On the surface, server rooms made for brilliant prisons.
Alone, her fear dissolved, dissipated until she was empty of the consuming internal battle. In its place was not fury, but resolve. If Euan and Nick had taught her anything, they had shown her the worth of herself. Not as a commodity like that of which these men meant to use her, but in the sense that she had skills, she had attributes that were more than just the muscle and bone that made up her body. Or what lay between her legs.
Kira was a human that was smart and brave. She was valuable as a person that had a brain, that could make decisions, see the present, and judge it. She was no longer going to let men define her, force her into a plaything for their pleasure. She was sick of this presumed inferiority, this lack of civility.
This devastating lack of humanity.
Yes, she was smaller. Yes, she was physically weaker. But that did not make her subservient, at least not in this context.
She waited, her breath held in her chest for the light to gather confidence and show itself again.
The dying globe zapped with its swan’s song.
She twirled around where she stood. She had worked in marketing, but many of her friends had been in Information Technology. There was one thing she knew about servers. They needed to be kept cool, lest they overheat and breakdown. Somewhere in this room would be a ducting system large enough to chill the numerous machines that would have been housed in here.
In the strobe lighting, her eyes darted to the roofing, the walls, in search of the way out. The internal cabinets had been removed, but not the ones that lined the walls. When she spied the vent in the ceiling, she almost whooped with elation.
The light dissolved.
She closed her eyes for no reason other than to focus, bit the inside of her cheek and considered both her options, and humankind’s path to destruction.
How had fathers, brothers, husbands and sons turned into this? How had good men, who once loved and respected women as their partners and lovers, as their family, morphed into these creatures?
How had the human race evolved into this?
A trigger had been pulled. Civility and decency destroyed in the explosive aftermath. They had been convinced by the government that stood by and watched the destruction that their neighbours were their enemies, and that their friends were now foe. Load the shotguns, hoard the food. Those that stood beside them were not there to hold out a helping hand, but to steal what was left. It was this narrative that caused dystopia. It was this fear that drove the violence and cruelty. Humanity needed a leader. A trailblazer to show them what comraderie and decency could provide. What shared responsibility meant, illuminate the pathway out of the terrible, vicious mess they had created for themselves. If they were to survive as a species, they had to stop this warpath to extinction.
If they continued as they were, with death, rape and torture as their foundation, they wouldn’t see another thirty years.
Guidance was needed, a hand to support them on the road to success. She had told Euan that if change, true change, was really a possibility, they had to continue as they meant to go on. Equality had to be their foundation, and love to be their crown.
The men of this world had been given a chance to rule. In her opinion, they had failed.
She was small, the odds insurmountable. She had held hope close to her heart.
In this space, her tiny stature was going to work to her advantage.
Behind the rapid beat of her heart, the hum of the light remained. Patience would win out. But she knew that time was also her enemy.
Soon Parker would come for her, soon the hands that had maimed so many others would scar her too. If her plan to escape failed, she would suffer under those malevolent eyes.
Another rapid flicker. She dashed before darkness resumed. A lone, abandoned screw in the wall made an effective lance. Only a few precious moments of scraping the twine that bound her hands together against its sharp, rimmed edges was needed.
Her fingers burned as the blood flooded the muscles and tendons. She shook them and hissed through the pain. In the darkness, her hands free, she felt along the walls until she discovered hope. The shelving of the cabinets that lined the walls were used as a ladder.
It was then easy to climb them until she could pry her fingertips into a vent cover and pull it from the wall.
She was nimble, lithe and quick. The soundproofing designed to keep the hum of the servers from outside was to her advantage. Strength and agility were used to her success and with only a few wiggles and scraped knuckles, Kira heaved her body into the cramped air-conditioning duct.
Then, she crawled towards freedom.
Chapter 20
Nick
The truck declared useless, Nick didn’t feel the miles he travelled on his feet. He didn’t register the intermittent rain, the howling wind, the day that bled into the night. It was nothing to him, inconsequential. It was simply something that happened to his body rather than his mind. He was on lockdown. His brain only thought of survival, but it was not his own it focused on.
She was there, in that fucked-up place. It was surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. It was slashed with red paint in a mark of ownership, in a sign of warning, a threat, a deterrent. It didn’t dissuade Nick. Nothing as simple as paint ever would.
But it was still a cause for caution.
When he had spied the industrial sector on the horizon, his gut had revolted. It had been the first time in hours he had noticed his body. She was lost somewhere in the mass of innumerable buildings, the labyrinth of roads, the sea of concrete and tar. It registered a primal surge of hopelessness. He heeded
