It was cold.
That was the first sign that something wasn't completely normal. Growing up in Russia, the cold was never a point of problem. This cold, however was piercing, almost as though Jack Frost himself clawed his way underneath the skin and settled in for the long haul. The biting of the frost at the fingertips permeated throughout the rest of the body, beginning to slow the beat of the only heart in the vicinity. The chains around her wrists held their own chill due to the weather, as though they were becoming an extension of the dangling body.
Looking through blurry vision, the only sight she was met with was of plain sliver walls. She was locked in a metal box; metal door, metal walls, metal ceiling, metal. The shine would have added to her disorientation if the small window behind her began to give off any sort of light, but all it contributed to was drenching the room further into darkness. The only source of light seemed to be the occasional vehicle that drove near the window, a touch of headlights bringing another shine to the cage the bird has found herself locked inside.
Her leather jacket was nowhere to be seen, or felt for that matter. The thin cotton t-shirt she found herself throwing on that morning just to have something underneath her favorite piece of clothing doing little to stave off the cold in the air. At least she had the common sense to actually wear pants that could fight off a little portion of the chill in Russia, added with her thermal sock choice. She would claim she thought they looked comfortable and would always have a pair on hand, but would never tell anyone she just had poor circulation from all of her training in her youth.
Dangling from the ceiling by her wrists began to send an ache through both of her shoulder blades, unable to take away any of the pain due to how she was placed. Her feet were just barely touching the cool ground, only able to stand on the tips of her toes. The feet themselves could take the weight for hours, the only positive of learning ballet since she could begin to walk, her shoulders were a different story. She's dislocated almost every bone in her body throughout her life, some on accident, some on purpose, and some just because someone didn't think she could. The shoulders were one of the latter, which in turn gave her very finicky shoulder sockets.
The door of the metal box swings open, blinding its singular occupant as a bright beam of light comes with it. Two pairs of pounding boots is all that is heard as she closes her eyes to push away the spots in her vision, only to shoot them open as one owner of the footsteps slaps her. As her face swings to the side with the force, she licks the inside of her cheek to check for blood and turns to smile at the assailant.
"Six out of ten, at best."
The second pair of footsteps pushes the first away, only to take an open swing for her exposed side. A grunt easily escapes her lips, accompanied by a surprised chuckle as she gasps for the air the hit took away from her.
"Okay, that one was a little better. You may have cracked a rib. Here, try the other side, maybe I could compare, like a side by side."
Not bothering to listen to her, the first assailant swings for her face again, full closed fist to the side of her jaw. She feels one of her back molars fall out with the force, dangling her head down as dribbles of blood slip out of her mouth and down the front of her cotton shirt. Spitting out the tooth, she finally gets quiet, letting her dirty blonde hair hang in front of her face.
"Нечего сказать?"
Both men stand on opposite sides of her hanging body, one trying to bend far enough over to look through her curtain of hair. Neither happen to see the small smile at the corner of her lips as she slowly drags her face up, only to spit a glob of blood into the face of the man who cracked her rib. In surprise, he backs up to wipe off the blood with a snarl on her face, yet before he can retaliate the other grabs his arm.
