Yelena awoke, but instinct told her not to move.

It is so weird, she thought, so twisted, so sick, to wake up with your face in your daughter's crotch. To smell the tang of urine, the aroma of sexual juices, feel the prickle of her pubic stubble on the end of your chin.

But she's at peace, lying there, still asleep. She's probably dreaming of something pleasant, something ordinary. Of going to a dance with her friends, maybe, and sharing a dance with a boy she likes. If I move I'll take her away from that.

Or is Marya in there at all anymore? Is she all Hélène now? Does she remember I'm her mother, or am I just Hélène, her other self, her lover?

Yelena wasn't sure if she had twitched in some tiny way, or if Marya awakened on her own. But seconds after Marya first stirred, Yelena could feel a tongue, soft and wet, lapping at her sex.

And in front of her eyes, Yelena saw Marya's sex lips grow puffy, and glisten with beads of moisture.

Yelena licked her, and heard Marya's sigh, felt the wriggling excitement begin to take over Marya's body.

Whatever is happening in her head, thought Yelena, it wasn't just last night. It's still going on.

Yelena began licking harder, going deeper inside, and felt Marya do the same.

Rachel's head pounded from the daylong battle with freezing cold, with the exertion, and with her own internal efforts to hold back the tears. She had known today would be worse than yesterday. It was hard to keep from looking at Anya, yet remain aware of her location so she could stay away from her. Rachel had done the same yesterday, but yesterday she hadn't just spent a sleepless night hearing Anya crying.

Passing her eyes across the room, Rachel saw Anya looking directly at her, with a lost expression. I know I don't know your words, Anya's eyes said, but still if you'd tell me what was wrong, then I know I could understand. Just tell me!

The tight set of Anya's jaw told Rachel how close she was to bursting into tears again.

It had begun snowing in the mid-afternoon, for Rachel's last three trips, and it seemed colder. But Rachel could tell, from the fading light outside, that this would be the last cycle of the day. Her turn was already past, so she had nothing more to do.

With the last woman doing her stint outside, Rachel was startled by a sharp scratchy sound, and saw Boris fish a small walkie-talkie out of his pocket. That had never happened before; Rachel hadn't even known the guards had devices like that. Boris spoke and listened to the voice speaking against a background of static. The conversation was brief, and at the end Boris put the phone back in his pocket, then nodded to Igor and Matt, who both left the room. Obviously something was prearranged. Rachel was utterly mystified.

Five minutes later, as the woman outside finished her job and stumbled through the door to be warmed, two guards Rachel had never seen before entered through the door from which Igor and Matt had just left.

Boris spoke to the men very briefly, then raised his voice and addressed all the women. The women looked happy -- for about twenty seconds. Then their faces fell as Boris continued. He pointed outside and towards the left, and said some more.

Once he'd finished, seven women looked... not unhappy, exactly, but nervous. Boris then turned to Rachel. "Dis is last day for you here, to do dis work..." Rachel felt a quick flash of excitement go through her, before she remembered how the other women had reacted to what he had said after that. "Next work is in rock cave." Whatever that is, thought Rachel. "Much warmer dere, not bad work. But first we have game wit' oder team. Win game, rock cave tomorrow. Lose game, den work in snow for two weeks more."

The idea managed to assemble itself in Rachel's head. There's another team -- she suspected the two unknown guards must be assigned to them, though Rachel still wasn't clear on why those two guys were here now -- and Rachel's team would have to compete against them for the right to work in the rock cave. Rachel supposed the other women on her team knew what that was, and they had seemed cheered by the idea of working there, though probably only in comparison with what they'd been doing here.

Boris went on, "All girls run to oder place." He gestured outside as before, and Rachel knew he meant the other big glass-walled room, from which she had had often seen women emerge to do the same straw-gathering job her team did. Oh, shit! thought Rachel. She had judged the other room to be about a hundred yards away. We all have to run all that distance in the snow! she told herself. In our hobble chains! "Dat team run here. First time every girl get inside oder room is win." Rachel wove her way through the garbled syntax and caught the idea: The first team to get every one of its members inside the door of the other room was the winner. Presumably, Rachel judged, the door will be unlocked.

Oh! she thought. That's why the other guards are here! There had to be guards representing both teams in each room, so both sets of guards could be there to witness when the last girl came into each room.

Boris looked at Rachel sternly. "If girl still outside when oder team wins, den door is locked. Have to come back to before."

Shit, shit, shit, thought Rachel. If any of us are still out when the other team finishes, we have to turn around and come all the way back. Penalty for losing: another hundred-yard run through the snow.

Boris suddenly gave all the girls a confidential look, spoke to the group in general and gestured to the far end of the room, away from the other team's guards, who seemed okay with him being secretive. Acceptable strategy session coming, she guessed. Team coaching. The women, including Rachel, all followed him over.

Boris spoke very quietly, just a few sentences. Then, of course, he turned to Rachel. "You choose one girl for oder team. Run to her. Knock her down. Den finish run."

That was straightforward enough. Rachel, and all of the other women, were each to try to slow down someone on the other team, while otherwise completing the race as fast as possible.

Rachel was suddenly puzzled. Why does Boris care if we win or lose? Why does it matter to him if we work in this rock cave place, or here in the ice field? He's not the one who has to freeze his butt off every day. He's a guard; he's okay either way. I'm sure all of us want to win more than he does.

Then it came to Rachel. She would have slapped her forehead for being an idiot, if she could have raised her hands. In the case of the guards, money was going to be changing hands. There was a serious bet going on here.

If we lose, she told herself, then Boris, Matt, and Igor are all going to be pissed.

Boris's walkie-talkie chirped. He pulled it from his pocket, said a few words into it, nodded, and literally ran to the inner door to the outside, opened it, pulled out a key and turned it in a lock in the outer door -- to unlock it, or to disable the interlock that prevented both doors opening at once -- perhaps both. Pushing the outer door open, he backed away quickly, folding his arms against his chest, as the angry thought flashed through Rachel's mind, Yes, you asshole, it's cold out there! Boris swept his arm towards the door and shouted something that sounded like, "Idyotye!" Rachel at first thought he had called all the women idiots, but combined with the gesture, and the fact all of the others started rushing for the door, and the unlikelihood he would address all of them in English, she decided it simply meant "Go!"

Rachel just had time to think, Shit, that's all the warning we get??, as the first woman shuffled quickly out through both doors into the cold.

It was snowing as hard as it had all afternoon. Rachel was the third one out, and felt the usual body blow of frigid air surround her. She hunched her shoulders in the same way the women in front of her did. All around her, it looked exactly as though someone had just shaken a snow-globe, with powdery flakes floating down on all sides to a thickening white blanket on the bottom that made the feet ache instantly, with a leaden-gray glass ceiling arching overhead. Pinpricks of snowflakes on Rachel's head, shoulders, back, and breasts added to the misery. The snow covering the ground did helpfully amplify what little daylight remained -- it would be dark within half an hour, Rachel judged.

Rachel wanted so badly to look back and see how Anya was doing. She fought her instinct to drop back to protect Anya; that was out of the question. Even here, where she wasn't sure any guards could see her, she just wasn't sure enough that they couldn't see her. She forced herself not to look back.

Rachel boiled with fury at the cruelty of making her cut Anya out of her life. She felt the fury not only on her own behalf but, even more so, on Anya's. Neither of them had done anything wrong, except to bond with each other in self-defense against an intolerable environment.

Bent over and shivering, Rachel wasn't able to look up and ahead of her until she'd gone a dozen steps and started breathing. She could see, in the distance, the other team shuffling towards her own. The distance looked appallingly far in such bone-rattling cold, daunting even if her legs had been free, but doubly so with the hobble chain slowing her down. To make it more difficult, Rachel had to concentrate on picking up her feet as she walked, so the chain wouldn't drag through the snow. Where she and the other women had been working, the snow was trampled down, but here in the untrod space between stations, it was now about three or four inches deep. Rachel suddenly realized it might hide holes she might step in and break an ankle. She slowed even more, testing each step. The other women, clearly struck by the same thought, slowed as well.

It took a few more steps for something more to register: While Rachel's own team was starting to string out as individuals running at different speeds, the oncoming team was running in four pairs, each pair staying close together.

Oh, shit, thought Rachel. Boris, you ass, if you're so smart, why didn't you think of this? She understood the thinking immediately.

The other team, operating under the strategy their own guard had obviously devised for them, knew they didn't have to try to knock down all of Rachel's team. They could let a few go past them, while pairing up to smack the stragglers down with a force of two against one. They just had to keep one girl on Rachel's team from finishing before they all got in.

Of course, the other guard had the advantage of being able to take more time to describe the strategy to his team, without having to repeat it all in broken English. This might be partly Rachel's fault, just for not speaking Russian. She hoped Boris didn't end up holding that against her.

Rachel was already feeling a growing exhaustion from the shivering, from the difficulty breathing, and from the effort of her hobbled progress through thick snow by the time she reached the halfway point, and the members of the other team confronted hers. The first pair from the opposing team trudged right past Rachel, and her teammates ahead of her, not even looking at them. They were targeting the slower, weaker girls.

Rachel's two teammates in front of her both veered off towards the second opposing pair, who were trying to pass them by. Rachel looked ahead to decide which remaining pair to take on.

Rachel normally thought of herself as the least physically aggressive of women. Growing up, she had always been the biggest and usually strongest girl on the playground, and was always careful, concerned she might hurt a friend without meaning to. But here, today, she would do anything she had to, to win. She wanted out of this deep freeze.

And she wanted, so badly, to pound somebody to the ground.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw her teammates run into the opposing pair they had picked out, with all four women knocked on their backs by the impact, while another pair of opponents trooped past. It would be nearly impossible to stay upright after a hit like that, Rachel judged. Without being able to wave your arms or take big enough steps backward, there was no way to recover balance.

There was one last pair of opponents ahead of Rachel. Rachel angled towards them, and changed her path again as the pair tried to go around her. With a last lunge she managed to clip the shoulder of one of them with her own. The impact knocked the woman flat and spun Rachel around. Somehow, Rachel managed to stay on her feet. She was now looking behind her, and saw, just at that moment, the leading pair of opponents run straight into Anya, hitting her from both sides and knocking her on her back. The pair was staggered but kept going. Another teammate just ahead of Anya was slammed to the ground by the next pair of opponents.

Beside Rachel, the partner of the woman she'd just knocked down started to run on, then stopped, indecisive. It appeared she realized that the most important member of the team was the one who was farthest from the goal, and that was her prone partner. She came back to help her get up.

Rachel had to clamp down on her instincts once more. She felt an almost unmanageable compulsion to run all the way back to Anya, the one person on her team she wasn't allowed to help. Anya was sitting up, a good sign, but seemed dazed. It was hard to tell, from this distance, how close she was to getting up. It looked equally likely she could be so dizzy she'd fall on her back again instead.

To Anya's right, one of her teammates had run back to give a hand to the other who'd been knocked down. No, you stupid bitch, Rachel wanted to shout, go help Anya!

All of these observations of what was happening behind her took just a few seconds. Rachel was just a few steps from being in the lead, with her teammates ahead of her still occupied, one on the ground and the other kneeling to give her a hand. A few steps would put Rachel in the lead, though being first really didn't matter. Rachel still wanted so desperately to run back to Anya, and stood running in place for a moment -- standing motionless in that cold was out of the question. I can't do it, she told herself miserably. I could help Anya now, but if I do she would pay for it so, so much worse later.

It occurred to Rachel that she could help her own team by further preventing the girl she had knocked down from getting up. She had time, at least until her other teammates behind her started catching up -- indeed, until Anya got up and started running again, it didn't matter how long Rachel took to reach the other room -- but she just couldn't physically bear being out in the cold any longer, and she was barely halfway to her goal. She saw now that her hesitation had allowed the woman she had knocked over to return to her feet at last, and the woman was now past Rachel.

It was agonizing for Rachel to force herself to leave Anya behind, but the idea of a warm place ahead put her back into forward motion. It was too cold to think about deviating from her goal to chase someone running the other way.

Rachel wasn't sure exactly how to recognize the other window room, though it seemed it would be hard to miss a vertical wall of glass in the mountainside. She started high-stepping carefully through the snow again. She was shivering so badly, she thought she must be colder now than she had ever been in her life.

There! I was right, she thought, it's easy to spot.

She shuffled as fast as she could towards the door, by now able only to think: Cold, cold, cold, cold. She heard the other two women she'd originally been trailing just behind her.

Yes! she exulted, as she pulled at the handle on the outer door, it's open! She had tried not to imagine the guards playfully leaving it locked, but apparently the bet took priority with the guards over tormenting their charges. Rachel slammed through the space between doors, pushed the inner door aside and fell to the floor, breathless.

The two women behind her came through seconds later, and, with reflexes bred by so many days working in these conditions, fell on Rachel and began rubbing their bodies back and forth against her. They were cold, and they knew Rachel was cold. The top priority was using body heat and generating more.

Another teammate, and another, stumbled through the door and joined the pile.

Rachel dragged herself out from under as soon as she felt survival was possible. Another of the women rose, then another, both of them looking out the window. Rachel decided it was safe for her to do the same. They couldn't fault her for simply trying to see how her team was doing.

Rachel could see the two remaining women, other than Anya, getting closer, maybe twenty yards away. But she still didn't see Anya. With the increasing darkness and falling snow, visibility was probably little more than fifty yards. Anya, Rachel fretted, must be farther away than that.

Every muscle in Rachel's body tensed. She was at war with herself as never before. It was almost impossible to hold back from running out the door and find Anya. I can't go, I can't go, I can't go, shouted a voice within her, growing louder as she took a first step towards the door. Matt and Igor would be furious, the inner voice pointed out, if they saw me go back outside after getting in safely. And even worse, far worse: they'd know exactly why I'd done it.

Suddenly the walkie-talkie in the pocket of the third guard in the room chirped. He put it up to his ear, and then shouted in joy. Matt spun and pounded his fist against the wall, uttering a single coarse word that was no doubt obscene. Quickly the guard moved towards the door and locked it. The two women approaching outside both shouted a horrified "Nyet!!" Reaching the door just seconds later, the nearest of them found it wouldn't budge. Rather than stay and plead, they both turned immediately and ran back the other way.

Rachel screwed her eyes shut and broadcast a mental message to them: Help Anya, help Anya, please, please!

Anya was her foremost thought. Only later did her shoulders slump with the realization: we lost. Two more weeks of shivering, of teeth chattering, of freezing air biting your lungs, stinging your eyes, hurting your ears, hurting everything.

And I don't know whether Anya will be there with me! she wailed inside.

Rachel had hoped she and the four teammates with her could wait until the missing members showed up, but right away Matt and Igor lined them up to be chained together. Neither guard looked happy, to put it mildly.

Rachel tried to address them telepathically: I understand you're mad, you guys, but don't take it out on us. It's not our fault. We got here in time.

Rather than return to the original window room, Matt and Igor took Rachel and her four teammates straight to the shower. Rachel was willing to be washed, but wanted to get it over with quickly so they could get back to the cell block. But there was a delay caused by, of all things, a snake in the room, slithering on the floor perhaps ten feet from the shower line. The woman directly in front of Rachel in the line apparently saw it first, and screamed. The others saw where she was looking, and the scream was echoed.

Rachel sighed and shook her head. She looked for and saw the signs that the snake was of a non-poisonous variety. She would have picked the thing up and looked for a place to dispose of it, but was trapped in place by the chains connecting her to the adjacent women, and was seriously doubtful they'd let her drag them any closer to it. The women looked on with wide, frightened eyes, breathing hard, as a bespectacled gray-haired man Rachel hadn't seen before, incongruously wearing a lab coat rather than a guard's uniform, smiled apologetically and reached down to scoop up the snake in his hand. He disappeared through one of the side doors, and the excitement seemed over.

And what the hell, Rachel suddenly wondered, was a snake doing here? They're cold-blooded. You don't find them crawling around frozen mountainsides.

She shrugged and walked through with the others to finish rinsing off, her thoughts turning back to worry over Anya.

Back in the cell block, her worry increased in volume. None of the other three women, Anya included, were back yet. The room's other team had arrived earlier, and were all in their cells.

So not just Anya is missing, Rachel fretted. The other two girls are too. They were so exhausted, so cold, and they had to go all the way back through the snow. It was too far. Those two, and Anya -- probably all lying sprawled in the snow, getting covered by it. Guards in each room thinking they were in the other. Nobody knowing to look for them. They're dead, all gone.

Locked now in her cell, Rachel sat back, miserably, her tears flowing again. Anya is dead, she told herself. I know she is.

I can't make it without Anya, she moaned. Mandy is dead. Everybody I've ever known is gone from my life, my father, my friends at school, I'll never see any of them again. They've taken all that away from me. Anya was all I had. Even if I can't talk to her, even if she thinks I hate her, that I've forgotten about her... I have to see her. I have to have her in my world.

Rachel heard footsteps across the drawbridge. Probably the food cart, she told herself. I can't eat anything. I won't eat anything, ever again.

Then she made out the jingling sound. Her eyes shot open. The food cart doesn't sound like that, she told herself.

Her heart pounding, she caught herself scrambling up to her knees, stopped herself. Don't react! Don't react! You can't show you care!

Tears of joy, now. Three women walking along the aisle, stopping at Boris's order. Anya right in front of Rachel's cell.

Anya was white as a sheet, trembling. Rachel somehow didn't think it was from cold. She looked badly frightened. The other two looked much better. Did Boris threaten Anya in particular? Why? He can't blame her for the loss all by herself. All three of them were still out there when the other team finished!

Now the food cart did arrive. Bowls were distributed among the cells, and in front of the three new arrivals, who were sitting now, at Boris's command, right there in the aisle where they had been standing. He wasn't putting them in their cells. But they were getting fed. Oh, yes, thought Rachel with a sigh, they'll always feed us. Using starving scarecrows for sex isn't enough fun.

After all dinners were finished and the meal cart taken away, Boris gave orders to the three girls in the aisle. Rachel presumed Anya was following those orders when she knelt down and bent over, as if ready for Rape Time activities, but right out there in the aisle rather than in her cell. Anya, still pale, seemed to Rachel vacant, robotic. Nothing seemed to matter to her. Leaning forward in her cell, Rachel could see the nearer of the other two women assuming the same position that Anya was, with all the fear in her face that Anya was missing. Boris directed Matt to retrieve the ring gags from the three empty cells, and Anya, still blankly unemotional, opened her mouth for Matt to place the gag, and waited, ready for sex in any of three holes.

Rachel squeaked in alarm when Boris suddenly bent down to open her cage, and gestured her out into the aisle.

Rachel stood, carefully avoiding looking at Anya, so vulnerable in that position. Boris unlocked Rachel's handcuffs and hobble chain, and removed the slipchain, deepening her alarm. He's going to have me hurt Anya, she thought, I know he is. I didn't do anything wrong! This isn't fair! Everything is so unfair!

Boris looked at Rachel with a barely concealed smirk. "You do good today. You knock down girl, and you are first to finish. I give you nice t'ing." He gestured at the three women in the aisle, Anya and the other two, all obviously about to endure multiple rapes. "You choose one and save her. She stay free in your cell tonight. Instead of dis." He swung his arm to indicate all three again. Rachel took "dis" to mean everything that was about to happen to them. Knowing the guards, and knowing how upset Boris, Matt, and Igor in particular must be with the three women, Rachel was sure the rapes wouldn't be the end of their torment.

A tornado of thoughts swirled through Rachel's head.

She could choose Anya. Instead of being raped and then suffering through whatever followed that, Anya could stay with Rachel in her cell. Rachel had an instant mental image of holding Anya, hugging her tight, kissing her, seeing Anya smile and feeling her soft lips kissing back. Somehow thoughts of this type no longer took Rachel by surprise. Wanting sexual intimacy with Anya was simply a fact of Rachel's existence, something she lived with. It was just a small part of their connection with each other, a connection that had come on so quickly yet ran so deep. Obviously there was no question whether Anya felt the same way. Witnessing one wet dream had been enough to settle that.

Finally, Rachel thought, we can do it. Right now.

Except, of course, we can't.

Rachel gritted her teeth until her entire jaw ached.

Boris wasn't telling Rachel she really was free to choose. He wasn't suspending the treat-Anya-as-dirt-under-your-feet rule. Boris himself hadn't made the rule. The general had. Boris would be in big trouble for overlooking it.

And obviously he wasn't overlooking it. Boris was reaching a depth of cruelty Rachel had never imagined existed in the world. Here, pick any one, he was saying. Knowing that Rachel knew she couldn't pick Anya, that she would have to choose one the others.

And in making Rachel make that choice, he was forcing her to step on Anya one more time, in the most definitive way yet. I don't want you, Anya, she would be saying. I'd rather share my cell with any other girl but you.

Anya, in fact, would know that Rachel had decided to make Anya's night even worse: it occurred to Rachel that, instead of three girls being raped by two men each, the remaining two would each be used by three men. Anya would get the message from Rachel: I don't care how many men rape you, Anya. You're nothing to me.

Hate. Hate. Hate. I hate all of you here, Rachel thought, and especially you, Boris. I hate you. You never had to create this situation for me, here, now. You could have left me alone. But you're purely evil. You have to twist the knife.

Rachel felt her face burning, the anger swelling within her, more than her body could contain. She balled her hand into a fist. Just hit his face like this, she debated within herself, or open fingers to scratch his eyes out?

Her brain sent the signal to her arm: strike. Now. Rachel felt her shoulder muscles twitch to begin the movement.

Natalya wanted so badly for her body to leave her in peace. Thirty days on The Farm, the general had said. It's been that long, hasn't it? It feels like it must be. It feels like it's been a hundred years.

I'll never hit a guard again, Natalya told herself for the hundred thousandth time. Hit one? I won't even look at one. I'll just say Yes sir, thank you sir, I'll keep my eyes down and whisper, never shout. Please let me out of here, please. My thirty days must be up by now.

Suddenly she felt something cool, smooth, and wet, a tongue no doubt, on her sex lips.

Her body exploded again, her hips jerking forward to chase the elusive tongue that was now gone, her stomach muscles quaking, her breasts bouncing once more. An avalanche of need, a hunger for touch never satisfied.

She was completing her eighth day in The Farm.

From a higher level of Rachel's brain, an emergency order went out to her arm: No! Stop! Don't!

Rachel had no idea what they would do if she attacked Boris. But she was positive she would wish she never had. It would feel good only for a few seconds, if she hit him. And then forever after, it wouldn't.

Rachel pointed blindly at the woman on the floor directly ahead of Anya. Trying to keep the shaking out of her voice, and more or less succeeding, though it was still raspy with emotion, she said, "Her. I want her."