Don’t let go.

She tightened her grip and pulled out the screw, a grinding sound of metal on metal.

The shelf tilted forward, losing its front support. Something hard and heavy slid down it, knocking into her shoulder.

Pip flinched.

Her grip loosened, just for a second.

The screw fell from her hand.

A small clatter of metal on concrete, bouncing once, twice, rolling away.

Away into the dark unknown.

Nononononononono.

Breaths rattled in and out of her nose, hissing against the edges of the tape.

Pip swiped with her legs, feeling out the unknown, this way and that. There was nothing around her but concrete. The screw was gone, out of reach. And she was dead again.

‘I’m sorry,’ she told the Ravi in her head. ‘I tried. I really did. I wanted to see you again.’

‘It’s OK, Sarge,’ he told her. ‘I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you. Plans change all the time. Think.’

Think what? That had been her last chance, the last sliver of hope, and now the terror was feeding itself on that too.

Ravi sat with her, back to back, but he was actually the heavy vat of weedkiller leaning against her, pushing down on the loose corner of the shelf. The metal groaned, bending out of shape.

Pip tried to take Ravi’s hand behind her and felt the drooping corner of the shelf instead. Felt the tiniest gap between the lopsided shelf and the pole it was supposed to be attached to. Tiny. But enough to slide her fingernail through. And if it was big enough for that, then it was big enough for the width of the duct tape wrapped around her wrists.

Pip held her breath as she tried. Lowering her hands, forcing that empty side of tape through the gap. It caught on the shelf, so she shifted and jerked, and it came free. She slipped her binds below the shelf, and now she was attached only to the lowest part of the shelving unit. Just this small length of pole and the ground it rested on, that was all that was keeping her here now. If she could somehow raise the leg of the pole, she could slip her restraints down over the end and off.

She shuffled her bound feet, feeling around the area, careful to keep blocking the vat so it didn’t fall. Her legs dipped down, into the lowered channel running through the concrete floor. That was an idea. If she could drag the shelf forward to that gutter, there would be space beneath the pole leg for her to slip out. But how was she going to drag it? She was attached to it by the wrists, arms locked behind her. If she hadn’t been able to fight off Jason Bell with her arms, there was no way she could lift this heavy shelving unit with them. She wasn’t that strong, and if she was going to survive, she had to understand her limits. That wasn’t her way out of here.

‘So, what is?’ Ravi prompted.

One idea: the duct tape had snagged against the uneven shelf as she’d lowered her hands. If she kept passing the tape through that small gap, kept snagging, maybe it would start to tear small holes in her binds. But that would take a while, a while she’d already spent loosening the nut and removing the screw. DT could be on his way back at any time. Pip must have been alone for over an hour now, maybe more. Alone, even though Ravi was right here. Her thoughts in his voice. Her lifeline. Her cornerstone.

Time was a limitation. The strength of her arms another. What was left?

Her legs. Her legs were free. And unlike her arms, they were strong. She’d been running from monsters for months. If she was too weak to drag or lift the shelves, maybe she was strong enough to push them.

Pip explored the unknown with her legs again, stretching out to the back pole of the shelving unit. Through the fabric of her trainers, she could feel that the back side of the shelves wasn’t against the wall. It stood a few inches in front of it, at least the width of her foot. Not a lot of room, but it was enough. If she could push the shelves back, they would over-tip, landing against the wall. And the front legs would stick up, like an insect on its back. That was the plan. A good plan. And maybe she really would live to see everyone again.

Pip swung her legs forward and dug in her heels, using the lip of the gutter to push against. She propped up her shoulders against the front of the shelf, still blocking the nearest vat from sliding off.

She pushed down, into her heels, and raised herself from the floor.

Come on, she told herself, and she didn’t need to hear it in Ravi’s voice any more. Hers was enough. Come on.

Pip screeched with the effort of it, the muffled sound filling up her death mask.

She threw her head back against the pole and pushed with it too.

Movement. She felt movement, or hope was only tricking her.

She shuffled one foot closer, and the other, and she drove them into the gutter, shoulders ramming against the shelves. The muscles up the back of her legs shuddered, and it felt like her stomach was tearing open. But she knew it was this or death and she pushed and she pushed.

The shelves gave way.

They tipped back. The sound of metal meeting brick. A crash as the vat of weedkiller finally slid free, cracking open against the concrete. Others sliding, thumping against the back wall. A sharp chemical smell, and something soaking into her leggings.

But none of that mattered.

Pip lowered her binds down the metal pole. And there, at its end, was freedom. It stood up only about an inch from the concrete, that’s what it felt like, and that was more than enough. She slipped the tape over the end and she was free.

Free. But not all the way.

Pip shuffled away from the shelves, from the liquid pooling around her. She lay on her side, tucked her knees into her chest, and slipped her bound hands over her feet, arms now in front of her.

The tape came off easily, one hand slipping out of the space left by the pole, then freeing the other.

Her face. Her face next.

Blindly, she felt around her duct tape mask, searching for the end DT had left. There it was, by her temple. She pulled it, the tape undoing with a loud rip. It pulled at her skin, pulled out eyelashes and eyebrows, but Pip tore it off, hard and quick, and she opened her eyes. Blinked in the cold storeroom and the destruction of the shelves behind her. She kept going, pulling and tearing, and the pain was agonizing, her skin raw, but it was a good pain, because she was going to live. She held on to her hair to try to stop it pulling out from the root, but small clumps of it came away with the tape.

Unwinding and unwinding.

Up her head, and down her nose. Her mouth came free and she breathed through it and breathed hard. Her chin. One ear. Then the other.

Pip dropped her unravelled mask to the floor. The duct tape long and meandering, scattered with hair and small spots of blood it had claimed from her.

DT had taken her face, but she had taken it back.

Pip leaned over and unravelled the tape still binding her ankles, then she stood up, her legs shaking, almost buckling under her weight.

Now the room. Now she just had to get out of the room and she would be alive, as good as. She skittered over to the door, treading on something on the way. She glanced down; it was the screw she’d dropped. It had rolled almost all the way to the door through the unknown. Pip rammed the door handle down, knowing it was useless. She’d heard Jason lock her in. But there was a door at the other end of the storeroom. It wouldn’t lead outside, but it would lead somewhere.

Pip sprinted to it. She lost control as her trainers scuffed on the concrete, skidding into a workbench beside the door. The workbench jumped, with a sound of colliding metal from a large toolbox on top. Pip righted herself and tried the door handle. It was also locked. Fuck. OK.