When it was her turn, it took all she had not to buck and flail. To cause even some superficial amount of trouble or pain for these assholes. Her breath hissed through the gag as she felt jostling at her ankles. Eyes had to squint tight as the hood jerked past her ears, over the top of her head.
“Up,” August said.
They’d never mentioned anything about the straight jacket. She was going to have to do this without arms.
Buckeye wanted to just lie there. To get used to the light. To stretch, to let feeling come back into her shoulder. But there were ‘consequences’. Whatever was coming next, she needed the least number of additional handicaps while facing it.
She flopped onto her back, then to her left side. Bent her knees up. Staggered her feet apart like a newborn colt, lurching to get them under her and sit up without hands to brace herself. It happened, but with the opposite of finesse.
The open roll-up door was a blinding rectangle. She widened her stance for balance, eyes watering against the glare, but a hand in her lower back was already herding her toward the edge. Toward a ramp.
When her pupils contracted enough for her to begin making out shapes, absorbing surroundings, the first thing she saw was wrong. And the second thing. And the third.
All wrong.
At the head of the ramp leading down from the truck, another man stood with a hand out, ready to guide. To prod her along like livestock. He wore some uniform of solid
grey, crisp and immaculate, a silver cross patched onto the upper sleeve.
At his hip was a weapon. Odd-looking. Not quite a baton, something more complicated. Something with a business end she had no interest in meeting.
No one dressed like this. No one had clothes this nice. Or clean.
She pitched toward the ramp, legs still trying to remember what sturdy was. A woman lumped down ahead of her, and behind her she could hear more faltering steps. The uniformed man swept her past with a distracted hand, his focus on the cargo area behind her.
A strong smell of unwashed body, of failed bladder, hit her the moment she left the truck proper. Or rather, the violent sterility of the air outside made the contrast bitter and sharp.
Four more men—guards?—in the same grey uniform blocked out an area to the side of the ramp where the unfortunates were accumulating. As she’d guessed, everyone stumbling out of the truck had done so in a jacket like hers. Some of them looked ill. Others had wild eyes. A few looked like the dead, standing.
Buckeye joined them, too lost for anything else. She turned to watch the rest come down the ramp, but found herself scanning their surroundings, instead.
Almost everything was grey here. Walls, ceiling, floor: all concrete, but in far better shape than the mail carrier had seen in any part of The Vice. Banks of lights marched away along the ceiling, which wasn’t much higher than the top of the truck. Other vehicles sat parked at a distance, glossy under the lights like malicious insects. Entirely free of rust.
It was neither hot nor cold in this place.
It was wrong.
She might have called it a parking garage, but again … way too clean. And no one appeared to be living here.
A loud squawk came through a gag, and Buckeye’s attention ripped from sterile concrete. On the way down the ramp, a dark-haired woman put her foot at an odd angle on the lip at the edge. Ankle turned, limbs twisted, and she fell, shoulder hitting the ground to knock out a grunt of pain.
The guard at the top of the ramp jumped down, bending and reaching to help. Buckeye saw the fire flash in the woman’s eyes and cringed for what would come next.
The woman hauled a knee to her chest and kicked out with whatever was left of her strength, her foot landing square on the guard’s shin. Flipped to her belly with some last reserve of dexterity and tried to get her feet while the man clutched his smarting leg.
It was over in a second.
The weird baton came out. He thrust it against the back of the woman’s thigh. Her spine jerked backward, and she made a feral noise, nostrils flaring and the whites of her eyes showing all around. When he took the weapon away, she went limp. Sides heaving to get air.
“I see our work is cut out for us.”
The new voice sliced through everything. Heads turned, and brushed metal doors slid back into place behind a man dressed head-to-toe in white. But not just britches and a shirt, no. A long cassock so clean and blinding nothing could ever have touched it and lived.
Buckeye’s blood ran cold.
The only people who dressed this way were Covvies, but no one sneaking into the VT managed to stay so pristine. And this man didn’t look like he was sneaking anywhere.
Every eye was on him. August and Wayland. The guards. The captives. They all stared, silenced. His mouth turned up on one side with that terrifying satisfaction that can only come from zealotry.