InkHeartMy head is full of sand and static. A metallic tang coats my tongue, the chemical ghost of whatever they used to take me. I try to move, but my limbs are weighted, distant things that don’t quite belong to me.
My eyes crack open to a ceiling of weeping stone. The surface beneath me is a wafer-thin pad on a concrete floor, doing little to ward off the chill seeping into my bones. I’m in a cell. Iron bars make up the fourth wall, looking out on a corridor lit by bare, buzzing bulbs. The air stinks of bleach and damp rust.
I’m not wearing my own clothes. The worn denim and soft shirt are gone, replaced by a black silk slip. It’s a cold caress against my skin, offering no warmth, only a chilling sense of purpose.
I’m not alone.
In the far corner, another girl is curled into a ball, rocking slightly. Her pale pink slip is a wound against the gray concrete. Her gaze is fixed on nothing. In the next cell over, two more women sit like statues, their postures rigid with a fear so complete it has become paralysis.
The sharp taps of leather on stone echo down the corridor. A man in an impeccably tailored black suit stops before my cell, jingling a key ring. His face is a placid mask, his eyes holding the detached interest of a biologist studying an insect.
“Good,” he says, his voice a calm, even baritone. “You’re all awake.”
The sound of it, so reasonable and out of place, makes my skin crawl. “Where am I?” My own voice is a dry rasp.
His gaze slides past me as if I were a smudge on the wall. He moves to the girl in the corner. “You. On your feet.”
She doesn’t move, lost in her own terror. He sighs, a small, impatient puff of air. He crosses the cell in two strides and yanks her up by the arm. A thin squeak escapes her lips.
“Please,” she whispers, tears finally breaking free and tracking through the grime on her face. “I just want to go home.”
“This is your home now,” he says flatly. He glances toward the corridor and gives a slight nod. Two guards in drab uniforms appear at the cell door, which the man unlocks with a sharp clatter. “This one is non-compliant. See to it.”
They haul her out, her bare feet scraping on the stone. A single, choked-off scream is swallowed by the slam of a distant door.
The man in the suit turns back to me, his eyes cold and empty. “Any other questions?”
I shake my head, my throat clamped shut.
“Excellent,” he says, almost brightly. “Let’s get you ready. The buyers will be arriving soon.”
He raps his knuckles on the bars, and two older women with faces as blank as slate enter the cell. They don’t speak. One grabs my arm, her grip surprisingly strong, and pulls me to my feet. The other starts to roughly undo my braid.
“Take off the slip,” the first woman says, her voice a monotone.
I clutch the thin fabric to my chest, shaking my head. It’s the only thing covering me.
The woman’s hand snaps out and rips the delicate strap. The silk tears with a soft hiss, pooling around my ankles. The cold air is a physical shock, but the wave of shame that follows is worse, a heat that floods my face and chest. I wrap my arms around myself, a useless gesture.
They march me to a small, tiled room with a drain in the center of the floor. They hose me down with ice-sharp water, scrubbing my skin raw with a coarse brush as if scouring a dirty pot. A finger pries my mouth open, scrapes against a molar. My mind retreats, focusing on a single crack in the tile, a dark line spidering toward the drain. I am a thing being cleaned.
They shove a new slip into my hands—this one is gold, and it clings to my damp, shivering skin. Back in the cell, they sit me on a stool. Impersonal fingers work on my face, brushing my hair until it hangs like a dark sheet down my back. They paint my lips red, hiding the blue tinge of cold. They hold a small mirror up, and for a vertigo-inducing second, I don’t recognize the glossy, painted stranger with my wide, haunted eyes.
A gold tag, thin as a wire, is clasped around my wrist. It’s stamped with a number. Twenty-seven.
“Time,” the man in the suit calls from the corridor.
A guard opens my cell and grabs my arm in a vise-like grip. He pulls me into the hall where the other girls are being lined up, each a polished, silent version of who they were before.
From the end of the corridor, behind a set of heavy double doors, comes a low hum of voices, punctuated by a bark of laughter. The sound of a crowd.
The guard shoves me forward, my bare feet numb against the stone. He pushes me toward the doors. Another guard pulls one open, and the world explodes in a blast of warm air, noise, and light.
The light is a physical blow, a blinding white spotlight that pins me in place. I can’t see past its glare, but I can feel the eyes on me. The hum of voices falls silent. Then it rises again, a soft, collective intake of breath.
The sound of appraisal.
A hand presses into the small of my back, forcing me out of the shadows and onto a raised platform, alone in the burning light.