No Matter What

Chapter 4

"Hey Danny." I reply in the same tone of voice. By this time I am next to her, my back against the wall as I slide down into a sitting position. It feels very calming to be with Danny, she's the first person I had ever talked to in this place. The other girls would always treat me like I was poisonous when I attempted to approached them, but Danny, one of the first girls in the ring, became my friend. She had told me she was almost twenty five, ten whole years older then me, but there's no way you could tell. She looked so young with her beautiful long blond hair and her small frame.

"So what happened?" Danny asked, curiosity clear in her voice."You know, because of yesterday?"

I had only been asked for twice yesterday and I thought that Sir would have been angry at me, but...he didn't say a word about it. "He didn't bring it up." I reply.

"That's..." Danny's expression was somewhere between shocked and confused. "...weird." Is all she said. I can tell she's thinking of something, but I can't quite touch on what it is...

She is right though, it is weird. I can remember, clear as day, one of my first weeks here, I was under my quota for the night and Sir had....I cringe at the memory. But that's why the way he had acted was so unusual. "I don't know." I say. "He just brought me back and I slept and...." the image of Kate from my dream flashes through my head.

"And...?" Danny asks in anticipation

"Nothing." I say as I let the thought pass. "We just went back to the house and I slept." This isn't the time to think about her. "So how are you?" This is such a purposeless question but I ask it anyway.

"Um." Danny's says in a low voice, her eyes suddenly cast downward. "We have someone new...she was put with me yesterday." I rarely ever see Danny show emotion. She's alway so strong, but now, I can tell she's fighting back tears. "she's so small...she can't be more then eight." She finally chocked out. "Its been happening a lot lately, they call this time of year the rounding season, I think. Where they get a bunch of new girls." There's a long pause.

"Where do they come from?" I finally ask, just wanting to break the silence. Danny just looks at me with unreadable eyes.

"Where did they come from?" She repeats. "Where did you come from? Where did any of us come from?" She raises her voice, and the other girls look our way. "That's a stupid question." She said in a lower volume, noticing the attention

"I'm sorry." I say after a moment of silence. "I was just curious."

"They come from the same place we do." Danny says, her eyes becoming wet. "Not here."

I turn my head away from her and pull my legs to my chest, her last words in my brain. Not here. I knew that. Although, Danny has a better idea of where she came from then some of us. She she told me the story once. How her parents died in a car crash. How her foster parents hurt her. She had been my age, fifth teen, when she ran away.

"Whatever." Danny's voice snaps back to reality. "That's life. Well....our life at least." We drop the conversation, and spend about the next hour, at least I think it's been an hour, in silence.

"YOU!" The guard shouts. we have about four guards, or superiors as our keepers call them, on the floor level and about ten on the platform above us. "Red shirt! Come!" He calls. Danny stands up, I had just then realized that she was wearing a dark red lace shirt. A guard on the floor walks over to us and grabs Danny's arm, I can tell from her face that he wasn't being gentle.

"See you later." She says. "Stay safe." And her and the guard disappear through the tall metal door.

****

The rest of the night goes by very fast...I don't get called once. I also don't see Danny for the rest of the night, which isn't uncommon really. I'm still worried though. She wasn't herself today for some reason...she seemed really uneasy. Her voice, which usually has a comfortable steadiness, was very shaky and...unsure? I think. Maybe it was the girl that she had talked about. Danny had told me that she had had a younger sister...once. I know what that could feel like, well, kind of. Even though Kate's older...I still feel protective of her somehow.

Suddenly the car comes to its normally jilting stop and the door opens beside me. "Come on." Sir says in an abnormally calm voice. With the blind fold still covering my eyes he takes my arm, even his touch is less aggressive, which makes me slightly suspicious. I step out of the car and my feet touch the familiar rockiness of the...street? Maybe? I'm not sure. He leads me down to the room and I hear the screech of the door. Sir rips the blindfold from my eyes and pushes me in. I can hear the door immediately shut behind me.

As my eyes adjust the first thing I see is the sun peeking out of the small window, its' rays of light just peaking over the horizon. I alway thought the break of dawn was so beautiful, mostly because it meant the end to a long night. I saunter over to the bathroom and pick up my comb off the ground where I had dropped it earlier. As I run its' sharp teeth through my hair it barley tugs, probably because the night was very uneventful. The comb does however take some of the wave out of my hair.

Just then I hear the loud door screech open. Oh no. I think. Here it comes. I slowly turn around, expecting to find Sir in front of me, expecting the pain that's sure to come within the next few hours....I turn.

But I don't see Sir in front of me. I see his shadow just outside the door...but there's another one too, nearly the same height as his...they seem to be struggling. I'm so confused. Then the two shadows come into the room and I see a figure thrown to their knees in front of my bed. It takes me a second to register what has just happened, but I don't quite get it until the strange person looks up at me, his eyes lock right on mine. A boy.