Viktor Lih

[Jacinda]

Costa inventoried the room. Blankets and pillows, couple of mattresses, microwave, a fridge, a tv, and maybe one or two toys. Fast food containers littered the floor. Likely there were rats and cockroaches everywhere too, though thank god he didn't see them. The room itself reeked of human sweat and mess.

Their home? This place was a dump. Certainly not somewhere to keep children. They were pale skinned, nearly as white as Lih, like they had never seen the sun. Clothing hung off their emaciated small bodies, wrists and ankles bone thin, teeth yellowed and hair in tangled disarray.

But it was the eyes that said it all. The broken look, the tiredness, the robotic faces that said that if they had once been human, something had ripped it out of them.

His stomach turned and his lip curled. The stim kept the pain of the movements on his face from being noticeable. Maybe it was the stim. But he knew it wasn't, not really. It was hard not to see Sabrina, Luca, and Mateo in front of him.

He knew what this was. He'd seen it before. Heard about it too. Women captured and held in chains, bound for years, kept alive only to satisfy the appetites of the man or men who took them. He thought about the things they had killed. Men were monster enough. But what would these have done to them?

The little children, two girls and one boy, both looked at them listlessly, affect blank. It was hard to tell the ages. The little boy and girl were the same size, though the girl's face seemed slightly older. The last of the children, a boy, was already showing man-signs, though of course he could be 10 by his height. Definitely more musculature too.

He called for an ambulance. Still holding his gun, but not pointing at them, he said, "We're just here to help. We're going to take you somewhere safe. No one will hurt you." His used the same calm reassuring one at home with his kids.

The oldest boy looked at him curiously, his eyes sharpening. The way his head moved. It was odd.

Costa turned to Lih.