Chapter 3: Kidnapped

My eyes scrunched tight. Disoriented, I raised my head from my own shoulder. A low vibration was rapidly giving me nausea.

I noticed a cold something on both of my wrists, which were together in my lap. I found out that I was in a sitting position.

My eyes fluttered weakly open. The place was dim, but of course I could see.

As soon as I saw the crowd of people in that small place with me, a horrible stench of unwashed bodies hit me, making my wrinkle my nose. All of us were crammed in here in a sitting position. Studying the girl opposite me, I saw that her wrists were bound by handcuffs, which were chained to the floor by a yard-long chain. I saw that we were all bound that way, and we were all girls.

"Where are we?" I murmured.

"Kidnapped," one of them wailed in despair. "I was just coming out of the mall, then there was this prick on my neck, then I was here!"

I shut my eyes and heaved a sigh. I escaped from the orphanage, then I ran into a town, then...

Travis!

He was the one who injected me with whatever it was, and now, apparently, he had kidnapped me.

I cursed. I tuned out the girls who were talking, describing how they were caught, where they thought we were, and what they thought would happen. They were about twenty.

I lay back my head and waited. We were in the back of a moving truck, so I supposed we would stop eventually.

Several hours and three naps later, the truck jerked to a stop. We felt more than heard two doors slamming.

The doors opened and light flooded in. On second thoughts, it wasn't that bad; it looked like evening.

Two men stomped in and unchained me from the floor. He shoved me out, and I crumpled over my numb legs. Another girl was kicked out after me.

"Hurry up! Search!" said one of them. He pulled a gun from his belt and aimed it at us.

His companion searched the two of us, patting us down for way too long. Then he retrieved a knife from his pocket and sliced all the buttons he could find on either of us. He took away the other girl's earrings and scrunchie. He then combed through her dark brown hair and my reddish one. She glared at him silently the whole time, not an ounce of fear showing on her sharp face, even though she struck me as rather small. Finally, he spotted an inconspicuous pair of earpins further up her lobes. He pried them off, and one was blinking a subtle red light.

He cursed. "Damn! How the hell did you get your hands on a tracker like this? A tracker that can fit in such a tiny gem?" he shouted. She said nothing. Flinging them onto the ground, he shoved us up and into the truck again, where he chained us securely.

He rushed back out and shouted that we had to move quickly, they found the tracker and it was on.

We started moving again.

I silently listened to the steady hum of the tires. I wondered what would happen next, especially to the young girl who had not shown fear.

She was wearing a tracker. Which makes one think, why would a normal, almost- teenage girl be carrying a tracker so advanced?

I sighed and stopped my thought chain.

A lot more time passed, and they brought us food. Finally, the truck stopped.

The doors opened. Six men stood outside in the blinding late morning sun, a pistol lodged and glinting in each belt.

"Okay, lassies, listen up!" Travis boomed. "I wanted to just get on with this, but I figured the dumber ones of you might be trying stunts before long, so y'all don't have any excuses. So pay attention, you pathetic wenches!

"First thing you gotta know, is that all of your kidnaps were meticulously planned and executed. So you can just say goodbye to the cops, your families, or whoever the hell else you were counting on to get you out of here.

"Number two, don't bother with escape, the guards will just shoot on sight. And even if you managed, you are in the middle of nowhere, so you'll get lost immediately. Forget that too.

"And now for your purpose. You would eventually find out, but it's always best to be prepared, you know. So, you are all here to be sex slaves. Prostitutes. No one will give a shit about you. Your job is to please... But you'll learn all that soon enough. You learn on job here.

"Yyyeeaa, there's more, but whatever. Anyway, you will all be given new names, which I suggest you learn ASAP in order to avoid any unnecessary punishments. You don't want to be labeled 'absent' when we call the roll just cause you didn't know your name, you know.

"Lastly, your lives are not yours anymore, much less your bodies. We call the shots around here. We say who lives and who doesn't. We say who eats and who doesn't. We say who gets whipped and who doesn't. We say what we want, you do what we want. A useless or disobedient girl is a dead girl. The better we and the customers love you, the longer you get to see the sun."

Some of the girls in the truck were weeping helplessly as they listened to their fate. I, however, listened with a straight face. I was not afraid. I was not worried. Somehow, I knew I was going to let no one touch me.

They came in and unclipped our handcuffs from the chains. We stumbled out. They began naming us random feminine names. I noticed, nonplussed, that we were all rather pretty.

My attention riveted to our surroundings. We were in a large space that looked like a parking lot. A large warehouse stood in the middle of the tarmac, with small windows and doors. A low barbed wire fence lined the edges of the lot, beyond which was what looked like forest. Only a small dirt road led up here.

I felt a slight tug on my arm. I turned to the girl I was searched with hours ago. The oldest she could be was barely fourteen. I seethed a little at what she was being forced into at this age.

"You didn't seem to catch your name," she whispered.

I didn't even know they had named me yet. Someone yelled, and we began filing inside, into a large room. "Oh, yeah," I answered, unconcerned. "Looks like I'm in trouble already."

"You don't have to be. Your name is Amber."

I eyed her sharply. It was the nicest thing that had ever been done for me in years, save Travis's fake courtesy. But I found no malice in her honey brown eyes that were strikingly similar to mine. I smiled.

"Thanks, what's yours?"

"Sarah," she answered, then snorted. "Of them all."

My eyebrows shot up in amusement. "Don't like it then?"

"Nah, not my type. No offense."

I laughed.

"Amber!"

My name was called almost immediately, and I looked up. One of the men, with the beginnings of a beer belly and a piercing on his eyebrow, moved slowly towards me.

"Well, all these lasses are fine picks, but you definitely take the cake. Come with me, I get first skim."

"Don't touch me," I snarled.

He smirked. "Ah, the feisty kind. Well, the boys might like that, as do I. But a word of advice: don't try it with my men; they'd love an excuse to punish you."

My men. So he was the boss.

I growled when he grabbed the few metal links between my wrists.

He paused, then shrugged casually and began to drag me towards a dark corridor. Sarah started as if she wanted to follow, but stopped abruptly as she changed her mind. I flashed her a small smile of gratitude.

I was pulled down the corridor, into the darkness which swallowed us willingly.