The cell went dark again as the man slid the rectangle shut.

Back to darkness.

Cassy waited patiently for the door to open, but it didn't happen. She counted three minutes before she pounded on the closed window hole. Nobody answered.

Is this some kind of joke? Are there a cluster of bemused mercenaries outside of this room, snickering under their breath as I pound on their window?

She pressed her ear to the cold steel, and listened for any sounds of movement.  There didn't seem to be anyone there, anymore.

Still, this isn't so bad, Cassy thought to herself. She'd been taken prisoner once before, just out of atmo near Ending. When the Authority took prisoners off a backwater planet, they didn't afford them the luxuries of a clean and adequately sized containment area.

I can still remember the dank, sour smell of flesh. They hadn't even cleaned out the body locker before tossing me in. If it weren't for the guard's unmet hungers, she'd probably still be trapped in there. But, a man easily excited was a man easily killed.

Unfortunately for Cassy, these Mercs didn't seem as easily excited. The abruptness with which the man had closed his communication window gave Cassy a pretty clear picture of what tools she did and didn't have to work with.

Realizing that she was left to her own devices, she quickly set upon finding a way out for herself.

Eight feet by four feet. Low ceiling.  Sheet steel, with a single sliding window that seems to lock from the outside, and a single door, hinged. The floor feels rusty and unclean, but the walls are smooth and new. Clearly built independent of whatever surrounds it, probably a standard Hethar-Lewis bolt-down storage template or some such.

It took the better part of an hour to find what she was looking for. One of the corner braces was held in with bulkier, clumsier screws than the rest of the cell. Clearly a replacement piece. With a significant amount of effort, Cassy managed to unscrew one of the screws, and then the other. She pulled the corner brace out of its place, and in the darkness held it up triumphantly.

And now what? I'm in the exact same position I was a moment ago, but now I'm holding... a bracket.

It took Cassy at least another twenty minutes to figure out her next step. And from there, it took another two hours before she managed to pop the door open from inside. From the corner of the dark cell, she peered out and scanned the room.

Empty. No guards rushing over to throw me down and re-secure me. Surely they knew I'd try to escape the cell.

With no visible threats, Cassy walked out of her cell into the room enclosing it. She only saw two items in the room, aside from the steel box she'd just left.

The first was a camera that swerved, almost quizzically, toward her. The second were her shoelaces, carefully placed in the center of the room.

Are they testing me, or toying with me?

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I fancied trying my hand at sci-fi, but as always my horror addication took over. I enjoyed setting the scene for this story with my first chapter, but then I kind of lost interest as sci-fi isn't really my thing. So anyone who can blend sci-fi and horror in equal parts can pick it up if they want to.

updated Aug 6 by Monkette