Page 83 of Exit Strategy
“It was not smart of you to come alone,” the woman said. “And DHS isn’t coming back, they got everything they needed.”
“I’m going to bind your hands behind you if you surrender. No one has to be shot in the head. We’ve made it all day with zero fatalities. Let’s keep it that way,” he said. I mouthed anokay, too petrified to nod my head. I let the stranger put my wrists behind my back and heard the soft whisper of cable ties binding me.
I felt shame at the sob I let out when the woman took the gun away from my head. He patted me down and took my phone. He seemed surprised that was all I had. The expression on his face, I felt sick with humiliation. He made me feel like a child pretending to be an adult, the way I had felt when I failed to measure up to become a First Daughter.
He tied me to a tree, and left me alone, for a while.
There was hushed conversation between the two of them, and I could only imagine it was over the fact that the woman really wanted to kill me, and that she hadn’t, and he wasn’t going to let her.
I didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t New Eden or Fallout.
My hands went numb, and my wrists ached from the cable ties. I would have killed to wipe at my face. I knew I looked awful, my eyes red and swollen from the silent tears I had shed.
Fuck.
“Hey,” I said, my voice startling me with how raw it sounded.
“What?” the woman said.
“Can I have a drink, and I need to pee…” I croaked.
There was a long pause – silence that lasted for minutes, an eternity of minutes. Some sort of insect crawled across my leg and wiggled its legs at me before moving along.
“Hey?” I repeated.
“I don’t care,” the woman said. “If I bring you water, you’ll just have to pee more. Hold it, you’ll balance out.”
There was another long silence, and then a hushed discussion.
The man walked to where I could see him, and he looked down at me, gauging me, seeing what condition I was in. Fucked, fucked was the condition I was in. I hadn’t eaten properly in two days, just junk food and energy drinks, and not a full night’s sleep in a week. I was ragged, and exhausted, and I could feel where we had fought before and now. I knew I had to be on the verge of dehydration.
He let me drink from a water bottle, and as absurd and insulting as it was, the water was cold, and I felt tears in my eyes again.
“We’re leaving in the morning,” he said.
“Please don’t leave me tied to this tree,” I said.
“We’re not going to,” he said. “You’ll be blindfolded and driven to an undisclosed location, and then we’re going to turn you loose. You’ll be on your own to get back to your people. My companion is a little upset because we aren’t going to do anything to you. I consider it… mercy.”
“I don’t want to die,” I whispered.
“We’re all going to die, every one of us, eventually,” he said.
“Please don’thurtme,” I managed. I couldn’t even say the word. He certainly had the ability to do anything he wanted to me.
“Why would I harm you? You’re disarmed, and detained,” he said. “Does New Eden have a habit of harming people it apprehends?”
“No, we don’t apprehend people, we’re just private security,” I said. He let out a chuckle, and I felt his eyes bore into me. “And I don’t want my first time to be like this—”
“Wait… what?” He looked genuinely surprised. “Do you think I’m going to take advantage of you?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Well, I’m fucking not. Put that out of your mind. The only thing I’m here to do is walk you to the latrine so you can have a piss, and then back to the tree,” he said. “Then I think we need to have a talk, just the two of us.”
I nodded.
“Are you going to untie me?” I asked.
