Chapter 2: New Uniforms
The clicking of the lock was a sound Silas was beginning to hate. It was the punctuation mark to every fragment of freedom. Matron stood in the doorway, her expression carved from stone. "Form a line. Shoulders back. Chins level. Eyes forward."
They shuffled into position. Silas fell in beside Annette, who gave him a minuscule, weary nod. Chloe’s eyes were still red-rimmed, but she stared rigidly ahead as instructed. Tasha looked furious, her jaw clenched. Lily was nearly translucent with fear.
They were marched not to a classroom, but to a long, mirror-lined hall. The floor was polished to a high-gloss, reflective black. At the far end, a rack of garments waited.
“Your training uniforms,” Matron announced, as if presenting weapons. “You will change. Now.”
These were not the relatively modest uniforms they’d just been given. These were something else entirely. The top was a cropped black corset with a plunging V-neck that promised to expose most of the sternum. The skirt was a band of black fabric so short it was essentially a wide belt. A pile of stiletto heels, taller and thinner than the ones he’d arrived in, sat beside them.
A muted sound of distress escaped Chloe. Annette’s breath hitched.
“This is ridiculous,” Tasha spat, her composure cracking. “We can’t clean in that. You can’t even bend over.”
“You will learn to clean without bending over,” Matron replied, utterly unfazed. “You will learn to kneel. To squat. To move with efficiency that preserves your presentation. The residents appreciate aesthetic consistency. This is the aesthetic. Change.”
There was no option. The mirrors would reflect any hesitation. Silas moved mechanically, his fingers numb on the new clasps. The corset was tighter, an engineered vise. When he fastened it, the silicone forms were pushed up and together, creating a dramatic, exposed cleavage that felt shockingly public. The cool air hit his stomach. The skirt, when he zipped it at the hip, covered perhaps a third of his thighs. The pelvic piece, thank god, was still covered by the sheer black stockings and garter belt, but the entire ensemble felt less like clothing and more like a topical application of fabric.
The heels were a form of torture physics. Standing still was a challenge; walking felt like a theorem in instability.
Matron walked the line, making adjustments with impersonal tugs. She shoved Silas’s shoulders back. “Your posture is still defensive. You are not hiding. You are presenting.” Her fingers dug into his flesh, repositioning him. When she was satisfied, she stepped back. “The walk is a glide. No hip swaying. No bounce. Your head is a floating orb. Your feet are precise instruments. Watch.”
She demonstrated, moving down the hall with a bizarre, smooth gait. Her knees seemed barely to bend. The effect was unnerving, a floating mannequin.
“You will practice. From this end to that. Until it is unconscious.”
The first hour was pure agony. Silas’s calves screamed. The balls of his feet burned. He stumbled, caught himself, tried to find a center of gravity that didn’t exist. Chloe fell, twice, scraping her knee on the hard floor. Matron made her start over without a word.
“It’s impossible,” Lily whispered during a forced water break, her hands shaking as she held a paper cup.
“It’s not,” Annette said softly, massaging her own ankle. Her eyes held a deep, old resignation. “It’s just pain. You learn to separate from it. Think of it as… someone else’s feet.”
Silas leaned against the wall, trying to relieve the pressure on his heels. He was surveying the room, the ceiling vents, the door mechanisms, but the pain was a relentless distraction. This was the brilliance of the system. Reduce them to a collection of screaming muscles and burning ligaments, and there’s no mental space left for plotting rebellion.
“Again,” Matron called.
The afternoon bled into a haze of repetitive motion. Left, right, float, glide. Silas began to find a brittle rhythm, a way of locking his joints to minimize the wobble. He watched Tasha, who moved with a furious, jagged precision, and copied her tension. He became a machine part, grinding itself down to fit the machine.
Just as a dizzying numbness began to set in, the door opened. Bree Harding stepped in.
Her presence changed the air. Matron’s authoritarian glare was one thing; Bree’s calm, scanning observation was another. She wore her usual pantsuit, a monument to practical authority amidst their absurdity. Her gaze moved over each of them, a silent audit.
“Matron. A progress report on Cohort Seven?”
“Adequate. They comprehend the basics of carriage.”
Bree’s eyes landed on Silas. He felt them like a touch. He kept his gaze fixed on a point on the far wall, his Margo-face placid, but every instinct was screaming. She walked closer, her low heels making no sound on the floor. She stopped in front of him.
“Look at me.”
He obeyed. Her gray eyes were close-up, clear, and deeply unsettling. They traveled from his eyes, down to the exposed skin of his chest, back up. She was comparing, he realized. Comparing the person in the ridiculous outfit to the memory of the nervous maid in the lobby.
“You’ve adapted,” she stated.
“I’m trying, ma’am,” Silas said, letting a thread of meek pride enter his voice.
“The walk is still hesitant. You’re fighting your own height.” She circled him slowly. “You have a longer stride than the others. You must shorten it. Contain your energy. Think smaller.”
Her advice was technical, delivered in the same tone one might use to correct a spreadsheet error. It was worse than cruelty. It was professionalism applied to his dismantling.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She gave a single, brief nod to Matron and left. The room felt several degrees colder.
Training shifted. They were given small, empty silver trays. “You will carry these. A glass will be placed on them. You will walk. Not a drop will spill. Not a ripple. The champagne flute is your world.”
Silas’s arms ached. The tray trembled. He focused on his breathing, on a point on the wall, on separating his mind from the fire in his feet and the strain in his shoulders. You are a conduit. You are empty. You are Margo.
When a plastic flute finally clattered to the floor, it was Tasha who failed. The sound was like a gunshot. Matron didn’t yell. She simply said, “Cohort deduction. Five points. Again.”
The resentment in Tasha’s eyes when she looked at them was immediate and hot. The system was working.
Dinner was a silent affair in a small, white cafeteria. The food was bland, nutritious paste. They ate in their uniforms, the corsets making it difficult to take deep breaths, let alone digest. No one spoke. The clink of utensils was the only sound.
Later, in the stark bathroom with its glaring lights and warped mirrors, the reality of their situation crystallized. Silas stood at a sink, splashing cold water on his face. The reflection staring back was a stranger—cheeks flushed, eyes shadowed, hair pinned tightly back, and so much exposed, artificial skin. He looked cheap and used.
Chloe was crying quietly in a shower stall, the sound echoing. Annette was helping Lily, whose hands were shaking too badly to unpin her hair.
Tasha leaned against the sink next to Silas, examining a blister on her heel. “This is hell,” she muttered, not looking at him.
“It’s a process,” Silas heard himself say, the agent’s analysis overriding Margo’s likely response. “They’re applying stress to see what breaks, and what holds. The shape that holds gets kept.”
Tasha shot him a look. “You sound like a textbook.”
“I read a lot,” Silas deflected, turning off the water.
The schedule was taped to the back of their dorm door. Lights out in twenty minutes. His body begged for oblivion. His mind was a racing engine. He had seen no external windows, no obvious vents large enough to climb into. But he had seen a grille in the bathroom ceiling, above the showers. It was small, but it was something.
As they settled into their hard beds, the door locking automatically, Silas lay in the dark and listened. He listened to Chloe’s muffled crying, to Annette’s soft snore, to the hum of the building. He mapped the corridor in his mind based on the day’s marches. The service elevator was to the left. The lounge was to the right. The unknown stretched in the other direction.
The uniform itched. The corset was a persistent fist around his ribs. The phantom sensation of Bree Harding’s assessing gaze lingered on his skin.
He had to get to his toolkit. That was step one. The grille in the bathroom was step two. But to reach either, he needed to become the perfect trainee. He needed to be invisible to Matron’s scrutiny and uninteresting to Bree’s. He needed to glide.
In the darkness, he flexed his aching feet. Pain is data, his old instructor had said. Learn its language.
The language here was one of submission. Of becoming small. Of carrying a tray without spilling a drop while walking on knives.
Silas closed his eyes. He began, silently, to practice the glide in his mind. Left, right, float, contain.
He would learn the language. And then he would use it to write his own escape.