11. Last Night
Last Night
Solace
Something has changed outside my door.
I knew it before the gunfire started.
The port has its own rhythm at night, engines idling low, chains dragging over concrete, men calling across the yard while trucks come and go under dull yellow lights. After seven days locked in this room, I know the difference between routine noise and trouble.
Tonight is trouble.
It began with shouting near the container yard, louder than the usual orders, sharp enough to cut through the wall. Men arguing in Greek. Another voice over them, educated, furious, unmistakable even through concrete and steel.
Petrakis.
I sat up so fast my shoulder hit the wall.
He hasn’t come back since yesterday, when he stood in this doorway smiling through lies and calling my captivity a misunderstanding. He hasn’t needed to.
Men like him prefer distance once the dirty work begins. They give orders in offices, smile at donors, and let other people handle locked rooms and crying women.
But tonight, he was at the port.
Then came the first shot.
Sound slammed through the building, one crack after another, followed by women screaming from the other side of the wall. The container. The women were still there.
I crossed to the door and pressed my ear against it, trying to hear through gunfire, engines, and boots running past. Someone shouted about money. Someone else shouted Petrakis’s name. A vehicle tore away too fast, tires biting gravel, and more shots chased it into the dark.
After that, everything changed.
No one brought water. No one checked the room. No one spoke calmly in the passage. The men outside moved fast and angry, careless enough to make mistakes but not careless enough to open my door.
A key scraped once in the lock around midnight, then stopped. Whoever stood outside never came in. I heard breathing on the other side, then a whispered argument, then footsteps leaving again.
That frightened me more than the gunfire.
Because routines keep prisoners alive. Food at the same time. Guards at the same door. Threats delivered in familiar voices. When routine breaks, it usually means someone has decided the old plan no longer matters.
Now the room is dark except for the thin slice of port light leaking through the high window. I sit with my back against the wall, knees drawn up, listening.
The shipping schedule I overheard earlier keeps turning over in my head.
Not the old one.
The new one.
After the gunfire stopped, two men argued outside my door in low, furious voices. One said the port was compromised. The other said Petrakis wanted everything moved before midnight.
Then a third voice cut in.
No later than twenty-two hundred.
At the time, I thought they were talking about the women in the blue container.
Now I think they mean all of us.
The realization should make me panic.
It doesn’t.
I’m too tired for panic and too angry to waste energy on it.
If Petrakis came here tonight, if gunfire broke out over payment, if guards are whispering outside my door instead of opening it, then something has cracked in their system.
Maybe someone found the records.
Maybe someone followed the truck.
Maybe someone got out.
I press my palm flat against the wall behind me. On the other side, the faintest sound answers.
A sob.
Still women there, then. Not all rescued.
I lean closer. “You’re not alone,” I whisper.
A woman answers in Arabic, her voice shaking.
I understand only one word.
Tomorrow.
“Yes,” I whisper back. “Tomorrow.”
Hope, not certainty.
If someone is listening, it means nothing.
If she's praying for tomorrow, I'm agreeing with her.
If she already knows something is coming, she'll hear exactly what she needs to hear.
I close my eyes and see Petrakis in his clean shirts and polished shoes, telling me I was mistaken while deleting the photographs from my phone.
Tonight, I heard his voice stripped of polish, and for the first time since they locked me in here, he sounded less like a man in charge and more like a man afraid of losing something.
Wonderful.
Let him be afraid for once.
The men outside are rattled.
The schedule has changed in ways they didn’t choose.
And tomorrow night, they’ll have to open something.
My door.
The container.
The gate.
A route.
A mistake.
I press my scraped fingers into my palm until the sting sharpens my focus.
Tonight, I listen.
Tomorrow, I move.
Locked Room in Mytilene Port, Greece. 0130 hours
The woman on the other side of the wall says tomorrow again.
This time, I understand the question inside it.
I press closer, mouth near the cracked plaster. “Tomorrow,” I whisper. “Help is coming. Be ready.”
Silence answers first.
Then a different voice, younger, frightened, carrying enough English to reach me through the wall. “How do you know?”
Because I have spent seven days trapped beside a shipping container full of women Meridian plans to move like freight.
Because Petrakis was at the port tonight, shouting like a man watching control slip through his fingers.
Because men with guns argued about payment and someone out there shot his perfect little operation full of holes.
Because before all of that, a very large Russian man found my window and told me not to lose hope.
I swallow, keeping my voice low.
“Because a very large Russian man told me through a window.”
For a few seconds, there’s nothing.
Then someone laughs.
It’s a broken sound, small and startled, almost swallowed by a sob, but it’s laughter. Real enough to pass through concrete and fear and reach me in the dark.
Another woman whispers something in Arabic, too fast for me to follow. Someone else answers in Greek. The voices move softly through the container, one to another, carrying the message without making it loud.
Tomorrow.
Help.
Be ready.
I close my eyes and listen to the words travel.
This is dangerous. I know that. If a guard hears enough, they’ll move us before anyone can reach the gate. If one of the women panics at the wrong time, if someone cries out, if hope becomes noise, everything could collapse before it begins.
But silence has risks too.
Women who don’t know help is coming might freeze when the doors open. They might run the wrong way. They might fight the people trying to save them because every man who has touched them here has been part of the cage.
They need to know something.
Not everything.
Just enough.
“Quiet,” I whisper. “Tell them quietly. No shouting. No guards.”
A woman repeats it in Arabic. Another in Greek. The message softens as it moves, breaking into fragments I can’t fully understand, but the meaning stays clear.
Quiet.
Ready.
Tomorrow.
The younger voice returns. “Who is he?”
I almost laugh, though it comes out more like breath. “I don’t know if that’s the part that matters.”
“He is Policia?”
“No.”
“Army?”
“Maybe. Something worse for them.”
Another tiny laugh moves through the wall.
Great.
Let fear have company tonight.
I shift until my shoulder rests against the plaster, every scrape on my hands stinging from the pressure. “When the doors open, don’t fight the people who aren’t guards. Listen for my voice if you can. If you can’t, stay low and move together.”
“Together,” the younger woman repeats.
“Yes.”
I think of Nikolai’s face at the window, hard-edged and impossible, his voice low enough that I almost thought I’d imagined him. I think of the certainty in him when he told me help was coming, as if he’d already decided the outcome and the world simply hadn’t caught up yet.
I don’t know him.
I don’t know HAVEN.
I don’t know whether anyone can truly pull us out of this place before Petrakis moves us somewhere worse.
But I know what it felt like to hear a stranger risk himself to reach my window.
I know how quickly one voice can push back the dark.
“Tomorrow,” I whisper again...
This time, the word comes back from the other side of the wall in more than one voice.
Tomorrow.
Not loud.
Not safe.
But alive.
Locked Room in Mytilene Port, Greece. 0145 hours
After the whispers fade, the room feels smaller.
The women on the other side of the wall go quiet in stages, one voice settling, then another, until only the port remains. Engines. Chains. A distant shout. The sea pushing against the harbor wall like it’s trying to get in.
I stay where I am with my shoulder pressed to the plaster and let myself think of Manchester.
Not the dramatic version. Not the postcards with rain shining on old brick or the skyline lit up at night.
I think of my mother’s kitchen, the small table by the window, the chipped blue mug she always insists is mine even though I haven’t lived there in years.
Strong tea. Too much milk if Mum makes it while distracted.
The smell of toast going slightly too dark because she never admits the toaster has favorites.
Diane Montgomery would be furious if she could see me now.
Not frightened first.
Furious.
She’d stand in front of Petrakis with her teacher voice and make him regret every poor choice that led him into her line of sight. She raised two children, buried a husband, and taught classrooms full of teenagers who thought sarcasm counted as a personality.
A corrupt aid official in polished shoes wouldn’t stand a chance against her.
The thought almost makes me smile.
Then there’s Owen.
My brother would already be halfway to Greece if he knew the truth.
Police officer, older brother, lifelong professional worrier.
He’d pretend to be calm while asking too many questions in the tone he uses when he’s trying not to sound like Dad.
I used to tease him for it. Now I’d give anything to hear him say my full name like I’m fifteen and home late from a party.
Solace Anne Montgomery, what the hell have you done now?
I rest my forehead against the wall and close my eyes.
My flat waits somewhere far away, probably colder than it should be because I always forget to set the heating properly before I travel.
Books stacked on the floor beside the bed because the shelves ran out of space months ago.
A cardigan over the back of the sofa. Half a packet of digestives in the cupboard if Owen hasn’t raided it.
Rain ticking against the window while the kettle starts its low rattle in the kitchen.
Small things.
Ridiculous things.
The kind of things I never thought to miss because I assumed I’d go back to them.
That’s how life tricks you. It makes home feel ordinary until ordinary becomes the one thing you’d crawl through broken glass to reach.
I press my scraped fingers into the hem of my shirt, holding onto the fabric because there’s nothing else to hold. My tea mug. My books. Mum’s terrible toaster. Owen’s worried voice. Rain on glass. The uneven floorboard near my bedroom door.
I line them up in my head, one after another, until they become more than memories.
They become proof.
I existed before this room. I exist beyond this room.
Petrakis can lock a door. Meridian can move women through ports and camps and paperwork until the world stops looking closely enough.
But they don’t get to make this room the whole of me.
A sound rises on the other side of the wall. A soft cry cut off quickly.
I open my eyes.
Manchester fades, but it doesn’t leave.
I keep it tucked inside me as I shift closer to the wall again.
Tomorrow, if the door opens, I’m not moving toward freedom alone.
I’m taking every woman I can reach with me.
Locked Room in Mytilene Port, Greece. 0200 hours
Sleep doesn’t come.
It should. My body is exhausted enough to take whatever rest it can steal, but my mind stays fixed on the dark ceiling while the port mutters beyond the walls. Every sound becomes possibility. A footstep. A key. A truck starting too early. A guard deciding tomorrow should become now.
So I think about him instead.
Nikolai.
The name suits him. Hard edges. Cold consonants. A name that sounds like it belongs to a man who knows how to disappear into dangerous places and leave with blood on his sleeves.
I think of his face at the window, lit by a thin slice of night. Ice-blue eyes. Short blond hair. A voice held so tightly it should’ve sounded emotionless, except it didn’t. Not when he spoke about the women in the container. Not when he said, It’s enough to risk your life when the cargo is human.
Like the words cost him something.
Like they had followed him from somewhere worse.
Men like Petrakis make cruelty sound administrative. Transfers. Schedules. Humanitarian logistics. They build soft language around ugly things so they don’t have to look at what they’re doing.
Nikolai did the opposite.
He called it what it was.
Human.
That shouldn’t matter as much as it does, but in this room, where people are reduced to files, containers, and routes, the word felt almost violent.
A strange thing to think about a man built like a tank.
I wonder who taught him to speak so little. Who taught him to watch first, move second, and keep every feeling locked inside. I wonder what he saw before he came to my window. What kind of life makes a man look at human cargo and sound less shocked than haunted.
Who hurt you?
The question comes uninvited.
Ridiculous, maybe. I’m the one locked in a room beside a shipping container. I’m the one with scraped hands, no shoes worth running in, and a door that only opens from the outside. Wondering about the wounds of the man trying to rescue me should be a poor use of my final hours in captivity.
Still, my mind returns to him.
To the way he didn’t promise safety like a man selling comfort.
He gave me instructions.
He told me help was coming.
He made it sound like a fact.
Outside, a truck engine coughs, then settles. Voices move across the yard and fade. I stay still, counting seconds until the night returns to its restless quiet.
Tomorrow, the door opens.
Maybe because Meridian moves us.
Maybe because HAVEN reaches us first.
Maybe because I make the mistake they don’t expect and force the choice myself.
I press my palm flat against the floor and let the cold bite into my skin.
One way or another, I will walk out of this room tomorrow.
And if the Russian with the sad eyes is waiting on the other side, I might just believe in rescue.