Chapter 1
Her whole body aches, rippling pain shooting down her limbs. The corner of her mouth cracks as she struggles against the gag. Mirae has always adapted to difficult situations- over time, it’s become muscle memory. She scans her surroundings with half-lidded eyes.
“A manufacturing hall?” she thinks, hazily.
It looks like an abandoned section of a goods factory. Her gaze moves as far as her position allows. On her right are large wooden boxes, shipping containers, and metal crates. The same structures are scattered across the space, though more densely packed on one side. The floor is layered with hardened coolant or resin spills, dark oil stains marking time like bruises on concrete.
As she takes it in, fragments of memory begin to surface. Last night… a dingy corner of this same place. They had moved her.Repositioned her like cargo.
“Mir-”
The name flickers in her mind. The bald captor.
A phone call. And then- her body reacting without permission. The other one noticed instantly.
A needle.Cold.
Then nothing but spinning darkness. They gave her a shot of sedative.
Mirae's breath turns uneven, but she forces it down. Not now. Not here. She cannot afford panic.
She tries to scan the room again, searching for anything useful- something sharp, something to cut through the ropes binding her wrists and torso. They are tight. Unforgiving and suffocating like they want her dead.
She tries to wriggle, her body sore, but
Blood.
Her heart stutters. A pool lies near her feet- thick, dark, half-dried. Old, but not ancient. Too much of it. Too close.
It isn’t hers.
She would not be alive if it were.
Her eyes slowly track further, despite everything in her screaming not to.And then they inevitably stop.
A body. Mutilated. Her breath catches.
The face is distorted, barely recognizable, but something about it claws at her memory- wrongly familiar. Her gaze locks onto the bald head. and the tattoos
The captor.
The one who had spoken on the phone.
The one who had said-
“Mir.”
Her stomach twists violently. She forces herself to look away, but the image burns behind her eyes. A sharp pain pulses through her skull.
“I’m in deep shit,” she mumbles.
The words slip out before she can stop them. Her voice is hoarse- ragged, like her throat itself has been dragged through metal ever so slightly.
