Lost Girls
The room was as white as rooms could get. Clean, sterile. There were only the necessities needed in that room. A toilet, a bed. Nothing more. But then there was life of course. A little girl. Curled in a ball on the floor. She sat like this most of the time. She waited.
The door would open. Every day. Someone would step through and they would drag her out. They would make her fight and train. She would swing weapons and fire guns and it was all too much. When she would sit here, she would weep sometimes. She would cry until she was exhausted then fall asleep. She had attempted not to eat what they had given her. They had shoved an IV in her vein then. She ate after that.
Her internal clock told her that soon they would come to get her. She hugged her knees closer to her chest.
It was then that she heard the noises. She couldn't place them. Usually the facility was quiet. Not a peep. Children should be seen and not heard. Someone was begging for mercy. She had watched tapes of people dying and they did that. She wondered who they were hurting now. She felt an emotion that most children don't understand when she thought about how glad she was that it wasn't her. She hugged her knees harder.
It was then that the door opened. She didn't look up immediately. They would have to pry the ball of a person open if they wanted to make her fight again. But it didn't come, the rough hands of the guards. There was nothing. No movement from the person at the door. After a long while, she looked up.
What stood before her was a woman. Short blood red hair. A form fitting black body suit. A strange red symbol on her belt. Beautiful. Powerful. But sad. She knew the look in the woman's eyes. She saw it in reflections. The woman looked at the child as if confused. Questioning. She finally kneeled down. The child looked down. There was the sound of a leather stretching. Of a glove coming off. A soft hand touched her cheek. Stroked it. It was the first tender touch that the girl had felt in a long while. The woman was looking at her. Looking in her eyes. She didn't smile. She still looked confused and sad. She let out a long breath.
"Illyiana," the woman said the child's name, another thing that hadn't happened in a long time. "пора домой"
The little girl unspooled herself. She opened her arms to the woman. The woman grasped her under the legs. With little effort, the child rose from the ground. She held the child close. The child felt safe.
They walked into the sunlight.