Her trembling fingers began buttoning, which proved very difficult. It had small pearl buttons going all the way up the chest. There were so many, and they were so tiny, it was no easy feat in her drugged state.

‘All the way,’ he said when she stopped at the base of her throat.

Rachel raised her hands again and buttoned the last few so that the dress’s collar went all the way up her neck and ended tightly under her chin, making it difficult to swallow. The dress looked like something from the fifties. It had long sleeves and the bottom hem fell near her ankles. When she was done, her arms dropped back to her sides and the man smiled.

‘Very good, Number Eight. Let’s go.’

‘My name’s Rachel.’

The man barked a short laugh. ‘Not anymore.’

He led her back to her and Sasha’s room, shoved her in and re-attached her ankle shackles to the wall. Then he went for Sasha who was still lying in a heap on the floor, tears streaming down her face. After he led Sasha out of the room, Rachel sat on the ground and listened as her friend was cleaned in the next room. She hoped Sasha wouldn’t fight; it would only make things worse. They were at a disadvantage and for now, there was nothing they could do about it. She lay down facing the wall on the cement floor, her limbs still trembling from the cold as she wrapped herself in the lightweight, nearly useless, blanket covered with holes that he had given them. She was grateful that she’d cut her hair into an ultra-short bob last month. It would’ve taken hours for the long, thick locks she’d once had to dry in this frigid room, and Rachel was prone to getting colds.

Lying there, her teeth chattering uncontrollably, she noticed something on the wall and squinted, trying to make it out. Someone had made hatch marks, rows and rows of groupings of four lines with another line through them. She counted them up. 274 tallies. Counting time, she thought to herself as the realization hit. Rachel did the math and thought back to the list of names they’d already discovered etched into the wall. The previous women, who had to be the ones who’d etched these lines into the wall, had been here around nine months. Her and Sasha had only been here one night so far, which meant they had a full nine months to either escape, or never set foot outside this cabin alive again. Her breath caught in her throat and tears streamed down her cheeks.

CHAPTER 11