Seraphina
I woke up because someone was whispering not loudly but I could still hear it.
Fear rarely raises its voice. It curls itself into corners, breathes into other people's ears, and waits for them to infect one another with it. Panic shouts. Terror doesn't need to.
My eyelids felt impossibly heavy, as though someone had stitched damp sandbags beneath them while I slept.
Every thought drifted through thick syrup, arriving several seconds later than it should have, refusing to arrange itself into anything useful.
Whatever had been inside that needle was still moving lazily through my bloodstream, politely asking my body to remain someone else's property for a little longer.
I opened one eye, then the other. The world arrived piece by piece instead of all at once. A dirty yellow bulb hung from a frayed black cord above my head, swaying almost imperceptibly. The movement was so slight it would have escaped most people, but it told me everything I needed to know.
No windows. Poor ventilation. Somewhere nearby, something heavy had moved recently. Metal. Everything around me was metal.
Corrugated steel walls curved upward into a rust-stained ceiling where old water had bled brown veins through faded grey paint. The floor beneath my bare feet was cold enough to steal the remaining warmth from my skin, the iron refusing to give anything back once it had taken it.
The air tasted wrong, not simply damp but like iron or diesel, maybe old timber and rust. Something sour beneath it all.
Blood.
Not fresh blood.
Old blood.
The kind that had seeped into cracks years ago, scrubbed away by people who believed bleach erased history. It doesn't. Rooms remember. Concrete remembers. Metal remembers longest of all.
I drew one slow breath through my nose and immediately regretted it. Copper coated the back of my tongue until I could almost feel pennies dissolving between my teeth.
My fingers twitched, they answered. Good. My legs followed a second later. I closed my eyes again, forcing myself backwards through memory instead of forwards through panic.
The kitchen. Warm dough beneath my hands. Garlic. Basil. The back door. A shadow where there shouldn't have been one. Cold metal touching my neck. Gerald…
Everything inside my chest tightened so violently it almost hurt.
"...Gerald..."
My voice barely existed, escaping my throat as nothing more than a cracked whisper. For one terrible heartbeat there was only silence.
Then I heard it.
"Honestly, I've suffered worse," Gerald grumbled somewhere inside my mind with all the enthusiasm of a tax collector.
"Although I do feel obligated to point out that smashing me onto cement was exceptionally rude. When we leave here, I expect a replacement. Marble would be nice. Bronze if you're feeling sentimental. Anything less and I'll file a complaint."
The breath I hadn't realised I was holding escaped my lungs all at once. Relief is a peculiar thing. It doesn't make you stronger. It simply reminds your body it hasn't fallen apart yet.
"That's outrageous,"
Frank complained immediately.
"Why does Gerald get upgraded? I endured the exact same traumatic experience emotionally."
"Nobody dropped you onto concrete."
"Emotionally they did."
"You're exhausting."
"Stop talking," I murmured, rubbing weakly at my forehead as the chemical haze continued to pulse behind my eyes.
"Both of you. I can't think while you're arguing."
They grumbled because of course they did but blessedly fell quiet. Only then did I realise the whispers hadn't stopped. They'd stopped because they were watching me.
Slowly, I lifted my head.
Only then did I realise... everyone in the space was staring at me.
There were women. At first my mind refused to settle on the number. Fear has a curious habit of rearranging mathematics.
Six.
No...
Seven.
No.
Twelve.
They were scattered around the container without any obvious pattern, each occupying her own small island of despair.
Some sat with their backs pressed so tightly against the corrugated steel that they looked as though they hoped the metal might eventually absorb them.
One woman had wrapped both arms around her knees with such force her knuckles had faded to the colour of old paper.
Another couldn't have been much older than eighteen.
Bruises bloomed beneath her skin like dark violets, spreading across her wrists and collarbone in uneven circles.
Dried tear tracks had carved pale rivers through the dust coating her cheeks, leaving clean lines where grief had washed the dirt away.
For a long moment I simply looked at them not because I didn't recognise them but because I did.
Every single face. I'd seen them before.
Not here but pinned to corkboards. Printed beneath newspaper headlines.
Frozen inside televised pleas where mothers begged strangers to remember smiles instead of statistics.
Each one had been reduced to a missing person's photograph. A date, height, weight and last known location. People have an astonishing ability to transform living women into paperwork.
Elias had stood in front of those photographs while explaining the investigation to me, his jaw tight enough to fracture stone. I remembered the way his fingers had lingered on certain names a heartbeat longer than others, as though refusing to accept that ink and paper were all that remained.
They hadn't been dead. They'd been here. All this time…
A young blonde woman slowly edged closer, dragging herself across the iron floor as though every movement hurt. Her cardigan hung from one shoulder, ripped almost completely down the sleeve, and her hands shook so violently she struggled to keep them clasped together.
"Are you alright?" she asked quietly.
I studied her face. The swelling beneath her left eye. The split lip. The tremor in her breathing. The way she kept glancing towards the doors every few seconds, even while speaking to me. Then I answered with the only truthful response available.
"No."
She blinked. Perhaps she'd expected reassurance. People usually do. The truth often disappoints them. Her eyes filled again.
"Do you..."
Her voice cracked before she swallowed hard enough for me to hear it.
"Do you think we're getting out?"
I didn't answer immediately. Hope should never be given away carelessly.
It needs evidence. My gaze travelled slowly around the container instead.
One entrance. Heavy industrial hinges. External locking system.
No visible interior release. Ventilation slits positioned too high to reach without assistance.
Steel walls. No corrosion significant enough to weaken the structure.
No loose rivets. No obvious escape route.
Someone had designed this place with remarkable patience. They hadn't built a prison. They'd built storage. That thought disturbed me far more than the steel. Finally, I looked back at the blonde woman.
"Yes."
The word left my mouth quietly not hopefully but certainly.
"My boyfriend is a detective."
Several women stared at me without speaking. Their expressions were strange. Almost pitying.
"He'll find me."
I smiled faintly.
"He always follows the pattern."
A woman near the far wall buried her face against her knees and began crying again, the sound muffled by her sleeves.
"They never come," she whispered between broken breaths. "Nobody knows where this place is."
I shook my head.
"You haven't met Elias."
My fingers unconsciously found the blue wool pooled around my shoulders, holding the fabric for only a second before letting it fall again.
"He'll notice."
Someone laughed bitterly. Another woman looked away. I didn't.
"He loves me."
The words settled into the container with surprising weight, not dramatic or desperate. Simply true.
Metal exploded against metal.
CLANG.
Every woman flinched. The sound echoed through the container so violently it seemed to vibrate inside my ribs.
Another bolt slid back.
Then another.
Steel screamed against steel as the enormous doors began opening inward, daylight slicing through the darkness in a blinding white line that grew wider by the second. Dust floated through the light like tiny insects.
Three silhouettes waited beyond it. The largest stepped inside first. He was immense. Not merely tall but dense.
The sort of man whose shoulders entered a room before the rest of him had made the decision.
Grease stained his work clothes, and the sharp smell of diesel followed him across the floor.
A pale scar disappeared beneath his left ear before vanishing into the collar of his shirt, twisting his jaw just enough to make his face look permanently irritated.
The container seemed to shrink around him.
Several women recoiled instinctively. One pressed herself so tightly against the steel wall I thought she might break her own spine. Another began sobbing openly.
I stayed exactly where I was. Fear is information. Displaying it simply tells the other person they've succeeded.
He stopped directly in front of me. His shadow swallowed almost my entire body. He waited. He expected panic. He expected pleading. He expected tears.
Instead, I tilted my head slightly, studying him with genuine curiosity.
"...How disappointing."
His brow furrowed.
"I assumed someone carrying that much muscle would have something equally impressive inside their skull."
The corner of my mouth lifted.
"It appears your body consumed all available resources before they reached the brain."
Inside my skull, the alarms went frantic.
"SERAPHINA!" Gerald shrieked, his tiny painted hands waving over his tunic.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"For once," Frank muttered.
"I completely agree with him."
"That's the absolute opposite of surviving! You're rewriting the safety parameters!"
The colour climbed his neck slowly. Red. Then darker. Almost the shade of old wine.
Interesting.
Anger always travelled upward before it exploded outward. His jaw tightened. His nostrils flared. One shoulder rolled forward.