Chapter 1

The girl with the number around her throat refused to lower her eyes.nThe room hated that. She could feel it.

Hundreds of people sat in the darkness beyond the stage lights, watching her. Measuring her. Judging her.

Waiting.

Some looked amused. Some looked interested. Some looked hungry. She looked back anyway.

The collar around her neck read: 27.

Nothing else. No name. No history. Just a number.

The handlers hated when she stared. The buyers hated it too.

Good.

Let them hate it. It was one of the few things she still owned. The auctioneer was talking, but she wasn’t listening.

She’d learned long ago that listening rarely changed anything.

People talked.

People decided.

People paid.

And then life happened to her whether she wanted it to or not.

So she stood perfectly still beneath the lights and waited for it to end.

Then something changed.

The room shifted. Not loudly. Not visibly. But enough.

A ripple of attention.

A pause.

A recognition.

Someone important had arrived. Her eyes followed the movement automatically.

Two women sat near the front.

One leaned lazily in her chair, looking like she owned the room simply because she was bored enough to let everyone else borrow it.

The other sat completely still.

Watching.

The first woman was beautiful. The second was dangerous.

27 knew which one frightened her more. The still one. Always the still ones. The woman met her gaze.

Didn’t look away.

Didn’t smile.

Didn’t blink.

For a moment, the noise of the room disappeared entirely. 27 felt something cold settle beneath her ribs.

Not fear.

Instinct.

Like standing too close to the edge of a cliff. Beside the woman, her wife smirked. “Well,” she murmured. “That’s new.”

The still woman never took her eyes off the stage. “Defiance.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is.”

A pause.

“Until it isn’t.”

“God, you’re so dramatic.” The wife laughed softly.

27 didn’t understand the joke. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

The bidding began. Numbers climbed. Voices overlapped. The room became louder. The two women remained quiet.

Watching.

Waiting.

Studying.

The lazy one eventually leaned toward the other.
“Are we taking her?”

The answer didn’t come immediately. When it did, it wasn’t verbal.

The still woman lifted a hand. The bid jumped. The room reacted.

27’s stomach tightened. Something had just changed. She wasn’t sure what. Only that everyone else seemed to understand it before she did.

The numbers continued climbing.

Higher.

Higher.

Then

Silence.

The gavel came down.

“Sold.”

The sound echoed through the room. No one moved. The women stood. The playful one stretched. The dangerous one simply adjusted her gloves. Both looked toward the stage.

Toward her.

Like the decision had already been made long before tonight.

“Let’s see how long this one lasts,” the first woman said.

The second woman’s gaze never left 27.

“Not long.”

Something about the answer made her chest tighten.

Then the woman added, “Not the way she is now.”

For the first time all evening, 27 looked away. And for reasons she couldn’t explain, That seemed to satisfy them.
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(FYI this story’s gonna be WEIRD. But we all just need to keep an open mind :))