A loud bang against the cage bars jolted me awake. I winced against the sudden daylight as I sat up beside Rose, who was already stretching her back with a quiet grimace. Mine ached just as badly. The thin blanketed floor had done absolutely nothing to soften the solid metal underneath it and every part of my spine was making sure I knew that.
I waited instinctively for Cel to say something cutting, the way she always did first thing in the morning, and then remembered. She was gone. The emptiness where she had always lived inside me felt worse in the daylight somehow, more obvious and harder to ignore. I looked down at my hands and said nothing.
"Listen up, ladies. Time to exercise those legs," a man shouted from somewhere beyond the cages. "Recruits will be rounded up and sent for questioning."
