Page 11 of Break Me

I open my eyes and stare at my arm. The tattoo. Three letters and three numbers.

I’m not a person anymore. I’m property.

I close my eyes again.Emma, Emma, Emma.They can’t take away my name. It’s still there, lodged in my mind as a reminder that I’m someone.

Opening my eyes again, I glance at my naked body. I don’t feel like Emma anymore. I feel... broken. A mere shadow of a person that once was. In the span of barely a week, they have taken everything I have and reduced me to three letters and three numbers. An object to be processed and sold. What will happen after one more week? Two weeks? Two months?

Emma, Emma, Emma.

They can strip away my rights, but they can’t crush my will. They may break my body and my mind, but I’m determined to hold on to my name.

I close my eyes again.

DAX001.

I whimper as the image of the tattoo forces itself into my mind, shoving out my name and crushing my hope.

I stare down, seeing the symbol in the flesh before me.DAX001.A black line of letters and numbers like a stamp on a paper. Black ink embedded into my skin. Vertical on my inner arm.

It takes me back to the museum Trevor and I visited in Budapest a few days before we came to Romania. Violent pictures flash before my inner eye. Men and women stripped of all their rights. Forced to succumb to an oppressive authority. Hopelessness written deep in their sunken eyes. Numbers written across their weathered skin.

DAX001.

It’s a cruel homage to the atrocities of mankind. A statement. Human slavery and suppression have always existed and always will. And I’m the next victim to a practice as old as the world.

***

I don’t know how long I sit here, staring at the tattoo, trying to remind myself that I still have a name.

When the door opens, I’m in the same spot where Dax left me, sitting on the edge of the mattress, naked and alone. I haven’t even moved to pull the blanket over my lap, and I’m shuddering as the cold of the cell bites into my skin. But I barely even feel it.

Steps thud against the floor as someone enters. Still, I keep staring at the mark.

Hands press against my chest and my back. I think they’re warm, but I’m not sure.

“Fuck, you’re cold to the bone.”

Strong arms hoist me up against a solid chest. I keep staring, into the air, into nothingness, as I’m carried down long halls and into a new room.

I’m placed on my knees on the floor. On a mat. Water starts running, beating against a surface. The sound is loud and oppressive as it shatters the dead silence I’ve been stuck in.

Someone sinks down behind me and starts rubbing my arms, up and down.

Still, I stare at my arm.

DAX001.

The hands disappear, and the water stops running. Then I’m in someone’s arms again, being carried to a large tub and lowered into hot, foamy water.

I groan as the water burns my skin, and I grab the edges of the tub to get up.

“No, stay.” Hands grab my shoulders, holding me in the water. “It’s not that hot. It’s just you who’s cold. It will feel good in a second.”

Pushing weakly at the hands, I flick my eyes across the room as latent panic quakes within me. Old stone walls still surround me on all sides of the window-less space, but the room is not as barren as the cell—not as clinical as Dax’s office. An iron chandelier, shelves with towels, and a wooden counter lend the space some warmth. There’s even a green plant beside the sink—it might be plastic, but it looks like life.

It’s too overwhelming, so I stare down and see the mark again. Barren and cold. More fitting.

DAX001.