The Unusual Way of Breaking Out of Metal Cuffs

It wasn’t uncommon for Leona to wake up to dizziness and a pounding headache. Everything was disoriented for a moment, and the writer let herself laze in bed for a few more minutes. She couldn’t remember much of what happened last night. Did she finally pass out again at the desk? Leonard must have returned and carried her to the bed again.

As she tossed and turned a little too much, Leona panicked on reflex. At this point, she should have fallen off the narrow mattress, but even after turning around twice, the only thing she felt was the strange pulling at her wrists. The bedding was also soft and not lumpy, very unlike her old bed.

Snapping her eyes open too quickly, Leona groaned at the light source coming from the side. Wait! Her room had thin curtains, and the lights usually filtered in from above her head. There should be no stabbing pain even if she opened her eyes so suddenly unless Leonard deliberately shone a flashlight in her face.

Where exactly was she?!

For a few heart-stopping seconds, Leona felt everything from the wee hours of the morning coming back to her as the headache worsened. She felt weak from hunger, but that was only the icing on top of this disastrous cake.

Oh yes, she remembered those thugs in suits and black glasses barging into her crappy apartment with guns. They looked real enough, and while she was still worried about her written chapters, those did not take priority when she realised there were freaking handcuffs on her wrists! No wonder she didn’t fall off the bed. These cuffs had long chains that allowed her some movement.

Untwisting herself from the chains she rolled into in her sleep, Leona tested the limits of her freedom. The kidnapper was a rather rich person from the interior decor. This four-poster bed was imported furniture and probably cost more than Leona’s yearly earnings from writing. The handcuffs were also the real deal as they did not give easily. The chains gave her some freedom to move from the bed but only a meter from her bed. She could reach that new bottled water on the bedside table, but it wasn’t long enough for her to reach the bathroom.

Speaking of the bathroom, Leona needed to go urgently. She had no idea if it was still morning or in the afternoon without any windows or clocks. There wasn’t anyone around, and Leona spent a good minute calling out to her captors, but there wasn’t another soul in this luxurious bedroom.

She might not know her precise location, but Leona deduced it had to be a penthouse or a mansion from the interior design. They did not treat her too badly, even if she was a hostage, meaning they still had some use for her. She didn’t have to be a genius to understand that Leonard was in trouble. Nobody else would think of her as valuable.

“Forget it. I have more urgent needs to attend to,” Leona growled at the urgency in her bladder.

The perks of writing action romances were the amount of research she invested in for writing certain scenes. Ordinary hostages would probably feel helpless in such situations but not Leona. She might be terrified if she was in a cage or watched by gun-wielding thugs from the moment she regained consciousness. However, Leona felt a spark of hope because she was left alone by such careless kidnappers in a luxurious apartment.

The first thing kidnappers should do was remove anything on their hostage that could be used as a weapon or escaping tool. In addition, all watches and contacting devices should be removed to prevent the hostage from knowing more about their location and situation as much as possible.

Leona wasn’t wearing a watch when she was kidnapped. The clothes she wore were the same as last night. Her laptop and phone were left in her apartment, and her kidnappers most certainly wouldn’t pack them for her when they dragged her over to her new prison. There wasn’t anything useful to pick the lock in her handcuffs, and Leona’s wrists were sore from trying to squeeze out of them.

According to her knowledge, there were two ways to break out of metal cuffs. The first was by using lubricant and squeezing from them for captives with smaller wrists. Leona searched the drawer of the bedside table, and it was empty, for better or worse. She might be able to squeeze out of the cuffs if there was lubricant in the side drawer, but seeing such a thing there would only heighten her panic. Leona could only opt for the second method and look for something to pick the lock.

Ideally, a bobby pin would work. Heck, the keyhole was also big enough to be forcefully picked by the edge of her glasses if she was wearing them. They were anti-glare glasses, so Leona had no trouble seeing without them. However, they must have fallen off in the struggle earlier, and there wasn’t anything nearby that she could reach, capable of picking this lock.

Determined not to embarrass herself by peeing on the bed, Leona thought quickly. Was there really nothing she could use to get out of them? The writer tried to tug at them in hopes to loosen the chain, but it wasn’t happening. All it did was tire her out, and the bed didn’t even budge. She eyed the plastic bottle she drank from earlier and wondered how appropriate it would be to pee into that if she couldn’t free herself when an idea struck her.

“It might not be the most conventional, but anything is worth a try now,” she told herself as she squirmed her arms out of those elastic hoops on her shoulder.

Unfastening a bra in such a fashion was uncomfortable, but she could only improvise without the help of her hands to unfasten the hooks at the back. For the longest time, Leona hated how uncomfortable these cheap wire push-up bras were. However, she changed her mind about them for the first time since puberty. Desperate times called for drastic measures. When there were bobby pins, bra wires could be used to pick the locks!

Thanking her cheapskate character and refusal to get a new bra, even if the one she wore was old and worn, Leona rejoiced that the wire protruding from the crappy bra fabric was exactly what she needed to earn her freedom! Dignity could be damned as she pulled the bra around to unfasten it beneath her shirt.

The bra came off smoothly, and Leona worked quickly. She freed that exposed wire and bent it into a wavy shape before she bit onto it. Her heart was racing as she shook in both nervousness and excitement. Reading about the different lock picking methods was very different from doing it in reality. Leona understood that there were two easy ways of picking almost any physical lock, and the fastest was raking. She didn’t have the right tool and wasn’t an expert, so this had to be the only way.

Inserting the wire into the lock and finding the pins, Leona applied pressure on the wire according to the direction of the pins and pulled it out quickly. Nothing happened the first time, and she repeated several times, shaking the handcuffs lightly as she raked the lock until eventually, she heard a heavy click as the metal cuffs snapped open.

Rejoicing at her freedom, Leona made a sprint towards the slightly ajar door with a sink behind it. She never appreciated modern facilities as much as she did now, without any windows or clocks. She and the sound of a flushing toilet was a luxury she promised to never take for granted again.

Alone in the bathroom, Leona finally took a good look at herself in the mirror. Since she was here, it might be a good time to formulate her escape plan. If those thugs thought they could keep her here and expect her to be distracted by these luxuries, they were gravely mistaken.