"We will be ready the day after tomorrow," the general said. "There was some delay in obtaining a sufficient number of the right kinds of snakes, but we have been assured that they will be here tomorrow. The president personally expedited the requisition."

Of course he did, thought Yelena grimly. He would do this to his own daughter. Nothing he does would surprise me anymore, except possibly demonstrating the smallest particle of human decency.

"Also, the room we wish to use was suddenly needed yesterday for another project. The proper electronic and mechanical gadgetry will need to be installed. But preparations there are now well advanced, and it will be ready at that time."

The doctor spoke up. "I will be weaning Marya from the deep anesthetic. If I continued using it up to the time of the event, she would awaken groggy and confused, and she will need to be clear-headed, able to understand complex instructions and follow them. I will be shifting her this afternoon to a lighter drug, and she should be quite well-oriented to her situation when she awakens after the drug is withdrawn."

Yelena sighed. "Is there anything else I need to know?"

The doctor responded, "I will have a script for you by tomorrow, so that you will have time to study it. You will not need to commit it to memory, but only to deliver it smoothly."

"Script?"

"It's important to hit exactly the right psychological note. A terror trauma is only effective as a motivation for a particular behavior if it points in the proper direction."

Yelena closed her eyes and said softly, "Whatever you say, doctor. I'm sure you know what you're doing."

The doctor beamed at her genially. "I'm a professional."

Rachel convulsed at the now-familiar but still shockingly intrusive sound of the airhorn, the daily wake-up alarm. Her eyes felt glued shut, and she was extra-groggy from a short night of sleep. She rubbed her eyes, and remembered a moment later how unusual it was for her to be able to move her hands anywhere at will. I'm sure they'll fix that in a minute, she thought bitterly.

And then full memory returned, and a sense of devastating loss washed over her. Every morning for the rest of my life will start this way, she reminded herself miserably. A life in prison at hard labor, a life of constant sexual abuse, a life with no hope of freedom. Tears began streaming from her eyes again. She wiped them away.

Last night's three "losers," including Anya, were released from their penal hogties, and their gags, and locked into the cells again afterward before the meal cart began distributing bowls of breakfast. Rachel, again, found the food wasn't as unappetizing as she would have expected in such a place, though it was demeaning to have to eat it with her fingers, insignificant as the feeling might be considering everything else. Or, as some girls did, straight from the bowl like dogs.

A few minutes later Rachel's team, and the one across from her, were assembling in a line in the aisle, waiting for Igor and one of the other team's guards, whom Rachel had not yet bothered to name, to secure them together with chains. Matt locked Rachel's handcuffs to the slipchain once more.

I hope our job isn't gathering pine droppings in the snow again, she thought with fervor. Do we switch to a different job every day, or stay with the same one? I guess I'll find out in a few minutes.

While Igor was gathering chains, Anya took advantage of the guards' momentary inattention to turn partway towards Rachel and smile at her. Anya softly said something that sounded like, "Dobray utra, Retchell."

Oh, jeez, thought Rachel. She's not only able to look at me without being embarrassed over what I did last night, she's smiling at me and talking to me! I must have spent at least twenty minutes stroking her breast. How can that be okay?

And I should say something back, Rachel told herself. She's looking at me, waiting for me to say something. In context, Rachel could only guess Anya had given her some kind of morning pleasantry. She forced a smile and responded quietly in kind: "Dobray utra, Anya." The girl's smile spread wider, before she quickly turned back at the sound of Igor starting to secure chains at the front of the line.

Rachel's stomach tightened suddenly. Does she have a crush on me? she wondered in horror. That look in her eyes. I've seen lovestruck girls directing that at cute boys, but I've never had one do it to me before. It would make sense, Rachel told herself. Just from looking at Anya's body, those whip marks, so many more than any other woman I've seen here, on the skin of such a mild, sweet-looking girl, I knew from the start that Anya has been through horrors even I can't imagine, even after I've lived here myself. And I'm probably the first person in all that time who's done anything nice for her, Rachel thought. Not just saving her from one more major whipping yesterday, but also comforting her, if that's the word for it, last night.

Even though I tried to punch her lights out in between, marveled Rachel. But she knows I had to. She doesn't know what I went through after I refused to hit her, but she knows enough about this place that she understands it was something that made me have to follow orders. She doesn't blame me for hitting her. At all, obviously.

If she does have a crush, I can't do anything about it, Rachel told herself. And I definitely don't want to hurt her. She's had way more than enough of that.

The line of women was marched out of the cell block and into the corridor. Rachel kept hoping for a turn in a different direction from yesterday, but they followed the exact same path. And ended up in that same place.

How long do we work here? she asked herself, feeling desperate to know.

Rachel looked out the window and echoed the moans she heard all around her. She wasn't fooled by the fact that most of the snow was gone. The big trouble was that the sun was gone as well, and the sky was heavily gray. The icicles hanging down from the eaves above the window told the story. They hadn't been there yesterday. Rain had washed away the snow, but the temperature had clearly been hovering around freezing. There was probably a crust of ice on the ground. Walking barefoot through it would be at least as painful as the snow had been. There was a heavy mist in the air, and Rachel couldn't yet tell whether it was raining right now.

She turned to Boris with the idea of begging him for some mercy, but stopped herself. Not because she thought it would get her in trouble, but because she knew it would accomplish no more than to amuse him.

Boris read her unspoken words anyway. Smirking, he said, "You don' like it out dere? Work fast, will be okay."

Matt pointed and counted again, while Igor was unlocking the chains connecting the women, though it was the exact same women standing in the exact same order as yesterday -- Rachel had been a new girl in the lineup yesterday, but today it was exactly the same team as the day before. Apparently it was just something Matt did.

When the first woman exited the outer door, she hunched over immediately, and turned and banged at the door with her elbow, her face a silent pleading to be allowed back in. She happened to be looking at Matt, who laughed and waved her away. She turned and started towards the trees, still hunched, elbows tight against her sides.

I'm not going to do that, Rachel vowed to herself. I won't try to get them to let me back in. It's just wasting precious time, and I'm not spending any longer out there than I have to.

She felt a touch at her hip. Turning to look in surprise, she found that Anya had sidled up against her, though Anya, with everyone else, was still watching the girl outside. Okay, thought Rachel, a crush it is. She wants to be touching me.

It felt very weird to Rachel, to be one of the participants in a gesture of physical intimacy, however minor, between two naked women. It did occur to her it was kind of cute the way her hip fit into the curve of Anya's waist, in the same way the western bulge of Africa had once, millions of years ago, fit into the curving shoreline of North and South America.

And then within Rachel, always prone to self-examination, a submerged feeling bubbled up near the surface and she caught it: she realized that Anya was also partially filling a deep emptiness in Rachel's soul that had been there from the moment she had found out she could never leave this place. If I can at least have a friend, she thought, I can get through this. Maybe.

Rachel moved her elbow outward just the tiniest bit, so that it rubbed against Anya's upper arm near her shoulder. There, she thought, amazing herself by coming close to giggling, I know it's her shoulder this time. No anatomical surprises.

Rachel felt a warmth spreading through her, billowing up against her heart. She rubbed her hip, just the tiniest movement, up and down against Anya's skin. She thought for a moment there was another feeling besides the warmth, hovering elusively just beyond the reach of her conscious mind. She tried to reach for it, but it danced away.

As soon as the outer door closed behind her, Rachel knew she had been right about the weather. The breath ran out of her in a rush, and she was helpless to draw in a new one. Instantly she hunched and drew her elbows in, as all the other women had before her.

It really was worse than yesterday. There was indeed a light rain coming down, and it coated the surface of her body, feeling like a layer of ice. She could feel it especially in her might-as-well-be-bald head and bare feet, as she started radiating body heat away at both ends.

In fact, to some extent it was ice on her skin. The rain, she saw immediately, could more properly be termed sleet, and there were tiny wet chunks of ice clinging to her body within seconds, hardly having time to melt before more replaced them.

She forced herself to move, move! She ran as fast as her hobbled feet allowed, to the nearest tree that seemed to have any pine straw under it, clouds billowing out of her mouth with each breath, once she'd started being able to breathe again. At least she'd had practice scooping the stuff up into an armload yesterday, and that seemed to go fractionally faster. She ran it over to the bin and dumped it in, then instantly turned to run back to the trees without waiting for the sound of a bell, knowing it wasn't yet enough. With her third armload of straw, she tripped over a root as she started towards the bin, and swore at herself out loud as the straw scattered onto the ground in front of her. She was furious at having to go back under the tree and replace the load she'd dropped -- there was a bigger pile under the tree than the amount she had dropped, and it was easier to scoop enough together there to make an armload than to recover what she'd been carrying before. She was shivering more violently than she thought she had at any time yesterday, though she felt more numb than cold now. At last she stumbled back into the room with the others, and was intensely grateful for their body heat as they crowded around her, rubbing up and down. Anya, warmed now from her own first trip, tried to get to Rachel but was shut out by larger women, and stood at the periphery, her face a mask of worry. She didn't smile until Rachel, breathing normally and her shivering reduced to a manageable level, emerged from the scrum and smiled at her.

Starting with the third cycle through the lineup, Rachel saw women, while outside, occasionally dropping to their knees to drink from puddles of snowmelt. It had to be a shock to their system to drink icy water when their skin was already covered in near-freezing water with embedded bits of ice, but it convinced Rachel, even more than yesterday's experience, that there must be no other way of getting water during the workday. She wondered what they did when the ground was dry.

When she imitated them during her fourth trip, she found it was indeed a shock. But she was thirsty enough not to care.

Through nine trips during the day, Rachel found herself wishing she and Anya could be of more help to each other. But each time Anya returned, Rachel was already being sent off to start her own stint, and whenever Rachel came back, Anya, never very assertive in any case, was pushed aside by the others.

But Rachel found that it was at least a very nice feeling to stand next to Anya during the times in between helping warm the other women as they came back inside.

The rain became harder, and visibly more slushy, through the afternoon. Near the end of the day, Rachel found she could never completely stop shivering between trips, and thought she would never be able to make herself go out when her turn came again. But she knew if she tried to defy orders they would torture Mandy. Probably worse than before. And though they had not said so, Rachel was sure they would make her watch, helpless to intervene. She heard Mandy's screams in her memory.