She pulled and tugged again. No luck. Then again and again. She felt blood pouring down over her hands and her fingers. The pain was making her delirious. She imagined the flesh on her wrists peeled right back.

But she had no choice. She had to keep trying.

‘One more time!’ Jason said.

Then she saw Ethan move. His eyelids flickered. Then opened.

He began to shift, like a coiled snake waiting to unfurl.

‘Dani, come on!’ Jason shouted.

Tears streaming, Dani heaved one more time and her hands shot forwards in front of her. Before she could even process relief or the pain that was now consuming her, Ethan Grant was up on his feet, rage in his eyes.

Dani lunged for him.

They clattered to the floor and Ethan screamed as he landed in the acid. There was ferocious anger in his eyes. Even though Dani was on top he grabbed her neck and began to choke her. His strength was too much. She couldn’t breathe at all.

She stared into his evil eyes. In desperation, Dani channeled the inner rage that had eaten away at her over the last two years and pushed her thumbs into Ethan’s eye sockets, using every ounce of animal strength she had. The inner rage that had been such a detriment to her life over the last two years was breaking out.

She wouldn’t try to stop it this time.

She pushed with her thumbs as hard as she could, venom and hatred bursting from her. Blood oozed out of Ethan’s eye sockets.

‘Dani!’ Jason shouted.

She barely heard him. She crashed Ethan’s head into the floor again and again. It was a scene of bloody horror. Dani would never have imagined she could stand to even watch something like that, never mind do it.

But she could. Because she knew for damn sure that Ethan Grant deserved no better.

Jason had grabbed hold of her trying to pull her up and away. Eventually he managed it.

Dani clambered to her feet. Ethan’s eyes were now two dark holes. Blood streamed from them. Dani thumped her heel down into Ethan’s face then kicked him in the side and used her foot to heave him over. The side of his face landed in the bubbling pool of acid and he found the strength to scream as the skin and flesh on his cheek fizzed and melted.

Not long after that, the screaming stopped. Ethan Grant went silent and still.

‘Dani, we have to go.’

Dani tried to clear the torment from her mind. She nodded.

As they ran for the staircase at the far end, Dani suddenly changed course. She moved over and grabbed the broken cutters. The blade mechanism was wrecked but it was still a big lump of metal.