Page 5 of Shadow Waltz
“Better luck next time,” she smirked, wiping a smear of blood from her lip. “You’re a slippery one, I’ll give you that.”
They marched me out of the alley, past the bruised and groaning bodies I’d left in my wake. My heart thudded with anger—not fear. I’d made them bleed for every inch.
One of them said something I didn’t catch, and then pain exploded at the base of my skull — a sharp, white-hot burst that swallowed everything. My knees buckled. The world tilted sideways.
Black.
I cameto in a place that smelled nothing like the city—sterile, perfumed, cold as money. My head throbbed in time with my pulse. My arms were free now, but my body felt heavy, every movement weighed down, like the air itself wanted me still.
“Up.” A clipped voice, impatient. Hands hauled me to my feet before I could orient myself.
I knew the drill. Didn’t matter which operation you ended up in — the prep rooms were all the same. Strip, scrub, dress. Make the merchandise shine.
They peeled my filthy clothes off in brisk, impersonal motions, dropping them into a black plastic bag like biohazard waste. Cold, gloved hands pushed me toward a steaming shower. I barely remembered standing under it, just flashes of heat against skin, the smell of antiseptic soap, a hand in the middle of my back whenever I slowed.
When I stepped out, dripping, another attendant was already waiting with the uniform: silk boxers, crisp white shirt, black suit pressed to perfection. I didn’t argue. Not here. Not yet.
The fabric slid over my skin like a question I didn’t want to answer. A tie knotted tight at my throat. Shoes I’d never afford. A watch that cost more than my first apartment. Hands, always hands, adjusting, straightening, making me into something presentable. Something sellable.
At last, they left me alone in a gold-lit bathroom with a wall-sized mirror. I gripped the cool marble sink and forced myself to look up.
The mirror didn’t lie, but I wished it would.
Staring back at me was a stranger wearing my face, dressed in clothes that cost more than I'd ever seen in one place. The black suit fit like it was made for me, which it probably was. These people had resources, attention to detail, and a sick sense of theater that turned my stomach. The fabric felt expensive against my skin, soft as a whisper and twice as dangerous.
Eight years. Eight fucking years since I'd first seen the inside of a place like this, since I'd learned what words like “lot” and “merchandise” really meant when applied to human beings.
Back then, I'd screamed myself hoarse in a cell just like this one, clawing at zip ties until my wrists bled, making promises to a God I didn't believe in if He'd just let me see Cass one more time. Back then, I'd still thought fairy tales could come true, that Prince Charming might actually show up to save the day.
Now I knew better.
My wrists were raw meat where the zip ties had been cutting in for hours. Days, maybe. Time moved different in this concrete hell, stretching and shrinking until I couldn't tell if I'd been here for minutes or months. But I knew this routine by heart now, could predict every step of the process from the moment they'd grabbed me off the street until whatever fresh nightmare awaited me upstairs.
The barcode sticker pressed against my collarbone read “LOT 17” in stark black letters, and every time I saw it in the mirror's reflection, I wanted to claw it off with my fingernails. But I'd learned patience the hard way, learned that rebellion had to be strategic to be effective. You couldn't burn down the house while you were still chained to the foundation.
“Breathe,” I told myself, but the air tasted like fear and expensive cologne, like death dressed up in designer perfume. The room smelled of sanitizer and roses, clinical and cloying at the same time. Every breath felt like swallowing glass.
A masked attendant circled me like a vulture, adjusting my collar with the kind of clinical detachment I'd seen in morgues. Her hands were cold through the latex gloves, and she touched me like I was already dead. Maybe I was.
“Stop fidgeting,” she said without looking at my face. “You'll wrinkle the merchandise.”
Merchandise. They were still using the same fucking words. Still reducing human beings to inventory, still processing us like cattle in designer suits. The language never changed, just the faces behind the masks.
The prep room was smaller than Mrs. Hargrove's closet, all harsh fluorescent lights that made everything look sick and wrong. Mirrors covered every wall, reflecting my face back at me from a dozen angles, creating an infinity of broken boys in expensive suits. Classical music drifted down from somewhere above us, muffled by concrete and distance, like ghosts dancing in an empty ballroom.
On a bench across from me sat another guy, maybe mid-twenties, with dark skin and eyes that had seen too much. He was staring at his hands like they held answers to questions he'd forgotten how to ask. His suit was navy blue instead of black, and his barcode read “LOT 16.” The hollow expression on his face was familiar territory, the same look I'd probably worn eight years ago when I'd still believed screaming might save me.
But there was something else there too. A flicker of defiance that hadn't been beaten out of him yet, a spark of the same rage that had kept me alive through eight years of running and hiding and fighting my way back to the surface.
“First time?” he asked without looking up, his voice barely above a whisper.
My jaw tightened. “No. You?”
He looked up then, really looked at me, and I saw the moment he registered what I'd said. In this business, repeat customers were rare. Most people didn't survive long enough to get grabbed twice, and the ones who did usually didn't survive long enough to get grabbed a third time.
“Shit,” he said, sitting up straighter. “How long ago?”
“Eight years. I was seventeen.”