A gray bus travels down an all but deserted road, leaving a cloud of gray dust in its wake. Inside, past the guards, past the locks, sits a crew of orange clad women. Over the engine and the noise of the bus rattling along the gravel road, there is the murmuring of voices sharing their exploits, and downfalls leading them to this juncture. In the back seat there is one keeping to her self.
Looking out the window as a dead leafless tree crosses the landscape, she knows why she's here, and what she needs to do. She deserves it. This punishment. Barely 18 years of age, the stress from her past has made her look older then she really is. Darkness seems to loom under her tired brown eyes. The color of her lips has seemed to fade. Long brown hair is merely an annoyance as it lands in her face as the bus comes to a halt.
The front bus doors open to make way for a uniformed large woman. If it wasn't for the lack of an accent one could have easily confused her for one of those infamous East German Olympic swimmers. She stepped up to the cage like wall separating the passengers from the driver, unlocked the gate and spoke, "Ladies, welcome to Xerine State Prison."
One by one the prisoners were lead from the bus to the secure complex that will become their home for the next several decades. Maybe only years if they are lucky. Finally two guards enter and lead out the silent brunette from the vehicle. They lead her through a maze of institutional white corridors. One hallway seemed to look like the one before it, and so on and so on. Ultimately leading her to a dark room with a solitary lamp hanging from the ceiling. Something was wrong. She could feel it.
The brunette squinted into the darkness, and saw nothing. The light failed to stretch to the walls leaving her with little idea of the size of the room. Her ears perked as a foot came out of the darkness and made a hard dull sound on the cement behind her. Listening closely, she can hear as something is whistling in the air coming at her. Instinctively she ducks. She can the air break as knife passes above her.
The girl spun around as fast as her shackled feet would allow, in time to see the Eastern Block woman from the bus taking another swipe at her with the knife. The worn and tired girl catches the blade in the links of the cuffs on her wrists. With a twist of her wrists she disarms the giant woman.
The girl raises an eyebrow as a sound reminiscent of a dying moose emanates from the refrigerator shaped woman as she yells and lunges at the petite figure ready to rip her apart. In a movement almost too fast to be witnessed by the human eye, the fight is over. The mammoth woman, now doubled over on the ground gasping for air, the girl's fist still remaining in the space the woman's stomach once occupied.
She hears a lone person clapping slowly, and turns to face that direction. Adrenaline pumping through her body, she ready herself of the expected.
Out of the darkness stepped a man in Snoopy shirt. OK, a well torn and tattered man, in a brand spanking new Snoopy shirt. Guessing from the dirty and blood-stained dress pants and scuffed shoes, the previous shirt was long gone. She noticed a combination of fresh and healing cuts, scratches and bruises on his face. He had one stretching across his lips as he spoke, "Good job, Faith. We'd like to make a deal with you."
Faith backed up in protest, tired brown eyes a little wide from shock. "Whoa, no, I already told Wolfram and Hart no! I don't deserve to be free."
"No, you don't deserve the calmness and the tranquility of prison." The man calmly expressed and he casually put his hands behind his back, "And we're not Wolfram and Hart and we never said anything about setting you free. Annette."
"What about a net?" Faith muttered with confusion conquering her face, and a sharp pain entering the back of her neck. Everything seemed to degrade into slow motion, as the room drifted greater and greater into darkness till the only thing left was black.