Alexandria (ONC entry)

Part two

He smiled that pleasant smile of his, removing his hand from the handle and letting the door slide closed, clasping his hands in front of him. "Positive, Miss Mills." For just a split second, his gaze flickered down.

The briefcase seemed to grow hot in Maxence's hand. She instinctively took a step backwards, her nerves set on edge. Her breathing grew heavier, and she thought in her panicked state, This is it. He's going to kill me. I'm going to die. But he didn't move towards her, didn't give a peep as she slowly backed out of the corridor. There was a slight cock of his head.

"I'll scream if you try anything," Maxence said, her voice trembling. Her glasses started to slide down her slick nose, and she clumsily pushed them back up with her arm. She cursed herself for the twentieth time in two minutes: how could she have been so stupid? "I'll scream, and everyone will hear, and you'll get arrested."

"I wouldn't count on it," Dawson said.

Maxence's breath caught in her throat. He wasn't here alone, of course he wasn't. He was merely the distraction. Head spinning, she turned around, fully prepared to just book it to the nearest information desk, but her path was blocked by a tall man in flight attendant uniform. Maxence almost sobbed and leapt back. The man rolled his eyes and grabbed her arms, forcing her to drop the briefcase. The briefcase. The documents. She would lose it all.

A paralyzing fear spread through Maxence's veins, dousing her to her very core. The one thing she was most afraid of, the one thing her father had always warned her about, the one thing that made her mother lose all colour in her face. Her chest rose and fell with fast breaths. Her voice gave up on her, fleeing to safety when she could not. Huh. The irony.

One of the last things Maxence Mills felt was a sharp prick in her arm that made her cry out, and then a numbness slowly spreading to every inch of her body. Her knees gave out from underneath her. A soft "No, please. Please," made its way past her lips, but even she could barely make out the words. She crumbled, felt two arms loop underneath her armpits and gently deposit her on the ground.

"Steady." That was Dawson's voice. Maxence's eyes rolled back. Her eyelids drooped. Dawson's face was a dark brown blur hovering over her form. His voice echoed when he said, "Now, feel free to scream."

--

Maxence Mills woke with her arms tied behind the backrest of a chair, sitting in front of an empty metal table. She groaned, shaking her head. Blonde locks of hair fell into her eyes: someone had taken out her ponytail. Why the hell had someone taken out her ponytail? That made no sense. She squinted at the dirty stripes on her glasses and silently thanked the heavens that they hadn't taken those from her.

Wriggling her fingers to get some feeling back into them, she blinked a few times, shaking the grogginess from her mind. Then the reality of the situation crashed into her once more with the force of a truck, and she had to fight back the tears threatening to spill from her eyes at any given moment. Forcing herself to take a deep breath, she looked up and cautiously inspected the room she currently found herself in.

A single, naked lightbulb lit the small room. The walls were bland and cracked, a map of Europe pinned to one wall, and beneath it another map, this one of the world. When she looked closer, though, Maxence saw that the first map didn't depict Europe at all: not wholly, at least. It was a map of the Mediterranean Sea, and after some squinting she made out dotted lines running through it. Sailing routes, Maxence figured. She closed her eyes again. Was she on a boat?

The slight rocking of the floor beneath her gave a solid enough answer. Maxence tried to wriggle her wrists from their bounds, grunting in pain when the ropes dug into her flesh. Her feet were bound too, she noticed wryly when she tried to move them: the table hid them from her view. Her captors had done a fine job with the knots. But she wouldn't dare expect anything less from sailors. Well, she reflected with a glance at the shiny metal surface of the table and meeting her own, pale eyes, at least they hadn't gagged her.