August 15th
8:22 A.M.
After so many hours sitting on the hard concrete floor, it felt like her backside had gone numb.
But there was nothing else to do.
So she sat, huddled in a corner of her cell, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs, attempting to physically hold herself together, and waited. For whatever horrors were awaiting her in this place.
That Mateo was part of this still didn't seem real.
Surely it had to be a delusion, her already terrified mind fracturing into a thousand pieces and conjuring up the one person who could provide her comfort. Only if it was her mind trying to conjure up someone who could provide her with any measure of comfort, wouldn't Mateo be sitting in a cell alongside her? He wouldn't be one of her captors, because that didn't provide any comfort at all.
If she’d wanted to pretend that she was mistaken, and it hadn't really been Mateo at all, then she couldn’t. Because hekept coming back. At what had to be lunchtime, he’d come back down to this huge room—which she had to assume was a basement, given there were no windows—with another trolley. This time, there was nothing on it for her, nothing for some of the other women either.
Again, at dinner time, he’d been back with another trolley containing more food. A small bowl of soup for her this time, and she already knew from what he’d said at breakfast and from watching the other women that she had to be down on her knees, staring at the floor, the perfect picture of submission before he’d enter the cell. Ally honestly wasn't sure whether the soup had tasted good, because she was too scared to taste anything.
Now he’d just left after once again delivering a meal. Two slices of toast again for her, no butter. Again, it was tasteless, it may as well have been cardboard going down. It also did little to ease the gnawing hunger pains.
But hunger pains she could live with.
It was whatever was coming next, she couldn’t.
Not knowing was the worst. Without any idea of what she should expect to happen over the coming days and weeks, meant her mind was free to conjure up its own ideas. No one had spoken to her yesterday, no one had taken her out of her cell, the men walking back and forth, up and down the corridor between the rows of cells didn't even glance her way.
She heard the screams, though.
Coming from women who had been collected and taken to rooms at the end of the corridor. Heard the moans, too, the grunts and groans, there was no mistaking that they were the sounds of sex. Or at least the sounds of someone taking their pleasure from an unwilling partner. Which was what every single one of these women was, herself included. They might not put up a fight, but that was only because they’d been conditionednot to, not because they were consenting to anything that happened to them.
Consent wasn't even possible when you were being held prisoner.
Panic clawed at her throat, threatening to have her throw up the meager meal she’d been given. That couldn’t happen. She had no water in here. It was bad enough she’d been forced to do her business in a corner of her cell, the smell of that was horrendous, but she couldn’t handle the smell of vomit.
So somehow Ally kept the bile down, then glanced around, needing answers before she lost her mind. No one in here talked, but there didn't appear to be any of the men about watching over them, and she had to know how bad things were going to get. She had to mentally prepare herself to endure it.
There were no other options.
No one would know she was gone, not for days at least, probably weeks, if at all. If the cops were going to find out about this place, it would have happened already. There was no hope. There was no imminent rescue. Ally knew she had to find a way to survive this world the same way she’d had to survive everything else life had thrown at her.
Gathering courage she didn't really possess, courage that was born out of desperation and nothing else, she turned her head to the woman in the cell beside hers. The woman was wearing clothing, but it clearly wasn't the clothes she’d been wearing when she was brought to this place. Just a simple white cotton gown, sort of like the kind you’d wear in a hospital, although it didn't appear to have ties at the back. This woman had a single blanket, and her meal had been a bit nicer than Ally’s, with eggs and bacon along with her toast, and the woman was still nibbling away at it, like she was trying to make it last for as long as she could.
This was probably a bad idea, likely something she’d be punished for if the way none of the women had spoken a word all day yesterday was anything to go by, but she was out of choices.
“Hey,” she whispered, and the woman’s head snapped quickly in her direction.
Wide blue eyes, full of panic, looked back at her, and the woman gave a sharp shake of her head. It was obvious she didn't want anything to do with a conversation, but Ally wasn't giving up.
“Please,” she begged. “I need to know what's going to happen to me.”
Another sharp shake was the only response the woman gave.
Maybe if she tried asking yes or no questions, the woman would be able to answer them without speaking a word and be more likely to interact. “Are they … human traffickers?”
The other woman hesitated long enough that Ally was sure this wasn't going to work either, that whatever these monsters had done to her had her shut down enough that she was too afraid to break out from it. But then she gave a single nod. A shakier one this time, not as sharp or decisive.
But an answer, nonetheless.
“Did you know any of them? Before you got here?”