3. Taken
Taken
Honor
The siren starts at six-thirty, cutting through the walls and dragging me fully awake before the machinery follows. Engines turn over somewhere beyond the building, one after another until the compound comes alive.
Twelve mornings.
I sit up on the narrow cot and pull the blanket around my shoulders. They took my coat. My boots too.
The small window is frosted almost opaque, but the ice feathering the inside of the glass tells me enough about how cold it is outside. The wall behind my bed vibrates when something enormous moves past, followed by the metallic crash of equipment being loaded.
Lockhart built this place around an old open-pit nickel mine. Officially, it closed years ago. That's what their records say.
The records are lying.
Heavy equipment operates throughout the day. Haul trucks, loaders, excavators, machinery I can't identify from sound alone. Some of it starts before dawn and continues well after dark. Warning alarms sound when vehicles reverse. Sirens mark shift changes. Generators run constantly.
Noise covers a lot of things, including women screaming.
I learned that on my third day.
The lock turns, and I stand before the door opens. A man in a heavy Lockhart jacket enters carrying a tray while another waits in the corridor. Neither wears a company identification badge. I've stopped asking their names.
The first man puts the tray down. Oatmeal. Water.
“Eat.”
“I was hoping for pancakes.”
His eyes narrow. I smile. Fear is useful to men like him, and I won't feed him mine.
He leaves, and the door closes behind him with the lock turning again.
I wait until his footsteps disappear beneath the machinery noise before picking up the bowl.
I've spent twelve days listening, not only to guards or doors because those things change too easily to matter. I've been listening to the women.
The older woman two rooms down coughs badly at night. Somewhere farther along the corridor, a younger woman speaks Cree when she's frightened. Yesterday someone new arrived crying and asking to go home.
I eat because being hungry won't help anyone.
The mine gives me something else too. Every blast of a horn, every reversing alarm and every shift siren tells me this isn't some hidden cabin in the wilderness where a few men can do whatever they want. This is an illegal mining operation. People work here.
Drivers come and go. Fuel arrives. Food arrives. Equipment needs maintenance. Somebody keeps the generators running, and somebody pays for all of it.
Lockhart can call this place closed on paper, but whatever they're extracting out there hasn't stopped. Neither has whatever they're doing to us inside a working company facility.
Footsteps approach again, and this time they stop outside the room beside mine. A lock turns and the door opens.
A woman says something I can't hear. A man answers sharply. Then she screams.
A reversing alarm starts outside, swallowing the rest.
I close my eyes and listen anyway, because if I get out of here, I'm taking every woman I can with me.
And I'm going to make damn sure the world hears what Lockhart buried beneath all this noise.
Lockhart Mining Compound, Northern Manitoba, Canada. 0930 hours.
The machinery eases sometime after nine. It never stops completely, but the haul trucks move farther off, the loader goes quiet, and the building settles enough that voices carry through the corridor.
That’s when I hear the woman they brought in yesterday.
“Are you awake?”
Cree. Soft and careful.
I move to the wall beside the cot. “Yes.”
A pause.
“I’m Lena.”
“Honor.”
Another pause.
“How long have you been here?”
“Twelve days.”
Silence.
Then, quietly, “Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know who else is here?”
“Some of them.”
I sit on the floor with my back against the wall, close enough that I don’t have to raise my voice.
“Mariah’s two rooms down. Tessa’s across from her. Ivy’s at the end. Sarah’s farther along.”
Lena goes quiet for a moment.
“How many of us?”
“Eight, as far as I can tell.”
A door opens somewhere down the corridor, and we both go silent. Boots pass. A lock turns. Someone coughs hard enough that it echoes through the wall before the footsteps move away again.
“There was another woman beside Ivy,” I continue. “Danielle. They moved her yesterday.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
The words come flatter than I want them to.
“There are two women farther down whose names I still don’t know.”
Lena is silent for a moment.
“You’ve been keeping track.”
“Trying to.”
I move to the door and crouch beside the narrow gap at the bottom.
“Mariah?”
Nothing.
Then, from farther down the corridor, a woman answers in Cree. “I’m here.”
“Tessa?”
“Yes.”
“Ivy?”
A weak reply comes from the end. “Here.”
“Sarah?”
A softer voice answers from farther along. “Here.”
I glance toward the wall beside me.
“That’s Lena. They brought her in yesterday.”
Mariah gives a quiet laugh. “We heard.”
Of course they did. Women talk, even when men think locked doors stop them.
I look toward the corridor.
Eight women.
All in this building.
Six names I know.
Two I don’t.
Yet.
“Ivy’s sick,” I tell Lena.
“I’m fine,” Ivy calls weakly from down the corridor.
“No, you’re not,” Mariah says.
Despite everything, I almost smile.
“Fever’s still there?” I ask.
“Yeah. Cough too.”
“And the pills they gave you?”
“Took them yesterday.”
“Do you know what they were?”
“No.”
I press my palm against the door. “All right. We keep talking when it’s safe. We learn what everyone has seen, where people get moved and anything that changes.”
Lena answers through the wall. “And then?”
I look toward the frosted window, pale daylight barely making it through the ice.
“Then nobody disappears quietly.”
The loader starts again outside, its engine roaring back to life and swallowing our voices.
But now Lena knows the names I know.
And I know hers.
Lena. Mariah. Tessa. Ivy. Danielle. Sarah.
Six names.
Two more to learn.
Names mean family. Someone waiting. Someone wondering. Someone refusing to believe a daughter, sister or friend simply vanished.
Lockhart doesn’t get to erase any of them.
I repeat the names until I know I won’t forget.
Lockhart Mining Compound, Northern Manitoba, Canada. 1230 hours.
By midday, the frost on the window has thinned enough for me to see through patches of glass.
I cross to it, wipe condensation away with the sleeve of my sweater and peer through.
White. That’s most of what I get.
Snow covers the ground between this building and the security fence. Beyond it, spruce and pine stretch toward a distant ridge, dense enough that I can’t see what lies between here and there.
I know what’s out there.
Without boots or a coat, I wouldn’t make it far.
A haul truck crawls past the far side of the compound, so enormous the tires are almost as tall as I am. Its engine vibrates through the building before it disappears behind another industrial shed. A loader follows several minutes later, its reversing alarm cutting through the constant machinery.
People everywhere, yet nobody comes near this building unless they belong here.
That tells me something too.
Whatever Lockhart is doing, enough people know which parts of the compound not to question.
I look beyond the fence again.
The treeline hasn’t changed. I’ve been staring at it every chance I get since I woke up here.
Sometimes I imagine movement between the spruce. A person. An animal. Anything that doesn’t belong to Lockhart.
I know better than to build hope out of shadows. Nobody knows where I am.
My phone disappeared with my camera and notebook. I don’t know what happened to my vehicle or whether Grandmother Rose even knows where to start looking.
She’ll be looking, though. I know that as surely as I know my own name.
She won’t accept that I walked away or believe I decided to disappear. She knows enough about what I’ve been investigating to understand exactly who might want me silent.
The thought keeps me at the window.
Somewhere beyond those trees, there could be someone searching. People from the community. Hunters who heard a missing woman mentioned and decided to look. Police too, maybe, although my investigation has taught me not to put much faith in that.
I don’t care who.
Just someone. Anyone.
For once, I let myself believe it.
Then a siren sounds across the compound, and I watch out the window a little longer.
Believing someone might find us isn’t a plan. Keeping these women alive is.
Lena has only been here one day. Mariah longer. Ivy is sick. Danielle has already been moved somewhere we can’t identify, and there are still women in this building whose names I don’t know yet.
I’ll learn them. I’ll learn everything I can.
And when a door opens that shouldn’t, when a guard gets careless or one of Lockhart’s machines gives us enough noise to move without being heard, I’ll be ready.
I look back at the strip of forest visible through the window.
If anyone is out there looking, I need to keep us alive long enough to be found. Until then, I know exactly what I need to do.
Keep breathing. Keep listening. Keep the others doing the same.
Lockhart has already made too many women disappear.
We won’t be next.
Lockhart Mining Compound, Northern Manitoba, Canada. 1800 hours.
The guards make their evening rounds just before six.
I know because the shift siren sounds outside, followed by the heavy thud of boots moving down the corridor and locks opening one after another.
The machinery has been running hard all afternoon. Haul trucks grind past the building, loaders reverse with shrill alarms, and somewhere farther across the site an excavator keeps hammering at frozen ground. The noise rises and falls but never disappears completely.
The guard reaches my door. The lock turns. I stay where I am.
He looks at the empty food tray, then at me.
“Anything you need?”
“My coat. My boots. A phone.”
His expression doesn’t change.
“Then no.”
“How about some feminine hygiene products?”
He gives a short laugh.
I don’t.
“No, really. I’ve got my period.”
The look of alarm that flashes across his face is almost comical.
Almost.
He backs toward the door like I’ve announced I’m contagious.
“If you could bring me pads or tampons, that’d be great.”
He mutters something under his breath and disappears into the corridor so quickly I might’ve laughed if I didn’t genuinely need them.
He shuts the door, the lock clicking into place. I listen as his footsteps move on.
Of course he doesn’t come back.
Later, I fold toilet paper over and over until it’s thick enough to use and try not to think about how long it’ll last.
Disgusting.
Another basic thing Lockhart gets to decide I can live without.
“Honor?”
Lena’s voice comes through the wall.
“I’m here.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No.”
Farther down the corridor, Mariah asks if Ivy has eaten.
“A little,” Ivy answers.
“Drink the water too,” I tell her.
“I did.”
“More.”
A weak laugh comes back. “You sound like my auntie.”
“Your auntie sounds smart.”
That gets another laugh, this one from Mariah.
The women have started asking me things throughout the day.
What time is it?
Did I hear the truck?
Do I think they moved Danielle somewhere close?
What should Ivy do about her fever?
I don’t have answers to most of it. They ask anyway.
Someone has to keep track. Someone has to remember what was said, who was moved, who’s sick, which guard came through and what changed outside.
So I do.
After the corridor goes quiet, I reach beneath the cot and retrieve the thin wire I worked free from a clothes peg two days ago.
The underside of the wooden support is rough enough to take a mark.
I start scratching the women’s names.
Lena.
Mariah.
Tessa.
Ivy.
Danielle.
Sarah.
Then I add my own.
Honor.
Seven names now.
I don’t add guesses. Only names I know belong to women who are here.
If somebody searches this room after we’re gone, they’ll probably check the mattress, the walls, the floor, maybe even the vent.
Nobody’s going to crawl beneath a bunk and look upward.
I run my finger over the letters.
This is how people disappear. First the person goes missing. Then the search ends. Then the file closes. Years pass until all that remains is a photograph in somebody else’s house.
I won’t let that happen here.
“Honor?” Lena whispers.
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing?”
“Making a list.”
“Why?”
I look at the names carved into the wood.
“So somebody knows we were here.”
The answer travels down the corridor in Cree.
Mariah repeats it to Tessa.
Tessa passes it farther.
By the time it reaches Ivy, the words have changed slightly.
Nobody gets forgotten.
I like that version better.
Outside, another haul truck rolls past and the wall shivers under the weight of it.
I slide the wire back into its hiding place and sit on the cot.
They can lock the doors, move us and take our phones, clothes and names off whatever records they control.
But they don’t get to decide whether we existed.
I’m not becoming another photograph on Grandmother Rose’s table.
Neither are the women around me.