9.1.x

The floors were pristine white, the walls a smooth light blue. Cases and displays surrounded the spacious room and wound their way around the center of it, similar to a high end jewelry store flashing its wares to the public. Inside the displays, however, not a single jewel shone out. Instead, taking the place were what looked like life sized doll parts, as if it were a store for five and six foot ball joint dolls. Near the door were cases with left, then right arms and hands in various shades of peach, olive, brown, and so on; different lengths and thicknesses and tones. The body parts continued around the room, with the more prized pieces in the center glass. The joints, where they had been disconnected, were wrapped neatly and perfectly cleanly in blemish free gauze. Spotless. Everything was spotless.

Tchien vomited onto the floor of the holding space he was confined to, and from the way he could see it, it seemed as if his neighbors were likely to do the same within a few moments. He and the others were seeing the room through the skylights that surrounded it; the glass was one way and completely soundproof, begging the question of who the view was really for. Was it meant entirely to frighten them? Tchien guessed so, but the knowledge didn't help the nausea at all.

The holding space buzzed forward past the light of the windows and into darkness again. Tchien could smell the vomit all over his clothes now, and fought back the urge to do it again, spitting the last of it from his mouth. He tried to wipe it off of his clothes, but with his ankles cuffed together and chained to the floor, and he himself surrounded by nineteen other boys, there wasn't anywhere for the sick to go, and the most he managed was to waft the smell enough that two others threw up as well. He knew everyone was scared, that much was obvious.  He wanted to offer some consolation, some way of saying that everything would be all right in the end. Unfortunately, he had already figured out that none of the rest of them spoke Mandarin, they were mostly from way down south in the more Cantonese part of China, or from South Korea. Plus, even he would not believe such words. How could anyone get out of this?