37. Nell
“Where do you think they’re taking us?”
the girl beside me whispers, her voice barely audible beneath the suffocating fabric of the hood.
I don’t know if she’s speaking to me or the girl on her other side, but just hearing another woman’s voice—something human, something real—is a strange kind of comfort in this nightmare.
“Nowhere good,”
I murmur, my throat raw and dry. Every word scrapes like sandpaper. I’m so dehydrated, I swear, I could smell water if it were anywhere near. My tongue feels like it’s been coated in dust.
“Are they going to kill us?”
she asks, and there’s something in her voice that guts me—something broken and childlike, the kind of fear that doesn’t have room for denial anymore.
“I don’t know.”
It’s the only honest answer I can give.
I won’t lie to her.
False hope is crueller than the truth.
“Next,”
a commanding voice barks from somewhere to my left.
We shuffle forward, inch by inch, like cattle in a slaughterhouse. It feels like we’ve been doing this for hours, each step dragging us closer to something we can’t see but all instinct screams to run from.
If I could just get this damn hood off—if I could see—maybe I could map the space, find a weakness, a way out. But they’re too smart for that. They know sight is power, and they’ve stripped us of every ounce of it.
“I want to go home,”
the girl whispers, her voice cracking as soft sobs escape her.
I let a few tears fall too. Just a couple. I can’t afford to cry them all out. Not yet. I’ll need what strength I have left. Because whatever’s waiting at the end of this line—I’m not going quietly.
The girl doesn’t speak to me again.
We don’t exchange names, because names won’t save us. Wherever we’re going, we won’t end up together. I know that I’ll probably never hear her voice again.
“Next,”
the voice barks.
A rough hand clamps down on my shoulder, shoving me forward with sharp, impatient jolts. Each push drives me closer to whatever hell they’ve lined up for me.
“Move,” he snaps.
But something inside me snaps first. Panic floods my veins, white-hot and blinding. It drowns out reason, silences fear, and for a split second, I act on instinct.
“No fucking way,”
I snarl, lunging forward into the dark, praying for a gap—any gap—I can slip through.
I make it a few steps.
A few glorious, defiant steps.
Then—impact.
Two hands slam into my chest like a battering ram, knocking the air from my lungs and rattling my ribs. I stumble back, arms flailing, trying to stay upright. Then I twist, ready to bolt in the opposite direction, but I don’t get the chance.
Something sharp jabs into the side of my neck. A needle. A dart. I don’t know. I just feel the burn.
And then everything tilts.
My balance vanishes. The floor sways beneath me like a ship in a storm. My limbs go heavy, my thoughts scatter like leaves in wind. I try to plant my feet, to stay grounded, but the ground won’t stay still.
All I can focus on is staying upright.
One of them shoves me hard, and I stumble into a room that is somehow even warmer—thick, suffocating heat wrapping around me like a fever. The floor beneath my feet shifts from cold concrete to coarse, scratchy carpet. The fibres bite into my soles, raw and unforgiving.
But the room won’t stop spinning.
“Bidding starts at twenty thousand.”
Bidding?
The word slices through the haze like a blade. I stagger forward, reaching out blindly with bound wrists for something—anything—to anchor myself. My fingers meet glass, or what I can only assume is glass—it’s cold and smooth. And it stings against my overheated skin, a cruel contrast to the warmth pressing in from every other direction.
A loud buzz blares overhead, sharp and mechanical.
Then the voice drills through me again—calm, clinical, detached.
“Do I have twenty-five?”
I lurch sideways, my body no longer listening to my brain. Each step is a gamble. My legs forget how to move in sequence, and I crash into the glass again, leaving a smear of sweat and panic behind.
Another buzz.
“Thirty?”
I can’t breathe. My chest rises and falls too fast, each breath shallower than the last. Panic coils in my gut, rising like bile. There’s no corner to hide in, no shadow to disappear into. No way to dissociate, to drift, to escape—not when my body won’t even stand still.
I’m exposed.
On display.
And the worst part is, I know exactly what they’re bidding for.
“Sold, to number nineteen.”
The words land like a branding iron.
Now I know how cattle must feel at the county shows—tagged, priced, and passed off to the highest bidder. No one cares where they came from. No one cares what they leave behind.
I’m yanked from the room as quickly as I was thrown into it. This time, there’s no attempt at control, I’m dropped like dead weight, limbs folding beneath me as I hit the ground in a tangled heap. For a moment, I can’t even tell which way is up. My body won’t respond, like it’s been disconnected from my mind.
And that’s the strangest part—my brain is still working. Still me. Still thinking, still remembering, still screaming inside. But my body…
My body has betrayed me.
It’s limp, useless, hollowed out by fear and whatever they drugged me with.
“Chuck her in there with the others,”
a distant voice says, careless, like I’m nothing more than a sack of grain.
Then I’m lifted—rough hands under my arms—and for a second I’m airborne, suspended in time. And then a sickening jolt tears through my skull as I hit the floor. Pain explodes in my ribs—something cracks, sharp and deep—and a searing burn radiates through my side. I try to breathe, but it’s like inhaling fire.
Then the nausea hits.
I retch violently, my stomach convulsing even though there’s nothing left inside. Bile and acid spill from my mouth, seeping through the gaps in the hood, sticking to my skin, hot and sour. I can’t wipe it away. I can’t even move.
I just lie here, broken and burning, the taste of vomit in my mouth and the sound of the door slamming shut behind me.