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RED ROOM, 2016
When Ritika came to, she was in darkness.
Ritika knew she wasn't alone. She could sense that there were others in the room with her. The wall felt rigid and metallic against her back.
As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, looking around her, she could see many girls of all ages, some younger, some older, lying on the floor. Some were awake, their eyes wide with terror while others had just begun to stir. Ritika realized that she was in a shipping crate. The metal walls loomed all around her, as if she were in Hell. They were being shipped to the Red Room like cattle.
Ritika was smoldering with anger at this thought. If only she could make them pay...
The doors to the shipping crate creaked open and Ritika could hear the dogs barking, quite unlike her neighbor's friendly Collie back in Ohio. The guards rushed forward, pointing guns at the girls and shouting orders at them in Russian.
Several girls cried and whimpered in fear. The guards grabbed them by the hands and dragged them out of the shipping crate. Ritika wanted to cry too as she saw six and eight year olds being forced out of the shipping crate. As a Black Widow, she had been trained not to feel or show sympathy, but this broke her heart each time.
However, Ritika did not betray even a bit of emotion. The girls who showed weakness in the Red Room where never heard from again. So she stood tall, almost rigid as the guard escorted her forward, his grip so tight that it might leave bruises.
She could see Dreykov standing by his car, observing the whole thing. "That one." he said, pointing at a screaming, crying girl who was trying to resist the guards.
One of the guards moved forward and pointed a gun at the girl before shooting her in the head. The girl crumpled to the ground as the bullet buried itself in her head. "And that one too. And her. All of the crying ones." Dreykov added. More screams echoed through the crisp night air as several more girls died, presumably shot in the head like the first girl.
Ritika did not react. She didn't feel anything, not sympathy, not sadness, not even horror. A wave of numbness had washed over her. He had done this all before.
The remaining girls were ushered onto a crowded helicopter. The doors were locked, so trying to jump out of the vehicle at the last moment wasn't an option.
This was a mistake, Ritika told herself. My parents will come get me. It’s all a mistake. Lying to herself was better than facing the truth, that her "parents" wouldn’t come back for her, that they hadn't even planned on it.
After a few hours of flying, Ritika looked out one of the tiny windows on the wall. The skies were pitch black, but now Ritika could see the Red Room off in the distance, lit up like a beacon. It was a high-tech aerial facility, supported by the strongest jets and turbines.
