I woke up in a dull bunk room, chaffing brittle wool covers cloaking my tiny frame. The room was more like a cellar. The walls were plain crumbling brick and the floors were water coated cement, a glossy layer sitting on the grey surface.

Splotches of decaying damp crawled across the ceiling, bubbling under the plaster and tainting it with it's rotting green hold. The room reeked of it, in fact.

Then I became aware of the pain still residing in my body as left its dormant state and I transitioned into true consciousness. The white hot pain that had been blazing in my head had dulled into a subdued throbbing across my temples and the stinging agony in my muscles was but an ache. But everything was different...

I sat up in the bed and rubbed my eyes, trying to make sense of the order of events. My head, it was cloudy, thoughts seemed to lie in empty spaces, everything was tidy and tucked away. There were gaps, gaping holes in my memory. The order of events was scrambled, everything was hazy in my mind. Apart from the ballet, that was clear, clear as day. As I tried to clutch at some of the more distant images and memories, pain rung out in my head like a shotgun. And as the pain overtook me, the thoughts drifted further and I ground my back teeth together.

I felt a warmth dripping down one side of my face and as my fingers went to swipe my cheek, it met with the trickling line of scarlet. From my left ear was dripping a small trail of blood. In fact it stained the pillow I had been lying on. There was a dark crimson patch blooming on the fabric.

Everything was odd. Everything was wrong. I looked about the room, my vision sharper than it usually was and I zoned in on the beds around me. Many other girls were stirring awake, seemingly experiencing the same disorientation and confusion.

That's when an alarm sounded and a voice drifted from speakers dotted around the room.

"Get out of bed and stand to the right side."

I locked eyes with a few of the girls, a silent communication of defiance in the face of authority and explicit order.

"Belova and Romanova get out of bed."

I looked at the blonde who was also frozen stiff and followed her lead as she obediently rushed to her feet. She looked older and seemed a far more human figure to align myself with than the rest of the robotic troop.

Many of the girls faces were catatonic, as if under some curse and were completely compliant to instruction. I looked down at myself and then around the room. We were all clothed in identical uniforms: black catsuits with the Russian star branded onto the shoulder. That's when I made a revelation - this was the KGB.

A scientist appeared through a door in the wall before us all and he strode in with a menacingly blank face and observed us in our lines: silent and still.

"Girls and ladies alike; I am here to talk you about why you are here. All twenty eight of you are here to serve your country. This is the red room: here you will be taught how to fight, how to obey and how you must always put the motherland and the supremacy of the Russian empire before yourself. You should count yourselves as lucky, only the elitist of young women such as yourself made it. Many were... Eliminated. And you must know that should you choose to disobey direct instructions, you, yourself will be eliminated."

The man, draped in his scientific lab coat, paced, eyes scanning the hand picked squad of us. I felt vulnerable, exposed. His eyes met mine for seconds, seconds that seemed to drag like hours, curious and explorative in an enigmatic way - he was unreadable, completely unreadable. Then when he finally ripped his gaze away, I remembered to breathe again and allowed myself to blink. My skin was crawling, not just from the frigid draught, but from his icy gaze.

He was a bulky and tall man, with broad squared shoulders and a chiselled jaw. He had a bushy wiry beard sprouting from his chin and dark piercing eyes which were framed by brush like brows. He towered above the troop like a giant and was magnificently vast like a statue. Each of his heavy plodding footsteps were accompanied by a muffled thump and the splash of water.

"You'll do as you're told, when you're told. You will respond to all of your masters with 'Yes, Sir'. The training will be hard, but you will not give up. If you do, you will be eliminated. Do I make myself understood?"

And just like the programmed automatons we had all been converted to, in perfect synchronisation well all spoke the perfect phrase. "Да, сэр."

"Very good."

Then on instruction we filed out the room in a pencil thin line, treading it as accurately as tight rope walkers - terrified of stepping a foot out of line. We were guided down gloomy corridors and patterned across oil smeared floors into the training facility.

And the scientist wasn't wrong. The training was back-breaking and unrelenting. I'd feel the creaking burning heat in my stuff joints at the end of every day, warm as I lay against the deflated mattress in the freezing cold room. I'd feel my injuries cripple me as I lay in bed, my body uncomfortable in whatever direction I turned. I'd be put through my paces in every form of exercise possible and it was the purest form of torture; athletics, combat and gymnastics.

It would be hellish, I'd work myself beyond any realistic human parameters. I would tear muscles and feel the pain flare, and my ears would be gunned with hoarse shouts the moment I began to lose stamina. With sprained wrists, I continued to punch bags, bare knuckle: twisting the joint until it was mangled, mashing my hands until the skin had been eroded by the punches and were bloodied, streaming a scarlet puddle that dripped down my hands and wrists. Even when my sight blurred: when everything doubled -sometimes tripled - up, when the world swayed like a seesaw and bulged like a fish tank and when everything blurred like it was being engulfed by clouds, I pushed on: even when my back was drenched with sweat and sweat dripped from my hair into my eyes. Even when I couldn't breathe: when my lungs were straining and my whole body was scorched with the pain of anaerobic exercise, when I wheezed and gasped for air that wasn't there, when my whole body went weak from oxygen starvation I pushed on, consciously forcing my body to move and my eyes watering with constant pain.

Why? Because I didn't want what happened to other girls to happen to me. I saw most of what happened. I watched their collapsed bodies sag with failure and saw them melt to the floor with exhaustion and how they were dragged away with apathetic whimpers and sometimes sobs - too weak to put up a fight - and then I'd hear the fight injected back into them: the strangled screams that trailed off into crackling garbled noises, their throats unable to abstain a cry of such magnitude. I'd hear the involuntary howls forced out of their lungs, belted out from the pit of their stomach and I'd hear the crack of the whips and the buzz of other torture devices. You could always hear it: the sound of the thin slicing flack as it cut through the air and then the fleshy tearing slap as it lashed down on skin. There would be the buzz of dog collars: some of which the girls wore constantly as a reminder to keep working. You'd see their scars in the showers; the scars marring their skin like a tally chart of their offences. You could always pick out the weak ones by their scars.

And that was enough for me. I didn't need to experience it first hand to learn from it. I learnt to keep my mouth shut to avoid the wrath of a hand to my cheek. I learned to keep my face plain and my thoughts and feelings locked away and avoid the shouts of senior staff and exclusive exercise or reduction of meal portions. I learned not to question orders and not to fail to avoid the crack of the whip of the sizzle of electrocution.

We'd train for ten hours with half an hour for breakfast, lunch and dinner, half an hour for showers and sleep the rest. And that became my routine. I didn't dispute it. Only the fool and most impertinent in our ranks dared and many were reprimanded physically and sent to solitary. Some never came back.

It wasn't until I was ten years old that I finally committed my first offence. The worst thing was, I knew it was coming and could do nothing to stop it.

My body was slick with sweat, droplets clinging to my clothes and hair dripped off as I whipped my body about, like a soggy cat of nine tails. My body was trembling, crippled from a bad night's sleep and my knees were giving convulsions with the lack of energy. My sight had become hazy long ago, but then my peripherals began to shrink. But I carried on. Because I had no choice.

My punches deteriorated in velocity, each less powerful than the last as all of my remaining energy was redirected to keeping my eyes open and my legs working. I attempted to propel my fists with power from my shoulders and train my eyes but everything was lax and wobbly.

That's when I heard the first shout. And for a second, I straightened up: desperate to impress and to survive the hostile environment. But quickly the punches became pathetic flails again and I started to miss the punch bag. With lethargic debilitation, my legs gave out and I fell forwards onto the bag and hugged it with determined shaky arms.

More shouts were showered on my ears - and onslaught of Russian barks, but it meant nothing. My ears were filled with only the sound of my breathing and my sight shrunk more and more. And with a few final sharp shallow gasps I passed out.

It was a bucket of ice water that brought me back around. Even with that scream-worthy assault on my boiling body I felt relief. The cool felt good on my overheated body, it washed away the sweat and eased the heat in my joints. I flopped like a seal and lay back in the ice cold puddle, sprawled out like a snow angel.

With that brief intermission with my loss of consciousness, some energy had been restored and when I awoke the world was a little brighter and a little clearer.

"Turn over."

The words registered, but I looked up at my punisher perplexed, still dizzied and light headed. Then I was rattled out of my daze when I was seized by the collar, turned and thrown onto my front. I managed to compose myself on all fours: dripping a solution of my sweat and refreshing ice water.

"Remove your top."

I shook my head. No.

"Remove it!"

That's when I was manhandled. I screamed. I thrashed as he tore it from my back, yelled for my god, my parents and loved ones as he pinned me down and then shrieked, with full lungs, until my lungs were empty when the first strike of the whip tore through my skin: writhing and struggling against the icy floor. Tears jerked from my eyes with the impact and the painful resounding pain that echoed through my skin like an afterthought. My throat choked, my eyes watered and my mouth gaped.

And as each strike was counted out: one for every minute I had been out of consciousness - forty minutes as it had turned out - I gave a lion-hearted bellow of agony and outrage. I'll never forget the pain I felt that first time I was punished: the clarity of the moment and how vividly present I felt inside my own body. With each strike, I could anticipate the timing, but never quite comprehend the pain. It's always stuck with me. I won't forget my emotionless punisher - how he seemed deaf to my frantic pleas and bargaining promises. Ruthless. Everyone and everything was ruthless. And no matter what I said or how I prayed, no god, no saviour and no family ever came.

And after my punishment was done, I was thrown straight back into service once more, forced to carry on with overseers watching me closer than ever before. And that punishment was by no means my last - they only got worse and more frequent as I aged.

But in the midst of such violence and remorselessness I sought tenderness and consolation. Some of which I found with some of the other girls in sweet touches and words of endearment and encouragement. But it wasn't much later that I met James.

A/N - I needed to refresh myself by working on another project so I tended to this today. I'm reasonably happy with how this turned out.

No dedications - this is all written on my phone.