Trace

Two

Trace faded in and out of consciousness, her body trying to shake off the exhaustion and slow ache that was returning to her head. Her hand, surprisingly, didn't hurt. Instead, it itched, a reminder that wouldn't go away. A reminder that she had been marked for life.

Finally, Trace woke fully enough to realise her hands and ankles were no longer bound. Blood still dribbled lazily down one wrist, the cut the bond had made scoring across a vein. As she propped herself up, she wondered how long she had been unconscious. The sticking of her grey shirt to her chest indicated she had been curled up for a while but the bleeding wound said otherwise.

Maybe this is more of Thor's power, she thought, sitting up fully and glancing around. Now she was awake, Trace realised that it was brighter than before. A rectangular opening had opened up, letting in light and sound. A low roar filled her ears and drew her eyes to the door.

Almost as soon as she laid eyes on it, Trace felt a strange feeling, like she wanted to go through the door. Leave the room and go back out to the world. Leave this nightmare behind.

Slowly, she stood up, clenching her hand into a fist in a futile attempt to keep the black mark hidden, some unknown part of her causing her too think it would make things a whole lot worse than they already are if someone realised she was a slave. Trace looked around again, her eyes scanning the white room one last time. No-one else was there; no other openings that could lead somewhere else.

Sighing, Trace walked out the door. Heat beat down on her in resilient waves, the sun a glare of white in the sky. Shielding her eyes, Trace took in her surroundings. She stood in a stadium, the ground made of panels of silver metal. Tiny metal shavings flew in the air around her, glinting in the sunlight. A large, fence surrounded the stadium, at least five meters higher than her head and separating Trace from the thousands of spectators around her.

A quiet shck caused Trace to turn, only to find the door she had come through disappear, replaced by a smooth wall. Rushing forward, she banged her hand on the door, felt around for a handle, a disfigurement in the wall, but found nothing but smooth material beneath her fingertips. Confusion took over any initial panic and she faced the spectators again. They were mostly men, gawking and pointing at her like she was an animal to be slaughtered.

"What's going on?" She whispered, half hoping some invisible force would answer her, whisk her away to some magical land and tell her it was some mistake. She would even settle for being woken by the orphanage mistresses, yelling at her for sleeping in to late and wasting valuable time. Trace closed her eyes briefly, before opening them up again.

No-one came.

No-one shouted.

Unless the loudspeakers counted. "Ladies and gentlemen, here is Slave Number. 2159, otherwise known as Trace!" the voice was deep, booming and echoing throughout the stadium. "She is a healthy, young woman with no mutations whatsoever and would make an excellent helper, whether it is as a house servant or an outdoorsman- or should I say, woman!"

Laughter erupted around the stadium and Trace rolled her eyes at the joke, searching through the crowd for the owner of the voice, then the stadium around her. Her eyes led her to a portly man wearing a tuxedo, a hammer in one hand and a microphone in the other. He had olive skin and shifty, grey eyes that didn't match his wide smile. It was a little too wide for Trace's liking, considering she was standing in front of men and women who looked to be drunk and tipsy.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, let's get this show on the road. Let's start at $1000, shall we? Hmm? Any takers?" the man chortled and, almost in an instant, the bidding war began.