Oof

  Lucy gasped as she was tossed unceremoniously onto a cold stone floor. She squirmed, but her hands were tied, and her head was covered by a hood. Getting up from this position would be difficult, and her gag made calling for help impossible. She suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder and flinched, remembering the rough hands of her captors. The hand retreated, but the voice that came after it was nothing like her abductors’: “It’s okay. It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m just trying to help. Alright?”

  The voice was calm and gentle, not unlike Marie’s but without the accent. Lucy instinctively calmed down, her heart rate and breathing beginning to settle. Slowly, she nodded, and Lucy felt those hands remove her hood and undo the cuffs on her wrists. Truth be told, Lucy couldn’t see much even without the hood. She was in a large open space, likely within another warehouse. The only light in the room came from a few tiny windows high above, and since it was still evening the room was only a few shades lighter than pitch black. It was just enough to see that there was a small congregation of shadowy figures in here with her. Now that the hood was off, she could hear their murmurs and comments and was relieved to recognize that they were entirely feminine. The next voice she heard was an even greater relief: “Lucy!?”

  It was Marie. Tears welling up in her eyes, Lucy tried to respond, even though she was still gagged: “Let’s take care of that as well.”

  This recent statement came from the same voice that was helping Lucy. She felt someone take the gag out of her mouth and realized that her hands were now free. Pushing herself to her feet, Lucy had just gotten herself upright when she was enveloped in a powerful hug. She instantly knew who it was, of course. No one gave hugs like Marie. The visceral confirmation that her guardian was still alive and with her got the waterworks going.

  The two women held each other like that for a long time, simply grateful to be alive. Lucy was the first to break the silence with a choked apology: “I’m-*hic*-I’m sorry, Marie. I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

  She felt Marie’s confusion in her body’s reaction, and heard it in her voice: “Sorry for what, cherié? We have been kidnapped by villains! Surely, you are not in league with them!”

  This last part was said as something of a joke, meant to cheer Lucy up a bit. Instead, the girl wilted further, muttering: “I may as well be.”

  Now that set off further mutters from the other figures in the room, reminding the women that they had an audience. In a minor bit of embarrassment, Lucy released Marie and turned to look at the others. She was 14 now, too old to be weeping into her ‘Auntie’s’ shoulder. Too old in front of an audience, at least. One member of that audience stepped forward: her gentle voice recognizable as the voice of Lucy’s savior: “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m sure both of you are confused and scared. Why don’t you have some water and some food? Then we can talk about this place.”

  Lucy and Marie verbally assented and were given hard rations and sour-tasting water. They didn’t have much appetite, but the chance to focus on something simple like eating helped to calm them down. As they ate, the mysterious woman explained the situation: “I’m Rose. Rose Greenstone. I’d introduce you to the others, but it’s so dark in here right now that you can’t even match names to faces! We can all get acquainted in the morning. What you need to know now is…”

  Rose explained to them how they’d been sold off to sex traffickers, middlemen who would sell them to the appropriate ‘vendors’. Lucy and Marie vaguely remembered their meeting with the gold-toothed crook while they were in a hazy state. Even now, Lucy felt a bit loopy from the drugs her attackers had given her, though that loopy sensation was fast turning into a pounding headache. That didn’t stop the whip-smart girl from checking Rose’s story against what she remembered from that conversation, finding that the details matched up well. It didn’t take a genius to tell that Marcovi had decided to use these traffickers as a way to get rid of her. Speaking of Marcovi, the part of the conversation Lucy most dreaded came up faster than she’d hoped, as Rose continued speaking: “As for how we all got here, some of us had husbands or fathers who got into debt. Others, sadly, fell into substance abuse and got into too much debt there. I, myself, got a bit too mouthy with some of the local gangs.”

  Even in the dark, Lucy could sense the woman smiling combatively, apparently lacking any regret for her past courage. Her humor was infectious, causing Lucy to smile a bit also, but the following statement wiped that smirk away as quickly as it came: “If you feel comfortable enough to tell us, we’d be happy to hear your story. None of us will judge you, and we’ve found that talking about things can be comforting. But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

  Next to Lucy, Marie’s confusion was evident in her response, her voice growing more agitated as she spoke: “That is very kind of you, but I speak the truth when I say I do not know how or why we got here. The men who took us-“

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  “Marie.”, Lucy interrupted her guardian, voice hoarse yet firm. Her pounding headache got worse as all eyes turned on her. Lucy gulped nervously, steeled herself, then elaborated: “Marie, I know why we’re here. It’s all my fault.”

  She then launched into a lengthy explanation. Even as the blood in her ears pulsed with waves of pain, Lucy spilled her guts before her entire audience. She explained what she suspected happened with her parents, and the ongoing investigation she’d been doing into the Marcovi family: “I didn’t tell you about it because I wanted to protect you. I thought this was something I needed to do on my own.”

  She hung her head in shame, muttering the following words with a sense of self-derision: “Now I see how stupid that was. I wasn’t protecting anyone. I was just being selfish. I-“

  Before she could finish, Marie interrupted her with a firm hug, one that bordered on aggressive. The guardian’s response had steel in it, like Marie was prohibiting her from disagreeing: “No. I forbid you from feeling guilty. Stupid, yes, as you were very silly for not telling me. But guilty? No. Guilt is for the wicked. And you are the furthest person from wicked I have ever met.”

  She paused, then said: “It’s okay to love yourself, even when you make mistakes, Lucy.”

  Now Lucy was crying again, which only worsened her headache, but she couldn’t help it. All thoughts of appearances were gone as she clung to the arms of the woman who’d done so much for her, like a castaway clinging to debris in a stormy sea. Eventually, they separated again, and one of the other women offered them more water, which they thankfully accepted. The hydration improved Lucy’s headache a bit, and she was suddenly aware of just how sleepy she really was. Marie, seeing this in her charge, ordered everyone to bed. There were no actual beds, but Lucy had no problem simply lying on the concrete floor and passing out, totally spent.

  She woke up dehydrated and minimally rested, but at least she could see now. The sun had finally made its appearance, feeble beams trickling through the tiny windows above. Lucy could finally see the room’s other occupants in more detail.

  Rose stood out immediately, a pretty-faced, brown haired girl with twinkling green eyes. She smiled at Lucy as the girl looked over: “Mornin’. I’m sure you’ll be wanting more water now. I’m sorry to report that you drank the last of our stash last night. We need to wait for the pigs to refill it.”

  Lucy nodded slowly, wincing at the stiffness in her muscles as she sat up to look around. There were about two dozen women in the warehouse, besides Lucy and Marie. All of them, including Rose, looked worn and thin, yet Rose managed to look sunny and upbeat despite the circumstances. The others mostly seemed despondent and haggard, resigned to their grim fate. While waiting, Rose introduced them all, but Lucy was saddened to see that most of the women could barely bring themselves to smile and say their names.

  Eventually, one of the guards came to refill their water pail and give them rations through a slot by the door. Rose took charge of passing out the food, explaining to Lucy and Marie that they’d need to make this last all day.

  As she greedily sipped her cup of water and nibbled on her rations, Lucy thought through various escape plans. When the guard had come to fill up their water pail, he’d needed them to place it in the slot. Could they refuse to hand it over? The guards would have to come into the room and do it themselves, since they needed the women in half-decent condition, not dying of thirst.

  No. Even if the guards opened the door, the women’s chances of overpowering them and escaping would be terrible. Some of the guards might be Enhanced. Even if they weren’t, Lucy didn’t want to go up against armed guards with emaciated women. Even with numbers on their side, that plan was doomed to failure. And even if they succeeded, the women wouldn’t know where to go afterward. She needed more info. Lucy caught Marie’s eye and gestured to the windows. The maid nodded in understanding and turned to the other women, asking: “Apologies, but is there someone willing to help us with something?”

  To no one’s surprise, Rose was the first to volunteer, though when she heard what they were planning, she just shook her head: “That’s smart and all, but we’ve thought of that. I suppose you’ll want to see for yourself, though.”

  They formed a human tower, with Marie on the bottom, Rose on her shoulders, and Lucy on Rose’s. That allowed the young woman to peer through one of the tiny windows, trying to get a sense of where they were and what the facility looked like. All she saw was the grey side of a solid concrete wall that ran up close to the outside of the warehouse. As Lucy looked out, Rose spoke up, unprompted: “All of the windows are like that. We’ve checked. I can’t even goad or tempt the guards into coming in here. They just give us another pail of water if we refuse to return ours.”

  Sighing, Lucy got down. Escape would prove difficult to impossible with no info.

  The next few days passed without ceremony. Lucy meditated on the problem, coming up with a few possibilities, all of them far-fetched. On the fourth day, the women suffered another blow. Someone banged on the door without warning, a male’s voice calling out aggressively from the other side: “Away from the door!”

  They barely had time to react before the double steel doors steadily creaked open. In walked eight thugs in military fatigues, bearing assault rifles and flanking the fat, gold-toothed Hispanic man. He glared critically at the women who’d shrunk away from the loud noise, before pointing: “Her, her, her, and that one.”

  Four of the guards stepped forward, grabbed the four women, and dragged them over to the door. As they did, however, Lucy was shocked to hear someone cry out: “Wait!”

  It was Rose. She had stepped forward, glaring fiercely at the gold-toothed crook: “Take me instead. Please, leave at least one of them. I-“

  “Step back, you stupid whore!”

  The fat man interrupted her, pulling out a revolver and aiming it at the defiant woman. As Lucy looked at the weapon, her heart leapt a little. It reminded her of Danny’s gun. That reminder improved her spirit, especially when she remembered that he was still out there somewhere. When Danny realized she was gone, he’d come for her. These fantasies were soon interrupted by cold reality.

  Rose hesitated at the order, and the crook cocked the firearm’s hammer in response. She finally obeyed at that. The crook sneered at her: “I have a different buyer for you. Now stay.”

  And with that, the goons left, leaving the remaining women in a heavy silence. They stayed like that for several minutes, the depression in the air thick enough to cut with a knife.

  Then, they heard the gunfire.