That her helplessness was not being broadcast live in front of the entire country was the only silver lining Samantha Lang could see in her current predicament. Indeed, she was alone and unobserved now for the first time since the terrorists stormed the Christmas Gala and took her hostage, the cameras she’d been propped in front of, bound and gagged, as they listed their endless demands blessedly absent after they’d hauled her away at gunpoint down into the convention centre’s boiler room. They hadn’t even left one of their number to watch over her, finally sparing her a witness to her continued humiliation.

Yet there was no comfort to be found in that, not with the blinking red LED clock before her counting steadily down towards zero, and the pretty Chinese woman let out a scream, hoping against hope that this time someone would hear her through the silk cleave gag digging painfully into the corners of her lips. “Mmmpgggh! MMMPPPPGGGHHHH!” Rivulets of sweat, the product of the suffocating heat, trickled down her fair, beautiful features and along the cleft of her breasts, the latter left exposed after the terrorists had unbuttoned the collar of her tight red silk cheongsam, while the dark nylons clinging to her legs did nothing to ease the discomfort that resulted from kneeling on the hard concrete floor for so long. “MMMMPPPPGGGHHHH!”

Nothing. No knight in shining armour, metaphorical or otherwise, came to her rescue. No pounding footsteps signalled the approach of a heavily-armed SWAT team coming to secure the building. Nothing answered her save the desperate beating of her heart, the clink of the chains connected to her wrist manacles, and the steady beep of the detonator counting down towards an explosive finale for Samantha’s night out. She might have been spared any further time as the public face of a hostage crisis, but being shackled to a bomb was hardly her idea of a good time either, and only with great effort did she manage to calm herself down and assess her situation.

She’d been secured to a great oil drum that sat in the middle of the boiler room, while the black device atop it with the digital clock attached could only have been the main detonator for the bomb. Meanwhile, her ropes were replaced with a pair of metal shackles that held her wrists fast and were connected by a long length of chain… a chain now wrapped around the circumference of the barrel so tightly that Samantha was forced to remain on her knees, face kept inches from the barrel’s side. The only way to slip the chain from around the barrel would be to pull it towards her and knock it over, a difficult task, and not necessarily a wise one. She had no idea what the terrorists had filled it with, and even if she found the strength to topple it, disturbing its contents or the bomb on top could be fatal. And it was merely one of a score of such barrels crowding the boiler room, all connected to the same timer, their combined explosive power likely enough to turn the entire convention centre into a smoking crater. If even one of them was set off prematurely…

I’m going to die, the thought sprung up, unbidden, and in that moment, Samantha felt the anger burst inside of her, as explosive and destructive as any weapon the terrorists possessed. For so many years, she’d been afraid of her own shadow, a nervous, shrinking violet too imprisoned by her anxieties to raise her voice or take pride in herself or stand out in front of the crowd. And now, on a night when she dared try to change that by going out to the Christmas Gala, she’d been punished for it by becoming a hostage, and the sheer unfairness of it all sent the Chinese beauty trembling in rage, unfamiliar steel reflecting in her brown eyes. No… no, I am not going to die. I’m not ending up some blackened smear on the ground! I’m going to live my life!

A moment later, and the tranquilizing drug of reason and good sense would have taken hold, containing her anger like it had so many times before. Samantha did not give herself the opportunity, instead twisting and flexing her wrists in hopes of squirming free of the cuffs, long, dark hair whipping about in her struggles. The scent of copper emerged as the metal cut into her skin, yet she refused to relent, choosing explosive anger over the blast that would come if she sat here helplessly, waiting for a rescue that might never come. I’m getting free from here, no matter what! I’m going to live on, and I’m going to be happy!