One

Once Silla awoke, she opened her painfully crusted eyes and took a deep breath through her dry, cracked lips. Her lungs burnt from the sharp intake of breath as sudden pain flew down her wind pipe. The roof of her mouth was dry, and she couldn't swallow. Looking down she was surprised to see a dark red blood trail. Had the wood of the beams not been so aged and bleached, the blood might have been missed. But she could see where it had dropped down through the wood to the dirty cement floor below.

The deep red splatters were well spaced apart, suggesting that thankfully the bleeding wasn't heavy. Silla's whole side was covered in dirty dried blood from where the shards of glass from the window had cut her last night. Sitting up to inspect her wounds searing pain makes her vision goes blind. She can't breathe. She can't move, and her head was spinning, threatening to shut down altogether. Even the slightest movement made a needle like pain shoot up her sides. Stressed due to pain small bits of bile came up and burned the back of her throat, but her stomach was so empty she couldn't even vomit properly. All her stomach was capable of was dry heaving.

Crawling out the window, she was more careful to not cut herself this time. The sharp glass sticking out on the window seal reflected the sunlight onto the floor. The shards shined almost bluish in the subdued light that filtered through poorly made thin glass. Polluted vomit colored clouds above only made the reflected lights color even more distorted.

It was almost mid-morning, and the sun was bright, shielded by clouds of green smog. The churning emerald clouds were dark and seemed to swirl in a circle at the center of the city. Sparks of lighting brewed in the clouds center. It was funny. The sky almost resembled a witches cauldron. Green stirring muck. It always looked like a tornado was about to form from the giant whirlpool in the sky.

Once outside Silla scavenged the streets for sustenance. She had walked around the edge of the outer ring for miles now and she hadn't had any luck yet. Without food to replace already lost energy her body was giving out after such a short period of time.

She was tired.

So very tired.

She couldn't feel her numb frost bitten skin and the rest of her body hung limp like wet laundry on a cold day. Every muscle in her body was giving into gravity, and her brain was at half capacity. Because of sleep deprivation she hallucinated and dreams of night seemed to fashion themselves into a fairytale like daydream. All she wanted was sleep, a nice warm bed and a solid night of dreams. The constant hunger she felt was ever-present; from dawn to dusk it gnawed at her. Food was her constant obsession. She couldn't look at an animal or plant and not wonder if it was edible.

She so desperately wanted something that she could just gulf down and not have to vomit up. The food she often found from dumpsters was either rotten or tasteless, it could stave off the pains for a while but was otherwise inedible. The gnawing hunger made her feel light-headed, and her legs empty with the occasional uncontrollable spasm of her almost nonexistent muscles. All she was able to find this week was a few moldy pieces of bread...

She sat down in an alleyway, huddled in a ball for warmth. Her lifestyle was lonely and sad but strangely Silla liked crouching in these isolated corners. They made her feel like she was protected and tucked away safely from everything. It was relieving because her own warmth felt like the warmth of others. It was the only way she knew of to protect herself from the solitude. Humans were by nature social creatures. Without others isolation could cause many negative effects on a persons psyche. Especially if prolonged over long periods of time.

It seemed she'd gone as far as she could on this path alone.

She'd learned how to walk alone, how to carry herself, how to cope with and solve her own problems alone. However, after all these years what was left was a form of loneliness that had burrowed into her very soul. It required only another person to solve. It was the need for physical closeness, for touch, for emotional warmth from a partner in life. So all she can do is hope that whoever they are they come, otherwise she is at a plateau, suffering nor truly in comfort, a sort of emotional-limbo where she felt nothing but numbness.

At a varying rate, time passed.

But as of the last hour she couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. It was eerie. It was the kind of silence that fell right before you were knifed in the back. Shivers were sent down her spine, and her blood chilled in her veins. Spooky didn't quite cover it and eerie was an understatement. In the shadows, she could see a large hover-craft pass by almost carrying all the darkness of the alleys with it.

They were machines that flied at a constant altitude of a few meters above the ground. They were used for personal transportation in the same way an automobile from the twentieth century was used. The idea was loosely based on electromagnetic suspension by a scientist in the early 2000's. These transports came in many shapes and prototypes.

Rear-mounted thrusters propel the craft forward at incredible speeds and magnetic levitation, fondly called Maglev, was the method through which the craft was suspended in the air. It was ingenious. The magnetic force was used to counter the gravitational force that pulled the vehicle towards the ground.

By this time of day, the streets should have been empty without commuters. It should have been as empty as any desert. Yet it wasn't.

High quality hover technology was hard to come by down here; they were more common the closer you got to the upper ring. Though as far out as she was it would be impossible to find working parts for one much less a whole vehicle. You couldn't just make one out of scrap metal. They were incredibly complex machines and most people in the lower ring lacked basic education.

But then she felt the vibrations. The solid concrete she sat upon reverberated painfully through her body and up to her ears in a faint ringing. The sound brought even the slowest pulses of her heart into over drive. Causing a loud painful pounding in her chest. In the beginning she had simply thought it to be another earthquake but the vibrations were so intense that even the air around her felt like a giant tuning fork was right under her.

Her body stilled upon seeing the large craft and Silla forced herself to stay as invisible as possible hoping to stay hidden in the shadows. She couldn't run yet, even if it was what her gut was telling her to do. She often found that it was best to avoid knee jerk reactions and blend in...That was until a bright burst of lightning lit up where she was hidden.

She knew that luck was not on her side today as she heard it move in reverse. From there a man quickly came into view from the inside, "You all alone little girl?" He suddenly questioned her a sense of worry in his voice. Silla blankly looked at him and continued eating rotten bread as she ignored him.

She wasn't afraid.

Not really.

She was hungry. Food; that's all Silla could think about.

She'd seen people like him before. Watched them from the shadows. They'd lure other unsuspecting people under the guise of being a good samaritan. That worried tone of his was fake and she knew it. She wasn't stupid enough to fall for it, and it seemed her lack of a response pissed him off. The floating craft suddenly screeched forward in her direction almost running her over. Being chased was nothing like the holographic motion pictures. The characters looked heroic, sexy and in command of the situation. Reality was far removed from that pretty version of running to save your own skin.

She usually hid in these situations but being captured was not an option. She forced her legs to shoot forward and she ran as colors flashes in her eyes, the cold wind making her blue orbs water. Silla's lungs were eventually going to give out, but she refused to stop until she hit the ground. At this great speed she could barely see a few feet ahead of herself and she panicked as she couldn't catch sight of her assailant. Adrenaline coursed through her veins and a thin layer of sweat covered the nape of her neck. She had to keep her breathing steady, pushing harder and going fast but not fast enough. It wasn't speed that she needed but durability. All she had to do was outlast him and his patience.

She ran. To where that might be, she didn't know. But she knew she needed to get out of there.

Worn shoes pounded heavily across the ground causing mud to splash up her leg, and her breaths to come in short gasps. The thuds of her footfalls, came closer and closer to each other with each bounding forward. Her feet painfully slapped the concrete sending her jetting past the various buildings that blurred in her speed. She ran like mad, from the mysterious person following her.

The foreboding thunder in the background echoed into her ears and she felt a bead of sweat roll down her forehead and splatter to her chin. The only things that could hinder Silla from survival were her physical limits and her doubt.

Through the darkness the lightning above illuminated a brilliant pathway around her. Lifting her eyes skyward, her deep blue orbs reflected the blinding strikes in the sky as if two small reflective mirrors were capturing Mother Nature. Her breaths are sharp and frantic, her eyes are wide filled with water from cold wind. Fear washes over her as she thought of the possibility of her life being cut short.

She kept running, but she knew her time was up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a large metal object; a blunt object of some sort possibly a pipe coming towards her. She tried to jump out of the way, but it was too late. She let out a silent scream, and the pain in her head was unbearable.

She collapsed to the ground and as she laid there, she saw an image of her only family; or at least the only person she considered family. It seemed forever ago that she ran away from home but in reality it was only a little over a year ago. Her watery vision clouds, and the world and her family fade away.

______________

Sudden.

Startled.

Scared.

Everything was cold. Her body. The floor. The air. That's how she woke. Every thought in high definition in a very strange and unfamiliar place. Her eyes taking in every ray of moonlight. Without a doubt she knew she had been out too long; it was already night.

Her deep blue eyes were wide open but she couldn't think of why. Her heart was pounding, mind empty. It was as if a shot of adrenaline had been emptied into her veins. Silla strained to see in the utter darkness, breathing rate beginning to steady, her skin covered in a pale coat of sweat. The side of her head lightly bled from where she was knocked unconscious and blood matted in her dark hair. Her head throbbed painfully, and it was hard to concentrate. She felt as if she had double vision; everything was multiplied to the point she couldn't differentiate any of the colors and beams of light from simple objects.

Focusing through the pain, she finally became fully aware of her surroundings as her eyes darted around the room. It didn't take long for her to realize that she was in a cage of some sort. She was inside of an abandoned warehouse. And she wasn't the only one...

"Hey they're coming!" A soft ghostly whisper of a woman echoed from behind her causing her to flinch realizing that she wasn't alone. There were other cells surrounding hers, filled with people that were covered in dirt and blood. Their bones practically peeking out from beneath their skin. There was a whole crowd of people trapped here just like her; Silla being the only child amongst them.They too had been kidnapped by the same people and held here to be sold.

Ahead there was only one exit. A large iron cast door and in the metal of the door were small dents and scratches that indicated someone had tried to claw their way out. While the cold dirt floor they sat on was wet and eroded. Disappointingly the only windows available were so high up that there was no way you could reach them.

Since night had already fallen there was nothing but each other left to enrapture heat. They were grouped together and though a little warmth radiated off each of them it was still freezing. The only light Silla had was the moonlight shining through the shattered windows and beaming across the floor. It was as if the gods had adjusted the colours of the world.

Foolishly Silla stood, using the wall to support her shaking legs, and craning her head to see what everyone was staring at. Three men walk down the space between the cells and the prisoners reach through the bars to grab them as they passed. Some shout insults, but most of them are screaming or begging for forgiveness. The arms and hands that stuck through the bars were either brutally bashed back inside or just cleanly cut off causing the victims to scream in agony.

It was pure pestilence.

The place was infested with oddly large and deformed rats skittering in the small corners of the cages. Meanwhile bugs seemed to devour the old rotting corpses of those who didn't make it. Or of those who were disease infected, many parasites buried themselves in the skin of unsuspecting victims causing violent scratching until the white of their bones started to show.

All anyone could do was wait to be auctioned off, there was no way to escape. Even if Silla did, she had no idea where she was. For all she knew she could've been on the other side of the city by now.

So, she watched.

And waited.

While the warehouse was disgusting and hard for ware, the many activities inside were not. They had a relatively good system when it came to bartering. She watched as the scavengers sold scrap metal and weapons they collected or stole to paying customers. They had all sorts of technology on their hands. She would've loved to get a look at some of their merchandise if they didn't sell people.

All the buyers seemed to be from the upper ring. Most were sold for just a few Crites; city credits. It was fascinatingly much more easy to sell humans than she had originally thought. All they had to do was post an AD on the archive and multiple buyers would pop up within seconds.

These vile methods of human trafficking weren't surprising to her in the least. The lower ring where she resided benefited economically from trafficking, the merchant class making most of their profit through slavery. Besides, it wasn't odd for people to buy workers this way in the upper ring. She'd heard stories of families making investments in their own children. Aristocrats selling their young to each other through mutual benefits in marriage. Unlike the lower ring that had no use for slaves or forced labor, the upper ring was the main benefactor of the slavery system.

It made her want to puke.

Strangely she wasn't as disgusted when it came to buying slaves for labor.

But when women were sold in the upper ring as a concubines or consorts... A vile pit formed in her stomach. Maybe because she new it was a longstanding possibility. A young girl like her was probably sought after in the upper ring. She wanted out. So very desperately. Silla didn't know why but the warehouse smelled of burning flesh and to be honest she didn't want to find out. The whole place was dreadful and sent a cold sweat down her back. The sound of rough rusted mental being sawed down over and over made her feel like she was going insane.

Out of the darkness of night loud clanking of cold hard metal was heard echoing around her.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

It was rhythmic, repeating over and over.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Slowly as the sound drew more and more attention, it came faster and louder only adding to its desperation.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

Though the thick must and darkness she squinted to see through the large cell she was trapped in. In front of her a man in their little huddled group somehow managed to loosen the door of the cage. He was looking to make a break for it and internally she panicked. She knew it was stupid as he would easily get caught yet she knew better than to say anything because he would just try even harder. Hopefully, the rest of them didn't get in trouble for his actions.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

His dirty and leathery face desperately clenched trying to open it wide enough for his skeletal form to squeeze through."Hey!" A loud voice sounded as the clanging of metal became even louder.

He had drawn the attention of their captors.

Silently gasping the man who foolishly tried to escape swiftly ran back into the crowd hiding himself as to not get singled out and caught. Though it was too late. He had already ensured the wrath of the person waiting ahead. A painfully bright light was flashed in their eyes causing her to wince. Her sight that had already adjusted to the dark was temporarily blinded, and she had to use her forearm to cover her burning eyes. Whoever had came had flashed a bright light on the group as if they were some strange wild animals. Why did they even put them in pitch black darkness in the first place?

From the ajar door came an angry burley man that loudly yelled into the crowd. Spit flying from his foul mouth. "Who did that!" At his outburst she froze. His eyes searched the crowd and soon landed on her own sending a nervous spasm down her back. Two other men came up behind him inspecting the incident making things all the more serious. Hands abruptly grabbed her wrists, she nearly shrieked as she struggled within the stranger's grasp. On her right and left, two men from behind the burley figure in the doorway had grabbed her limbs, refusing to let go as the burley man appeared before her. The dim moon light illuminated his wrinkled features and his deep frown as Silla was subjected to his harsh scrutiny.

Hiding behind her small form was the very man who attempted to escape.

The middle aged man looked the young girl up and down before looking down at the man who attempted to escape. He frowned and demanded an answer to his question, "Is this the disgusting pest who tried to leave?"

"Y-Yeah... She's the one..." The grown man cowered behind her fearfully. Silla frowned at the man who ratted her out to save his own skin.

What a pussy.

She looked to the others in the crowd who looked away at the scene. At first her rage boiled at these people. That was until she looked into their many sad desperate eyes. She looked at the man who was pointing his finger at her and gazed into his frightened deep brown eyes. The many eyes of all colors sizes and shapes all held the same thing. She opened her mouth but then closed it once again instead of correcting the man who pointed his finger or those who turned away. Silla let out a breath and stilled letting a wave of calm come over her.

Fuck.

Curse her conscience.

Uselessly tugging at her arms she glared at them while they held her still. They began to drag her out of the cage and to the middle of the warehouse where a metal pole stuck out with chains attached. The men worked quickly to restrain her with the chains, their eyes foretelling something horrible was about to happen. Every movement she made was futile, even the smallest twitch caused the chains to rattle loudly and fill her hearing with their annoying clatter. She attempted to turn her head back glancing at the crowd of people in the cage.

Would these men leave her out here all night?

Silla could never recall how long the beating had gone on for, only the final time his hand connected with her face and the sound of her legs falling to the ground. Her face wasn't too bad, just a cut above her eyebrow and lip, the scarlet blood dripped down into her eye and down bruised cheeks. Every forceful turn of her head she stared into the crowd of people watching.

It hurt but she was fine.

Once she was alone, something interrupted her storm of thoughts. At first she had thought the men who chained her left. Did they come back? She yanked at the chains and muttered under her breath as a new sound of footfalls caused her to pause.

Caught like a deer in headlights the volume of the wind crashing outside the thin warehouse walls fell deafly upon her ears. Something emerged from the shadows, but her eyes seemed to blur a deep red from the blood in her eyes.

She must've been hallucinating at this point.

With a concussion everything seemed doubled and hazed as if she was in a dream. Everything was a fogged haze. She told herself it must've been due to her head being hit so many times.

But then she saw it.

Her blood ran cold as her eyes met it's own in the dark corner as it stared back at her. She gazed into what seemed to be an empty black void that was the creatures face. All except two glowing monstrous green orbs that pupils seemed to be slit like a snakes.

She painfully lifted her head in order to keep her eyes on it. Time seemed to stop as the black surrounding the corner of her vision slowly came closer and closer. The creature leaned closer having to bend down to come even closer to her face. Long black boney fingers reached forward as she leaned backwards as far as the chain would allow until her.

The creature's sharp nails poked her delicate skin causing little beads of blood to run down her jaw. Silla's back was against the cold metal pole and the long razor sharp nails trailed across her jaw and cheek moving downward to her tangled hair as she held her breath in. She prayed that this creature would spare her. However, it stood back to its full form and flinched looking away as the darkness seemed to engulf her as she lost consciousness.

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To be continued...