Pip wasted no more time, dropping her wrists as far as they could go, resting just above that lower shelf. She felt her way around the corner of the shelf with her fingers and there on the inside, she felt something: small and hard and metal. It must be the nut, secured to the end of the screw. Pip pressed her finger hard against it. She could feel the end of the screw, emerging from the nut. It wasn’t as sharp as she’d like, but it would work. She could still use it to hack away at the duct tape.
Next step: remove the nut. It wasn’t going to be easy, Pip realized, as she shifted her hands again. There was no way she could get either of her thumbs around that side of the pole, they were stuck here on the outside. She would have to use two of her fingers instead. Her right hand, obviously. It was stronger. She positioned her middle and forefinger around the nut, clamped them together and tried to twist. Fuck, it was screwed on tight. And which was the right way to loosen it, anyway? Was it to the left, so her right?
‘Don’t panic, just try,’ Ravi told her. ‘Try until it gives.’
Pip did try. And she tried. It wasn’t working, it wouldn’t budge. She was dead again.
She shifted and tried the other way, struggling with the angle. This would never work. She needed her thumbs: how could anyone do this without their thumbs? She pushed her fingers together around the metal and twisted. It hurt, right into the bones, and if she broke the fingers… well, she had more of them. The nut shifted. Barely, but it had shifted.
Pip paused to stretch out her aching fingers, to tell Ravi about it.
‘Good, that’s good,’ he said to her. ‘But you’ve got to keep going, you don’t know how long he’ll be gone.’
It might have already been half an hour since Jason left, Pip had no way of knowing, and the terror moved time in strange ways. Lifetimes in seconds, and the other way. The nut had hardly loosened at all; this was going to take a while and she couldn’t lose focus.
She shifted her fingers again, clamped around the protruding metal nut and pulled it round. It was stubborn, moving only after she’d given it everything, and hardly moving at that. Every time it gave, she had to reposition her fingers around it.
Shift. Clamp. Turn.
Shift. Clamp. Turn.
It was only a tiny movement, in one hand, and yet Pip could feel the sweat running down the inside of her arms, into the fabric of her hoodie. Sliding against the tape at her temples and her upper lip. How long had it been now? Minutes. More than five? More than ten? The nut was loosening, giving a little more each turn.
Shift. Clamp. Turn.
It must have made a full turn by now, growing looser against the screw, against her fingers. She could turn it in quarter-circles now.
Half-circles.
A full turn.
Another.
The nut came free of the screw, resting on the ends of her fingers.
‘Yes,’ Ravi hissed in her head as Pip let the nut drop to the floor, a small tinkle of metal in the great, dark unknown.
Now to remove the screw and hack away the tape at her wrists. She was only likely dead now, not very. But she might live. She might just. Hope discolouring some of the terror’s dark edges.
‘Careful,’ Ravi said to her, as she felt for the end of the screw. Pip pushed it, driving it back through the hole. She had to push hard, the weight of the shelf and all those vats leaning down on the screw. She pushed again and the end disappeared inside the hole.
OK, breathe. She shifted her hands once more, reaching for the front side of the metal pole. This was better: she could use her thumb now. Pip felt for the protruding screw, found it with her finger and hooked on, holding it between her finger and thumb.
Don’t let go.
She tightened her grip and pulled out the screw, a grinding sound of metal on metal.
The shelf tilted forward, losing its front support. Something hard and heavy slid down it, knocking into her shoulder.
Pip flinched.
Her grip loosened, just for a second.
The screw fell from her hand.
A small clatter of metal on concrete, bouncing once, twice, rolling away.
Away into the dark unknown.
Nononononononono.
Breaths rattled in and out of her nose, hissing against the edges of the tape.
Pip swiped with her legs, feeling out the unknown, this way and that. There was nothing around her but concrete. The screw was gone, out of reach. And she was dead again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she told the Ravi in her head. ‘I tried. I really did. I wanted to see you again.’
‘It’s OK, Sarge,’ he told her. ‘I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you. Plans change all the time. Think.’