I feel like I've been blown apart all over again, and I struggle to steady my breathing. "Daniel's holding me down here?"

"He's one of the Leaders here. How do you know him?"

"He's my..." What is he? My boyfriend? My fiance? My captor? I don't know anymore, so I stick to the most innocuous term: "friend."

She takes my hand. "I'm very sorry, Isla," she says, "But I'm not sure he's your friend any more. We need to go to the salon."

"Jane, please," I say, digging my heals. "What is going on here?"

She sighs. "The drones keep us in check. That was the thing that you stabbed. They hover around, collecting data for Cooper. Audio files, video files, passcodes, you name it. The one you stabbed was a monitoring drone for this block, meaning it gives food to prisoners and Caregivers, and locks and unlocks the doors. Come here," she pulls my hand and leads me into the yellow hall. "Look." She points to the left and right of me, and I turn to see that there are doors in both directions. "These are our rooms. All of us Caregivers are more like slaves. I don't know what they do with the Workers. They're our male counterparts. You're going to the salon now, because you're not slotted to be a Caregiver. You're slotted to be a Comforter."

"What is that?"

"You will be upstairs with the Leaders, Soldiers, and Scientists. You are going to be assigned to one of them, and you will be his comfort. If he's stressed, you comfort him. If he's sad, you comfort him. If he's mad, you comfort him."

"Are you kidding?"

"No."

"Are there any jobs for women that aren't completely degrading? What about working in the labs?"

"No, women aren't allowed in the labs, unless they are there to comfort their man."

I lose my breath in frustration. "Well, we can't stay here, Jane. You might need medical attention, and I need to be back to the Deathless."

"So you will help us? You'll get us out of here like you did with the people at the bunker?"

She looks at me like I'm some sort of super hero, like I will simply smile and unfurl my cape before flying us out of here. I want to tell her it's not that simple, that I'm no hero. I just did what anyone else would have done in that situation. What kind of person would leave helpless people to die when there was a chance of saving them?

I'm still processing her request when I see her smile drop and her eyes widen with desperation. There isn't a countdown here, ticking away our time left to survive, but there are sick people whose bodies won't last much longer. So I take a deep breath and pretend to be the hero she needs. "I promise you, I will get us out of here," I say. Staying isn't an option anyway.

"Thank God," she smiles, and there's redness in her mouth, like it's bled before. "But now, we really need to go or they will start to question my abilities and terminate me."

"As in kill?" She nods. "What the hell kind of place is this?"

We immediately start walking down the yellow hall, and she opens the door into a huge cement room.

In front of us is a company of soldiers, all with vacant stares, standing upright in rows. Their sleeves are pushed up to reveal glowing marks on their arms. A few soldiers walk around the company, touching their arms like Gabriela used to for Nate, and then the vacant-eyed soldiers march away to work. The sight is exactly what I'm afraid of seeing on someone I know again, only multiplied by hundreds, and a shiver rolls through me.

As soon as we step into the room, two buzzing drones meet us on either side, as we cross to the left toward a staircase leading upstairs.

"What was all of that?" I ask.

"Sh," she tells me. "Remember... audio files."

We walk up the cement staircase until we reach a wooden door, much like the one outside the Captain's dining room. As soon as her hand touches the cast iron door knob, the drones leave our sides, and we are left alone. She spins back toward me. "All those soldiers lined up were machines, robot men. They used to be real people, but now they are being controlled for the Great Reconstruction. Dr. Quail's in the process of converting all the soldiers into robot men."

Before I can say anything, she turns the knob, and we are met once again by a pair of drones on the other side. Jane leads me into a white room, decorated much differently than the President's quarters and the Captain's dining room were, with navy accents sprinkled here and there, and little wooden sailing ships resting in suspended animation on tables around white sofas. On the mantle over a grey stone fireplace rests a framed portrait of a President I remember from books, George Washington. The windows opposite of us look out over a green garden and fountain, and though it is all very pretty, the drone buzzing beside me makes my skin crawl.

"This way," Jane whispers.

She leads me to the right, down a hallway past the fireplace, and I think about how, just beneath our feet, there is an army of cyborgs and an entire hallway of prison cells. The contrast is disgusting, and anger builds inside me, but I think of Nate's words, urging me to control myself, and I am able to push it down.

"Through here." Jane opens a door on our right labeled SALON and we walk into a mirrored, well-lit room filled with bottles of serums and scents. Standing feebly beside a white chair in the center of the room is a woman who looks even closer to death than Jane. Her grey straw hair sweeps her shoulders, and her skin is an overcast sky. She extends a hand to me, and I try not to notice that it is nearly all bone and veins, thinly wrapped in flesh. She smiles, revealing her red gums and mouth, and it reminds me of the President's blood against his snowy skin.

"Isla, this is Meg. She'll be making you pretty. Well, sorry, prettier. I'll wait outside with the drones," Jane says before leaving me alone with the grey woman.

"Take a seat," Meg tells me. Her voice is light and sweet, and she tries to smile, but it appears to hurt her.

"I know this sounds strange, but can I see your arms? I just want to be sure. You never know anymore."

She lifts her sleeves to show me her empty, grey skin. "Satisfied?" she asks. A cough erupts from her frail body.

"Are we alone?" I whisper. She nods, so I rush to her side, and let her relax in my arms. "You need to sit. I can do this."

I guide Meg to sit in the chair, and she collapses with a sigh. "Thank you," she says.

"Why are they making you do this? You're clearly too sick."

"We are the least important."

"No one is unimportant."

"We aren't strong like the Carriers or beautiful like the Comforters."

"Who are the Carriers?" I ask.

"They are the women who have been slotted to carry the children. Dr. Quail creates ideal gene combinations, and the Carriers are the surrogates."

She tells me all of this like it's normal. "Meg, that's not okay."

"It's better than living out there," she says. There are memories in her words.

"Living out there is better than being a slave?"

"We're not slaves, we're Caregivers."

"Meg..." I say, meeting her eyes, "you're dying here, don't you see? They are literally working you until you die."

"I would be dying anyway."

"Yes, but on your own terms. Who knows? Maybe if you were out there, you'd be fine."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does. What you do with you're life matters. You can either be free or you can be forced to take care of me. The Deathless, they found me and my mom, and their doctors found a tumor in my mom's breast, but they took care of her. They gave her a choice for what her life would be, and now she's a scientist."

"We aren't Deathless here." She coughs again, so I grab her a towel to dab her mouth. "Thank you," she says.

"Have you seen anyone about that cough?"

"Dr. Wilkes. He said it's probably an infection." She coughs more, and blood appears in the corners of her mouth.

"From the cells you sleep in, probably. You need to be treated for that."

"Dr. Wilkes said they didn't have the medication."

"That's crazy, you need antibiotics. That should be one of the first medications they stocked."

She coughs some more and shrugs. "They are expecting you upstairs, so we can't delay. The sinks for your hair are over there. You should get started."

I cross the room toward the sinks, when I catch my reflection in the mirrors. The ends of my once orange hair are charred black and half of it has been burned away over my ear. My skin, though not as red as I initially suspected it would be, is still a sensitive pink, and scabs stripe my neck and face. I barely recognize myself.

The black thread of stitches pokes out over the grey silk nightgown I'm wearing. It's only now that I realize I've been walking around without any shoes or pants. I'd feel embarrassed if I cared, but I don't. Gunther and his people, including Daniel, are torturing these women. My bare legs are the least of my troubles right now.

"I have a lot of work to do, huh?" I joke, but Meg doesn't hear my sarcasm, and tries to stand.

"I'm coming."

"No, no, Meg, sit down. I was joking. Just relax."

I try to sound like I know what I'm doing, but the truth is my hair is a bigger mess than I thought it'd be. I turn on the faucet and wait until the water runs cold, so that it soothes my burns. For the first time since waking up here, I allow myself to relax.

I wash my hair, but even the conditioner can't combat my crispy ends. There's no hope for them. I find the scissors, and, keeping my head down over the sink, begin chopping it off. From the side most badly burned, I cut it all. There's no use saving any of it. But from the other side, I simply cut off the ends. Inches of orange and black hair fall into the water, and I scoop the sections out to keep the sink from backing up.

"Where should I...?"

"Just drop whatever you cut on the floor," Meg says blankly, her head in her hands.

I wrap a nearby towel over my chopped hair and head back toward the make-up station. It's all so foreign to me. I've never used any of this before, and all I can do is stare stupidly at all the colors and bottles and brushes.

"Let me do this. I'll get in trouble if you look crazy," Meg sighs. She tries lifting herself from the chair, but struggles. She looks at me for help, but when I reach to lift her, the towel falls from my head, and she sees my hair. "Oh my god, what have you done? It's crooked!"

I shrug. "It's unique," I suggest, immediately remembering when Nate told me the same thing about my hair's red color. The memory sends a shooting pain through me.

"You're trying to kill me, aren't you? Come here, I'll fix it. You're lucky this was actually a trend before..."

She trails off, distracted by the scissors in her hand, and she evens out the sections of my hair. I watch her through the mirror, maneuvering her fingers through my hair. She trims the shortest side to my scalp, just above my ear, until it looks like I have permanently swept my hair to the opposite side. At least now it's back to its regular color, like the petals of a tiger lily, but it only reminds me of my dad. I wish I could know he was safe.

Once Meg is done, she tries to stand to choose some make-up, but falls back into her seat.

"Just tell me what you need, and I'll get it for you. I'll stand, it's fine," I say.

One by one, Meg tells me which product or color or brush to bring over to her, and she paints my face with ointments and powders. She paints lines around my eyes and covers my eyelashes in a heavy black coating of mascara. She smears black powdered make-up on my eyelids, and red gloss over my lips. Last, she coats my hair in some sticky gel, then wipes her hands of it.

"Go ahead, look at yourself," she tells me, so I stretch my legs to stand.

I look older with all the colors on my face and the jagged hair on one side, but I'm happy with it. It makes me look like I'm both a queen and a warrior, rolled into one damaged body.

"Thank you, Meg. I appreciate it," I say to her in the reflection.

I see her point to a door in the white wall behind me, different from the entrance. "There are dresses in there. Shoes, too. Go put some clothes on."

I open the door to an explosion of colors and sparkles, and I'm immediately overwhelmed. I grab the first dress I see and the closest pair of shoes, and change as quickly as possible.

When I emerge, I see myself in the mirrors: I'm dressed in a bright red ballgown and black flats. The top of the gown is sequined in circling patterns, and the bottom is a fluffy poof of fire. A strip of sequins cross the neckline, covering my stitches. Red was Nate's favorite color. In stories, a red dress usually represents love or passion, but after all I've seen, I can only think of death.

"Beautiful," Meg sighs. "Let's bring you back to Jane now. Let me guide you, so it looks like I've been up."

She lifts herself from the chair before I can stumble over the huge fabric to help her, and rests her shriveled hand on my back to guide me.

Before we open the door, I turn to her and say, "I can help you."

Meg smiles weakly. "Did Jane ask you to help?" She laughs, but it transforms into a heaving cough. "No you can't," she continues once she's caught her breath, "They will stop you. Besides, it's too late for me. It's okay, you can't do everything. Sometimes you just have to do your job and be done with it."

She opens the door before I can protest, and I'm handed back to Jane and the drones. Jane leads me up another staircase in a main foyer area. Everything is crafted from rich burgundy wood, with accents of gold. In the center of the foyer is a small, round table with a gold figurine on it. It's dancing or something, I can't quite tell. I'm too focused on not tripping over this giant dress to examine it. I've worn dresses before, but this one is different. This one is heavy with fabric, and about as wide as my arm span. Why couldn't I have picked one of the smaller dresses? I wonder, lifting the fabric up to my eyes as ascend the staircase.

Once reach the second floor, I see that there is a long hallway directly in front of us with doors on either side, and I'm immediately reminded of the hallway on the Immortal, only more opulent. The gold and rich woods continue, but Jane leads me to a doors off to the side, with the name GUNTHER QUAIL written in gold letters.