Rachel wondered how long it had been. The air was getting stuffy. Her legs were getting achy from standing with no place to go. She assured herself that they wouldn't leave her to die. She knew she was under a death sentence, but this would be a ludicrously peaceful form of execution. They could do it in so many more imaginative ways.

For what seemed the hundredth time, she stood upright and bounced slightly on her feet to maintain feeling in her legs, then leaned once more back against the wall.

And in any case, they couldn't kill her; they were about to let her go! Perhaps, she decided, Matt hadn't meant the representatives of the U.S. government were already here on-site. He had probably heard news that they were on their way, to claim the American girl. They put me here to wait for that. They don't have any "nice" places to hold inmates around here. This is what they have.

Rachel disliked the absolute blackness, reminding her of her day spent in pitch dark yesterday waiting to be raped. But this was different. She was waiting her for her release! Nothing could blacken her mood, not even blackness itself.

She wondered about that other door. The rest of the closet doors were open, probably to keep the air as fresh as possible before the closet was used again, but one door was closed. Probably another girl was being held there in this same cramped condition Rachel was enduring. Rachel couldn't begin to speculate what the girl might have done. She hoped the girl would be okay.

Just as Rachel finished standing upright one more time, she gasped at the sudden sound of the latch being opened. A crack of light appeared at the edge of the door, and it opened. She was glad she hadn't been leaning against it. They would have laughed as she fell into the room.

She found herself facing the general himself.

He gave her that benign, phony smile. "Come with me, Miss Preston. There is someone here to meet you."

She tried to hold it back, but her smile broke loose and spread over her face. "Yes, sir." She hadn't meant to sound so respectful, but she felt too good to insult anyone.

She noticed that closet door that had been closed earlier was now standing open. Good, she thought, they let the other girl go already. Rachel followed the general out of the closet room, into the corridor. She was glad of the absence of a leash.

He couldn't, she now realized, be taking her directly to see the American representatives. Somehow it had slipped her mind for awhile that she was naked, but now she was sure she couldn't be brought before her countrymen in that condition. Obviously they would first remove the chains, in a place where she could wash up, comb her hair... she almost laughed. Somehow "comb her hair" had come into her mind as an automatic part of getting presentable. Comb what hair, Rachel? She recalled that her original clothes had been shredded, but surely they could easily find something she could wear. She hadn't realized how much she would miss wearing a bra. She knew now how useful it was to have a little help carrying her breasts around for an extended period. Anya, with those big breasts on that tiny body, probably found it even harder. Rachel wondered idly if it was hard for Anya to find bras in her size, with sufficiently big cups for such a small girl.

The general stopped in front of a door and pulled it open. He gestured Rachel inside. Rachel took two steps into the room and stopped.

The room, about twenty feet square with a fifteen foot ceiling, was nearly featureless. There were a few odds and ends around the periphery, but the room was dominated by a curtain in the middle, arranged circularly to hide something within.

Rachel turned to gape at the general, who smiled. "There is exactly one way for you to get out of this room. It is up to you to find it." With that, he swung the door closed. It closed with a sound of finality, and the clack of a solid latch being engaged.

One way out, thought Rachel. What the hell does that mean? She tried the doorknob, and couldn't sense any movement at all, not even the usual slight looseness of a locked knob. She pounded on the door.

She sighed and shrugged. You could never open doors around here when they didn't want you to, she told herself.

They've given me some sort of riddle, a stupid puzzle, she thought. It doesn't amuse me, but it must be amusing them.

She spun around, as something in the room had made a noise. She saw that the circular curtain was being raised by some sort of pulley system that operated through the ceiling.

She gawked at the sight that was revealed. It was a naked girl, her backside visible from where Rachel was standing. Her legs were spread wide, their muscles taut and quivering, and there were familiar metal bands locked around her ankles. The bands were secured to metal rings bolted to the floor -- unusually well secured, in that for each ankle, two short chains, one on each side of the ankle band, connected a ring in the ankle band to one of the floor rings on either side of the foot, with no slack. The girl couldn't move either foot in any direction, nor lift her heels from the floor.

Her arms were stretched straight upward, her metal wrist bands attached to each other and to a chain that hung down from the ceiling. There was no slack in the chain. The girl's back muscles looked taut with tension.

The girl had a full head of hair, brown, though unlike Alina's and the mystery woman's, it wasn't well cared for, but unkempt and tangled.

Rachel was appalled to see that there was a metal rod, about an inch thick and circular in cross section, running from the floor straight up to the girl's crotch. Rachel suspected it might go higher than that, directly up into her. Rachel winced at the violation this girl might be experiencing.

The girl suddenly stiffened and made a brief scream that had to indicate pain.

She must have heard Rachel come in. She was trying to turn her head, but it was difficult with her arms in the way. She let her head drop back behind her arms, but at that angle she couldn't turn her head far enough.

The girl's desperate need overcame the inertia of Rachel's shock. Rachel moved quickly forward, saying, "I'll try to get you out of that. I'm not going to hurt you. I want to help you." She made her voice friendly and sympathetic, so the sentiment would come through if the girl spoke no English.

The girl gasped audibly at the sound of Rachel's voice. That's odd, thought Rachel, I was positive she knew I was here.

Rachel shuffled forward as quickly as her chains allowed, and came around to the front of the girl, to get a better idea of the extent of her bondage and how she might be helped. It wasn't for the purpose of seeing the girl's face, but it was there to be seen.

Rachel froze.

Her brain worked in a fitful, sputtering way. It was a little reminiscent of an experience she had once had while learning to drive a car. On a two-lane highway, she had seen, some distance ahead, an oncoming car trying to pass another. For that purpose, the car was in the lane Rachel was driving in, coming straight at her. As Rachel recalled it later, her first thought was not "There is a car in my lane coming at me." It was instead, for the first couple of seconds, a much more vague sense that "something is wrong with this picture."

When the mind is presented with things that don't fit with its view of how the world should be, it is unable to make them fit, at first.

That is how Rachel felt right now. Something isn't right. Something doesn't fit.

It wasn't until the girl's shocked whisper, "Rachel!", that Rachel finally could process what she was seeing. Rachel, with her mouth wide open, sank to her knees. Shaking her head, she mouthed the name, with no voice behind it: "Mandy!"

One of Mandy's eyes was swollen partly shut. On the other side of her face, there was a cut on her cheek surrounded by a partly faded bruise. Her nipples, and the skin immediately around them, had a red, chafed look.

Mandy screamed again, as briefly as the previous time. Whatever the pain was, it had probably started just recently. Mandy was only just now starting to break out in a sweat.

The scream brought Rachel out of her funk. She rushed forward. "Mandy, what is it? What hurts?"

Mandy moaned, and said in a weepy voice, "Everything hurts. My legs are aching. I've been standing like this, I don't know, half an hour. My face hurts. They hit me, in the other place, before I came here. My butt hurts. My... nipples hurt. They put little clips there and gave me shocks..." She was crying now. She stiffened again, and made the brief scream again.

"Okay, but I mean, what really hurts? Why do you keep screaming like that?"

"It's... up inside me. The shocks, inside."

Rachel went down to her knees again. Oh my God, my God, she thought. That thing isn't just penetrating her. It's electrified. Inside her. Oh God.

Rachel bent down to look at the base of the metal rod. The base was flat, like a plate, about six inches across. Kneeling, Rachel was able to pull her hands away from her waist, the slipchain clinking, and rub her fingers against the bolts holding the base secure. She couldn't sense any give in them, or any way her fingers alone, without tools, could work them loose.

Mandy screamed again, then begged, "Rachel, get me out of this!"

Rachel said, trying to sound calming, "I'm working on it, honey." She had never before addressed Mandy with any form of endearment. It wasn't something she really did with anyone, not even much with her boyfriends. But Rachel knew that, aside from being freed from the torture as soon possible, what Mandy needed more than anything was hearing the voice of someone who cared.

Behind Mandy, the electrical cord powering the rod came down from the ceiling. Rachel thought about simply ripping the cord, but that strategy had been anticipated. The cord was woven through the links of a thick metal chain, and the chain itself embedded in a sleeve of see-through plastic that disappeared into the base of the rod at the floor, leaving no gap through which Rachel might tease out the cord. Rachel tried yanking at it as hard as she could, but it became clear that breaking the whole assembly was beyond her strength.

Mandy screamed again.

It's like it's on a timer, thought Rachel. There must be...

Rachel looked around, and found the answer on the wall. She had understood the answer might not be in the room, but there it was.

Rachel stood and walked over to the clock -- a very old-fashioned analog clock, with a second hand creeping around the face, as well as minute and hour hands. It was on the wall just above Rachel's eye level.

Just as the second hand reached the top of the clock, Mandy screamed again.

Looking more closely, Rachel saw, against the white background of the clock face, a narrow copper-colored pie-slice, occupying the space between the very top of the face and one second past. The second hand ended with a short metal prong turned inward towards the face. Rachel watched the second hand go around. When it reached the top once more, the metal prong scraped over the copper strip, for one second.

And Mandy screamed again.

Okay, Rachel told herself, biting her lip, frantic for something to do, that's how the circuit is completed and Mandy gets shocked. She's going to keep getting a shock every minute when the second hand goes across that strip.

The obvious solution was to tear the clock out of the wall. The face of the clock was protected by a cover consisting of metal bars, bowed outward around the clock and meeting at a circular base surrounding the clock, bolted to the wall. Rachel supposed the cover might be removed, and the clock underneath then wrecked, but her hands couldn't reach that high. She clamped her teeth around one of the protective bars, but it was clearly stronger than her teeth.

The clock's electrical power, and its connection to the shocking rod, were in two cords that ran directly upward from the top of the clock. They weren't protected, but they were up well beyond the reach of Rachel's mouth.

Mandy screamed again.

Rachel gasped when she looked more closely at the clock's minute hand. It also ended in a prong. When it reached the top of the hour, fifteen minutes from now, Mandy would suffer a vaginal shock continuously for a full minute as the prong slowly passed across the copper strip.

Rachel moaned as she saw the hour hand had a prong as well. In a little over three hours, Mandy would be shocked... well, not for a full hour. The wedge wasn't that wide. A fifth of an hour. Twelve minutes.

I'm not telling Mandy, she thought. Not yet. If we get much closer to the time, I'll have to tell her before so she can brace herself. Maybe I can get her loose before then.

Rachel went back to Mandy, and knelt down in front of her crotch.

This is SO weird, thought Rachel. They had both been so shy about showing each other their bodies. All through Germany they had each gone into the bathrooms of their hotel rooms to undress and change into pajamas. Now, thought Rachel, I'm sitting here looking at Mandy's labia, and this metal rod stuck up into her vagina.

Rachel noted, as just a passing observation, that along with no haircut, they hadn't given Mandy the lower-body hair treatment either. Mandy had a full, untrimmed bush. Another thing I never imagined looking at, she thought.

Mandy screamed again. Shit, thought Rachel. What is that, then, fourteen minutes left?

She stood. "Sweetie, I need to see if I can get you off this thing."

Mandy, tears mingling with the sweat running down her face, nodded. "Please hurry."

In frustration, Rachel realized she couldn't get her hands apart to put her arms around Mandy's waist to lift her. Maybe her thigh, she thought. Rachel, her wrists together, spread her hands apart as far as she could. She put them flat against Mandy's left thigh, her right index finger anchored against the bottom of Mandy's buttock. With a grunt, she tried lifting. Her fingers instantly slipped upward on Mandy's sweat-slick skin.

Rachel shook her head. "Sorry, I'm doing this wrong." She dropped down to the floor and lay on her back, looking up at Mandy's crotch from below. She raised her legs and carefully put the front part of her feet at the top of Mandy's thigh on either side of the rod. She waited for Mandy to scream again, then gritted her teeth and pushed upward.

She had leverage, and Rachel thought it would have worked if Mandy's feet hadn't been so firmly anchored to the floor. After a few seconds Mandy gasped and said, "Wait, wait, my legs don't stretch like that."

That was the biggest problem. Mandy's legs were as straight as they would get, and her feet couldn't be lifted any distance off the floor. There was no way of raising her crotch any higher than it was.

Mandy screamed again. Breathing hard, she said, "Rachel, I heard that man say there was a way you could get us out of here."

"Oh! Right!" In the stress of dealing with Mandy's torture, Rachel had forgotten all about that. She sat up. In times when she was desperate to think, Rachel sometimes put the heels of her palms against her temples to somehow tease the thoughts out of them. She couldn't manage that now, so she brought her legs up and pressed her knees against the side of her head instead.

She looked up suddenly. "A key! He had to mean there's a key here somewhere."

"A key? To what?"

"I don't know. The door, my own locks. Your locks. Whatever. It has to help somehow." Rachel focused her eyes on the floor. No, too simple, she thought, but she had to check. She widened her visual search, outward towards the walls.

Mandy screamed again.

Every scream tears at my heart, Rachel thought. Somehow it's my job to get her out of this. My responsibility. That's what the general was telling me.

Rachel looked at the clock. Eleven minutes left until the big one.

"Rachel, why are you in those chains anyway? And what happened to your hair?"

Rachel swept her eyes over the walls, walking closer to the one to the left. Absently, trying to concentrate, she said, "They do that to the prisoners here. You know we're in a prison, right?"

"I don't know what I know, Rachel. I don't know anything. They brought me here today. I don't know what for. The people who flew me here, in a helicopter, they didn't speak any English. I never know what's going on. Except when they ask me questions. And then hurt me."

In a far corner of the room there was a water trough, surprisingly nearly full. Rachel looked carefully through the surface of the water. No key in sight.

Mandy screamed again.

She screamed several more times as Rachel, increasingly desperate, made a slow circuit of the room. She wanted so much to hurry, but didn't want to miss anything. She looked all around the clock carefully. It was too flush with the wall to be a hiding place for keys.

It has to be around her somewhere, Rachel decided. There's so little stuff in here, it should stick out like a sore thumb.

Mandy screamed once more. Rachel looked at the clock. Oh jeez, oh jeez. Four minutes left. She rushed over to Mandy. "Mandy, listen to me."

Biting her lip, Mandy nodded.

Rachel took a deep breath. "The clock... I don't know if you figured out, it gives you the shock every time the second hand starts a new minute."

Mandy whimpered. "If you know that, can't you stop it?"

"I tried, Mandy, I really tried. I'm just..." She jingled her chains. "I can't reach what I need to reach. But it's..." She took a deep breath. "When it starts a new hour, it's going to shock you for a whole minute straight."

Mandy's jaw dropped as the breath rushed out of her. "Rachel, please, please, don't let it do that!" She suddenly screamed again.

"I can't stop it, Mandy! I don't know where the key is. I don't think I can find it in the next..." She looked at the clock again. "Three minutes. Mandy, I'll be right here. I'll get you out. But you need to get through this."

Mandy started crying. "Rachel, it hurts!"

"I know, I know." She came up to Mandy and rubbed her cheek against her friend's. "I'm so sorry. I..." She paused as Mandy screamed again.

Rachel suddenly felt positive the key was under one of Mandy's feet. Why else would they hold them so tightly against the floor?

Rachel dropped to the floor in front of Mandy, sitting back on her heels to give the slipchain as much slack as she could. She slid her fingers under Mandy's right foot, forcing them under as far as they would go. The front of her foot was not really held down. It was the back part that was the problem.

Rachel forced her fingers as near Mandy's heel as they could easily get, then pushed harder. They were under the heel now. Nothing there.

Mandy screamed again.

Last minute. Rachel stood quickly, and leaned against Mandy. "Mandy, when it starts, take real shallow little breaths, in and out, really fast. Blow them out of your mouth. Like this..." She demonstrated.

"Rachel, I'm scared, I'm scared..."

"I know, honey. You'll get through this."

"I don't want..." She suddenly screamed, her whole body convulsing, and kept screaming.

Rachel pressed up against her. "Mandy, it's going to be over soon, you'll get through it, you'll be okay. Breathe, breathe, like I said." Mandy started sucking in and expelling breaths as fast as she could, her body quivering in pain.

"Rachel, make it stop, make it stop!" She sobbed helplessly.

Rachel cried with her. "You'll be okay, you'll be okay!" She looked at the clock. Fifteen seconds left. "Mandy, we'll go straight home, we don't need to go to the night clubs, we can just get on a plane and head back to school, don't you want to start reading books and taking tests again..." She smiled shakily as Mandy gave a quick choking laugh.

Suddenly Mandy was taking in deep breaths, her body relaxing. Rachel saw the second hand of the clock had completed the minute. Rachel rubbed her head against Mandy's shoulder. "You did it, sweetie, you're through it!"

Mandy looked as if she'd just played five hours of basketball in a hot, sticky gym. Her body glowed with sweat as if it had an internal light. It ran in streams down her sides and legs and dripped onto the floor. She gradually got her panting under control. "So no more of that for an hour, right?" Suddenly she screamed again. Another minute had passed.

Rachel rubbed her head on Mandy's shoulder again. "Just those little one-minute pricks. They're nothing, right?"

Mandy actually giggled, then moaned. "See if you can find the key. Please?"

Rachel went back down to the floor to search under Mandy's left foot. One scream later, she'd concluded there was nothing there.

Somewhere on her body, though, thought Rachel. It has to be.

Her hair, thought Rachel. They hadn't cut it. Plenty of room to hide it there. "Mandy, do you feel anything in your hair? I mean, like a key?"

Mandy shook her head hard, not for negation but to determine whether there was anything there that didn't belong. "I don't think so."

"Tip your head back, hon." Rachel couldn't reach that high with her hands, so she used her cheek to scrape all around Mandy's head. She couldn't feel anything.

Maybe that doesn't make sense, she thought. If I felt a key in there, I'd probably need my fingers to pull it out from the tangles. I can't do that, and they know that. The key has to be somewhere I can reach.

Suddenly Rachel realized, her face flushing, that Mandy had some hair she could reach.

Mandy screamed again.

Rachel went down to her knees in front of Mandy, her face feeling still hotter. "Sorry, honey, I have to check here." A key could be hidden in Mandy's bush and she might not feel it.

Rachel let her fingers softly trail through Mandy's pubic hair, with a feeling of extreme unreality. If you'd told me I would do this sometime, she thought to no one in particular... Rachel kept her fingertips in contact with the skin underneath, and felt through every square inch, trying not to miss anything. Mandy screamed again.

Rachel sighed and shook her head. "Not in there." She walked on her knees behind Mandy and, feeling still more unreal, used both hands to spread her friend's buttocks apart.

Rachel sucked in a quick breath. "Oh my God!"

There was a small plastic bead sticking out of Mandy's anus.

Mandy said, "There's something in there. I told you it hurts."

"Uhhh, yeah. You said everything hurts."

"Can you... pull it out? Be careful, okay?" She screamed again.

Rachel carefully took the bead between her thumb and forefinger, pulling as gently as she could. "When did they put this in here?"

"When they were bringing me in here. I wasn't exactly sure what they were doing. I was kind of dopey from drugs, I think."

Behind the bead, as Rachel continued pulling gently, there was another bead. And another. Mandy grunted and said, "Ow... ow... ow!" interrupted by another scream.

There, thought Rachel, you thought awhile ago just looking at Mandy's pubic hair seemed weird. Now you're looking straight at the cleft between her buttocks and pulling beads out of her rectum.

Rachel at last had a string of a dozen beads dangling from her fingertips. Mandy's anus had closed with a tiny pop as the last one emerged. "There's no key attached to these. Mandy, do you feel anything else at all in there?" Rachel hoped to God not. She didn't want to have to reach in with her finger.

Mandy shook her head, then screamed again. "No, I don't feel anything that shouldn't be there. That really feels a lot better. Sore, but better."

Rachel sighed. Fine, but still no key. She tossed the beads as far away as she could.

"Rachel..." Mandy stopped for a scream, then went on, "Could you get me some water? I'm so thirsty." Her voice was a hoarse whine. The hoarseness was fully justified by all the screaming she'd been doing. The whining was justified by all the pain she'd been experiencing, and by her desperate need. Rachel looked at the sheen of sweat covering Mandy's body. She must, thought Rachel, really be seriously dehydrated by now. That could even kill her before long, because the pain isn't going to stop, and neither is the sweating until she totally runs out of it.

Water! Rachel thought. There is some! Rachel hadn't really focused on it, other than as an obstruction to seeing whether there was a key underneath it.

She hurried over to the water trough. Plenty of water, but no cups to put it in. She wanted to get the water closer to Mandy. She tried pulling on the trough, but it was solid concrete, along with containing a couple hundred pounds of water, and sliding it along the floor was purely impossible.

Rachel leaned over the water, and sniffed it. She couldn't smell anything. Tentatively, she bent down to slurp up a tiny mouthful. It seemed fine. And Mandy had to have some.

Mandy screamed.

Rachel put her hands tightly together and scooped up some water. She started walking towards Mandy, trying hard not to spill any, and stopped. She sighed in exasperation, and let the water drop onto the floor.

She had no way to get it to Mandy's mouth. As tall as Rachel was, the gap between how high her hands could get and how low Mandy's mouth could reach was still at least a foot.

Rachel stood, her teeth gritted, air whistling in and out of her mouth, as Mandy screamed once more. Mandy said pitifully, "Rachel, I'm really thirsty."

Rachel had a sudden mental image of something that would work. If she thought she had been blushing earlier, that was nothing compared with the hot flush she felt in her face now.

She walked over to Mandy. "Sweetie, tip your head back again. Look right up at the ceiling, and keep looking up. When I get to you, open up your mouth. Okay?"

Mandy was too much in need of immediate rehydration to bother asking questions. She merely tipped her head back as Rachel had asked.

Rachel went back to the trough, dipped her chin and mouth all the way under the surface, and took in as big a mouthful of water as she could. Closing off her throat against swallowing, she went over to Mandy. Her face over Mandy's, she saw that Mandy had forgotten about opening her mouth. Rachel, unable to speak, blinked her eyes forcefully and lowered her mouth towards Mandy's a couple of times.

At last Mandy got the idea, and opened wide. Like a baby bird being fed by her mother.

Rachel waited impatiently until Mandy screamed again. She didn't want to get her lip bitten by Mandy, or have Mandy choke on a mouthful of water when the pain came.

After the scream it was safe, and Rachel put her lips against Mandy's open mouth, carefully opened them and let the water dribble slowly out of her mouth and into Mandy's.

Mandy swallowed several times as Rachel gave her small sips, not wanting to drown her. When she ran out of water, Mandy licked Rachel's lips for the last drops, then whispered, "Thank you."

"I know you need more. Back in a minute."

Rachel made ten trips to the trough and back, taking twenty minutes -- Mandy always screamed once while Rachel was getting the water, and then Rachel waited each time for another scream before...

Yeah, thought Rachel. That's what I'm doing. After all the other impossible intimacies, I'm giving Mandy big, open-mouthed kisses.

Mandy finally raised her head up to signal she'd had enough. She looked much better.

She screamed again. Then she looked at Rachel. "I just... Thank you. You don't know what it's been like." She started crying. "They didn't give me any water when they were questioning me. They just hurt me. And for nothing, really. Rachel, all that stuff we talked about in the hotel room -- they had a tape of all that. They played it for me, just so I'd know they knew everything. Our room was bugged, somehow. But then they wanted me to tell them more. I didn't know any more. I told them what I knew about Sergei, but I know they already must have known about everything I told them. It sounded like they'd already arrested him."

She paused to scream, then went on, "I told them about you... I'm sorry, I talked about you. But they already knew about you from the tape, and I could tell them where you were from and how I knew you, but none of that could help them. And they thought I was holding back, so they hurt me, but..." She started crying, then screamed once more.

Rachel only half-heard the last part of Mandy's speech. She suddenly felt an intense buzzing in her head. Her face felt numb. Her heart was trying to pound its way out of her chest.

Somehow, with Rachel so intent on trying to help Mandy, she had not been able to focus on the question of what Mandy was doing here to begin with.

The police had known what Rachel was doing before she had left the hotel! It wasn't Rachel's contact with the girl passing her the envelope that had brought her under suspicion. It was Rachel herself they had been following, not the girl. They had heard her and Mandy in the hotel room the night before. They had already been listening in, that early.

Rachel didn't want to ask. But she had to know. She had to know.

She opened her mouth, and for a moment couldn't produce any sounds. At last she spoke, her voice halfway between a whisper and a raspy croak. "Mandy. Did they arrest you... after you went to the embassy? Or... before?" Rachel felt a sudden sharp pain that she realized was her upper teeth biting her lower lip.

Mandy screamed again, then sniffled, trying to stop crying. "They came busting in, like... about twenty or thirty minutes after you left. You said I should wait until you were really late coming back, and then go. I never got to go."

Rachel's knees felt weak, then watery. She carefully sat on the floor, raised her knees up and cradled her head between them.

Oh no, oh God, she chanted in her head. Oh God oh God oh God oh....

The vision of her release from prison broke apart, like tissue paper in a flood, carried away on the waters, gone. Gone.

Nobody outside the Irkhetnian government knew she was in prison here -- nor even that she was in the country. The U.S. State Department didn't know -- Mandy hadn't gone to the embassy. Her father didn't know. Rachel hadn't called him. Nobody knew.

Their hotel room in Berlin was paid for, for a few more days. Those days would go by, and she and Mandy would be officially missing. Or her dad might call the hotel, and then start a search. So people would be looking for them soon.

But only in Germany. As far as anyone who would ever want to find them knew, they were lost somewhere in Germany. No information existed anywhere in Germany to suggest they had gone to another country. Nobody would think to make inquiries in a tiny former Soviet country Rachel had never suggested she might visit.

Several screams by Mandy went unnoticed.

But maybe...

The last blinders suddenly fell away from Rachel's eyes. She saw, at last, what she had so badly wanted to hide from herself:

The Irkhetnian government would never, ever think of letting Rachel or Mandy go free to return home. They were accused of being spies; they were spies. They both knew something that Irkhetnia wanted to keep hidden. They couldn't be allowed to say what they knew to the U.S. government. Mandy's knowledge was sketchy, Rachel's even more so, but even the knowledge they did have in their heads was a bomb waiting to explode the government of this country.

If, by some impossible miracle, someone looking for Rachel and Mandy did somehow make inquiries in Irkhetnia, Irkhetnia would blandly deny any knowledge that they were in the country or ever had been. And there was nothing to prove them wrong. It was as simple as that. The wall built of ignorance of Rachel's and Mandy's whereabouts, and the even thicker wall of Irkhetnian unwillingness to let them out of custody: those twin walls could never possibly be broken down to permit their rescue.

Rachel would be here in this prison for the rest of her life. This hellhole of abuse and rape was the only home she would ever know from now on, up until they finally decided to execute her. She would never relax in the sun in a bikini on the beach. She would never ride in a car with the top down, her hair blowing in the wind. She would never hear music. Never hear kids playing games, down the street.

Her whole body shook as she cried.

She didn't know how long it was before Mandy's voice got through to her. "Rachel, what is it? What's wrong?" Punctuated by a scream.

Rachel looked up at the clock. Okay, that long. Long enough that it's just twelve minutes until Mandy's next big, full-minute shock.

Rachel's head pounded. Her eyes felt raw. Everything through them looked reddish.

And suddenly the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. Amazing, Rachel thought, how clearly you can think when you stop lying to yourself.

She knew why she was in this room: she hadn't played the game. That game the guards wanted her to play, of knocking Anya down with her fist. You had to play to win or lose. You couldn't forfeit. Her refusal to fight had merited a much harsher punishment than simply being uncomfortably hogtied all night in her cell. The guards had started discussing what that harsher punishment should be. And then Matt arrived, with his news that they had another American girl, just arrived. Probably, thought Rachel, Mandy was just here to be executed. Her body wasn't really up to the standard that Rachel saw on display in the cell block. But the guards suddenly were inspired by Mandy's unexpected presence. Mandy could be used to punish Rachel.

Mandy screamed again. Don't worry, Mandy, thought Rachel. That next really long shock isn't coming.

One way out of this room, the general had told her. Rachel knew what it was. And it had nothing to do with a key.

Rachel stood up. She didn't know which direction to look, or even whether there was a hidden camera at all. But she was positive there was a microphone, at the least. She started speaking.

"You don't have to hurt her. I swear I will be good. I will do anything the guards tell me to do."

She waited, feeling drained. Her head still hurt. As she waited, she watched the second hand on the clock creep to the top, and past. No scream from Mandy. "Rachel, who are you talking to?"

Rachel sighed, gestured with her elbow at the door, and said in a flat voice, "Just them. Them out there. It's not important. You're going to be okay, Mandy. They won't hurt you anymore."

Mandy was startled when the door started opening. Rachel was not.

Rachel kept her groan to herself, but felt it billow within her, as she crossed the drawbridge into her cell block. My cell block, she thought. This is where I live. This is where I'll always live, until the end of my life.

Matt called to the dogs, and they came trotting over to him, to sit by his feet obediently, their tongues lolling out as they breathed rapidly. Boris led Rachel back to her cell. And stopped.

Instead of opening her cell door, he opened Anya's.

Oh, shit, thought Rachel, miserably. I should have guessed this. I thought they would give me a break for tonight. If the clock in the torture room was correct, it was about 1 a.m.

Blearily, Anya stumbled out of her cell. She squinted up at Rachel, and smiled when her near-sighted eyes recognized her.

Anya's eyes went big when Boris unlocked Rachel's cuffs.

Boris's eyes bored into Rachel's. "You try hard, your friend okay." His gesture indicated the outside world, so that it was clear he meant Mandy. "You don' try, friend be very unhappy."

Rachel understood this to be the rule that applied to her, and would always apply. As long as she gave the games her best effort, then they wouldn't hurt Mandy. She might not always win, but it must always be clear she was trying. And in all other situations as well, she always must do as she was ordered, with Mandy's well-being hanging in the balance.

Rachel felt her eyes stinging. She had ordered herself not to cry. Crying wouldn't help. She had cried herself out earlier.

I have to hurt Anya, Rachel told herself. Because I can't let them hurt Mandy any more. That's always going to be the first priority.

Still, her lip quivered. She looked helplessly at Anya.

Left cheek, thought Rachel. It's already bruised, so it will hurt more, but I can't help that. I can't hit her jaw, I might break it. I can't back-hand her or hit her left-handed. That won't look like a serious effort.

Rachel balled her hand into a fist, and swung it at Anya. She hit Anya's face directly on the bruise.

Anya staggered back and went over backward, landing heavily on her buttock, and continued backward until her shoulder hit, hard. She started to cry.

The guards pushed Anya into her cell and quickly rearranged her bondage into a hogtie, and secured the penis gag. Rachel, the winner, was allowed back into her cell with her hands free.

The guards quickly withdrew, yawning, presumably returning to their quarters, and the dogs resumed their nighttime jobs.

Rachel drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. She sniffled, and her shoulders shook. She still didn't want to cry, but it was so hard. Softly, hoping the dogs wouldn't hear, she said over and over in a teary whisper, "I'm sorry, Anya. I'm sorry, Anya..." She knew Anya wouldn't literally understand the words, but was sure the meaning would come through.

She was speaking softly enough that she easily heard the gagged Anya saying, "HMM hm. HMM hm. HMM hm." The words were in musical tones, the HMM high, the hm lower. It reminded Rachel, in an uncanny way, of her mother comforting her as a child, when Rachel had scraped her knee or was otherwise distraught -- her mother had used a similar, sing-song cadence. Anya was saying -- there was no doubt in Rachel's mind whatsoever about this -- "It's all right. It's all right."

The conversation -- and certainly it is that, thought Rachel, we both understand each other perfectly well -- was cut short as the dogs scrambled towards their cells, barking frantically. After a few minutes of absence of sounds from either cell, the dogs retreated to the front of the aisle.

Waiting until after the dogs had settled down, Rachel put her right elbow on the floor in the very front corner of her cell, her forearm vertical in front of the space between the cell wall and the first bar. Carefully, trying to make no sound, she tilted her forearm past the front of the wall separating her cell from Anya's, and swung it in past the opening into Anya's cell. With her elbow alone projecting out beyond the cells, she felt with her fingers for Anya's shoulder. There, found it. Rachel gently stroked the shoulder.

She heard Anya sigh.

Rachel meant only to do it for a few seconds, but somehow the satisfaction of having her gesture of warmth, such a rare, almost non-existent part of life here, be accepted and appreciated, made her keep going.

After a couple of minutes, Rachel's index finger, not quite retracing its stroking path exactly, felt an unexpected protrusion she couldn't identify.

Suddenly she realized: Oh my God, that's her nipple! Anya was on her stomach when they'd first hogtied her, but she must have turned onto her side! I've been fondling her breast!

Rachel jerked her fingers away, as if from a hot stove burner. Shit, she said to herself, what must Anya think of me now?

Then she heard Anya's soft, "Hmmm? Hmmm?"

Anya hadn't made the slightest sound, other than that sigh, while I was stroking her, Rachel told herself. Now she's wondering why I stopped.

She has had such a hard life here, thought Rachel. This was probably the first nice feeling she's had this whole time. It doesn't mean she wants a lover. She just wants, after all this time, someone to be nice to her.

Rachel let her fingers drop back onto Anya's breast and started stroking again. She kept doing it until the change in Anya's breathing told Rachel she was asleep.