“Look at me? Yes—that’s better.” She pinched Stella’s cheeks, just enough to add color, and did the same to her own. “We need to look healthy. Bite your lips, too.”

“How do you know what to do?” Stella asked.

“We’ve a better chance of surviving if they believe we can work for them,” she explained. “We don’t want to end up with the old and sick, or the children.”

The look on Stella’s face made Nina regret her honesty. “Not now,” she cautioned. “Don’t let yourself feel anything now. You need to be strong. Just stand tall and do whatever they tell you to do. Don’t look them in the eye—they won’t like that. And remember that you’re sixteen. You were born in 1928.”

They held hands until they were at the very front, and when Stella passed the selection Nina forced herself not to respond in any way, for these were the sort of men who would send a woman to her death for the sin of a smile.

And then it was her turn. She came forward and stood in front of the officers in their black-and-gray uniforms. She did not look up, for if she did they would surely see the hate in her eyes. So she focused instead on the shining buttons on their uniform jackets.

One of the officers beckoned her with a single, lazy curl of his gloved hand. She tottered forward, breathless with fear. He grasped at her upper arm, feeling for the muscles there. Then he took hold of her right hand and turned it over. Rubbed his thumb over her calloused palm.

He nodded in approval. “Dieser Transport hat starke Tiele.”

She was still puzzling out what he’d said as she was pushed toward the group of young women. Something about the pieces being strong?

Of course. She was one of the pieces. An insensate object to be assessed, inventoried—and discarded if found lacking.

When everyone had been sorted there were fewer than two dozen women in her group, about the same in the group of young men, and hundreds of people in the third group. Among them were the old lady who had steadied Nina on the train and the pregnant woman whose name she’d not dared to learn.

She would never learn it now.

NINA AND THE other young women were driven outside and across a barren plain, mud sticking like glue to their boots. The air was thick with fog and a throat-clogging sort of smoke that, breath by ragged breath, grew ever more intolerable.

A building rose from the mist. They were led inside and made to queue.

They did so dutifully, quietly. Nina did the same, all thoughts of protest evaporating. She only wanted some water and a chance to sleep. She would save her resistance for another day.

If she behaved they might give her some water.