"I would like to watch a movie." 743 said the word carefully as if the word itself was a precious thing.

"I would also like to see a ninja." 633 was back to holding his wrist and lolling his head against the bars, almost boneless in his nausea.

"I would like to be a ninja." Mads couldn't help but sigh at the thought. When she was very young she'd decided that she'd become a ninja. If she became a skilled ninja warrior then she could beat the shit out of her father and he would be too scared to ever lay a hand on her or her sister again.

Unfortunately, some dreams didn't pan out. Sisters died, fathers went to prison, and the girl too fucking stupid to just give up and die was passed from one nightmare of a foster family to another.

"I would like to visit a store." 633 sat forward and put his head between his bent knees. "I would like to purchase clothes as the ninja did."

"Ooh, that would be fun. I love shopping." Mads was still in wistful mode and trying to ignore the fact that she would probably never see the outside world again. "We could get ice cream, spend all of my money on clothes and books and snacks, and then eat the crappy mall food."

"Mads," 189 finally spoke up from across the cell. He'd listened to her go on and on about the movie and was quiet while the other two had asked countless questions. "If this Interpol is an international organization dedicated to policing bad guys why have they not arrested Mercile and the bad humans here?"

Tears burned the back of her eyes but she was too mentally exhausted to cry.

"They don't know what's happening." Or hopefully didn't. Hopefully, they didn't condone the shit Mercile was doing. But who knew, the government was shady- all fucking government was but Madeline didn't want to hurt him like that. "There are so many shitfucks out there that they have a hard time pinpointing everyone. But if they did know they would put a stop to this shit. They would raid this place so fast and get us out of these cages."

"Out." It wasn't a question or statement. It was a soft utterance of an idea that was both a familiar ache and a foreign concept. Out was a state of being that had only been dreamed of.

Madeline could only vaguely understand. She'd been imprisoned for a little over two weeks, they had never known anything else. They'd been imprisoned their whole lives.

"Maybe." The word was a croak in her throat. Did she dare hope? Did she give them hope? Was that cruel? The world didn't work like it did in the movies. There were no heroes. No swooping in at the last minute to save the day.

The reality of it was that they would all die before any kind of help was sent. Madeline wouldn't survive- she was just an incubator to them. She would fight and rage but in the end, she'd be just as dead as the rest of the women who'd been in her cell.

"Are they very smart?" 189's voice held a note of cautious hope that knifed at Madeline's insides.

Fuck that.

Hope had been beaten out of her a long time ago but she wasn't going to crush what little they had with her fatalism and cynicism.

"Yes." Madeline wiped the tears out of her eyes and scowled. "Yes, they are very smart. They have lots of agents. But Interpol isn't the only law-keeping agency out there. We have the FBI, the Military, the police- fucking state troopers. We just need one of them to investigate."

"Anyway— by the time we get out of here they'll be on like Fast & Furious 27 or something." Why Mads had the most random movies on the brain was a mystery to her. She should have been telling them about culture and art and all that shit that humanity was known for but, instead, she was recounting every B-Rated movie she'd ever watched.

Her voice was hoarse and she was thirsty but it had proved to be the best kind of distraction. Explaining movies to a trio of men who knew nothing of the world was utterly distracting with their constant questions.

She'd started with Ninja Assassin and then moved on to Robin Hood Men In Tights– which had been a crowd favorite. Mads had never had to explain what a musical was before. Singing was a new concept for the trio. Plus they didn't know what bad singing was– she had done a lot of it and they hadn't complained once. Then the Kevin Costner Robin Hood but they hadn't liked that one all too much and hadn't understood why she was speaking with different accents.

Which led to Nacho Libre– another one they really didn't understand, but she had assured them that her recounting wasn't doing it justice and they would have to actually watch it to understand why she loved it. Then she'd tried to explain the Ghostbusters movies but they didn't get the ghosts or the humor so she had moved on to the Lethal Weapon series and then from there went to Hot Fuzz. And that ending car chase scene inevitably led to the Fast & Furious franchise– including Tokyo Drift because that one was her favorite.

"Do you have a family, The Mads?" 189 was munching on the raw steak the tall guard had delivered and cocking his head at her.

The question threw her for a long moment. Every other line in those movies was about family– why did she think they wouldn't ask about hers?

Families generally consisted of parents of some variety of children but what Mads had was a dead sister, a son of a bitch of a father doing time in prison, and a mother who had skipped town while Mads had still been wet from the womb. No, her family died when her baby sister died.

"I did. Not anymore." Mads grimaced at the mush that they tried to pass off as food and tried to swallow the knot in her throat that formed whenever she thought of her sister.

"What does this mean? I thought; 'You don't turn your back on family.'" Mads could only laugh at his attempt at the accent she'd used when explaining the movie.

"She died when we were little." Mads didn't have it in her to explain her whole complicated and shitty family life.

"I would like a family." His tone was wistful and it about killed her.

"They are good when you have them."

"So the doors open to children's cages– because they are magic and the monsters need their screams to survive?" 189's brow was furrowed as his head lolled against the bars and his fingers on his pulse point once again.

"What is magic again?" 734 scratched his head and then kept on his single-minded mission to braid her hair.

"I would like to hear the star war one. This one is too confusing." 633 was shaking his head with a displeased look on his pretty face.

"Guys– you gotta stop demanding certain movies– I just can't explain some things." Mads couldn't help but laugh at their insistence that she tell every movie she'd ever watched. "You didn't get Ghostbusters, you're not getting Monsters Inc– you're not going to understand Star Wars."

"I have seen the sky."

I too have seen the sky– though I was very drugged. It was purple and orange and so… big."

"It was black and white when I saw it."

Mads couldn't help but burst into tears.