Page 45 of Stolen

“What the fuck?” I mumbled, pressing my palm against my forehead. “Kayla?”

“Jaden, I feel really, really dizzy,” she murmured before her body collapsed onto the little makeshift bed, her eyes searching mine as her chest rose and fell.

Oh no.

Loud voices stole my attention as I tried to overcome the dizziness swirling in my head, my eyes catching the guards at the end of our row pulling one of the girls from her cage. One carried her limp body over his shoulder as he walked past my cage. Her eyes were still open as though she was trying to fight her condition.

Gripping one of the bars of my cage to remain steady, I felt my stomach flutter with fear as I looked around the rest of the cages to see the girls beginning to collapse onto their beddings.

“Fuckers drugged us,” I slurred as my grip on the bars slipped, and I fell to my side onto the bedding.

“But why?” Kayla slurred.

“Don’t know. They must…want us weak…for some reason,” I barely managed to say.

“I don’t…feel like…I’m gonna pass out, though. Just…really…chill.”

“Roofies?” I mumbled as my body slowly became heavier and heavier.

We lay there like that for fifteen minutes before the guards came back to collect another girl from her cage.

“Hey…what…the fuck,” I tried to yell from my cage, but of course, I was ignored.

After another fifteen minutes, to my relief, the first girl they had taken was finally brought back, but she looked different. Her hair had been curled, and it looked like some makeup and been applied to her face. My stomach immediately dropped. They were dolling us up. But for what? Were they letting the buyers sample us? Or maybe they were taking pictures?

I watched as they carried the next girl out from her cage before turning my attention back to the girl they returned. She continued to lay there just like we were, just with a much better-looking complexion and hairstyle. She didn’t look like she’d been hurt. I couldn’t see any new bruises or red marks, but with her eyes so darkly shadowed, it was hard to tell if they were puffy from any crying. For all I knew, they used waterproof mascara.

It was torture watching each girl carried out to eventually be deposited back with clean, styled hair and a dolled-up face. When the girl two cages down from Kayla was returned, it was exhausting trying not to only question her but also to get her to respond.

“Hey…hey…what…what are they doing?” I forced myself to say, but all she did was lay on her back while her chest bobbed up and down. “Come on,” I pushed. “What…what happened?”

“Please,” Kayla pleaded, her words heavy with fear.

“Ppphh…” she started to say. “Ppphhh…pphhoo….tooooo,” she finally mumbled.

“What? What…did she…say?” Kayla asked.

“Ph-Photo?” I replied in question.

“Oh…fuck,” Kayla murmured as she took in several heavy breaths.

After several more excruciating minutes of waiting for our turn, the guards finally came for Kayla, pulling her limp body from the cage and throwing her over their shoulder.

“Jaden,” she called, her voice weak and muffled from the drugs.

I couldn’t even protest for her at that point, grumbled moans being the only sound I could make as I watched them carry her off. With each passing second, I felt my limbs becoming heavier and heavier. My stomach suddenly knotted itself after realizing how quickly I’d already lost track of time when I noticed the guards depositing the girl next to Kayla’s cage back in hers. Fear crept up my spine as the guards turned and reached for the lock on my cage. Squinting my eyes closed, I felt calloused hands grab at my arms and haul me out to toss my limp body over a bulky, uncomfortable shoulder. All I could do was grunt in irritation as I was carted off to fuck knows where.

I tried focusing on the floor to decipher where we were going, but it required way more effort than my vision was willing to provide. I was lucky my eyes were able to remain somewhat open at all. But as the pressure in my gut grew from the guard’s shoulder, my arms that were dangling over my head started to reach with the tiniest amount of strength I had left, which amounted to nothing really.

The trip must not have been that far because I had counted maybe twenty seconds before I felt my body fall into a chair with the back so far backward I was looking at the ceiling.

“Careful with that one,” I heard someone say. “She’s the biggest troublemaker of them all.”

“This little thing?” asked someone else’s voice. “Hard to imagine.”

Was that a woman’s voice?

“Just don’t fuck around. Finish with her quickly.”

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