4. Five Days
Five Days
Solace
I’ve learned to count time by sound.
The port has its own clock, engines starting before dawn, metal doors slamming through the morning, trucks arriving after dark, men shouting when paperwork matters and speaking quietly when it doesn’t.
Beyond the freight roads and concrete walls, I hear the call to prayer drift through the refugee camp five times a day. I don’t know who leads it or where the voice begins. Sound bends near the water, and the port throws echoes back strangely, but the prayers have become markers.
Morning. Midday. Afternoon. Sunset. Night.
Five days. Five nights. Five sets of bread and water.
Five mornings of telling myself I’m still alive because I’m still counting.
The guards have patterns too. The man who brings food arrives after the morning freight engines start and before the first heavy truck run.
Another checks the passage sometime after sunset.
A third comes close to midnight, walking with a slight drag in one foot and clearing his throat before he turns the corner.
I know all of them by sound now.
That may be the only useful thing I have left.
The room itself hasn’t changed. Thin mattress. Plastic bucket. Stained curtain. Water bottle. Concrete floor. Damp plaster, old salt, and the sour chemical tang from the container beyond the wall.
The women inside have been quiet for almost an hour.
I hate the quiet more than the crying.
Crying means someone is still fighting the shock. Silence means exhaustion, sedation, or whatever comes after both.
I roll onto my side and reach behind the mattress, fingers searching along the wall until they find the shallow grooves I’ve been carving into the plaster.
The stone I use is no bigger than my thumb, broken from the edge of the floor near the bucket.
It isn’t sharp enough for clean lines, but it works if I press hard.
Names first.
Amira. Laleh. Samira. Yara. Nasrin.
Every name I can remember from the south section. Every date I can estimate. Vehicle numbers. Guard habits. Words I’ve overheard through the wall. Blue container. Service gate. White minibus. Mytilene commercial side.
The marks are ugly and uneven, hidden low enough that the mattress covers most of them when I push it back. If they search properly, they’ll find everything. They haven’t searched properly yet because they still think fear makes people stupid.
It doesn’t. Fear makes people notice.
I scratch another line into the wall, careful to keep the sound small.
Two more women were brought to the container tonight.
I heard the truck stop, heard the chain drag, heard one woman gasp as if her feet hit concrete too hard.
No luggage. No time. No explanation. Then the door closed and the lock went back on.
Two more names I don’t know.
I press the stone harder, carving the number instead: 2
A sound comes from the passage.
I stop moving.
Footsteps.
Not the dragging step of the midnight guard. Not the heavier rhythm of the man who brings food. These are quieter, measured, too careful for the guards who already have the keys.
My fingers close around the stone.
The footsteps stop beneath my window.
Outside, near the wall.
Not in the passage.
My breath goes shallow before I force it steady. There’s a scrape, soft enough that I almost miss it, then the faintest shift of weight on gravel.
Someone is outside my room.
At the window.
Locked Room in Mytilene Port, Greece. 2215 hours
Whoever moved beneath the window doesn’t make another sound.
I stay where I am, fingers locked around the stone, listening until the effort makes my ears ache. I should get up. I should cross the room, climb onto the mattress, and look through the crack beneath the grille.
I don’t move.
My body has decided stillness is survival, and for a few seconds, I can’t convince it otherwise.
The port keeps working outside, engines turning over, metal shifting, voices carrying across the freight yard, but nothing else comes from the gravel below my window.
No whisper. No knock. No key.
After several minutes, I push the mattress back into place, covering the scratched notes on the wall. My hand is still curled around the stone when the first sob comes through the plaster.
It starts in the room to my left.
Soft at first, then sharper, as if the woman is trying to hold it in and losing the fight one breath at a time. She arrived two days ago. The guards brought her in at night, half dragging her through the passage while she begged them in Arabic to tell her where her sister was.
Since then, she has cried every few hours and gone silent whenever footsteps approach.
On my right, someone is praying.
Her voice is low and steady, the same phrases repeated until the words become rhythm. I recognize only pieces. Enough to know she is asking God for protection. Enough to know she has been asking for a long time.
The third woman is farther down the passage.
She hasn’t made a sound since yesterday morning. That silence bothers me most.
The women in the container are close enough to hear when they move, cough, or knock against the metal, but the women in these rooms are closer. Three locked doors. Three separate breaths. Three lives Meridian has reduced to waiting.
I shift carefully onto my knees and press my palm against the wall to the left.
“Anti mish wahdek,” I say softly, hoping the Arabic is close enough. “You’re not alone.”
The crying stops at once.
I keep my voice low. “My Arabic is bad. I’m sorry.”
A wet breath comes through the wall, followed by a whisper I can’t translate.
“My name is Solace,” I say. “British. Social worker. Meridian brought me here too.”
More silence.
Then, very softly, “Nadia.”
Relief tries to rise too fast, and I push it down before it can take over. A name is something to hold. A name means she is still with me.
“Nadia,” I repeat. “I hear you.”
On the other side, the prayer falters.
I turn and press my other hand to that wall. “Eísai asfalís,” I whisper in Greek, though safe is a lie too large for this room. I correct myself before the woman can believe the wrong thing. “No. Not safe. But I hear you.”
The woman answers in Greek too fast for me to follow, but I catch one word.
“Korítsi.”
Girl.
Daughter, maybe. Or the young one.
I close my eyes briefly, assembling the little I know. Nadia to my left. Greek-speaking woman to my right. Silent woman farther down. Women in the container beyond the wall. Two more brought tonight.
Meridian is gathering them.
The container isn’t the destination. It’s the waiting room.
I lean closer to the wall. “Listen to me,” I say, first in English, then in the simplest Arabic I can manage, then Greek. “Count guards. Count keys. Count trucks. Anything you hear, remember it.”
Nadia sniffles. “Why?”
Because information is the only weapon left to us.
Someone has to carry the truth out of here.
If no one comes, I still need to make sure Meridian regrets every woman it tried to erase.
Instead, I say, “Because we’re still here.”
The woman on my right begins praying again, quieter this time. Nadia taps the wall once, a small answer through plaster. Farther down the passage, from the room that has been silent for more than a day, there is a faint scrape.
One sound.
One sign.
Enough.
I press my forehead gently to the wall and whisper it again, for all of them.
“You’re not alone.”
Locked Room in Mytilene Port, Greece. 2230 hours
The woman on my right keeps praying after I stop speaking.
Her voice threads through the wall while Nadia breathes unevenly on the other side. Farther down the passage, the silent woman hasn’t made another sound, but I hold onto the scrape she gave us. One sound means she heard me.
Footsteps enter the passage.
Nadia goes quiet at once.
The prayer stops.
I push the mattress back over the scratches, then slide the stone beneath the edge of the cracked concrete. My fingers are dusty from plaster, so I rub them against the blanket before standing.
The footsteps are too measured for the guards.
Leather soles. Expensive shoes. No hurry.
Petrakis.
The key turns in the lock, and the door opens without warning. He steps inside wearing a pale linen shirt, pressed trousers, and the kind of concerned expression that probably works very well in donor meetings. Two guards remain in the passage behind him.
“Ms. Montgomery,” Petrakis says softly.
The use of my name feels obscene in this room.
“Where are the women being taken?” I ask.
He glances at the mattress, the water bottle, and the stained curtain hiding the bucket. “I’m sorry about the conditions. Truly. This was never meant to become uncomfortable.”
“Kidnapping usually is.”
His mouth tightens before the smooth concern returns. “This is a misunderstanding.”
“Then unlock the door.”
“We’re processing your departure.”
“My departure to where?”
“A safer location.”
I look at the sympathetic tilt of his head, the careful sadness he wears like another piece of Meridian branding. He spoke the same way in staff briefings when he described desperate women as complex population movement.
“How many women have you said that to?”
His expression cools. “You’re frightened. That’s understandable.”
“I’m angry.”
“Yes. That too.” He moves one step farther into the room, but not close enough for me to reach him. “You have always cared too much. It made you good at your work. It also made you careless.”
“I found eleven missing women.”
“You found incomplete records during a difficult operational period.”
“I found a container full of women at the port.”
His gaze flicks briefly toward the wall behind me.
Tiny mistake. I file it away.
“Let me speak to the British consulate,” I say.
“Communication is limited here. You understand.”
“No, I don’t.”
“The island is overwhelmed. Systems are strained. We are managing a sensitive situation with limited resources.”
“You deleted photographs from my phone.”
“Unverified images can create dangerous rumors.”
“You locked me in a storage room.”
“We needed to keep you safe.”
“From whom?”
He looks at me for several seconds, and the paternal mask thins just enough to show the man beneath it.
“From yourself, Ms. Montgomery.”
Nadia makes the smallest sound through the wall. Petrakis turns his head slightly, and my stomach drops because he heard it too.
I step forward.
“My colleague has the records.”
His attention returns to me.
Good.
“She has copies,” I say. “If I disappear, people will ask questions.”
“People ask questions all the time. Most answers are boring.”
“I’m not going to stop.”
“No,” he says gently. “I know.”
He steps back into the passage.
“Just a few more days,” Petrakis says. “Then this will be over.”
“You arrogant bastard,” I say. “You won’t get away with this.”
His smile barely changes.
“Everyone says that before they learn what away looks like.”
The door closes before I can answer.
The key turns.
On my left, Nadia begins to cry again, softer this time.
I stare at the door and count Petrakis’s footsteps until they fade.
A few more days.
That isn’t reassurance.
It’s a deadline.
Locked Room in Mytilene Port, Greece. 2230 hours
I wait until the port settles into its night rhythm before I move back to the wall.
The darkness doesn’t arrive cleanly here. It gathers in layers, first in the corners, then across the concrete floor, then over the mattress and the stained curtain until the room becomes a collection of shapes I know by touch.
Outside, the port still works. It never truly sleeps. Engines idle. Chains drag over concrete. Men call instructions through the night air, their voices carrying just enough for me to catch fragments if I stay still.
I crouch beside the wall and run my fingers over the notes I’ve carved into the concrete.
Five days of observations.
Overheard guard names. Shift times. Vehicle descriptions. Snatches of ship schedules overheard through metal and concrete. The blue container. The white minibus. The service gate. Women moved after dark and recorded as transfers by morning.
Not neat or complete, but enough.
I pick up the broken sliver of stone and add what I heard tonight, careful to keep the letters small.
Dock three.
After midnight.
Captain.
Petrakis.
My fingers ache from the pressure, but I keep going. Pain is information too. It tells me I’m still here, still able to record, still able to leave something behind that isn’t just another closed file in Meridian’s system.
Petrakis deserves more than a line on a wall.
Giannis Petrakis signed my deployment paperwork. He welcomed me to the camp with a practiced smile and a speech about compassion under pressure. He stood in front of exhausted families with Meridian’s logo behind him and made exploitation sound like service.
If his name is tied to the port tonight, then he isn’t just ignoring what’s happening.
He’s part of it.
I carve his name deeper.
Outside, a truck reverses somewhere near the harbor road. The warning alarm beeps through the night, sharp and regular. A man laughs. Another tells him to hurry. Then comes a sound that empties the air from my lungs.
A woman crying.
I move to the door before I can stop myself, pressing my ear against the cold metal.
The crying stops quickly.
Too quickly.
I close my hand around the stone until the edge bites into my palm.
Amira. Laleh. Samira. Yara. Nasrin.
There were eleven names in my notebook before they took my bag. More faces in the container. More women being moved while the official records turn them into voluntary transfers and administrative errors.
That’s how Meridian survives. Paperwork. Polished language. Plausible explanations. Crimes wrapped in process until no one wants to look too closely.
It turns my stomach.
I return to the wall and keep carving.
Woman heard near harbor road. Truck movement near dock three. Possible transfer.
The letters are uneven now, but legible.
That’s what matters.
I sit back on my heels and study the wall until the room blurs slightly at the edges. Five days of being locked in here. Five days of bread, water, silence, and the same narrow strip of harbor sky.
My stomach has moved past hunger into a sour, hollow nausea that rises every time I stand too quickly, but I can still listen. That’s the one thing they haven’t taken from me.
My hand lowers to the floor, and for a second, the fear gets through.
Not enough to break me. Just enough to make me understand how thin the line has become.
If no one received my message, if my colleague in London hesitated, if Meridian closes these records before anyone looks hard enough, then every name I’ve scratched into this wall could stay here with me.
I press my fingers into the concrete until the room steadies again.
I can’t fight my way out.
But I can document every crime and make sure someone sees it.
The truth is my weapon.
And if they open this door again, I’m going to be ready to use it.