Chapter Text

Anika woke to the soft creak of bedsprings and the rustle of blankets. Pale grey light filtered through the cracks in the wallboards. Her head throbbed dully, her limbs heavy as if the exhaustion had settled into the marrow of her bones.

She blinked, disoriented, the memory of the night before still clinging to her skin like a second layer. The alley. Levi. The boots. The window.

Wren’s panic.

Ludo’s hand on her wrist.

She pushed the thoughts away and sat up slowly, her hair sticking to the side of her cheek. A few of the other girls were already awake—murmuring quietly, pulling on threadbare shifts, brushing dust from their sleeves.

No one looked at her.

That was good.

Her boots were gone—tucked under the bed, right where she’d shoved them. So was Levi’s cloak. She didn’t touch either. Instead, she stood, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and slipped into her usual work clothes. The cotton was stiff and still slightly damp with sweat.

She didn’t bother to fix her hair. Just tied it back with the crooked black ribbon and joined the others near the door.

The bell hadn’t rung yet, but they were used to waking before it. To lining up like soldiers and waiting for the knock.

Familiar raps on the door echoed through the room, the door swung open. Lady Lena stroad in, her usual prim and proper waltz laced with the usual eerie feel.

She was all charm today, her hair pinned in soft curls, lips tinted rose-pink. “Good morning, girls. I hope you all slept soundly.”

They murmured their greetings… soft and automatic.

She stepped into the dorm, her heels tapping lightly across the wooden floor. “I have some lovely news,” she sang, smiling as she passed between their lines. “Today, once the laundry is collected and delivered, you’ll have the rest of the day free. Consider it a reward for your hard work.”

There was a quiet shift in the room… relief, disbelief, curiosity? Anika’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Lady Lena’s smile pinned wider up her cheeks.

“And remember,” she added lightly, “free time is still observed time. So let’s all stay on our best behaviour.”

Her gaze swept the room- and landed on Anika.

She paused.

Then turned fully, her heels clicking softly as she approached.

Anika kept her chin up.

Lena smiled, warm and honeyed. “Anika, darling. Could I trouble you for a small favour?”

The girls didn’t react, but Anika could feel them listening.

Lena tilted her head. “Would you mind coming with me for a moment? Just a small thing I need help with. Nothing strenuous.”

Anika didn’t move.

Then she nodded once. “Yes, ma’am.”

Lena’s smile deepened. “Good girl.”

She held the door open, waiting.

Anika stepped into the hallway.

And the door shut behind them.

The staircase groaned beneath their feet, each step a hollow thud that echoed in Anika’s bones. She followed Lady Lena in silence, the woman’s perfume lingering in the stale air. A sickly-sweet floral aroma that clashed with the mildew crusted into the stairwell walls.

Anika’s palms felt clammy. Her pulse tapped against her ribs. The farther they climbed, the thinner the air seemed to get. The complex never felt this tall before.

By the time they reached the landing, Anika’s legs ached with each careful step. She didn’t know why she was so tired— actually that was a lie. She knew it was the combination of sleepless nights, the endless labour, pretending to be a girl fit to survive in a world that wasn’t designed for her.

Well that, and maybe whatever was waiting for her at the top of the stairs.

Lady Lena didn’t speak. She turned down a corridor lined with brass wall lamps that glowed like dim halos, their flames wobbling as the air shifted. The hallway was silent, muffled by thick rugs, the walls unnaturally clean—no dirt-streaks, no scuff marks. A different world than the rest of the compound.

Anika’s feet barely made a sound as she followed, but her breath was growing uneven. Something felt wrong.

At last, Lady Lena stopped in front of a tall wooden door carved with an intricate floral motif. She rested her hand on the handle and looked over her shoulder.

“Come in, sweetheart.”

The door creaked open into a wide office lit by amber lamp glow. The air inside was warmer, heavier—laced with the faint scent of wax and paper.

Anika stepped in slowly.

Desks lined one wall in perfect symmetry, their tops cleared save for matching paperweights and inkwells. Filing cabinets stood like silent sentries near the back. On the opposite wall, a massive bookshelf loomed, filled edge to edge with thick ledgers and folders. No clutter. No mess.

Just order.

Lady Lena gestured to a tall-backed chair set across from her desk, elegant, cushioned, with velvet arms that looked barely touched.

“Please,” she said sweetly, “have a seat.”

Anika sat stiffly, barely sinking into the plush fabric. Her spine remained straight. Her eyes scanned the room, never lingering too long in one spot.

Lena moved with deliberate elegance, retrieving a glass jug and pouring water into a glass. The clink of the jug against the rim made Anika flinch.

She slid the glass across the table. “You must be thirsty.”

Anika accepted it with both hands. Her fingers trembled as she took a sip. The water was tepid, but it coated her dry throat like honeyed tea. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was until now. Her stomach gave a low, aching groan.

Lady Lena’s gaze flicked toward the sound, but she said nothing.

Instead, she sat across from Anika and folded her hands.

“You’ve been here for, what… a few days now?”

Anika hesitated. “Well over a week now.”

“A week already? Time moves quickly in places like this.” Her voice was pleasant, but distant. A hint of hesitation resonated through her vowels. “And how have you found your time with us, darling?”

Anika blinked, with a tilt of her head and a furrow of her brow. “It’s… okay.”

“Only okay?” Lena’s smile stretched. “You have a bed. Meals. Work that suits your talents. A place to belong.”

“I’m grateful,” Anika added quickly. “I am. I just… it’s been hard adjusting.”

“Of course it has.” Lena leaned forward. “That’s natural for someone like you. You’re observant. Quiet. Smart. I notice things too.”

Something cold brushed down Anika’s spine. She lowered the glass to the table, trying not to let it clink.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you,” Lena continued, as if that were something comforting. “You carry yourself like someone who’s used to being overlooked. But you’re not invisible, Anika. Not to me.”

Anika didn’t move. Her throat felt tight.

“I see you Anika… I see you in ways that no one else will ever look at you. That’s a mother’s love right?” Lena leaned forwards, reaching a bony hand forward adjusting the crooked bow wrapped around Anika’s hair.

“I love you Anika, like how I love all my children. Unconditionally and sacrificially. Naturally, my child, you must understand that you should reciprocate this in some sort of way.” Lena dropped her hands to her lap with a sigh.

“I want to have a transparent relationship with you, I would do anything for you. All I ask is to follow the rules, keep things clean and understand that every action I do for you comes from a place of love.

The words dropped into the room like a blade.

Lena’s voice didn’t change, but the air around her thickened. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “Tell me what happened at the market two nights ago.”

Anika froze.

Her mind blanked—emptied of every word, every excuse. The market. Two nights ago. The alley. The guard. Levi.

“I…” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t—”

“Anika.” The smile remained, but the sweetness had rotted. “Why lie? Just tell me.”

She gripped the sides of the chair. Her pulse screamed in her ears.

Wren. Ludo. Did Lena know everything? Did she know about last night too?

Lena stood up slowly, moving from behind the desk and circling Anika’s chair. Her steps were soft, almost playful.

“Why would you ever want to leave this place?” she asked, voice now low and tight. “You have everything. Safety. Structure. Friends. A future.”

Anika didn’t answer.

Lena crouched beside her.

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is here,” she said. “And still, you wander. Still, you sneak around.”

She brushed a piece of hair from Anika’s cheek, and Anika flinched.

“There are eyes everywhere in the Underground,” Lena whispered. “Whispers in the pipes. Footsteps in the walls. Otto sees everything.”

Anika’s breath caught. The cloak. The way Levi pulled it over her when she said Otto’s name. How quickly his tone had changed.

He knew. He’d known the whole time.

This wasn’t just a compound. This entire place was Otto’s trap—and everyone inside it, a pawn.

Lena stood again and walked to the center of the room, adjusting a stack of ledgers with perfect precision.

“You’ll learn,” she said softly. “Sooner or later. This place protects you from what’s out there. You wouldn’t last a day.”

Anika clenched her fists in her lap.

“But I’ll forgive you,” Lena said, smiling once more. “After all the love of a mother is unconditional, right?”

Relief stuttered through Anika, brief, false.

“Still…” Lena sighed. “It can’t go unpunished.”

Before Anika could react, Lena reached for her. She grabbed her wrist with unnatural speed, nails digging deep into the skin.

Anika cried out, stumbling to her feet as Lena yanked her forward.

“Let’s be sure you remember.”

She dragged Anika toward a second door on the far wall—smaller, unassuming, with a brass knob that gleamed in the lamplight.

Anika’s boots skidded on the floor. Her heartbeat surged in her throat.

“Where are we going?” she rasped.

Lena didn’t answer. Her grip only tightened.

The knob turned with a soft click.

The door creaked open into a thick shadow.

A gust of colder air drifted out, damp and metallic.

There were no windows, no furniture save for a solitary wooden stool in the centre and a crank-driven pulley hanging from the ceiling—its chain dangling like a noose. A thick, damp cold hung in the air. Anika could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.

Lady Lena shut the door behind them with a click. The sound reverberated like a sentence.

“Come now,” she said gently, her tone as warm as a lullaby. “You learn how we do things.”

Anika didn’t move.

Her stomach coiled.

Lena’s heels tapped lightly on the stone as she crossed the room, her hands clasped in front of her, humming a tune that didn’t belong in a place like this. She stood beside the stool and patted the wood.

“Up you get.”

Anika’s feet refused to lift. Her throat locked.

“Anika.”

The sweetness cracked like porcelain.

Slowly, with trembling legs, Anika climbed onto the stool. Her knees buckled slightly from fatigue, but she straightened herself, fists clenched at her sides.

“That’s my good girl,” Lena murmured, reaching into a drawer along the wall and pulling out thick iron cuffs.

They were too large for a child’s wrists, but she tightened them all the same. Anika hissed as the metal bit into her skin. She could already feel it bruising.

The chains above her clicked.

Then Lena moved to the lever.

With a deliberate turn, the pulley engaged.

Clank.

Anika’s arms were yanked upward.

Clank.

Her shoulders lifted painfully. She was forced onto the balls of her feet, the stool barely under her toes now.

Her arms throbbed, spine stretched unnaturally. Her breath hitched.

“Perfect,” Lena whispered.

She turned and opened a long, narrow cabinet. Inside, rows of tools gleamed—steel rods, leather straps, coiled cords. She chose a thin black whip and ran her fingers over it lovingly.

“You should be proud,” she said, smiling wide. “Negligent parents don’t bother with important things such as discipline.”

The first strike cracked across Anika’s back.

She didn’t scream.

But her whole body jolted violently, the chain above clinking in protest.

Another strike—harder this time, lower, across her ribs.

CRACK.

A cry forced out of her lungs. The sting blazed across her skin like fire under ice.

WHIP.

The third strike found the back of her thighs, and she screamed—a raw, involuntary sound that echoed through the stones.

WHIP.

WHIP.

It was chaos. A storm of sensation. The slap of leather, the clank of chains, the crack of each blow and the twitch of her limbs as her muscles fought to hold her weight.

Her toes scraped helplessly at the wood. Her hands, bound above, twisted against the cuffs, leaving red welts.

Then it stopped.

Only the sound of her breathing remained—choked, shallow, desperate.

Lena stepped closer. She crouched slightly, meeting Anika’s eyes.

“I don’t enjoy hurting you,” she whispered.

She smoothed down Anika’s hair, strands clinging to her damp cheeks.

“What is it that you have learnt in the short time spent with us?”

Anika shook her head weakly.

SLAP. Lena struck her across the face with the back of her hand. Anika gasped.

“Say them,” she hissed.

Anika swallowed blood. Her voice came out slurred.

“…To be clean…”

“Good. Again.”

“Young girls must… must be quiet. But Caring…”

“Louder.”

“…Obedient. Grateful…”

“And what happens to disobedient girls?”

Anika hesitated.

CRACK. The whip lashed across her branded side, and she let out another scream.

“They suffer!” she sobbed. “They suffer!”

Lena beamed like a proud teacher.

“That’s right. And what do we never do?”

“…run.”

“Good girl.”

She ran her hand tenderly down Anika’s cheek. “You’re learning.”

She stepped back again, her shadow long across the stone.

Then, without ceremony, she drove her nails into the edge of Anika’s ribs—right where the L had been seared. Flesh that hadn’t finished healing split open again, oozing blood.

Anika shrieked, her legs kicking wildly, nearly toppling the stool.

Lena giggled.

“That little mark of mine still hasn’t faded,” she said. “Good. I’d hate to think it stopped hurting.”

She circled around to the lever, giving it one more crank—not enough to lift her fully, but enough to take the stool entirely out from under her.

Anika’s toes dangled now, not touching the wood. Her body hung limp, twitching with pain. Her shoulders screamed.

Lena wiped her hands with a cloth and gave Anika one final glance.

“I’ll return when I think you’ve learned your lesson,” she said breezily. “Don’t pass out. Girls like you need to stay awake.”

She turned, her heels clicking again like a metronome.

The door shut softly behind her.

Anika was alone.

The dark swallowed her. The chains groaned. Blood ran down her back. Her body trembled from the strain, the sting, the terror.

But the only sound she made—

was breathing.

__

She didn’t know how long she’d been hanging.

Minutes. Hours. Time had lost its edges, bleeding into the pain.

Her arms ached with a fire that was no longer sharp. Her muscles had trembled themselves into numbness, and now she was weightless with exhaustion—sagging into her restraints, swaying slightly every time she breathed. Her shoulders throbbed with a dull pressure, tendons stretched taut and singing. Her toes barely brushed the stool anymore. Every shift scraped her wrists against metal, reopening the torn skin. Warm blood slipped down her forearms in lazy trails, soaking into her sleeves and dripping onto the floor with soft, traitorous plips.

The pain wasn’t what undid her.

It was the quiet.

The kind that filled itself with thoughts.

Wren and Ludo…

Were they safe? he pictured them slipping through the dorm halls unnoticed, Wren’s eyes blazing with that reckless fear, Ludo’s grip still wrapped around her wrist like a tether. If she was lucky, they wouldn’t even know she was gone.

Levi…

Her stomach twisted. He would be fine. Of course he would. Boys like him didn’t get caught. They walked through hell as if they were born and raised in its fiery pits. Still… would he wonder why she never came back?

Would he care?

She didn’t know.

The silence pressed harder.

Her mind slipped.

Backwards.

To the farm. To the pigs. To the way her mother screamed and how no one ever talked about it afterward. Just bones. Bones in the dirt and fat gluttonous animals with red on their snouts.

Her mother had been kind.

The other family lived just over the hill, didn’t they? Other family… what was their name again?

Did her father know? Or care? He must’ve noticed something amiss by now. Right?

He must’ve loved me a little. Right?

The metal dug deeper into her wrists as she shifted, as if her own body disagreed.

She blinked, hard. The tears stung the open welt on her cheek.

The bodies.

There’d been so many now.

Some fresh. Some already stiff. Some too mangled to make sense of.

She didn’t kill them. Of course not.

But hadn’t she scrubbed their blood off the floor?

Was this deal with Levi just her trying to pretend she wasn’t a cog in something rotten? Maybe this was the truth of it. Maybe Otto’s offer… clean floors, warm soup, soft beds—wasn’t a prison. Maybe it was the only safe choice. Maybe she’d been stupid to think there was another way.

So what if it’s built on blood? So is everything down here.

Her whole body started to tremble. A sob built in her chest and clawed its way up her throat. Her vision blurred.

Then it broke.

She screamed.

Raw, wild, furious.

The chains rattled as she thrashed, feet kicking at nothing, body writhing with the last dregs of strength. Her muscles burned. Her ribs screamed. The world spun around her, dizzy and distant and dark.

“Let me out!” she shrieked. “LET ME OUT!”

No one came.

She twisted harder. The cuffs carved deeper. Her wrists were slick with blood now, and her shoulders felt like they would tear from the sockets. She didn’t care. She wanted to fall. To hit the floor.

She hung.

Gasping.

Until the fight left her completely.

A long, shuddering breath rattled out of her lungs. Her chest heaved. Her heart still pounded, but slower now—like it had given up too.

She blinked, sluggish.

Then the words came.

Soft. Mechanical.

“Be clean,” she whispered.

Her lips moved without permission.

“Young girls must be quiet.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, voice trembling.

“Obedient. Grateful.”

Her jaw quivered.

“For order.”

The words repeated. Again. And again. And again.

Over and over, a broken litany, the only thing that kept her brain tethered to her body.

Her breathing slowed.

Her fingers stopped twitching.

She just… hung there.