Page 81 of The Bait

And he was sure it had been... but he still had to try.

He pressed his back to the wall, and using his bound feet, he pushed himself up, his torn shoulder protesting loudly. He groaned out through gritted teeth at the pain and exertion, the stab wound in his side leaking fresh blood.

Fuck.

When he was finally upright, leaning his back against the wall, he took a few deep breaths, allowing his throbbing head to stop spinning.

He edged over until he felt the door jamb under hisbound hands, fumbling over, searching for the door handle... to find only the hole where the handle should have been.

Goddammit.

Harry tried to ram his good shoulder into the door instead, pain reverberating through his whole body with each slam.

It didn’t move a millimetre.

All it did was leave him panting, breathless.

Hurting.

“Wh-what was that?” Lucas asked weakly. He sounded confused.

“Just me,” Harry replied. “Checking the door. Pretty sure it’s welded shut.”

“H-Harry? Harry, is that you?”

Could he not remember?

“Yeah.”

“Is . . . Asher . . . here?” He asked, rasping back breaths between each word. “Yunho? Where’s Yunho?”

Harry deflated. Any hope he’d briefly had before simply withered away.

“I don’t know where they are,” Harry admitted. “There’s only silence outside. So it’s pretty safe to assume we’ve been left for dead.”

Why they didn’t kill them both, Harry could only guess.

Maybe they’d be back for them. Maybe their torture wasn’t over yet.

“There’s no water,” Harry said flatly.

Hell, if the door had been welded shut and fully sealed, they had limited oxygen too.

Fuck.

He hadn’t even thought of that before now.

He shuffled to the other side of the door, feeling the jamb, trying to feel if a lick of air was coming in.

He couldn’t feel anything.

Hopelessness etched around him instead.

He wanted to lash out and scream, and maybe pummel the shit out of something, but there was no point.

He pulled against his arm restraints. He wasn’t even sure what they’d bound him with. Zip ties most likely. They felt thin and bit into his skin like a zip tie.

He tried straining his wrists apart, his torn shoulder screaming with pain with the effort. But because of the size of his wrists and his arms, Harry imagined it’d have taken zip-tie cuffs and a third zip-tie chain-linked between them.

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