After composing himself for a bit, Jack’s thoughts turned to the next phase of his great escape. He rolled out of his fabric cocoon and stood up on stiff, weary legs.

The keyhole on the door was about a foot above his head; it was quite a large, old fashioned one. He suspected the wardrobe might in fact be an example of antique-effect Alpha furniture - very large, very old locks from churches and other bygone structures were repurposed as vanity detailing in traditional-looking cupboards, chests of drawers and the like. As true antiques were obviously at Beta scale only, it was a real mark of status for some Alphas to boast something that looked authentically ‘vintage’ in their enormous homes.

For Jack at least, this gave him hope, as the lock appeared to be quite primitive in design, definitely more for show than to actually keep anything secure.

He racked his brain to try and remember any information he had learned about lock-picking; not necessarily something he’d ever suspected he’d need to use. It was already incredibly lucky to have a wire coat hanger to hand, he now needed to make the most of his good fortune.

He knew that older locks could be opened by skeleton keys, which were really simple keys with just a single tooth at the end, so if he could bend the metal wire relatively straight, and then put a 90 degree kink at the end of it, he might be able to turn the lock.

He knelt down and grabbed the oversize clothes hanger, and tested the strength of the metal hook with his hands. The wire was relatively thin, especially in comparison to the size of the hanger, but it still took some force to straighten the hook out, and add the kink at the end.

Once he was happy with how his makeshift skeleton key looked, he stood up on his tiptoes and slid it into the keyhole, using the loop-like frame of the hanger as a handle to try and jiggle and turn the ‘key’ in the lock.

Pressing his ear against the door, he listened to the clanking sound of the wire rattling in the keyhole, and tried to feel for any resistance. After a good long time concentrating hard, the metal seemed to be catching against something towards the back of the lock, so he adjusted his grip and begun to carefully twist the hanger with his hands.

He felt jittery as he increased the force on the thin wire, he seemed to be making progress, surely this was only a matter of time…

With a heavy clunk, his ‘key’ suddenly span and fell out of his grasp, causing him to lose balance. After picking himself up, and making sure the wire hadn’t bent or snapped, he inspected the lock and realised that, incredibly, the deadbolt had retreated back into the door, there was clear daylight there.

It took a moment for this to sink in - he closed his eyes and leant his head forward against the surface of the wood. More than anything else, an overwhelming sense of relief washed over him. It was the sudden realisation that some of this was in his hands now; he at least had a small semblance of control over the situation, instead of just waiting, and worrying.

Cautiously, Jack pushed the wardrobe door open. He immediately had to snap his eyelids shut, dazzled by the unexpected brightness of daylight after such a long stretch in the dark.

He stood there for a moment, totally blinded, but gradually his eyes acclimatised so that he could begin to survey the scene. The far side of the room was quite blurry without his glasses, but in the foreground he could see lots and lots of Caitlin’s clothes in untidy piles, or simply strewn across the floor.

He staggered across the room on legs made of jelly, nearly falling to his knees as he reached the oversized sports bag that had been his makeshift carrycase earlier on. Reaching in, he scrabbled around with his fingers until they stumbled across an item he had feared he’d lost; his glasses. Fortunately, they were intact, if a little grimy; they had lots of small flecks of dirt and grass on them.

Slumping back against the big bag, he wiped the lenses with his fingers and carefully slid the chunky frames onto his face. For the first time was able to scrutinise the finer details of the Alpha girl’s bedroom.

As he’d seen earlier, the room was a strange mix of fitness equipment, posters of athletes and sports stars, and then cuddly, cutesy crap like stuffed animals, pop band posters and lots and lots of pink. She even had pink weights littered around a kind of enormous multi-gym in the corner, next to an exercise bike and a ball-shaped punching bag.

The first thing Jack needed to do was to check if there was any possible way to escape, so he got to his feet wearily and headed over to the nearest window. Clambering up onto the windowsill, which was just above waist height to him, he inspected the handle – it wouldn’t budge, plus it was a modern lock; much harder to try and pick than an antique one.

He looked out of the window, and realised he was on the ground floor, as evidenced by the long expanse of lawn in front of him. This was a bit unusual as most Alpha homes tended to be 2-storey houses with bedrooms upstairs, they took up far less floor space, leaving more room for a small garden on restricted size plots. Extensive bungalows did however prove practical for wealthy Alpha families that had Beta maids or nannies as there were no double-height stairs to negotiate, plus they could easily afford to live in purpose-built, Alpha-only districts where plot size wasn’t a factor.

He could see a pathway leading to a swimming pool, hot tub and barbecue area around to the right-hand side. The entire garden was surrounded on all sides by a tall, white fence, so nobody was likely to see a naked Beta boy gawking through the window.

Jack spent a few minutes checking the windows in both rooms, but every single one had been fastened shut and locked. He gave the last window am extra hard punch in frustration, but this was super thick, Alpha-grade glazing, designed to withstand a fully grown Alpha throwing a brick at it without shattering. His pride, and knuckles, were hurt.

He slunk back to investigate the bedroom door, and that appeared to have a separate lock installed beneath the door handle. It was very compactly designed, and he couldn’t even begin to figure out how to pick it.

He tried to stay optimistic, he’d already come this far. There was no turning back now.

Walking into the bathroom, he clambered up to the sink via the toilet seat and had a long drink of water from the tap. Looking around, there was make-up detritus everywhere, lots of lipstick, bottles, jars and cases, cans of hairspray and other assorted things that he was pretty unfamiliar with.

Caitlin clearly cared a great deal about her appearance, but he had no idea if this was a normal amount of make-up or not. It made him feel very naïve, to be honest.

Heading back into her room, he began to search around for a phone or computer, or maybe even some food to keep his energy levels up.

Next to her bed was a small cabinet. He was able to drag the heavy drawers open and rummage through, but it was mainly assorted hairbands, nail varnish bottles, and cheap mall-purchased jewellery. He climbed up onto the big bed to pry open the topmost drawer, and noticed a small ladies watch laid on top of the cabinet. The second hand was still ticking, so it stood to reason that the displayed time of 3:16 pm was accurate.

Hopefully this would give Jack a decent window to try and find a way to contact the outside world, or at the very least, prepare a hiding place somewhere.

He opened the top drawer, which was a bit of a struggle, only to discover a huge purple dildo resting on a bed of panties and white socks.

Taken aback, he looked down at his own manhood, and felt more than a bit pathetic. This obscenely-proportioned behemoth was over 2 feet long, complete with ball sack and everything. The shaft alone had to be 5 inches wide; he could easily have used the thing as a battering ram, for fuck’s sake.

If other Alpha girls were used to putting anything like this between their legs, then there was no hope for boys like Jack. Reaching out curiously he ran his little hand along the smooth, synthetic shaft, then shuddered to think of the size of some his Alpha peers; guys who presumably had ‘things’ like this for real.

He shoved the drawer shut hurriedly in his embarrassment, and dropped down under the bed to see if he could find anything down there instead. There were a lot of glossy teen magazines thrown around with pictures of good-looking Alpha boys and girls on them, some with pages torn out, and several empty cardboard boxes with slabs of polystyrene falling out. On the sides of the boxes were names of various brands of fitness equipment, presumably opened up and discarded untidily under the bed.

Hiding under the bed didn’t seem to be a very sensible option, it transpired. He would be easy to find, either in a box or hiding behind one – he’d have to think of somewhere else.

Next, Jack went over to inspect the area by her gym equipment. Several bright pink dumbbells were littered around on the floor alongside the exercise bike; he tried to see if he could roll one a few inches but they were too heavy for him to budge at all.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted an unopened energy bar by the front of the bike, he darted over and pounced onto it. Tearing the wrapper away feverishly, he consumed the goliath slab of chocolate and peanuts greedily, barely pausing for a second. Scaled up, this one bar was as big as 8 bars of similar Beta confectionery, and about as delicious.

It triggered an old memory of when he was still allowed to go trick-or-treating; he and the other kids always used to go to the Alpha neighbourhood as they knew the haul would be so much bigger. At Easter too, there were chocolate eggs bigger than his head, and he’d eat so much that he’d make himself really ill. As the other children grew taller, and less and less Beta families stayed in the area, his parents had warned him it wasn’t safe and made him stay at home instead.

With his belly full of chocolate he started to feel much more normal, which in turn made him increasingly self-conscious about being completely naked. He’d need to get his clothes a lot dryer if he hoped to be able to wear them soon, though.

Walking back across the carpet, he stepped into the wardrobe and tucked his sodden pants, t-shirt and jeans under his arm. He kicked Caitlin’s oversized t-shirt and dress into a pile in the corner, retrieved the metal hanger, and closed the large wooden door so that the wardrobe appeared to be untouched.

He laid his clothes down on the nearest windowsill, and hoped that the warm sun would be able to dry them out a bit so he didn’t have to wander around in the buff forever.

Crouching under the bed, he then threw the hanger into the furthest corner, so that if Caitlin discovered it, she might not put one and one together so easily.

There was a laundry basket tucked away near the bed that he hasn’t noticed before, he went to scope it out as a potential hiding spot, but it was as good as empty. A couple of soft toys had fallen off the bed into it, but the clothes tossed all around indicated it wasn’t being used for its intended purpose.

Scrambling up onto the vast bed, Jack confronted the bizarre menagerie of plushies, teddies and the like. The collection had to have between 50 and 100 cuddly animals of various shapes and sizes, predominantly pink ones. Dominating the group was a big brown teddy bear, the kind of thing you’d win at the fair, who appeared to be even bigger than Jack himself.

Poking out from beneath the bear’s foot, was the corner of something glassy and flat… Jack’s heart skipped a beat. Rushing forward, he shoved the toys out of the way to reveal a large tablet computer about the size of a dinner tray.

His hands shaking nervously, he put his palm to the glass, which lit up to show a PIN code entry screen. In the corner of the display, the battery life was listed as 27%, which didn’t seem like much, but Jack knew for a fact was probably at least a day’s worth of charge for a tablet this size. Alpha electronics were large enough to contain many times more battery power and hard drive space than similar hardware available at a Beta-friendly scale.

As this was a tablet and not a phone, there was no option to do an emergency call or anything like that – the only way to get help was to crack this code.

Caitlin didn’t strike Jack as the most tech-savvy person, which was the worst kind of stereotypical assumption, but probably the right one. If he had to guess, he reckoned that she would not only have a simple PIN, but she wouldn’t have enabled the lock-out feature either.

He began by tapping 1,2,3,4 on the screen, code incorrect. 0,0,0,0 – incorrect. 1,1,1,1 – incorrect.

No warning had popped up, so he was safe to continue indefinitely – now, hopefully, it was only a matter of time.

He’d spent about 15 minutes on it by the time he decided to change tack, she might have a code that used the old telephone keypads, 2 for ABC, 3 for DEF, and so on.

REID was 7343, he worked out, but that code was incorrect. CAIT, 2248, incorrect. He wasn’t sure where to go next, looking around, he decided he’d try PINK, 7565… nothing.

He thought about it some more - maybe it was a year, or a date. He started by entering in the year he, and presumably she, was born, incorrect, the year after, nothing, the year before…

The code entry screen swooshed away to reveal a tiled menu in front of a photo of Caitlin and three friends on a night out. He was in! This also meant that perhaps Caitlin wasn’t 17 at all, maybe she was actually 18, or even 19…

He didn’t have time to ask questions, but this was definitely news. Jack recognised two of the girls in the picture as Hannah and Alex, but the third girl was a mystery to him. She was a bit taller than Hannah but noticeably less so than Alex, and Caitlin, obviously, and had dyed shoulder length hair. There was also something just a bit offish about her, he didn’t know quite what, but anyway, there were more important things to do right now.

The little clock in the corner of the screen showed the time as 3:42, people would be leaving school around now. Jack tapped the browser icon, and loaded up an incognito tab so that Caitlin would have no record of him using the tablet and it wouldn’t save or record his activity.

He wasn’t so sure that sending his parents an emergency email was a good idea, as he was beginning to worry about the implications if he got them involved. His parents would almost certainly call the police, which would make things incredibly serious, and they would surely push for an investigation into what happened, which would be expensive, embarrassing and risk upsetting Caitlin’s wealthy family. He didn’t want to get either of them fired, so he had to be careful.

All the same, he needed to be rescued, or at least make someone aware so that they could get him out of there.

He logged into his social media account, and loaded up the messages tab, selecting Delon as the recipient. He knew for a fact that Delon was pretty useless at checking his messages – he hadn’t been logged in for 9 hours, but seeing as his telephone number wasn’t listed, and he probably wouldn’t notice an email for several years, it was his best bet.

Opening up the maps application on the device, Jack looked at the list of recent locations to try and determine where he actually was. There were several big clusters of pins around the city, mainly around the school and the mall near the centre, and then a very tight cluster concentrated somewhere in the wealthy residential area to the north of town. Zooming in, the pins were centred on a large house with a pool, a hot-tub and a patio in the back garden…

Jack took a mental note of the street name – New Chester Lane – and reopened the tab with his unwritten message to Delon in it. He began to type:

Hey Delon,

I don’t know how to put this, you probably won’t believe me.

I’ve been kidnapped by Caitlin Reid, she grabbed me at school and brought me to her house, it’s just off New Chester Lane about 3 miles north of school – I just checked on her tablet – not sure which house number though. It’s a big bungalow with a pool in the back garden.

Her parents are away, she tied me up and left me in her room. I managed to get free and find this tablet. There is no way out of her room, I’m completely trapped, this isn’t a joke.

I don’t know whether to get police involved, or tell parents, I’m really scared.

Caitlin is crazy, man, all the rumours are true. I’m gonna have to hide in here somewhere and hope she doesn’t find me. She will be back later and will go apeshit, I have to make her think I already escaped or something.

If I can, I will check back on this, but I don’t know when that will be.

I don’t know what else to do.

Please get this message asap, dude. I don’t know what she will do to me if she finds me.

Jack

He read it through twice, and then pressed send.

3:51pm. He still had to find somewhere to hide…