Page 28 of The Glass Empire
Blood. Sweat. Rust. And something else—something that makes my stomach clench before I've even seen it. Something that smells like fear. Not the fear of a single man, the sharp adrenaline scent of someone who's been hurt. This is older. Colder. The fear of people who have been here for a long time, who have learned to live with the thing that's happening to them.
The warehouse is larger than it looked from outside. High ceilings, concrete floors, the kind of space that's been repurposed half a dozen times. There are shipping containers against one wall, stacked two high, their doors closed and padlocked. There are desks and computers and a map on the wall with pins stuck in it. There are men—five, maybe six—standing in clusters, talking in low voices, watching me with the same flat eyes as the man at the door.
And there are cages.
I see them out of the corner of my eye. A row of them, against the far wall, behind a partition of chain-link fence. They're large—big enough for a person to stand in, maybe, but not big enough to lie down. There are blankets inside. A bucket. Something that might be a mattress.
I don't look. I don't let myself look.
Because if I look, I'll see the women. And if I see the women, I'll have to do something. And I can't do anything. Not here. Not now. Not when I'm alone and they're watching and the man who needs my help is bleeding on a table somewhere in this building that smells like rust and rot and the particular sweetness of despair.
"The patient," I say, my voice steady. "Where is he?"
The bald man points to a door at the back of the warehouse. I walk toward it, my boots echoing on the concrete, my bag swinging at my side. I don't look at the cages. I don't look at the women.
I don't look to closely, at least.
The back room is smaller, lit by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. There's a table in the center—metal, the kind you'd find in a morgue or a butcher shop—and on the table is a man I recognize.
Dmitri. The young man from the diner. The one whose arm I stitched.
His face is a mess. Split lip, swollen eye, blood caked around his nose and smeared across his cheeks. His shirt is open, and I can see the bruises spreading across his chest—purple and black, the kind of bruises that come from fists or boots or both. He's conscious, barely. His eyes track me as I walk in, and I see recognition flicker through the pain.
"The farm girl," he says. His voice is thick, slurred. "You again."
"Me again." I set my bag on the table beside him and start pulling out supplies. "You need to stop getting hurt, Dmitri. I'm going to start thinking you like me."
"Don't like you. Just like your stitches."
"Same thing."
His mouth twitches—that almost-smile I remember—and then he winces as the movement pulls at the split in his lip. I cansee the cut from here. Deep, but not deep enough for stitches. The kind of wound that will heal on its own if he keeps it clean and doesn't talk too much.
"Lie back," I say. "I need to check your ribs."
He lies back. I press my fingers along his ribcage, feeling for the places where the bone gives in ways it shouldn't. He hisses when I hit a spot on his left side—the eighth rib, I think, maybe the ninth. Not broken, but cracked. The kind of injury that hurts like hell and takes weeks to heal.
"Nothing's broken," I say. "But you've got at least one cracked rib. Maybe two. You need to rest. No heavy lifting. No fighting."
"Can't promise that."
"Then at least wrap it." I pull out an elastic bandage from my bag and start winding it around his chest. "It'll help with the pain. Keep the ribs from moving too much."
He watches me work. His eyes are young—younger than mine, I realize. He's nineteen, maybe. Twenty at most. A kid. A kid with a cracked rib and a split lip and the kind of job that puts him in warehouses at three in the morning, surrounded by cages and chains and women who aren't there by choice.
"The lip needs cleaning," I say. "It doesn't need stitches. But it's going to hurt."
"Everything hurts."
"Then a little more won't make a difference."
I pour antiseptic onto a gauze pad and press it against his lip. He doesn't flinch—not really—but his hands curl into fists at his sides, and I see the muscles in his jaw bunch and release.
"You're good at this," he says, when I'm done.
"I've had practice."
"On animals."
