On what I felt was the fifth day of my captivity – although I will be the first to admit that my reckoning of time had likely fled – they tore the cloth from my mouth and pulled back my blindfold.

As I worked my jaw, I blinked my eyes, trying to adjust to the brightness of the floodlamps behind that illuminated the room before me. My captors loomed behind the lights, anonymous and threatening.

Before me was a mirror, set into the wall next to a heavy metal door. Rust pitted the floor, walls, and ceiling alike. Crusty bolt heads dotted the exposed surfaces at regular intervals. On the diamond plate floor in front of me was the cloth that had been used as my gag. The blood had long since darkened to brown, but I still recognized it as her scarf.

I started to twist my neck around, anxious to glimpse the figures behind when suddenly the lights were extinguished and my room fell into darkness.

Except for the dull glow of the mirror in front of me, which now manifested as a window, backlit from the other side.