Note: This is a follow up to my story “Solitary Retold,” which expanded the Sayid/Nadia interrogation story and narrated it from Nadia’s point of view. “Escape” is about the events immediately after Nadia escaped, and it is told from Sayid’s point of view. You need not have read the earlier story to follow this, though you may want to.

Chapter One

Sayid listened to the sound of tires squealing and leaned back against the harsh stone of the wall. Relief and pain mingled together in the breath he exhaled. He looked down again at the writing on the photograph: I’ll meet you in the next life, if not in this one.

Here he was, bleeding out of his leg, experiencing the hot throbbing of his first real wound, moments away from having to explain Nadia’s escape, and yet his first thought was: She wants to be with me.

This hopeful desire, which was quite foreign to him, was soon eclipsed by frustration and fear. Why did she write it? What was she thinking? They would find the photograph on him; they would read the writing, and they would suspect he had abetted her escape.

If only she had run when he had told her; if only she had heeded him instead of lingering…if only her love for him had not made her pause. Better yet, if she had simply hated him, as she should have hated him, none of this would have happened. He would have done his duty by his country. He would have broken her, and if he had not broken her, he would have shot her. And perhaps the nightmares would have haunted him from time to time, but he would have shackled and buried the guilt in that same dungeon with all his other demons. He might have known something like peace; but now, he did not think he could ever rest again.

He thought to tear the photograph to shreds, to consume the evidence piece by piece, but already he could hear the approaching echo of footsteps in the corridor, and so he merely shoved it in his pocket. He could get rid of it at the infirmary, he considered, if they took him to the infirmary. Of course they will, he thought. They have no reason to suspect me…yet.

The guards he had dismissed earlier now stood at his feet. One fell to his knees and examined the wound. “What happened, sir?”

Sayid sputtered as if he could not speak. The supply truck could not have driven far yet, and Nadia would probably wait a good ten minutes before she jumped out. And then what would she do? He had not thought that far…there had been a more weighty threat to consider then. But no doubt Nadia herself was now contemplating the difficulty of survival. A woman alone on the side of the road …well, she had friends enough, he assured himself. She could find protection; she could find someone to hide her, couldn’t she? If he could but delay the search…

“Sir,” the guard asked again, “What happened? Can you speak?”

Sayid coughed and shook his head weakly. He raised a hand and pointed to Omar, which distracted the guards for the time being. They ran to him and examined the body. One of them rose and took off down the corridor, the heels of his boots clicking loudly at first and then fading into the distance. Sayid assumed he would return with a superior officer, and then he would have no choice but to speak.