Chapter 1: Into the Abyss (3)
Elyse settled into D-Zone's routines with the hollow obedience of a cog in a machine. Wake, work, eat, work, sleep. Day after day indistinguishable from the next.
She was assigned to a group run by a fat man everyone called Ahab—a name that seemed devised purely for irony, as Ahab was neither adventurous nor tragic, merely coarse, greedy, and perpetually sweating. He managed a section of the scam operations on the compound's middle floors. Under him, Elyse's primary role was operating social media accounts, posing as attractive women, engaging wealthy male targets, and slowly drawing them into investment fraud.
She became proficient at it. Terrifyingly so.
It wasn't because she enjoyed it. She simply had a talent for mimicry—for looking at a person's digital footprint and reflecting back exactly the version of themselves they wanted to see. She spoke the language of loneliness with the fluency of someone who understood it intimately.
Ahab noticed her skill quickly. Shortly after, he reported it upward.
And so, Elyse was promoted from the general pool of "piglets"—the compound's term for its captive workers—to something slightly better. She received marginally more freedom of movement, marginally better food, and marginally less frequent beatings. None of these qualified as comfort. They were merely less severe forms of suffering.
The compound operated like a Darwinian ecosystem. Every small privilege was hard-won and easily lost. The difference between a "piglet" and a "supervisor" was not status—it was simply a different layer of exploitation.
Through her elevated position, Elyse gained a clearer picture of D-Zone's infrastructure. The compound was divided into zones—some specialized in telecom fraud, others in online gambling platforms, still others in money laundering. At the top of the hierarchy sat Shane.
Shane—his Chinese name was Shi Jun, but even the Chinese workers called him by his English name—was D-Zone's boss. He was young for his position, perhaps thirty, with a face that could almost be called handsome in a certain light, if you ignored the cold calculation behind his eyes. He was the one who had ordered Elyse diverted to D-Zone specifically, though she didn't yet understand why.
Elyse first saw Shane from across the compound's central courtyard. He was getting out of a black SUV, flanked by armed men, wearing a designer shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He walked with the easy authority of someone who had never once questioned his right to rule this place.
She watched him, and he must have sensed it, because he turned and met her gaze. He didn't smile, didn't frown. He simply... looked at her. Like he was reading a data point he'd been expecting.
Then he turned away and walked inside without a word.
But Elyse knew with sudden, gut certainty—whatever reason the universe or Shane had for bringing her here, it was not a coincidence. She was expected.
The question was: why her?
Ahab provided a partial answer, though not the one she wanted. Overhearing a phone call one evening—Ahab was spectacularly indiscreet when drinking—she caught fragments: "Shane's orders... the one from Cang City... special shipment... keep an eye on her."
Cang City. That was where she'd been taken from.
Special shipment.
The words crawled across her skin like insects. She wasn't just a random kidnapping victim. She was a targeted acquisition.
Over the following weeks, Elyse continued gathering information while keeping her head down. She learned that the compound's security rotated on a weekly basis, that the eastern wall had a blind spot in camera coverage that lasted exactly eleven minutes during shift changes, and that one of the supply trucks left the compound every Thursday morning with a skeleton guard—two men, both usually hung over.
She shared all of this with Sylvie.
Sylvie listened, asked precise questions, and seemed to file each detail away. Occasionally she would correct Elyse—"The eastern wall blind spot is nine minutes, not eleven; they changed it last month"—which only deepened Elyse's conviction that Sylvie was something far more than a fellow prisoner.
But she still didn't ask. Not yet.
It was during this time that the beatings started again.