible, I stopped to catch my breath. I didn’t have long, though, before I heard the sound of my captor’s slow, steady footsteps coming after me. I took off again down the hallway. I needed to get out.

 

 

I knew I couldn’t let myself get strapped back down to that table. I shuddered with a combination of dread and arousal at the things that had already been done to me. The ways I’d already been changed. 

 

I didn’t know exactly how I came to be freed. It just seemed like the haze in which I spent the past… minutes? hours? days? lifted, and I came back to myself all of a sudden. And for the first time in… well, however long it had been, I wasn’t strapped down and immobilized. 

 

Terrified and disoriented, all I knew was that I had to get out.

 

So I ran. 

 

I just couldn’t seem to find my way out amidst the maze of hallways. I couldn’t even figure out what kind of building this was supposed to be.

 

It was all a bit unnerving; aside from the terror of not knowing why I was being kept here or what was being done to me, I couldn’t help but feel like my sudden freedom, the unlocked door, and the calmness of my captor’s footsteps only meant more trouble for me. 

 

 

It was just one glance! I only took one split-second glance behind me to see how close behind he was when I barrelled into something and crashed to the floor.

 

Not something.

 

My captor. 

 

 

I was so utterly confused about how he could possibly have ended up ahead of me that by the time I got my wits about me enough to even try to scramble back to my feet, his knee was already pressed into my back and my wrists were being cuffed together. 

 

I managed one pathetic kick that hit nothing but air before he spoke, close enough to my ear that I could feel his breath.

 

 

And that’s all it took for my limbs to go completely limp. 

 

 

He snapped his fingers, and before my very eyes, the maze of hallways I had, until moments ago, been desperately trying to escape transformed into a straight, not even all that long, completely normal corridor. 

 

I was laid out on the floor, hands cuffed behind my back, unable to even struggle, mere metres from the door through which I’d escaped out to the hallway in the first place. 

 

It was far enough away that I couldn’t read the word, especially without my glasses, but there was a very clearly marked exit immediately ahead of me. 

 

 

I started to sob with the realization of just what had been done to me, how much power he had over me. I’d been completely physically free, less than thirty metres from the building’s exit, for at least fifteen minutes, and he hadn’t even bothered to do anything about it until I literally ran into him. I sobbed harder when I thrashed as hard as I could in my bonds, but my muscles refused to respond.

 

My captor hoisted me seemingly effortlessly over his shoulder, and I watched the exit move further and further away until the door to my prison clicked shut right in front of my face with a terrifying finality.

 

That’s when I broke. 

 

He laid me out on the table I had been strapped to before, my hands uncomfortably digging into my back behind me. I didn’t care. I was already starting to numb out. I couldn’t even find the will to flinch my face, the only part of my body responding to my own control, in revulsion when he reached down and cupped my cheek.