In a flash, terror subsumed her. She had never wanted more badly to be back in her cramped room in India, woken up by the rooster’s crow and the murmur of her colleagues’ good-natured bickering filtering through the thin walls. These sumptuous surroundings were far more disturbing than a dank basement would be. This wasn’t the kind of everyday crime that filled the headlines. These weren’t local hoodlums trying to scare her off. Her abductors had resources and their gambit must have some larger game behind it. She was not just a victim but a pawn.
And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that Zia hated more than being controlled.
Zia tore off the sheets and sat up. Her head swam and her temples thrummed like gongs under a monk’s mallet. Breathe. Breathe. Okay. The longer she stayed here, the more likely it was that her captors would check in on her. Right now, she had an opening. How many victims had sealed their own fates by procrastinating escape or resistance in the vain hope that the situation might improve? She would get out of here and when she did, she would find out who had done this and make them pay.
Peeling the medical tape from her forearm, she gently removed the IV. Then she knotted the plastic line to stop the flow and yanked off the needle. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was something. She looked down at herself. They had dressed her in a loose-fitting linen tunic and pants that split the difference between resort wear and hospital gown. At least the pants had pockets into which she could slip her needle. Careful to move more slowly this time, she swung her legs off the bed and donned the waiting slippers. Nothing on the bedside table except for an extravagant Guzmania in full bloom. The drawers were empty.
Zia stood, steadying herself with a hand on the bed. She could do this. She must do this. It might be her only chance. She just had to give her body enough time to pull itself together.
Somewhere in the building, she heard the faint sound of a toilet flushing and water running in a sink. Her palms began to sweat. She held her breath and froze, listening. A door closed and footsteps approached up the hallway.
Fuck.
Should she return to bed, pretend she was still unconscious? Wait behind the door, slip up behind whoever entered, and stab the needle through their eardrum and into their brain? Hope that they weren’t coming here to check on her?
Zia’s hands curled into fists. Who was she kidding? She was a humanitarian aid worker, not a secret ninja trained in an ancient mountain temple under the tutelage of stern grandmasters from an unbroken lineage going back millennia. If she could overwhelm her attacker with her expertise at navigating arbitrary bureaucratic labyrinths, she’d be all set, but if it came to actual physical violence, it might as well be over already. She’d gotten ridiculously lucky with the pizza ambush, and had been kidnapped anyway.
The footsteps were getting closer.
Fight or flight? The answer was obvious.
+
11
+
Zia stepped to the window and opened the shutters. Sunlight drenched her. She was on the second floor. A path ran along the side of the building. Beyond, lush jungle rose up to mist-shrouded peaks. Off to the left, sparkling waves crashed against a crescent beach. Where in the world was she? But there was no time for speculation. She only had a few seconds.
Undoing the latch, she pushed the windows open, swung her legs over the sill, reached back and pulled the shutters closed from the outside, only to discover that there was no drainpipe to slide down or convenient handholds. If Galang had his way and screenwriters adapted Zia’s life story, they’d really need to do a better job adding useful props.
Banana trees lined the side of the building, which really did appear to be a villa. The nearest one was a few feet away. Last chance. Go. Now. Do it. Throwing caution to the wind, Zia pushed herself off the sill. She hit the tree at an awkward angle, limbs flailing. But the big leaves slapped at her, breaking her fall as they bent under her weight, and she was able to hook one elbow around the trunk. The combination slowed her down enough that she didn’t break her ankles when she landed on the loamy, moss-covered ground.
For fuck’s sake.
Zia pushed off the trunk and sprinted across the flagstone path, through a mat of hanging vines, and straight into the undergrowth. She plowed forward through a claustrophobic tunnel of dappled green, every root trying to trip her, every branch trying to snag her, every thorn trying to bloody her as she stumbled onward, ever onward, never once looking back over her shoulder, reserving every particle of willpower for the increasingly impossible endeavor of keeping her legs moving, her head clear, her lungs full.
And then, all at once, it was too much. Zia collapsed. Her limbs ached. Her throat burned. The world spun as if it were a die on a craps table.
Darkness.
Zia coughed and spat. She rolled over onto her back in the muck. The racket of birds, animals, and insects made her temples throb. She had had quite enough of returning from unplanned bouts of unconsciousness for one day. Light filtered through the canopy above her, sliced into thousands of glittering shards by soaring trunks and whispering leaves.
Zia’s mom would have loved this place. She would have been able to name every species and trace it back through genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, and domain to the roots of the tree of life itself. She would have taken Zia’s hand and traced her daughter’s finger along the fractal patterns of compound leaves, explained how the plant was a distant cousin that shared a quarter of its genes with humans, and joked about science fiction stories that imagined humanoid aliens arriving from distant galaxies when far more exotic lifeforms were going extinct every day here on Earth. Their laughter would have been shot through with awe at the extraordinary imagination that was humanity’s greatest strength and flaw, and her mother would have captured everything in prose that transcended the experience itself and invited others to share it. It was a place like this that had claimed her mother’s life.
Zia pushed herself up and leaned against a tree she couldn’t name. She was caked in mud. Her clothes were torn and her skin was scratched and bloody. She must have stubbed her toe on something because the nail was split straight up the middle. It was incredible that the slippers hadn’t disintegrated entirely and that the needle in her pocket hadn’t stabbed her when she fell. Even more incredibly, there was no sign of pursuit. Or maybe that shouldn’t have been so surprising. The forest around her was so loud that she couldn’t hear herself breathe and so thick that she couldn’t even identify which direction she had come from.
She had lost her jailers by losing herself.
If her mother were here, they could have lived off foraging indefinitely. As it was, Zia was more likely to poison than nourish herself by harvesting nature’s bounty, and she was acutely aware of the short half-life of whatever calories and hydration remained in her system.
Shadows deepened and swirled around her. She was alone in a dangerous forest that could be anywhere on this miserable planet. All she knew was that there were people trying to abduct her and all she had was an IV needle and a pair of what might as well be pajamas. Fucked didn’t even begin to cover it.
If only she had accepted her father’s protection. If only she hadn’t decided to walk home from her date with Galang. If only this nightmare would turn out to be nothing more than a bad trip brought on by an experimental psychedelic cooked up in a distant lab that the chaiwala had slipped into their teas on a dare. The air was thick in her bruised and swollen throat. Her stomach performed a Cirque du Soleil routine. The cornucopia of vegetation induced a bout of vertigo.