The room was small. Cold. A single bare bulb swung from a chain overhead, casting slow-moving shadows across concrete walls stained with things best left unidentified. The air smelled of rust and damp—like the inside of a drain that hadn't seen sunlight in years.

Bakugo's wrists were raw, the rope biting into skin where it wound tight around both hands and lashed to a hook driven deep into the ceiling. His legs were free, but that didn't matter much when he couldn't reach the knot. The drug was still in his system too, dulling the familiar crackle that lived in his palms, that warm itch behind his teeth that meant power was coiled and waiting. Right now there was nothing. Just the ache in his shoulders and the throb at the base of his skull where someone had clocked him hard enough to drop him.

His eyes adjusted. The room had a door, metal, with a bolt on the outside. Bakugo's vision finally cleared enough to see the rest of the room, and he realized with a sickening lurch that there were two doors. The one he'd already spotted, and another behind him, half-hidden in shadow. Both bolted from the outside.

His mouth tasted like copper and dirt. His tongue found the cut inside his cheek where he'd bitten down when the blow landed.