“Perhaps that can be arranged.” He looked over her naked body. “You are not so scrawny. When you are cleaned up, you will be pretty, I think. Or at least not so disgusting.”
He reached out and touched her hair. She flinched and he slapped her so violently he drew blood.
“You will never do that again,” he ordered. “You will welcome my touch.”
She nodded and rubbed the skin where he had struck her and tasted the blood on her lips.
“You will be cleaned up. And then you will be brought to me.”
She looked at him and knew what that meant. “But the euros? I thought that was the payment.”
“In addition to the euros. While we wait the five days. Or do you prefer the filthy, dangerous mines to my bed?”
She shook her head and looked down, defeated. “I…I do not want to go to the mines.”
He smiled and cupped her trembling chin, lifting her gaze to his.
“You see, not so difficult. Food, clean water, warm bed. And I will have you as often as I want.” He turned to his men. “As will they. Anytime we want. You understand? Anything we want, I don’t care what it is. You are nothing but a dog, do you understand?”
She nodded tearfully. “I understand. But you will not hurt me? I…I have been hurt enough.”
He slapped her again. “You make no demands, filth. You do not speak unless I ask you a question.” He put his hands around her throat and slammed her against the wall. “Do you understand?”
She nodded and said in a defeated voice, “I understand.”
“You will call me seu seung,” he added, using the Korean word for master. “You will call me this even after you leave here. If you leave here. I make no promises, even if you get me the euros. You may not safely escape. It is up to me and me only. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “I understand.”
He shook her violently. “Say it. Give me my proper respect.”
“Seu seung,” she said in a tremulous voice.
He smiled and let her go. “See, that was not so bad.”
A moment later he clutched at his throat where she had struck him. He staggered backward, colliding with one of his men.
She moved so fast it seemed that everyone else had slowed by comparison. She catapulted across the room, slipped one guard’s gun from his holster, and shot him in the face with it. Another guard came at her. She turned and kicked so high her foot caught him in the eye. Her jagged toenails ripped his pupil, blinding him. He screamed and fell back as the third guard fired his gun. But she was no longer there. She had pushed backward off the wall and cartwheeled over him, taking the knife off his belt holder as she sailed past, landing a foot behind him. She slashed four times so fast no eye could follow. The guard clutched at his neck where his veins and arteries had been severed.
She never stopped moving. Using his falling body as a launch pad she leapt over him and caught the blinded guard in a leg lock around his head. She twisted her body in midair and hurled him forward, where his head struck the stone wall with such force that his skull cracked.
She picked up the pistol she had dropped, stood over each guard, and fired into their heads until they were all dead.
She had always loathed the camp guards. She had lived for years with them. They had left scars inside and outside of her that would never heal. She would never be a mother because of them. Because of them she had never even contemplated being a mother because that would mean she had come to accept herself as a human being, which she never could. Her name in the camp had been “Bitch.” Every woman in the camp had had that name. “Bitch. Bitch.” That was all she had ever heard from light to night for years on end. “Come, Bitch. Go, Bitch. Die, Bitch.”
She turned to the administrator, who lay on the floor near the door. He was not yet dead. He was still clutching his throat and gasping for air, his eyes unfocused but panicked. She had planned it this way, hitting him just hard enough to incapacitate but not kill. She knew exactly what the difference was.
She knelt down next to him. He stared up with bulging eyes, his hands at his throat. She did not smile in triumph. She did not look sad. Her features were expressionless.
She knelt down closer.
“Say it,” she said in a whisper.
He whimpered and clutched at his ruptured throat.
“Say it,” she said again. “Seu seung.”
She cupped a hand under his neck and squeezed. “Say it.”
He whimpered.
She placed her bony knee against his crotch and pressed. “Say it.”
He screamed as she jammed her knee down harder against his privates.
“Say it. Seu seung. Say it and no more pain.” She rammed her knee against him. He screamed louder. “Say it.”