The lights went out, the dark closed in, and Stella first began to shiver and then to cry, her shoulders heaving silently, her scrap of cheer vanquished by the bleak and bitter night. Nina held her close, and rubbed her hand gently over the girl’s naked scalp, and she tried to think of something to say that wasn’t a lie.

But the words stuck in her throat. She had no comfort to give.

“Sleep,” she whispered. “Go to sleep.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Will be here before you know it. So sleep while you can.”

APPELL! APPELL!

It was the middle of the night, the moon still bright in the sky. There was no reason at all, save malice, for them to have been woken so early.

As they had the night before, and the morning before that, the women assembled themselves and were counted, and by the time the aufseherin was satisfied, the sun had begun to rise. Yet she made no move to dismiss them.

Nina was very nearly asleep on her feet when the aufseherin began to call out numbers for a second time. Not everyone was being summoned, she realized—only about one in three. As their names were called, the blockowa pulled them from the formation and had them stand in a queue to one side. But why?

Stella was hauled to the side, and then the snarling blockowa came stomping over and Nina realized that her number, too, had been called, and before she had wrapped her mind around the truth of it, her feet had carried her across the yard to the end of the waiting queue.

It was for a kommando, she told herself. The Frenchwoman had been wrong. They were being sent out for work and they would be back in their bunks by nightfall.

So why did the aufseherin seem so pleased? Why did her eyes spark with malice? Why had her mouth curled into a knowing smirk?

Their route as they left the yard took them very near to the aufseherin, and as Nina passed she turned her head, just for an instant, so she might look the woman in the eye.

“Störenfriedin,” the aufseherin spat out, and her smirk broadened into a noxious smile, and Nina took another half-dozen steps before she realized what the woman had said. Troublemaker.

Troublemakers were not sent out for work. Troublemakers were sent—

No.

She could protest. She could resist. She could run back to the aufseherin and scratch out her eyes and show her what it was like to be hurt. To be afraid.

It was tempting, but they would shoot her like a dog, as Zwerger had once shot Selva, and that would leave Stella alone at the end. Her friend did not deserve to die alone.