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still on the dusty mattress in the cellar.
    No, she couldn’t be. The mattress wasn’t as hard as whatever she was laying on now. Slowly, cautiously, she lifted herself up on her arms. She found that she could only rise a little bit before coming up against those bars again. Wherever she was, it was dimly lit and smelled of smoke and sweat and other things. The floor looked like cement. The far wall looked like carved rock. She seemed to be in an artificial cave, maybe thirty feet on a side with the roof very high overhead. It was a little too cool for comfort.
    A woman screamed, somewhere out of sight. The scream was followed by a long, moaning wail. Giancarla shivered, and not just from the chill. Panic began to overcome her as she looked around and realized that she was in a cage set against the near wall, which also looked like carved rock. To her right and left she could see more cages. Most of them were empty, but two held other naked women who were either sleeping or unconscious.
    She had a sudden, irrational urge to beat at the bars with her hands and fought it down. The effort left her heart pounding and her arms and legs shaking. She felt sick to her stomach. There was a metallic taste in her mouth. Where was she? What had Nicholas done?
    She looked at the other two women again. She couldn’t see either of their faces. They were far enough away that she couldn’t even tell if they were breathing. All she could make out in the dim light was that they both had very dark hair.
    For the first time she noticed that what light there was seemed to be coming from somewhere outside of the chamber that she was caged in. There was some kind of opening in one of the walls, but she was not in a position to see through it. That was where the light was coming from. That was also where all the screams and wails were coming from. Now she also heard rough male laughter, and the sound of a woman crying and moaning. Giancarla shrank back against the rear of her cage, shaking uncontrollably. She tried to cling to the hope that this was just some sick, cruel joke that Nicholas was playing on her, but she already knew that that was very unlikely.
    She heard the sound of footsteps approaching. She froze, her breathing quick and shallow, wanting to see who was coming and at the same time dreading it. A short, squatly-built man appeared around the corner. He was wearing a white lab coat that made his dark skin seem all the darker and thick glasses. He scanned the cages, coming to Giancarla’s last, and he smiled when he saw her. All Giancarla could do was shiver and whimper.
    “Ah, good,” the man said in thickly accented English. “You awake. You be the American woman. We do you next.” He turned and gestured back the way he had come and shortly afterwards two more dusky men entered the chamber. Both of them were average height, and so alike at first glance that Giancarla thought that they might be twins. They wore only some kind of loose-fitting pantaloons and sneakers, so she could see their powerfully muscled chests and arms. The lab-coated man pointed to her and said something in a language she had never heard before. The two men nodded and came over to her.
    As badly as Giancarla had wanted to get out of her cage, the thought of what these men might do to her made her fight them as they tried to pull her out. She kicked and clawed and screamed and tried to bite, all in vain. The two men pried her loose, avoiding all of her attempts to hurt them with practiced ease. In a few moments, they were marching her out of the chamber towards the light, her arms twisted painfully up behind her. The floor felt icy cold to her bare feet.
    Her brief struggle had exhausted Giancarla, but when she saw where they were taking her, she found new strength to resist. She could see what looked like a gynecologist’s examining table, complete with straps and stirrups, other tables laden with jars and bottles and medical equipment. She tried to dig