Page 115 of Katya and the Young God

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The next threedays pass in a blur. A blur of tasteless food, delivered by faceless guards with guns, the lights turned off the moment she’s done eating.

In terms of breaking someone’s will, Katya has to give them props. With each shudder of the lights flickering off, her heart jumps to her throat, her hands shaking. The guards spare no words for her, and besides the brusque nurse who inspects her injuries on the second day, there is no physical contact besides her body against the stiff, lumpy cot.

She grabs onto her sanity with those short bursts of light, keeping her mind in line, but the majority of her time passes in a haze of pain, drowsiness, and hunger.

19

On the third day, when the lights come on, the nurse shoves Katya’s bloody and ripped suit at her, then watches with blank eyes as Katya struggles to put on the pants over the unwieldy splint on her leg.

They’ve ripped open the seams, taking out each hidden weapon and lock pick she has, and the nurse’s expression doesn’t change with Katya’s search.

Katya can’t twist her shoulder back enough to clasp her bra, so the nurse snaps it shut over her still scraped up skin. Even the familiar cloth of her suit is harsh against the million and one fine injuries she got in the accident, and she hasn’t been in the light long enough to tell just how many visible bruises she has.

“What’s this for?” Katya asks the moment she gingerly threads her arm through the suit jacket. Her fingers are still swollen, but now a deep purplish blue, making them difficult to manipulate.

The nurse just gestures at the guards, who, as one, let their guns rest on their straps and move forward, grasping Katya by the elbows and dragging her forward.

“So I guess we’re going out?” She says, voice breaking when her foot thumps against the floor, so she curls that leg up, supporting herself on just her one good one with her bare foot.

They don’t answer, of course, but Katya didn’t quite expect them to.

This means something changed.

She doubts they would redress her just to kill her, doubt they would do anything besides bring in a guard with a gun, but she tries not to be too hopeful about this being anything good.

She knows what it means to be a hostage, and, as she’s dragged through the long hallway, she counts doors they pass, counts windows that only show a snow-filled parking lot with barren trees, counts guards they pass. No one looks directly at her, but again, she wouldn’t really expect them to.

In adjusting his grip, one of the guards brushes by her bracelet, and she doesn’t let herself stiffen up. She hasn’t had any good opportunity to use that, but...

Running through her head are two main possibilities.

One, Pieter or Miri or someone figured out where she is, and has come to bargain to get her back. Unlikely that they would dress her if Selene isn’t there, if they weren’t getting what they want, and Katya hopes to whatever actual deities that still exist that they don’t do that. That they figure out some other way for them to get her out, without endangering the child.

Two, they tried, and failed, and now she’s a security risk and needs to be moved to a more secure location, and think that she’s so suspicious in appearance that they need the pageantry of the suit in order to move her. This at least suggests that she might get a chance, might get a single moment to call out for help, to create a spectacle that would be difficult to ignore and even more difficult to explain away.

Even though her chances of escape are better with the second option, if they can do the first without Selene…her eyes tear up with the idea of seeing Pieter’s face again.

He’d be worried, he’d fret over her, and she’d have to let him, have to let him take care of her, make her more of that soup he seems to love so much. Help her to the porch swing so they can watch the snow outside together, help her take care of Selene.

If she hadn’t just been locked inside a lightless cell for the last three days she’d disregard the sappiness of the thoughts, but she’s gonna let herself have them. Let herself want him, want the little bit of comfort they had carved out in the cabin, lets herself feel wistful for something she barely got to have in the first place.

They take her across a line of runes, a chill running down her back, then through another, and she shivers as they do. The guard to her right, the one with the old injury that’s only partially healed, tightens his grip as she does.

So he might be just as sensitive.

Consciously, ever so slightly, she lets herself lean against him a bit more as they drag her towards a door. It’s clearly set up like a conference room, with tables and flimsy metal chairs.

She doesn’t know if she can lift it, but they could be useful as a weapon, useful to kick.

There’s a line of runes around the door, scrawled in a cheap Sharpie, and some things never change. Regardless of power, of resources, everyone seems to use fucking Sharpies for their defensive runes.

So whatever they’re doing, this isn’t something they had a lot of time to prepare for. Also interesting, and she grasps at that fact, holds it against her, clings to the meager bit of hope.

The guards deposit her on a flimsy chair, the metal a shock of cold, but she sets her injured leg out, straightening it out with an obvious wince.

Let them see her in pain. Let them draw their conclusions, let them underestimate her.

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