Just a week ago, Irina could have never imagined her present situation.  She had woken up on an otherwise-pleasant winter morning to hear the news that a sizeable enemy force had crossed the border -- a mere twenty-five miles from the small industrial city where she lived.  Within another two days, the main exits to her city had been blockaded and regular incursions into the town were made.  The battle for the city was quite short, as few troops were mustered in time to secure the remote settlement.  After the surrender of her city's defenders, enemy platoons began patrolling the streets as the bulk of their forces pressed further into the country.

 

Upon insistence by the occupying force that civilians should go about their business as normal, Irina braved outside of her apartment to the restaurant where she made her living as a waitress -- only to find a blown-out shell of a building.  Apparently, some defending soldiers had used the building for cover during the battle for the city and found themselves vaporized by a few blasts from an enemy tank.

 

"Son of a bitch," Irina muttered to herself.  The city's industries were, for the most part, undamaged -- clearly the occupiers hoped to make use of the production facilities to supply their own people.  Not sure of what to do, Irina wandered back to her apartment and sat down in front of the television.  She flipped through the channels for a few minutes and found herself dozing off.

 

*knock knock knock*

 

Irina, still sleeping on the couch, didn't hear the noises outside her door.

 

"Open up!  Routine security patrol here.  Open up!"

 

Irina stirred a bit, not entirely sure what was going on.

 

"Last chance!  We know there's someone inside!"

 

She jumped to her feet and hurried towards the door, not wanting to cause any trouble with the occupiers.  But before she could make it, the door smashed open with a loud cracking noise and four soldiers, armed with nasty-looking rifles, barged in.

 

"Against the wall!  Now!" screamed one of the soldiers, apparently the leader of the group.  Without even giving Irina a chance to react, he grabbed her by the neck and threw her down onto the floor.  "Why the hell didn't you open the door when we ordered you?"

 

"I was sleeping," Irina gasped, clutching her neck.  "Didn't hear the door."

 

"Mmhmm," the lead soldier said.  "Luckovich, scan her."

 

The soldier named Luckovich knelt down beside Irina with a small device in his hand.  Irina had seen plenty of them before -- they were used to scan the ID chips implanted at birth into every person born in the last half-century.

 

"Irina Polanski, age twenty-five," he said.  "Most recent government records show she lives alone and works as a waitress in a local restaurant."  He punched a few buttons on his device.  "And... it appears that her place of employment was destroyed during the taking of the city."

 

"Any prior experience in industry?" the lead soldier inquired.

 

"Not according to her records," Luckovich answered.  "Worked in the service industry ever since she took a job."

 

"Fantastic," said the lead soldier.  "Romanov, let's take her."

 

A third soldier, both heavyset and muscular, walked over to Irina and knelt down onto her stomach, pinning her in place.

 

"What are you doing?" screamed Irina, trying her best to slap the soldier who was holding her down.  He didn't answer her or flinch at her feeble attacks.  The lead soldier handed Romanov a pair of handcuffs; with a massive hand, he grabbed her left wrist and snapped one of the cuffs onto it.  Irina tried to get her right hand away, but Romanov snatched it and slapped the other cuff around the wrist.  He reached out for another pair of cuffs provided by the lead soldier; he held down her legs as he easily snapped them around her ankles.  Irina, now expertly restrained, tried to slide across the floor away from the soldiers.  Romanov expertly seized her by the wrists and yanked her to her feet.

 

"Let's go," said Romanov.  Irina tried her best to protest as he hoisted her up over his shoulder, but couldn't move well enough to land any noticeable blows on the massive soldier.

 

"Where the hell are you taking me?!"  Irina shrieked as Romanov began carrying her out of the small apartment.  Nobody answered her.

 

"We're gonna move on," said the lead soldier.  "Romanov, meet up with us after you drop her off."

 

"Drop me off?!  Tell me what you're doing!"  Irina pleaded.  Her words fell on deaf ears.  Romanov had apparently done this quite a few times before.  He carried her down the stairs to the main floor of the apartment complex and out into the cold winter evening.  Irina heard voices all around her, but was unable to see with her face pressed up against Romanov's back.

 

When he set her down, Irina saw the source of the commotion.  Two lines were formed outside the building; one consisting of all males, one of all females.  All of them were cuffed in a similar manner to Irina, and their ankle cuffs were linked together to make movement difficult.  Several well-armed soldiers stood around the lines, looking quite alert.  Romanov quickly chained her ankle cuffs to the woman before her in line and departed.

 

It couldn't have been more than twenty degrees fahrenheit outside, and Irina was freezing.  She was expecting to sit in her well-heated apartment all night, and was dressed only in a t-shirt and shorts.  She looked around her and was horrified by what she saw.  The men and women who were drug into the streets were apparently done so in whatever condition they were in while inside their apartment; many women were fully dressed and in heavy makeup, others were dressed similarly to Irina.  One young woman Irina saw was totally nude, alternating between covering herself with her hands, bracing herself against the cold, and wiping tears from her eyes.  The humiliation must have been horrible.

 

"Do you have a clue what's going on here?"  Irina asked to the girl in front of her, a pretty brunette that lived on the same floor of the complex.

 

"Not a clue," said the woman with a nervous quiver in her voice.  "There's rumors spreading throughout the line that they're going to execute us all, but that sounds like a bunch of B.S."

 

Irina and the brunette made some small talk for a few minutes, when a loud voice over a megaphone pierced the night.

 

"All right, people!  We're rolling outta here.  You'll see two trucks in front of you.  Men, you need to get into the left truck; women, in the right.  Now hurry the hell up... you don't want us to break out the batons!"

 

"Oh my God," Irina said nervously to the girl in front of her.  "They're going to round us up in that truck and gas us, or suffocate us, or something!  I've heard stories about these kinds of things!  Why us?!"

 

"Shh!" said the brunette.  "I don't want to get smacked by a baton.  Just walk!"  The line of women hobbled forward into the large truck that was waiting for them.  After scraping her bare feet more than once on the cold pavement, Irina made it to the ramp leading into the truck.  She couldn't see a single thing inside; the cabin was pitch black.  Only two women were in line behind Irina; as the last made her way fully into the truck, a soldier pulled the truck's sliding door down.  It closed with an ominous *thud* and the clicking of what sounded like a locking mechanism.

 

Pure darkness.  Irina could see a tiny amount of outside light through small ventilation screens near the top of the cabin, but little else.  The cabin was surely unheated; it was nearly as cold as it was outside.  As she was contemplating what was going to happen, the truck took off with a sudden lurch.  The women that were still standing yelped as they fell onto the hard floor.  The truck was soon full of whispers, sobs, and groans.

 

Irina spent most of her time weeping silently and making small talk with people in the truck that she could not see.  As the night wore on, the women grouped into a tight bunch near the front end of the cabin, shivering against the cold.  As a small amount of daylight began to filter through the small screens at the top of the truck, an unpleasant stench started spreading as women relieved themselves or vomited from fear and motion sickness.  Night fell once more, bringing the impenetrable darkness once more.  The prisoners began begging for food and water, but there was no response to their pleas.

 

After what must have been 24 to 30 hours in the truck, the droning of the engine shut off and the truck came to a long stop.  After a short pause, the door lock clicked and the door slid open.

 

"All right, get the hell out of here!" barked the soldier who had opened the door.  "God, it smells like a pigsty. Ever heard of self-restraint?  I oughta make you all lick up the mess you've made in here."  The women slowly struggled to their feet and began marching in a jumbled mess towards the door.  Somehow, they managed to line up well enough to walk down the narrow ramp out of the truck.

 

The soldier turned up his nose at the stinking line of women as he led them forward.  Irina could tell from several bright lights in the area that they were in some sort of fenced compound.  The soldier was leading them towards a drab concrete building.  Once they reached the door, he stopped.

 

"All right, here's what we're gonna do," said the soldier.  We're going to uncuff you four at a time and bring you inside.  After we finish with the first group, we're going to do four more.  And so on.  No funny stuff -- if you try to run or fight, you're likely to catch a bullet from one of the guards."

 

As Irina watched the first four women get unchained and led screaming through the thick iron door, she felt a small amount of relaxation.  If they were going to all be killed like the brunette in front of her suggested, they probably wouldn't have threatened them with death -- they would have just done it.

 

There were only four groups of three in front of her, but it took a good three hours before Irina, the brunette in front of her, and the two women behind her were ushered into the door.  As the door slammed behind them with a loud thud, she studied her surroundings.  There wasn't much to see -- merely one door presumably leading further into the building and bare steel walls.  Half a dozen armed guards stood inside, looking at the four women.  The room was heated, which was a welcome relief after over a day in the winter chill.

 

"All right," said the lead guard as he clapped his hands.  "Get to it."  Four of the guards around the edge of the room put their rifles down and advanced on the women.  The four collectively cried out as they were each pushed against a wall by a guard.

 

Irina kicked, struggled, and screamed as the guard pinned her to the wall.  He immediately pulled out a cruel looking knife -- Irina felt a lump in her stomach, sure that he was going to slit her throat.  But rather than going for her, the guard took the knife and made short work of ripping Irina's shirt off her back.  Irina, realizing that she was going to be stripped, attempted to get away.  It was futile.  With a quick cut he ripped her bra in two and pulled it off of her, before grabbing her pants and underwear and pulling them off her legs.  The guard then grabbed at her earrings and cruelly yanked them out of her ears.

 

Irina now stood against the wall, entirely stripped of her possessions.  The other girls were the same.  The four of them cowered in fear, trying their best to cover themselves from the stares of the guards.

 

"I'm sure the four of you are wondering what's going to happen to you now," said the lead guard.  "Well.  Our conquest of your poor little country is going quite well, but we need assistance to produce our resources and keep the troop morale high. All of you women -- brought here because you were young, in decent physical condition, and not serving any of your hometown's vital industries -- are now property of the state.  Slaves."  Two of the women in the room with Irina began bawling.  For her part, Irina was shocked.  A modern and developed nation that still made use of slave labor?  It was preposterous.

 

"I believe the two of you," said the guard, pointing to the brunette and a blonde who had been behind Irina in line, "are going to serve the latter of the two purposes I mentioned... keeping the morale of the troops high."  He walked over to the brunette.  Irina couldn't help but notice that she was virtually a man's ideal of perfection with large, natural breasts, shapely hips, flawless skin, and an absolutely cute face.  The brunette began sobbing, and fell into a ball on the floor.

 

The guard yanked her up and pinned her hands up against the wall.  "No need for modesty, girl.  You had better get used to this -- our troops are going to enjoy you immensely.  I doubt you'll feel the same way about them, though."  Letting go of one of her hands, he cruelly squeezed one of her breasts until the girl let out a cry of pain.

 

"All right, let's take care of her first," said the guard.  He grabbed the brunette by her long, wavy hair, opened the door to the next room, unceremoniously hurled her inside, and shut the door with a slam.  The other girl that had been singled out for a life of sexual slavery collapsed into a weeping heap on the floor.  Irina felt sick to her stomach.

 

"Now, for the other two," the guard said, "you're probably going to wish you were born just a bit prettier.  You're going to be worked quite hard in service for our country.  Your assigned tasks aren't up to me, but I can assure you... most of them are the types of jobs that our people don't want to do."  Irina began feeling a bit sicker.  She had worked as a waitress for nearly ten years, but the worst she ever had to do was stay on her feet for eight hours and carry trays.  Looking at the other girl singled out to be a soldiers' plaything, Irina began to ponder which was the worse fate.

 

She admitted to herself that she probably would have never made it into the other category.  Although most men would consider her cute, she probably wasn't the kind that most fantasized about -- her black hair contrasted poorly with her milky white skin.  Her breasts weren't all that large, her nipples were tiny, and her hips were disproportionate to the rest of her body.

 Unlike the two who had been singled out as sex slaves, she didn't bother to shave the tuft of hair between her legs.  Not that it would have been a deciding factor in the guard's choice.

 

After forty-five minutes, the other girl singled out for sexual service was dragged into the next room -- now reduced to a pathetic, bawling, squirming mess on the floor.  It seemed like a longer time passed -- maybe an hour -- before they had finished handling her.

 

Irina was up next.  She followed the orders barked at her and walked into the next room.  She looked at the floor as she covered her chest with one arm and her pussy with her other hand.  She was horrified at what would happen if she disobeyed orders.

 

The next room was brightly lit and contained a desk at which two men sat, a guard standing against the wall, and a strange human-sized tube with all manners of machinery dangling from it.

 

One of the men at the desk stood up and approached her with an ID scanner machine.  He remained silent as he scanned her information and made some notes in the device.  Irina felt strange and exposed, standing totally nude in front of this man who seemed as if he could not care less.

 

"All right," the man said after he finished playing with the scanner.  "Let's take care of her."  The guard went over to the tube and opened it up; he then roughly grabbed Irina, lifted her up, and laid her down on a metal grate running the length of the tube.  He secured her hands above her head with manacles that were attached to the grate, then secured her ankles with another set of shackles.

 

"Have fun," the guard said ominously as he shut the tube around her.  Irina whimpered.  She heard a bizarre mechanical noise, and the grate she laid upon came to life with what felt like a mild electric current.  It stung mildly and Irina tried to arch her back to escape the sensation, but found that she was entirely paralyzed -- she couldn't move a single muscle and her breathing became strained.  She tried to cry out for help, but found herself unable to speak.

 

Irina waited in nervous anticipation as a mechanical arm approached her inside the tube.  She noticed that the arm was tipped with a nasty looking needle, and her heart sank.

 

The needle plunged down towards her bare chest and slightly pierced the flesh right above the left nipple.  She would have screamed if she were able.  With mechanical speed and accuracy, the needle moved about and pierced her flesh again and again, each time inflicting a nasty sting.  Tears began to form and run down her cheek.

 

After what must have been a minute of piercing, the device stopped.  Irina felt relief for only a second as the device moved to her right and began to inflict the same torment to her right breast.  Her cheeks were soaked in a stream of tears as the pain wore on.  As soon as it finished, the mechanical arm rotated about the inside of the tube and began inflicting the same process to her right upper arm.  And her right hand.  It circled about and began piercing her left side in the same manner, before circling around and stabbing the back of her neck through the metal grate on which she lay.

 

After finishing with the back of her neck, Irina's naked body was soaked with sweat and streams of tears had formed on her cheek.  The mechanical arm withdrew, but Irina was left with throbbing pain in seven different spots on her upper body.  She wasn't able to look at what had happened to her body due to the continued paralysis, but was sure it would have been a horrifying sight.

 

Another noise fired up behind her, this time sounding like a small circular saw.  The high-pitched whining was terribly unpleasant, but Irina was unable to cover her ears.  Then, suddenly, she felt all the hair on the top of her head being pulled by an unseen device, straight towards the direction of the noise.  Her scalp burned in pain as it felt as if her entire head of hair was being ripped out.

 

Just barely within her field of vision, she saw a spinning, circular blade descend above her head.  It sliced right through her hair, shaving it down.  It didn't hurt too badly -- not as badly as the needles, at least.  The screeching noise was the worst part.

 

After her hair was mostly shorn, the blade stopped spinning and spray nozzles positioned around her began blasting her with hot water that smelled faintly of chemicals.  Irina held her breath as she was entirely doused with the harsh spray.  Admittedly, it felt good to have the sweat and waste washed off her body.  As soon as the spray stopped, warm air circulated through the tube and dried her thoroughly.

 

Moments after she was entirely dry, the tube opened up and the shackles on her wrists and ankles snapped loose.  Irina could move again.  The guard quickly walked over to her and yanked her out of the tube, standing her up.  He walked her over to a mirror mounted on the wall.

 

She looked at herself.  Her hair -- once beautiful and long -- was chopped down to a very unkempt half inch.  She was horrified to see what had been done to her body -- black tattoos, reading "4601", were marked on each of her breasts, hands, and arms, and presumably on the back of her neck.  The skin around each tattoo was swollen and red.  The possible permanency of her situation began to sink in slowly.  She felt sick again.

 

"Enjoy the sight?  Get used to it!" said the guard in a degrading and cruel tone of voice.  Irina's lip started quivering and tears began to well up in her eyes once again.

 

"Enough of your sniveling," barked the guard.  "You ain't the first who's gone through here, and you won't be the last.  Now let's get going."  He grabbed her arm -- right around the fresh tattoo -- and dragged her towards a door leading further into the complex.  She couldn't see much in the darkened next room, but it was obvious that the room was rather large.  She heard noises -- sobbing, whispering, and the occasional cry for help.  The guard led her through the room to a corner.  He turned on a flashlight and Irina saw that they were standing before a metal box -- not much larger than a coffin.

 

The guard produced two pairs of handcuffs and roughly pulled Irina's arms behind her back, where he used one pair to cuff her wrists together.  He then produced another pair and bent down, binding her ankles together again.  He them opened the metal box, lifted Irina up, and unceremoniously dumped her inside.  He slammed the lid shut and secured it with a lock.  Through a small grate towards the top of the box, she could faintly see the guard smile at her before walking away.

 

Irina could barely move in the small steel container, much less get comfortable.  She began screaming for help and mercy, sobbing between her yells.  After what seemed like an eternity, she heard the door to the large room open again and footsteps began to plod across the room in her direction.

 

"Help!  Please!  Do something!" Irina begged.  "I'm a human being, you know!  You can't do this to me, you monster!"

 

The door to her box flew open and the same soldier looked down with her with a sadistic grin.

 

"You're going to learn to keep your mouth shut like the others," the guard hissed.  He backed up and Irina saw the fourth girl from her earlier group get pushed into view.  The girl, like Irina, was still totally naked and tattooed in multiple places.  She had a look of terror in her face -- probably similar to what Irina looked like when she was presented with the box.  The guard picked up the other girl and stuffed her into the box next to Irina.  Their bodies were pressed up so tight against one another that both had trouble breathing.  The girl looked into Irina's eyes with a look of terror as the guard slammed the lid on top of them.

 

"Hope you two can keep each other company," the guard said coldly as he walked away.  "Good night..."

 

Though barely able to breathe, the two girls, pressed so close to one another that they could hardly breathe, cried themselves to sleep.

 

To be continued