He checks the rest of his body, but everything seems to be in working order. His legs are bent beneath him and as he stretches, tries to work them out from underneath his own body, and sit up, he feels them burst into life with pins and needles.

He waits for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but they refuse. He reaches out again, forward this time, and when he feels the brick wall in front of him, rough and dusty under his fingertips, he understands where he is. He cannot see them, but he can feel the other walls pressing in on him from all sides. He can’t breathe. He draws in gulps of stale air and beats his fists against the cinder blocks, only stopping when he feels the skin on his wrist tear open.

He falls silent and tries to calm down, but his head is full of dangerous thoughts even as it pulses and spills his lifeblood down his face and neck. How long has he been here? How long does he have left?

He searches his way along the wall with his fingers, looking for a gap, a hole, anything. He forces himself to get up, though there isn’t room enough to stand completely, and the pain in his head is excruciating. Using his fingers as eyes, he works his way systematically across the rough brickwork, turning in circles. On and on. The blood flooding across his face burns its way into his eyes, and by the time he lowers himself gently back to the floor, he’s panting with exertion, his breath coming faster and faster, as though it’s in a race with his beating heart.

How long has he been here? How long does he have left?

The rule of three. Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food.

He’d be losing fluids faster than average, Elliot had said. Then there’s the trauma to the head, blood loss. I doubt he’d have lasted longer than a couple of days. Maybe less.

He knows, abruptly and certainly, what he must do.

He starts with the flat of his finger. A downward motion, stroking at the mortar between the bricks. He reasons that the mortar, by definition, must be softer than the brick, and assuming he hasn’t been here too long, it may even still be wet. And yes, he can feel something moist beneath his index finger. He stops, uncertain whether the moisture is the wet mortar or his own blood. Perhaps the skin on his finger, already torn, is adding to his loss of fluids. But he goes on. It really doesn’t matter. He has no choice.