Page 64 of Silence and Surrender

But darkness was rising, swift and certain as the tide. The last thing I saw was Isabella’s face, tears cutting through the mask of defiance she’d maintained.

Then nothing at all.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Isabella

They kept us in some kind of underground bunker. No elegant rooms, no pretense of luxury, just cold concrete and metal bars. The air hung thick with mold and fear and other things I tried not to identify. Somewhere in the darkness, someone was crying. The sound never seemed to stop, becoming part of the bunker’s atmosphere like the chill that seeped through the thin dress they’d given me.

I still wasn’t sure how many days had passed since the shipping yard. The container journey remained a blur of cold metal and chemical sedation. After Colton’s failed rescue attempt, they’d kept me heavily drugged, aware just enough to know we’d traveled by sea for what felt like days. Then a windowless van, more drugs, and finally this bunker. Rodger had mentioned Rotterdam, but I’d overheard the guards speaking what sounded like Czech. Another lie—a false destination to mislead anyone who might be looking. My last clear memory was watching them drag Colton’s unconscious body away, his blood bright against the concrete floor of the shipping yard as I screamed his name.

My wrists were raw from metal restraints, my body aching from the concrete floor. Everything hurt, but I forced myself to observe. To analyze. To maintain some semblance of my sanity even here in darkness. Twenty-three steps from my cell to the stairs. Four guards on rotation, but one who was often drunk. Maybe I could use that. Two cameras in the corners, modern but poorly maintained. Three other cells visible from mine, all occupied. All containing women who’d once been people before becoming cargo.

Like me.

The drugs were added to our water. Something that made the edges of reality blur, made time slip sideways, made it harder to hold onto memories. But I clung to thoughts of Colton through the haze.

But the drugs made everything uncertain. I’d wake up in my cell with no memory of how I’d gotten there, unsure how much time had passed. The other women’s faces blurred together, their cries becoming a symphony of despair that echoed through the concrete corridors.

I measured time by guard rotations, by the rhythm of boots on concrete. The windowless dark made hours blur into days, marked only by when they came for us. Some women were taken upstairs and returned broken. Others never came back at all.

When they came for me, the guard’s boot connected with my ribs when I didn’t move fast enough. The other women watched with dead eyes as they dragged me through the corridors. Three rights, one left. Heavy steel door at the end.

My buyer spoke with an Eastern European accent, watching as the guards shoved me to my knees. Everything about him radiated wealth and greed, from his Italian leather shoes to his manicured hands. I fixed my gaze on a water stain on the concrete floor, analyzing its pattern like I would a questionable brushstroke on a canvas.

“Very valuable skills,” my buyer had said, circling me like I was artwork at auction. His accent carried traces of old money, of European sophistication. “Authentication. Verification. Languages.” His hand gripped my jaw, forcing me to look up. “But you’ll learn new skills too.”

I retreated into memories when they drugged me. Into the safety of Colton’s arms in the vault, the warmth of his kiss in the library. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was remembering or hallucinating. The drugs made everything float, made reality fragment like a poorly restored painting.

Then came the moments of clarity—sudden, jarring sobriety when they’d bring me to a room with bright lights, where paintings hung on the walls. “Authenticate,” a man would command, the same man who’d purchased me. I began to think of him as the Collector. His expensive cologne, his European accent, the way he watched me with clinical interest.

My fingers would trace the air above the canvas, never touching but seeing everything. “The craquelure pattern is wrong,” I’d say, examining a supposed Dutch master. “Artificial aging. And look at the ultramarine blue—modern synthetic, not lapis lazuli. The forger was skilled but got lazy with the underdrawing.” Or I’d spend an hour with a loupe, studying brushstrokes on a Monet. “Genuine. Look at the impasto technique, the way he built up these water lilies in layers. The signature matches his 1918 period.” My mind would sharpen, years of training taking over. For those brief hours, I was myself again, the expert who had uncovered the Frankfurt Museum scandal and authenticated the lost Caravaggio found in that French attic. The Collector would watch, sometimes recording my analysis, his eyes gleaming with something between respect and possession.

Then the needle would come, and time would dissolve once more.

I cataloged what details I could through the haze. Expensive shoes. Custom suits. The smell of cigars and something else, something that made my stomach clench with unexplained dread. Time had lost meaning in the eternal twilight of my captivity. Had it been days? A week? More?

The woman in the cell next to mine spoke Russian in her sleep. She disappeared after what might have been my third authentication session, or maybe my fifth. Her absence left a hole in the darkness, another voice gone from our chorus of captured souls.

Sometimes I’d wake with unexplained soreness, my clothing arranged differently than I remembered. Had they moved me? Examined me? Done worse? The blank spaces in my memory terrified me more than the pain. “Premium merchandise,” I heard the Collector say once through the fog. “Unspoiled. We’re very careful.”

I held onto my training, analyzing everything I could see through drug-clouded eyes. The guards’ patrol patterns. The security camera blind spots. The way sound carried through the ventilation system. It gave me purpose, kept me from drowning in the uncertainty of what happened during the blank periods in my memory.

“You have a gift,” the Collector told me during one authentication session. It might have been day six or seven of my captivity. I’d identified a fraudulent Degas with barely a glance. “Such a shame to waste it on museums and collectors who don’t truly appreciate art’s value.”

Sometimes they’d leave us alone for what felt like days, nothing but drugged water and stale bread slid through the bars. Other times, the door would open every few hours, and the guards would select their next victim. Once, I woke to find bruises on my wrists, the ghost of fingerprints. Another time, the taste of something bitter lingered in my mouth.

The authentication sessions became my lifeline to sanity. “Raphael,” I’d say, or “Eighteenth century, French school.” The Collector would nod, sometimes pleased, sometimes displeased. He never touched me during these sessions, kept his distance like I was both valuable and dangerous. But afterward, the drugs would come, and I’d sink back into uncertainty.

Through it all, I continued to cling to thoughts of Colton. The strength in his hands when he’d hold me. The warmth in his eyes when he’d look at me.

“She’s adjusting well,” the Collector told someone once. I was floating in a half-drugged state, not fully unconscious. “The training is taking. She doesn’t fight anymore.” Had I fought? I couldn’t remember. “And the other conditioning?”

“Progressing,” came the reply. “She won’t remember specifics, but the fear remains. It’s more effective that way.”

What fear? What had they done to me? I searched my body for signs when I was lucid enough, but found nothing conclusive. Just occasional bruises that could have come from anywhere, moments of panic I couldn’t explain when certain guards approached.

Time stretched like taffy, reality bending at the edges. Guards changed shifts. Women disappeared. The drugs pulled me under and let me surface in random patterns. But I kept cataloging details, clinging to details as an anchor against the chemical tide.

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