Page 10 of Marked By Tank
The slow way she moves. The way she stands where they put her. The way her face looks empty while her body gives her awayin little tells. Toes curling against the stage. Shoulders too tight. Hands hanging still because they have stopped feeling like hers.
Her eyes stay far away.
Until they do not.
For one second, she looks at me.
Straight at me.
The whole room drops away.
For one second, the blankness breaks. She looks wrecked. Dazed. Scared out of her mind. But under all of it, there is something else in her eyes. Something raw enough to cut. Like she knows exactly what that room is and exactly what is about to happen to her and nobody in it plans to help.
That look hits me low and hard.
I go still inside.
The kind of still that comes right before something breaks.
I have seen a lot of fear in my life.
I have seen men bleeding out in sand and mud. Seen women pulled from places no one should have to survive. Seen the look that comes over a person when the world has made it plain they are on their own.
I know that look.
I also know exactly what it is to be treated like somebody else’s problem.
The next bid comes in and the room swallows the moment whole.
But it is too late.
I have seen her.
And she has seen me.
The bidding keeps climbing.
Higher.
Then higher again.
The men around me smile into their drinks. One laughs under his breath like this is all good fun.
My jaw locks.
I do not move.
Violence makes me calmer.
Always has.
The second things turn ugly enough, the noise in my head gets smaller. Cleaner. It narrows down to what needs to be broken and how fast I can get it done.
But tonight is supposed to be reconnaissance.
We came in to build a plan.
We came in to map the place, track the flow, figure out how deep Salazar Huntington’s filth runs before we tear the whole thing out by the roots.
