But they’ve broken my mind, she thought to herself calmly. She knew there was something different about the way she thought; the way she felt. She lay and thought of Maria Klee as if she were someone she knew rather than someone she was. Maybe Maria Klee was dead, but whoever or whatever was left was determined to survive. She knew, lying bruised and broken in an empty cold store, that her only strategy for survival was to separate herself from her own flesh: to focus her mind and use whatever internal resources she had left on thinking her way out of this situation.

Maria dragged herself to her feet, wrapping the blanket around her body and moving across to the cold store heavy door. She pressed the side of her head against the cold steel, but it was too thick to conduct any sounds from the room beyond. She made a circuit of the meat locker, seeking out anything that might be useful as a weapon. There was nothing. And even if she had found something, she doubted that an improvised weapon would have given her any kind of chance against The Nose and his handgun. She returned to the mattress and sat contemplating her situation. They were feeding her. That meant that, for some reason, Vitrenko was keeping her alive, but perhaps only for a matter of days. She gingerly touched the raised ridge on her head to remind herself that there seemed to be little other consideration for her welfare. She was in a hostage situation. She could not have been kept in more appropriate surroundings: she was just a lump of meat being preserved until she could be put to some profitable use.

The next meal was brought in by Olga Sarapenko. The one after that by The Nose. Perhaps they spelled each other, taking shifts. If she was going to make an attempt to escape, it would be that bitch Sarapenko she would go for. Maria knew that she could never succeed against the Nose. And even fully fit she didn’t know if she would have been a match for Olga Sarapenko. But one thing that her years in the Murder Commission had taught her was that anyone could kill anyone else. It wasn’t about strength. It was about murderous intent. About knowing no boundaries.

Maria knew that even if Vitrenko intended to use her as a bargaining chip, there was still no way he would let her survive. And when she became surplus to his needs he would kill her in a manner that would fit his perverted sense of natural justice. It would be messy, it would be slow, and it would be painful. She brought her thoughts back to her immediate situation. She would escape Vitrenko and the fate he had planned for her, either by getting herself free or by dying in the attempt. She would escape either in flesh or in spirit.