Despite the sodden cloth in Amelia's mouth, her teeth chattered together and her head throbbed in time as the two men rolled her along in the cart. The little wheels weren't designed to roll over such uneven concrete, but it pulled her out of the fog her mind had been in and helped her work out that she was out the back of the hotel somewhere. It only saddened her when she realised the information was useless if she couldn't pass it on to anyone else.
Before she could think any further, the cloth over the cart was swept backwards and she was lifted again. Once more, she tried to struggle, but being tied, gagged and unable to see gave her little room to achieve anything against two strong men. None of her training had covered what to do after you'd been incapacitated.
As she was slung onto a hard metal floor, she felt a strange sense of weightlessness before she came down hard on one arm. Pain flared, making her grunt. Sounds of scuffles on the cold metal nearby let her know she wasn't going to be alone for the journey, and then she heard the sound of two doors shutting.
A few seconds later another opened and then slammed, but more quietly, as if it was farther away. When the engine started up with a deep, throaty, and ever so slightly inconsistent, rumble she knew she must be in the back of a van.
While Amelia lay there, letting the pain in her arm fade, she thought over everything Tom had taught her in their last lesson together the previous morning. It only made her wish she'd had longer to practice it and hadn't been so awkward about paying attention. Right now it might have been something that could get her out of this mess.
Trying to calm herself down, she closed her eyes and focused on everything she could hear and feel. Someone coughed nearby, giving her a pinpoint on the exact position of her nearest captor. It wasn't a lot of information but it was something new.
Her heart raced and moisture prickled her eyes as she thought about the situation she was in, but she did her best to fight it off. It wouldn't do her any good to let panic overwhelm her, but this wasn't like the previous attacks she'd faced. These men had tried to kill her on previous occasions, and unlike her stalker only months earlier, Amelia knew there would be no talking her way out of this one. She was alone and there would be no direct help from the Holmes brothers.
She exhaled, noticing her nose was starting to block up from the tears threatening to fall. In such a short space of time the wad of cloth in her mouth had dried it out soaking up all the moisture and swelling to fill the space so completely if she couldn't breathe through her nose she'd suffocate.
Amelia reminded herself that this might all be a test and felt herself relax her tense muscles a little. If Myron wanted to see how she'd perform in this situation she wanted to leave him stunned by how well she coped. And if it wasn't a test, her life depended on her coping.
After focusing on her breathing for several minutes, she felt much calmer and returned her attention to the task of escaping, or getting a message to Myron. She could only hope he noticed her absence swiftly. After all, she'd been taken from a hotel he probably owned.
For a few seconds she considered trying to work out where she was going, but she knew she just didn't know London well enough. Even if she did, she'd not taken notice of the first few turns. It would be Myron who would have to trace the journey. She needed to focus on escape. While her hands were tied in front of her she couldn't do much with them, but her feet were untied, and that meant she could run.
Somehow, she'd need enough time to pull the bag off her head as she doubted they were going to remove it soon. While she was thinking about this, it occurred to her that she would need even longer. Her eyes would need to adjust. She'd spent long enough in the dark that her vision would be blinded by daylight. Once more, she wished she'd performed better at Tom's last lesson.
Time seemed to stretch out as Amelia went over the same few thoughts again. She knew she needed to try and escape and she needed to try and get a message to whoever might be coming after her, assuming this wasn't a test. If it was, no one would come after her.
Eventually, she noticed she was going in circles and getting nowhere. She stopped thinking about all the same thoughts and tried to think of a different angle of attack. A book she'd once read came to mind. The book itself was long forgotten, but she knew the characters, once captured, had taken stock of what they had on them that might be of use. Several items had come in handy when it came to their escape plan. Somehow, she might be able to achieve the same thing.
Not long after she thought this she remembered they'd left her handbag behind. She was wearing nothing but a flimsy dress and her coat.
When she thought over the matching underwear underneath, she let out a muffled laugh that she had no doubt would have sounded crazed had it not been hindered. Her best-friend, Sophie, had once joked that the best way a woman could protect herself against rape or kidnapping was to not wear matching underwear. After all, women who did have this sort of thing happen to them, in books or on TV, always wore matching underwear. She chalked it up to mistake number one.
Bringing her back to her situation, the van slowed and turned sharply to one side. The guy beside her then shuffled closer, and she realised something was about to happen. She might not be able to escape, but if she was going to try and leave something for Myron she needed to decide what now.
A light went on in her head as she remembered she had two of the bugs Myron had given her in her right-hand pocket. She could try and hide one of them on herself and turn it on. She was assuming he'd given her working models. The other she could drop somewhere he might notice.
While the driver got out of the van and shut the door behind him, Amelia reached around to her pocket. Trying to make as little noise as possible, she slid her hands inside and pulled out one of the tiny bugs in each hand. Less than a second later the back door of the van swung open, followed by the other.
When her legs were grabbed, Amelia struggled again, dropping one of the bugs as she did. Making sure she then cradled the other safely in the palm of her hand, she allowed herself to be taken to the edge of the van. As they set her on her feet, she let a leg turn to jelly. Instantly she fell to the ground, slamming into the feet of the person next to her.
She heard him swear in Russian; It seemed she'd hurt his foot and her shoulder equally. Allowing herself to yell in pain, she reached her hands up to massage her shoulder, inside her coat and near the edge of her dress.
Before she could plant the bug on herself they yanked her back to her feet again. Her breath caught in her throat as the second device slid from her grip. Her fingers closed on it just in time and cradled it against the palm of the other hand.
She felt a third pair of hands reach out, and between all three of her captors she was slung into a small space. It took less than a second for her to work out that it was a car boot. They pushed in the fabric of her coat around her and then slammed the lid down.
Once more, Amelia felt her heart begin to pound in her chest and her breathing quicken until her lungs felt like they were straining against the restrictions to getting air. Fog crept into her mind and she started to wonder if she was about to pass out.
Little frightened her more than being enclosed in a small space. Just before she passed out, Amelia thought of how Myron would react. Letting her fear get the better of her would disgust him so badly she'd never get him to like her again. This was enough of a motivator that, combined with the light-headedness, she managed to calm her heart back down a little and steady out her breathing.
Amelia estimated she'd been in the van somewhere between three quarters of an hour and an hour, even after adjusting for the eternity it felt like while she lay on the metal flooring. This car was warm, which was an improvement, but she knew she'd be in this space far longer. She needed to conquer this fear and keep it conquered or she wouldn't survive this journey.
As soon as she was once more in control of her body, Amelia tried to wiggle enough to tuck the bug in her hands underneath the top of her dress, where the strap was stitched in. Hopefully, her coat wouldn't muffle the sound too much. Once it was in place she depressed the very small button on the other side of it and wiggled around some more to bring her head down and close to it.
Now all she had to do was somehow get her hands up and underneath the bag she was wearing to try and get the cloth out of her mouth. After taking a minute to re-calm herself, she wriggled some more to bring her hands up to her neck and felt round the base of the bag. It had a drawstring-style closing around the bottom, and no matter how badly she tried to squirm her fingers up under the edge it didn't loosen. She couldn't get it past the base of her fingers without restricting her own neck.
It didn't take long for her head to fog up again and let her know she had once more come close to passing out. She changed tack and tried to feel around the bag for whatever was holding it so tightly closed. It had fitted over her head with ease so somewhere it must be tied in place.
Her elbows jabbed into her sides several times before she concluded she couldn't reach the tie in her current position. The breath she'd been holding while she concentrated came out in one exasperated puff, but she knew she couldn't give up. She had to use every last ounce of thought, strength and stamina she had to get herself into a better situation.
She allowed herself a slight whimper of frustration as she reached her fingers underneath the bag edge again, accidentally prodding herself in the tender flesh of her own neck several times. Centimetre by painstaking centimetre, she pulled the bag around.
By the time she reached the knot, her throat hurt from the abuse her fingers kept accidentally inflicting upon it and she was growing dizzy for a third time. She paused once more, unable to continue until she'd cleared her head.
Several more minutes passed while she rested and thought. There was still no way for her to tell for sure if this was a test from Myron or a real situation. However, it was evident that, if it was a test, she was meant to believe it was real. Either way, what she should do was the same. She could almost hear Myron's voice in her head telling her to assume it was real and act accordingly.
She nodded her acknowledgement of the thought and felt around the side of her neck for the knot. It was complicated and the string used to form the not had frayed, leaving strands of the soft fibre to trip her fingers up while they worked blind.
It took her several minutes of feeling along the knot for her to find anything that might be considered an end to start work with. When they'd pulled the bag over her head and bundled her along the hotel corridor she hadn't thought the knot was this complicated, but it was possible elements of it had already been in place and they'd only needed to yank it tight to seal her in darkness.
Amelia pulled on the different parts of the knot, but after ten minutes her finger tips were rubbed raw, she'd torn a finger nail somewhere low enough it now gave off a dull ache, and she had made incredibly little progress.
With a sigh, she gave up. The loose strands were tangled up in the rest of the knot, and trying to undo it without being able to see was only making more of a mess. No matter how hard she tried she didn't think she would manage to undo it.
If she was going to use the bug to communicate with Myron she needed to do so without using her voice. Reaching her fingers around until she could feel the bug, she placed the digit of one finger over the top of it. She paused, making sure she remembered SOS in Morse code, and then tapped it out several times.
After that she realised she knew little else. E was the most common letter so she knew it was represented by a single dot and she was fairly sure T was a single dash. That didn't give her the ability to say much. No matter how much she tried to think of other letters she just couldn't remember what they were. Not even numbers came back to her.
Morse code was something she'd looked at once in a maths lesson when she was a young child and then forgotten about. Twenty years later, there was nothing she could do to recall it. Unlike that of the Holmes brothers, her memory wasn't perfect.
Just in case someone hadn't heard her first message, she tapped out SOS again every now and then to signal to whoever was listening that she was in trouble. With that plan in motion, she tried to feel around the inside of the boot but her arms were tucked against her body in such a way that she could only feel a limited area. She poked, pulled and otherwise tried to get to something like the outside of the car, but nothing gave way to her probing fingers.
Until she reached somewhere else, she had no hope of escape. All she could do in the meantime was try to feed information to whoever might be listening in. She tried not to think about how little she had to communicate. With the bag on her head she had no idea where she was going.
While she fought to keep herself calm, keep track of the time, and keep up her message-tapping, hours slipped by, and she found her hope slipping away with it.