Stained with ash, the young lady's red hair flutters in the wind as she stirs awake from the bitter cold slicing into her face. Through her watery eyes, Anna forces a weak smile at the other workers, young and old alike piled onto truck like cattle, on the way to another day at work in the metal factory. Her slender fingers grip around the only source of heat available: a steel canteen filled with weak tea - so weak she's given up lying to herself that the taste is pleasant to her, and admitted she's lugging it around for warmth's sake.
Through Anna's sleep-fogged gaze, a man old enough to be her grandfather looks over his shoulders before peeling a pinch of black tar from wax paper and stuffing it into his mouth. The smell of his tobacco-lined breath reaches her, and she whiffs at the air, hoping it could carry her somewhere else.
"Arendelle thanks Grimfold's workers for their war efforts! Every tank built, every ship launched, every plane flown is a step towards our final victory!"
The noise of blaring loudspeakers pulls Anna from her haze. The criss-crossing coils of barbed wire passing over the truck reminds her how close she is to the factory, and another day of hard labor. With a squeak, the truck shudders to a halt in the muddy road, and the workers groan at having their naps interrupted. One by one, they file out and pass through the factory gates and under the careless glances of the security guards. The nagging ache in Anna's forehead fails to leave despite the rush of warmth from the foundries, and the weight on her head drags her sight to the floor, where she grimaces at her hole-ridden boots, held together by scraps of leather. These would have to do for now, until winter sets in and snow starts piling the streets.
The cawing of crows pulls Anna's gaze to the sky, before settling upon the larger than life portrait of President Hans perched beneath the roof, flanked by a pair of soldiers in black trenchcoats and motorcycle helmets. Like the pair of Hans's green eyes which stared at her from every direction, the soldiers could see everything happening on the factory floor. The nudge of a truncheon on her shoulders shatters the temporary idyll of Hans's eyes, and Anna comes face to face with a burly security guard nearly twice her size.
"What'cha got in the bag? Ain't no contraband in there eh? Don't mind if I have a look?" he growls. Anna grimaces at the smell of salted herring on his breath, and she turns away from his imposing presence brushing up against her. Without waiting for a reply, the guard snatches her bag and begins rummaging through what little she brought to work.
"Blimey! I knew there was somefink in 'ere!" the guard scowls, pulling out a stack of roughed-up papers.
"They're just production drawings-" Anna starts, before she's cut off by the man's brutesque voice.
"Have you been writing?" he snarls, enunciating the action like it was a vulgarity. At the mention of the word writing, blood drains from Anna's face and she waves her hands in protest.
"No, no! I swear I haven't been writing sir, I don't even know how to read-"
"How about we take you to the police and let em' decide eh?" the man hisses, drawing the attention of a few workers around them.
Anna recoils at his threat and her trembling intensifies, "Oh god no, not the police!"
Suddenly, the guard's fearsome demeanour melts as he spots a worker jostling his way through the morning crowd. A smile crosses Anna's face as the man comes into view, and she saunters behind his shoulders.
"Kristoff!" the guard exclaims, shaking his hand warmly before stuffing them into his pocket, "Always knew I could count on you to save a damsel in distress."
"C'mon, you know she wasn't carrying anything readable," Kristoff says, holding up Anna's drawings. Page after page of diagrams flip before his eyes, and he dismisses them with a wave of his baton.
"Ah, Kristoff," Anna sighs in relief, "y-you know you didn't have to save me - he would've let me off anyway. I mean, it's not like I'd be caught bringing books to work or anything. Whew, that would be stupid!"
"I didn't do that for nothing, you know. We need you in one piece for the big move later," Kristoff retorts.
"Oh, so that's how it is?" Anna scowls, crossing her arms, "no friendship, no favors, just need me around to move your shit?"
"C'mon, you know I'm joking," Kristoff laughs, wrapping an arm around Anna's shoulder and pulling her towards the shipyard, where her work for the day awaits.
"No, please! I'd rather get locked up!" Anna protests, giving a few light-hearted jabs at Kristoff's chin.
"Are you ready?" Kai yells over the din of roaring exhaust pipes. Before the crew of weary-eyed workmen lie a behemoth of a ship's engine: three tonnes of solid steel crafted into a amalgamation of interconnecting pipes and valves. The workmen groan in misery as Kai hooks a chain to the engine and yanks it tight. A cavernous pit sits beside the engine block, waiting to be fed its meal of twisted metal for today. The men cling to their helmets with bone-thin fingers as they listen to Kai explain in simple terms - how they're supposed to move the engine into the ship's belly.
"I need the tallest of the men down in the pit ready to align the engine block once it comes down, the rest of you - go up to the winch and pull with all your goddamned strength!"
Anna groans as Gerda passes through the crew and begins pushing people off to their respective lifting stations. She knows she'll be given no quarter as a girl - the men expect her to work every bit as hard as they do. But there's no point arguing with the people who've grown to be like family to her.
"Anna, you ok?" Kai asks, pulling her from her thoughts. The red-haired girl gives a nod of assent and joins Kristoff as they trudge the two stories of aluminium scaffolding to the winch.
"You know, you don't have to do this if you don't want to," Kristoff says, "Kai and Gerda can't see you from here."
"Oh please," Anna says, waving her friend off, "skip this and leave it up to you ladies? You'll be hauling this til' tomorrow!"
The men around her let out a half-hearted laugh as they take up their positions. A few of the older ones wrap rags around their calloused palms, knowing all too well how easily rusty chains chafe the skin under heavy loads. Kristoff and Anna opt for nothing more than brute strength, hoping the ordeal will be over as soon as it starts.
Peeking over the railings, Anna spots Kai and the other men getting ready to shift the engine into the pit. A whistle sounds and a chorus of grunts fill the air as the men put their backs into the chain. Despite the combined strength and weights of half a dozen workmen, the engine barely lifts by a foot, and Kai exhorts them to pull harder.
"Jesus, fuck," Kristoff hisses, "did they fill this with lead?"
Amidst the chain's clinking and the men's gruntings, Anna finds herself struggling to keep up; she wants to put every bit of herself into the work before her, even if it's just to alleviate their hardship by a fraction. Gritting her teeth, she crushes her grimy fingers around the rusty metal and pulls as hard as she can until acid seeps into her forearms. The sound of boots scraping the iron platform provides scant encouragement to the half dozen men putting their backs into the chain as it moves inch by inch over the pit.
"C'mon! Just a bit more and we can clear the railing!" Kai's voice calls from the pit, barely a whisper amidst the din of machinery around them.
Anna's joints creak under the strain; sweat drips from her chin and onto the rusty chains. In an attempt to rid the perspiration seeping beneath her eyelids, Anna raises her eyes skywards. The searing glare of the noon sun burns into her corneas, and nausea begins to overwhelm her senses. Her head spins; in her giddiness the noise of the chain snapping reverberates through her eardrums like a gun going off.
"Shit!" Anna shrieks, as the crew collapses to the ground, broken chain sliding through the pulley as it's dragged down by three tonnes of steel.
In the split second thereafter, she watches as the engine plummets towards the men standing in the pit, each one of them with wives and children she could remember by name. There was Kai too, the foreman who never said a harsh word to her despite her weakness and always let her work overtime without her asking. The factory would write this off as another bad accident, and some man from the authorities would pay his condolences for their sacrifice at the funeral, complete with starched white coffins and stoic faced women beneath the ever-present portrait of President Hans.
And in a few weeks this would happen again.
It takes another split second for a blinding rage to bubble within the pit of her stomach, rage at the cruelty she witnesses everyday – anger at the hardship even the youngest of the citizens are forced to endure, at the restrictions and the rules and the senseless oppression. The rage boils over in her veins; she leaps to her feet and grabs the broken section of chain still flying through the air.
The first sensation she feels is her feet sinking an inch into the platform and her fingers leaving a dent in the chain like it was made of butter. She gasps at the sight of the engine hovering over the pit, and the realisation sinks into her belly at the same time she notices the fallen workmen staring at her with jaws wide open. She expects to feel pain, see her dismembered arm flying through the air, or some gruesome sight she's witnessed happen so often to careless workers, but instead - there's nothing. Just the steady clinking of the tensioned chain bunched in her fist, and the creak of the engine swaying beneath. Anna searches through her mind for something to say, anything that could distract the men staring at her.
"Um, guys? I could probably use some help right now?"
Despite the sooty steam wafting through the air from the kitchens, the chill in the air fails to lift for the factory workers hunched around long tables during the lunch break. Seated at the foot of a table with her tea flask for company, the girl with ash-stained red hair shifts around in her chair as she counts away the seconds to the end of lunch. There are days when the growling in Anna's stomach would be so severe that even the stench of factory food wouldn't be enough to stop her from tearing into her lunch. Today however, her disgust wins out, leaving Anna staring at her bowl of oat porridge while she swirls a spoon around the sloppy mess in the bowl.
Across her, Kristoff wolfs down his meal, all the while casting glances to his left and right. He senses more than one pair of eyes looking in Anna's direction, and refrains from asking her about the feat she pulled off earlier. Kristoff winces when Anna puts down her spoon and he sees the angry gash where the chain had cut into her palms.
"How's your hand-" Kristoff starts, before another worker sets his lunch next to him, and begins shovelling the slop into his mouth.
Anna casts a glance at the man, before staring into Kristoff's eyes with that look; the expression every man, woman, and child in Grimfold knows.
Someone's watching, someone's listening.
"I beg your pardon?" Anna replies, placing her palms downwards on the table.
"Sorry, I meant - how's your lunch? No appetite?" Kristoff asks, gesturing at her oats.
Anna sighs and shakes her head, pushing her bowl towards him. The frown on her face is quickly replaced by a smirk as a clinking sound reaches her ear, and she spots the glint of a brass pepper mill.
"Maybe some spice will help it go down," Kristoff says, grinding black powder onto her porridge. Anna's eyes light up at the heady scent hitting her nostrils, and she tucks into her meal without hesitation.
At once, the pain in her palms fades away, replaced by a numbness that stretches to the weariness in her soul.
Hunched between diesel generators, Anna takes another drag on her cigarette; she exhales a woody stream of tobacco smoke into the generator's exhaust as Kristoff lights up beside her.
"So, that was some shit you pulled off just now," Kristoff says, his voice barely rising over the drone of chugging motors. He looks over his shoulders; seeing nothing but rows and rows of machinery, he relaxes and slumps to the floor.
"I don't know," Anna slurs, bloodshot eyes glistening in the flicker of her cigarette, "maybe the chain got stuck-"
"That engine weighed at least three tonnes, anything it got caught on would've been ripped to shreds. I've seen someone's shoulders get torn off beneath that kind of weight."
"My shoulders are fine," Anna says, staring at her hands, "these would take awhile to get better though."
"I don't think it's your hands you should be worried about," Kristoff replies, peeking over the corner of the generator again.
Anna sighs and shuffles her feet, a sense of dread settles upon her head, and the corners of the plant room begin closing in on her faster than she can remind herself she's safe. Needing a respite from the fear, she inhales deeply on the cigarette and allows the opiate-laced tobacco smoke to swirl around in her lungs, before exhaling it.
"You think anyone noticed?" Anna whispers, almost afraid that just uttering the words would get her hauled off.
"They noticed, for sure – but whether anyone's going to do something about it is another matter," Kristoff says, "at least you didn't do that in Arendelle."
A raspy giggle bursts from Anna's throat in a puff of smoke, "Arendelle? I'd have disappeared before lunch! There's too many of us here for them to care what goes on."
"No one gives a shit about us, and maybe that's for the best," Kristoff says, looking over his shoulders.
"You ever think about going to Arendelle, and leaving this shithole behind?" Anna asks, the faintest spark of hope flashing across her eyes, before it's smothered by the never-ending fumes of diesel exhaust.
"I'm not good enough to get a place on the train," Kristoff says, looking at his worn-out boots, "besides, I doubt I'd ever learn to read even if they allowed me to."
Anna's gaze drifts to Kristoff. Beneath the smoky fog wafting through the room, his cheeks take on a cherry red glow. She bites on her lip as she wonders whether this is everything her life was meant to hold.
"You have a shot at going," Kristoff says, snapping Anna from her thoughts, "you're strong, you're smart, you've always wanted to read."
"I don't think I can handle being watched around the clock, I'm wound up enough as it is after what happened just now."
"Relax! We look after each other here, no one's going to rat on you!" Kristoff says, "Especially not when it's likely you'll be doing all the heavy lifting for us-"
The sight of Kai and Gerda lurching into view sends the pair leaping to their feet. Instinctively, they throw their cigarettes far away from themselves, the stubs' embers casting an arc through the smoke.
"What the hell are you two doing here at this hour-" Kai starts, before shaking his head and pointing at Anna, "never mind, we need to talk."
At Kai's intense stare in their direction, Kristoff puts an arm around Anna's shoulder, but the girl edges forward with her head held high.
"Talk about what? I'm not afraid!" Anna says, crossing her arms, "Whatever happened, happened, and I'm, um, ready for - whatever to happen next!"
"Look, if it's true," Gerda points at Anna's arms, "this could mean very well for the factory, and it'd be in our favor to keep you here with increased rations for your family-"
At the phrase increased rations, Anna's eyes light up beneath the fog.
"But there's something far more important we need to talk about," Kai says, "the Party is coming tomorrow."
Kristoff and Anna recoil from their words, "The Party? You mean President Hans?"
Gerda nods, "Yes, they're visiting Grimfold, and the factory is on their itinerary. You've seen it happen before."
At once, the noise of screaming peasants and frantic applause at the sound of President Hans's voice floats through Anna's memory. She doesn't know why the very mention of Party Visit holds such sway over her, but she remembers each and every one like it happened yesterday. The anthems, the fanfare, the magnetic gaze of the President's shiny green eyes which looked directly at her no matter where she stood in the crowd.
"I...I would very much like to go," Anna says, unable to comprehend exactly why the words left her lips.
"We think it'd be better if you don't," Gerda says, her voice deepening to a drone, "they might know about you, the Party always knows-"
"What?"
"In fact," Kai says, "it'd be better if you don't turn up for work at all tomorrow; see it as your only chance of staying alive."