CHAPTER TWO
The air stung like ammonia—too clean, too sharp, like someone had tried to scrub away whatever had happened in this room one too many times.
They led us in: single file, barefoot and shivering through the cold hallways. No one spoke our names. No one asked questions. Only the sound of our feet slapping against the marble floor and our stifled breaths filled the space.
There were six of us.
A girl behind me made a soft, broken noise—almost a sob.
A masked guard stepped beside her and drove an elbow into her ribs without hesitation.
She didn’t cry again.
Silence. That was lesson one.
The room we stopped in held no chairs, no furniture, no windows—just a row of thick black lines painted across the concrete, evenly spaced like slots in a filing cabinet. They made us stand on them, shoulder to shoulder, eyes forward.
Then she entered.
She didn’t rush.
Her heels clicked across the room like a clock counting down to something we didn’t yet understand. Tall, striking, and ice-cold, she wore a high-collared red dress, cinched at the waist and smooth as pressed glass. Her hair stayed pulled tight; her expression, unreadable—almost carved.
“Welcome,” she said, her voice crisp and controlled, carrying without effort. “You’re here because you were selected. Not for what you’ve done—but for what you are.”
She paced slowly before us, hands clasped behind her back. She didn’t look down at us. She didn’t need to.
“You may feel frightened. You may feel angry. Those feelings will pass. They are echoes of a life that no longer belongs to you.”
She stopped in front of the youngest girl in line—barely thirteen, if that. Her lips trembled. The woman brushed her cheek with slow, intentional care, like handling something fragile.
“You are no longer girls,” she continued. “You are properties under development. You are here to be refined, reshaped, and ultimately, to be claimed.”
I felt my knees wobble. I locked them tight.
“To serve is not humiliation. It is an honor. Obedience is your currency. Your body, your silence, the way you carry yourself under pressure—these are the things that determine your worth.”
She pauses. Her gaze drifted down the line. It landed on each of us like the blade of a knife, slicing through the space between fear and comprehension.
“We expect perfection,” she said. “And we will carve it out of you.”
She motioned toward the far wall. Two guards wheeled in a cart—stacked with small devices. Headsets. Slim screens. Tablets.
“Today is orientation,” she said, lifting one of the tablets and tapping the screen. “Tomorrow we begin behavioral immersion. In the days ahead, we will teach you how to sit, how to speak, how to serve without asking. We will reward obedience and correct defiance.”
The word correct made the girl beside me tremble.
The woman’s eyes flicked to her.
She nodded once toward a figure in the corner—tall, impeccably dressed in a dark suit, his presence chilling. A porcelain mask hid his face, blank and haunting.
Without hesitation, the Warden clapped his hands.
Another guard stepped forward and seized the girl by the arm.
She tried to resist, heels skidding along the narrow black line beneath her as she fought to stay upright.
It didn’t matter. She was dragged away anyway, her screams and begging trailing behind her.
The rest of us stood frozen, eyes averted as she was taken—like looking too long might make us next.
I didn’t need anyone to tell me he was the man in charge. The way the guards moved the second he clapped his hands made it obvious.
“No,” the woman said calmly as the door slammed shut behind the girl’s sobs. “Do not look away. You need to understand what happens to disobedience.”
Another man entered, Mr. Hirsh. I remembered him from last night.
His suit was dark and perfect, and his expression was unreadable as he walked down the line, slow and deliberate.
“Strip them,” he said.
The words didn’t register.
Not at first.
But the guards moved fast—grabbed the fabric at our shoulders, yanked our clothes down over our hips and over our heads. They pulled until we were nothing but bare skin and shame under the buzzing overhead lights.
One girl tried to cover herself, but a guard struck her across the face and she dropped like a stone.
“You are property now,” the woman said, stepping over her. “There is no modesty. No privacy. No self. Not until we give it to you.”
She paced the line, looking at us with cold precision.
“You will learn to serve the men who claim you. You will learn to smile when they hurt you, to beg when they take what isn’t offered, to make them believe you love it.”
A girl began to cry, soft at first, the sound thin in the heavy silence.
“Stop,” a guard snapped at her, his hand already raised.
The crying didn’t stop fast enough.
A crack split the room, sharp and final.
She crumpled to the floor, blood spilt from her nose and streaked across the gray surface.
No one moved to help her. No one looked at her.
We couldn’t.
The woman clicked something on a remote as a screen rolled down from the ceiling.
The screen lit up behind her with grainy surveillance footage—girls on their knees.
Girls gagged. Girls crawling. Girls smiling with dead eyes.
Servicing men in masks. Some were bleeding.
Some were limp. Some were laughing in a way that wasn’t real.
“This is your future,” the woman said flatly. “Unless you behave. Then maybe they’ll send you to the private wings. You’ll get cleaner rooms. More gentle masters.”
Gentle.
As if that meant anything here.
She turned the screen off.
“You were not born to be free,” she said. “You were born to be used. You belong to men now. And how much they value you depends entirely on how well you learn.”
She gestured toward the side door.
“The first training session begins in one hour. Get them cleaned. The next round of clients arrives tomorrow.”
The guards moved in, barking commands.
They herded us onward without explanation. Then the decontamination started.
Cold water slammed down from above, soaking through us instantly.
Rough bristles scraped over skin in brutal, mechanical passes until everything burned raw.
It wasn’t washing—it was stripping us down, erasing anything that made us feel human.
Invisible handlers controlled every second of it, as if we were nothing more than something to be processed.
No towels.
No comfort.
Just a silence we carried like chains.
And deep in my chest, somewhere under the panic, something sharp curled inward and whispered:
I will survive this.
But I will never forget.