She came to the wall of the room and felt under the rim of the metal, between floor and wall, looking for a place to lift. She moved round, feeling under the wall with one hand, holding the knife in the other. Eventually she came to a set of steps leading up out of the room to a very dim red outside. where long, booming noises shook the air and the ground. The steps, made of compacted sand, were edged with wooden slats held in by little tuft-headed posts.
She came up out of the bunker into the gory glow of late evening; strips of close-packed cloud lay overhead, alternating with streaks of red, like blood staining black sheets. The thunder of the guns sounded in the distance, and the earth trembled. Down in the trench she found the men, lying exhausted against the sides of crumbling earth and rotten wood. The mud was up to their knees and their eyes were closed. Red light hung like oil on their rifles. They were bandaged; everyone wore a filthy grey bandage; on head or arm, or over one eye or both, or over their chest, over their uniform, or round one leg. She wondered why they didn't see her, and stopped and looked into the face of one whose eyes were open. Red light reflected in the darkness of his pupils. He sniffed and wiped his nose. She tried to talk to the soldier, but no noise came from her mouth, and the man ignored her. She started to worry that she wouldn't find anybody to take the knife out.
At the end of the trench were men who looked like their boots. Their eyes were threaded, up and down their leathery faces. Their mouths were stuck open, like the top of a shoe, tongues flapping spastically as they tried to talk to her. Their arms were like thick laces, and couldn't pull the knife out of her. One raised his foot out of the mud and she saw that the top of his boot melded naturally and easily into a naked human foot, without a break. She puzzled over this, sure she'd seen it before, but then the boot soldier put the foot under the mud again and a whistle sounded. The boot soldiers picked up their guns with all the rest and put rickety wooden ladders against the sides of the trenches. She walked up out of the trench, back to where a line of blasted tree stumps lay on the brow of a small hill, like teeth.
The village on the far side of the hill was wrecked; every building damaged. Roofs had collapsed, walls fallen, doors and windows been blown out, and huge holes filled the road and streets. She saw people in the town square, facing in towards the centre, where a red light shone.
She walked down the broad, crater-pitted streets, passing people who stood looking to the central square. She used sign language to ask for help, but they all ignored her.
It took a long time to walk through the suburbs; the crowd of silent, raggedly dressed people became gradually thicker until she had to push her way through them, which was difficult while she still held the knife. She could hear a roaring noise in the distance. The people looked exhausted and hollow-eyed, and some of them collapsed as she pushed past. The roaring noise sounded thick and heavy, like a great waterfall slowed down. The people fell around her, crumpling to the ground as soon as she touched them, no matter how careful she tried to be. She wanted to say sorry. She could see the silhouette of the giant fountain ahead against the crimson sky now. The people were thick about her; she pushed between them and they fell, knocking into their neighbours so that they fell, too, and hit the people near them, who also fell and took others down with them. The wave of collapsing people spread out like ripples in a pond, knocking everybody to the ground until only she was left standing and the fountain was there, huge, in front of her, with the lake beyond.
The fountain was tiered, shaped like a wedding cake. It gushed blood; blood roaring and falling and steaming through the cold evening air. She fell to her knees when she saw it, half-suffocated by the smell of it, mouth blocked. A cataract of blood flowed away from it to the inland sea beyond the city. She got up, stepped over the fallen people, stumbled down the steps by the side of the violet rapids until she stood on the shore of the lake, red waves lapping at her feet.
She pulled the knife out and threw it into the lake. No blood rushed out of the wound, but the knife splashed when it hit, and some of the blood splattered her face and feet, and some hit the place where the knife had been embedded, and a single strand dribbled down to the lake at her feet, and the strand thickened, and pulsed, and the blood flowed into her not out of her, falling up out of the lake, as if a tap had been turned on.
She tried to stop it, beating it down with her fists, but the blood burned her, breaking her fingers; she fell back, but the blood rushed out of the lake into her, the stream thick as an arm, filling her, bloating her, choking her, sealing her mouth. She lifted her ruined hands to the dark clouds and tried to scream, and the sky flashed once, above her; the lake shivered. The sky went dark once more. At last her lips tore open, and she screamed, with all her strength, and the sky lit up all over, as though the clouds were catching fire. The lake spasmed, whipping the strand that joined it to her, almost breaking its thin grip. She drew air in through her ruined lips, to scream with all the power of the lake itself, while the sky trembled above her, glittering and sparking on the brink of release, poised and ready to catch and blast.
She woke up on the floor. The place was dark, the deck hard and cold. Breathing sounded loud and ragged in the harsh steel container of the room, but it was only her own, coursing through her nostrils. The tape over her mouth still clamped her lips. Her breath quieted slowly while she sat, trying to ease the ache in her shoulders.
It was late. She didn't know how long she'd slept, but she knew it had been some hours; early morning by now, if not later.
She'd been secured against a metal bench, her hands attached to its leg by the plastic strap of the restrainer. As soon as she awoke she hurt; her backside had been spread in the same position for so long she felt welded to the deck, her shoulders ached, her wrists and hands felt numb, and the places on her breasts where they'd touched her with their cigarettes burned as though the glowing red coals were still there, sizzling through her flesh. Between her legs wasn't as bad as she'd expected. Sucre had been small and the rest had added their own lubrication with each violation. The pain didn't matter so much; it was the feeling of being used, of mattering so little as another human being, and so much as a warm, slippery container, to be taken and crowed over; look what I've done; I did this even though she didn't want to.
The ship hummed around her. She couldn't see a thing. The light in the corridor outside, between the engine room itself and the Nadia's steering-gear compartment, must be turned off as well. She tried to remember how the room had looked when they brought her in, but couldn't. Too complicated, for one thing; full of machinery, lathes and drills and benches with vices and tools. It ought to be an ideal place to escape from, but she didn't know how to begin.
She felt what she could, starting with her fingers.
And stopped.
The rear flange of the L-shaped leg supporting the bench, which the restrainer was looped around, was ragged. It rasped against her fingers, hurting. Blood welled on her fingers, making them slick then sticky. She explored the jagged edge. She pulled forward and moved her wrists quickly up and down, then stopped and felt the inner surface of the restrainer where it had been rubbing against the metal. The material felt roughened. She put it back where it had been and sawed up and down as hard and fast as she could.
She could hear it, and after a while she could smell it too, and that seemed like a good sign.
She was almost free when she heard steps, and the light outside in the corridor went on. She stopped for a second, then resumed her sawing, frantic with the effort. Footsteps clanged against metal, stopped at the door. She threw her hands up and down, drawing her spine back to the metal edge of the bench with the effort of forcing the restrainer against the leg.