Kara heard the door before she saw it open. Not the heavy steel of the corridor door — a smaller one, the hinge complaining, and then boots. Two sets, maybe three, coming down the short hall that led to the office. Dave was still crouched over her, one hand braced on the concrete beside her shoulder, his breath coming in fast little pulls. He hadn't finished. He'd been taking his time.

The boots stopped in the doorway.

"What the fuck," someone said. A new voice. Young, with a laugh buried under it. "Davy. You started without us?"

Dave went still above her. His hand came off the floor. Kara felt him shift his weight back, and the loss of contact was almost worse than the contact had been — she was cold everywhere now, the concrete leeching through her skin, her thighs sticky and her throat raw from the sounds she'd made and the ones she'd swallowed.

"Vic said," Dave started.

"Vic said." The new voice moved into the room, and Kara turned her head against the floor to see him. He was young — younger than Dave, maybe twenty-two, with a shaved head and the kind of shoulders that came from lifting, not from work. A black lanyard hung against his T-shirt. He looked at her the way a man looks at something in a window he's decided he can afford.

Behind him, two more. One she recognized: Paul, the soft-faced one who'd flinched when Vic said his name. He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the floor, and he did not come in. The other was broad and older, gray at the temples, chewing something slowly. Dennis. He came in. He closed the door behind him.

"Vic's upstairs with the girl," the shaved one said. "He's not gonna know."

"He'll know," Dave said.

"Then he'll know." The shaved one crouched down next to her, close, and Kara smelled spearmint on his breath. He looked at her face for a long time. Then he reached out and pushed her hair back from her cheek, almost gentle, and tucked it behind her ear like he was fixing her for a photograph. "You bit Tommy's thumb," he said. "He's still mad about it."

Kara's mouth was dry. She worked her tongue against her teeth and found her voice, and it came out worse than she wanted — a rasp, low, wrecked. "He should have kept his hands to himself."

The shaved one laughed. It was a real laugh, surprised out of him, and it made Paul look up from the floor for a second before he looked away again.

"Yeah," the shaved one said. "Okay." He stood and looked down at her, and the laugh went out of his face the way a light goes out in a room. "Get her up."

Dave got a hand under her arm and hauled. Kara's legs came with her but they didn't hold — she sagged, and the concrete scraped her knee, and then Dennis had her other arm and they had her standing between them, her toes barely touching, her head hanging. The room tilted. The green lamp on the desk threw everything in long shapes. She could see the letter opener still on the floor where she'd dropped it, near the leg of the leather chair, and she looked at it for as long as she could before Dennis turned her around.

"On the desk," the shaved one said.

They put her on the desk face-down. Her cheek against the mahogany, cool and slick with something she didn't want to think about. Her arms stretched out in front of her, wrists together, and Dennis's hand closed around both of them above her head, one grip, easy, like he'd done this a hundred times. He wasn't even breathing hard.

The shaved one came around the desk so she could see him. He was unbuckling his belt and he was watching her face while he did it, and there was nothing in his expression at all now. That was the part that made Kara's stomach turn over — not the belt, not the sound of it sliding free. The blankness. Like she was a thing on a checklist and he was working down the list.

"Say something," he said. "Go on. You had a mouth on you a second ago."

Kara closed her eyes.

"No?" He stepped in close. His hand found the back of her neck and pressed her face flat against the desk, and the wood was cold on her cheekbone. "That's fine."

He was inside her before she'd finished the breath. Kara's hands curled into fists above her head and her body arched off the desk on its own, a spasm she couldn't stop, and Dennis's grip on her wrists tightened just enough to remind her. The shaved one set a rhythm immediately, no preamble, no patience — hard and fast and businesslike, and the desk edge bit into her hips with every stroke. She heard herself make a sound. She hated the sound. She bit down on her lip until she tasted copper and the sound stopped.

It didn't last long. He finished with a grunt and pulled out and stepped back, and Kara felt the wet slide of it down the inside of her thigh, and then Dave was there, taking his place without a word, and it started again.

Time went strange. Kara stopped counting the strokes and started counting the things in the room instead: the green lamp, the letter opener, the chair, the framed photograph on the shelf behind the desk that she couldn't quite see from this angle, the seam in the ceiling tile that ran from one corner to the other. The seam was the best one. It didn't move. Everything else moved.

Dave finished. Someone else took his place — the broad one, Dennis, who had to let go of her wrists to do it and passed them to Paul, who held them so lightly Kara could have pulled free if there'd been anywhere to pull to. Dennis was slow. Slow was worse. Slow gave her time to feel every inch of it and the burn of friction and the ache that had started somewhere deep and low and had nothing to do with wanting. She pressed her forehead into the desk and breathed through her mouth and did not make the sound again.

"She's quiet," Dennis said, over her.

"She's not quiet," the shaved one said from somewhere behind her. "She's just saving it up."

When Dennis was done, Paul let go of her wrists like they'd burned him, and Kara's arms dropped to the desk and stayed there. She heard him walk away, toward the door, and then stop.

"Paul," the shaved one said. "Where you going."

"I don't —"

"She's already on the desk, man."

A pause. Kara turned her head just enough to see him, and Paul was standing by the door with his hand on the knob and his face all twisted up, and for one second she thought — she actually thought — he was going to leave. He looked at her. She looked back. She didn't beg. She was past the point where begging was a thing her body knew how to do.

Paul let go of the knob.

"That's what I thought," the shaved one said.

Paul came back. He was gentle, which was somehow the worst of it — hesitant, apologetic, his hands shaking on her hips, and Kara lay with her cheek on the desk and stared at the seam in the ceiling tile and thought about the letter opener on the floor and how far it was and how she would never reach it and how, even if she did, she'd already said it out loud in this room: I'm not a killer. She'd meant it. She still meant it. It felt like a thing she'd said in another life, to another woman, one who'd been standing upright.

Paul finished fast and pulled away and Kara heard him breathing hard somewhere behind her, and then the shaved one's voice again, and this time it had something in it she hadn't heard yet. A kind of bright, mean pleasure.

"Okay," he said. "Both of you. Get up here."

Dave and Dennis moved. Kara felt hands on her hips, on the backs of her thighs, spreading her, lifting her knees up onto the desk so she was kneeling on the mahogany with her chest down and her face turned to the side, and she understood what was about to happen a half-second before it did and there was nothing to do with the understanding except hold it. Dave pushed into her cunt and Dennis pushed into her ass at the same time and Kara's whole body went rigid — every muscle, jaw to toes, a locked line of pain — and then it broke and she made the sound. She made it loud. It came up out of her from somewhere under her ribs and it wasn't a word and it wasn't a scream exactly, and the shaved one laughed and said, "There it is," and they started to move.

They didn't move together. That was the thing. Dave was fast and Dennis was slow and the two rhythms fought each other inside her and there was no position, no angle, no breath that could accommodate both, and Kara stopped trying. She went somewhere else. She found the seam in the ceiling tile and she followed it from one corner of the room to the other and back again, and the desk creaked under her knees, and the lamp threw their shadows up the wall in a tangle she didn't look at.

Dennis came first. The sound he made was almost polite. He pulled out and stepped away and Kara felt the sudden cold where he'd been, and then the shaved one was behind her saying move and Dave pulled out of her cunt and the shaved one pushed in, and now it was Dave in her ass and the shaved one in her cunt and neither of them slow, both of them fast, both of them working her like she was a machine they'd been given for the night and they wanted to see what it could take.

Kara's arms had gone numb. Her wrists were still crossed above her head where Dennis had left them and she couldn't feel her fingers. She turned her face and her mouth was open against the desk and she was drooling onto the mahogany and she didn't care. Somewhere above the room, muffled through the ceiling, the concert was still going — a bassline she could feel in the desk more than hear, and a crowd noise like distant water, and once, faint, a guitar solo she almost recognized.

They switched. Then switched again. Then it was three of them, and Kara lost track of who was where and in what order — someone in her mouth at one point, a hand fisted in her hair holding her down on it, the taste of salt and the gag reflex she fought and lost twice, and the shaved one's voice somewhere above her saying look at that, look at her take it, and Paul, off to the side, not touching her, not leaving either.

At some point they put her on her back on the desk. Kara didn't remember being turned over but she was looking up at the ceiling now, at the seam, and the lamp was behind the shaved one's head so his face was a dark shape with a rim of green light around it. Her legs hung off the edge of the desk. Someone had a hand under each of her knees, holding her open, and she watched the ceiling and felt her body being used the way you feel weather — from the outside, from a long way off, something happening to a person who was almost her.

And then, mid-stroke, something shifted.

It was small. Kara almost missed it. The shaved one was saying something to Dave over his shoulder — a joke, something about Tommy and the thumb — and he laughed, and the laugh loosened his grip on her left knee, and Kara's leg came down. Not a plan. Just a leg, coming down off the edge of the desk, the heel of her foot finding the floor. And her hand — the numb one, the one she couldn't feel — was on the desk beside her hip, and the letter opener was on the floor somewhere past her head, and she couldn't reach it, she knew she couldn't reach it, and she reached anyway because her body had stopped asking her permission for things.

Her fingers found the chair leg instead. The leather chair, the one she'd sat in when Vic put the letter opener in her hand and asked her to prove something. Her fingers closed around the chair leg and she pulled, and the chair scraped across the concrete, an ugly sound, loud in the room.

Everyone stopped.

The shaved one looked down at her, at her hand on the chair leg, at her leg on the floor, and something crossed his face — not fear. Annoyance. The way you'd look at a dog that had gotten up on the couch.

"Huh," he said.

And then he leaned his weight down onto her, one hand flat on her sternum, pressing her into the desk until she couldn't get air, and Kara's fingers came off the chair leg one at a time and her hand dropped to the desk and lay there, open, empty. Her chest burned. Her vision went gray at the edges and stayed there. She heard him say something to Dennis, casual, conversational, and then she felt him push back inside her, and the rhythm started again, and above the ceiling the concert kept going, and the green lamp kept burning, and the seam in the ceiling tile ran from one corner of the room to the other, and Kara watched it, and did not look away from it, and did not close her eyes.

The shaved one finished with a sound like clearing his throat. He pulled out and stepped back, and Kara heard the wet noise of it, and then the flat clap of his palm against her thigh — not hard, casual, the way you'd close a locker.

"Okay," he said. "I'm bored."

Kara lay on the desk with her cheek on the mahogany and her legs still hanging, and she did not move, because moving wasn't something her body was offering her right now. Her thighs were wet to the knee. The green lamp hummed. Behind her, Dennis was zipping himself up and Dave was doing something with his belt, and Paul was somewhere near the door, and the room had gone quiet except for the concert leaking through the ceiling — a bassline she felt in her teeth.

Then the shaved one went to the door and opened it. And whistled. Two notes, low, the kind of whistle you use on a dog.

Kara heard boots in the corridor. More than two sets. She turned her head against the desk and watched the doorway, and the doorway filled up.

Four of them. Maybe five — she lost the count when the first two came through and the light changed. Young, most of them, younger than Dave, in the same black T-shirts and the same black lanyards, and one of them was carrying a paper cup of beer and set it down on the corner of Vic's desk like he owned the place, and the ring of wet it left on the mahogany was the only new thing in the room. Another one was chewing gum. Another one had a phone out and was looking at the screen and then looked up at her and then looked back at the screen, and then put the phone away, slowly, and grinned at the shaved one like they'd just agreed on something.

"Jesus," the gum one said. "That's her. That's actually her."

"Yeah." The shaved one was already buckling his belt. "She's got about an hour left in her. Maybe two. Vic wants her walking tomorrow, so — no marks above the collar." He pointed at Kara's throat, at the bruise the stocky man's rope had left. "That's already there. Don't add to it."

"What about below the collar," the gum one said.

"Below the collar's yours."

And then he left. Just — left. Walked out the door and pulled it shut behind him, and Dennis went with him, and Dave went with him, and the room was suddenly full of men Kara had never seen and empty of the ones who'd just been inside her, and that was somehow the part that made her hands start shaking. Not the four new ones. The door closing. The fact that the men who'd done it could just walk out and leave her to the next shift.

Paul was still by the door. He hadn't moved. He stood with his back against the wall and his hands in his pockets and he was looking at the floor, and the gum one glanced at him and said, "You staying?" and Paul said nothing, and the gum one shrugged and turned back to Kara.

"Get her on the floor," he said. "Desk's too high. I want to see her face."

They took her off the desk. Not roughly — that was the thing, none of them were rough about it, they handled her like furniture, two of them with a hand under each arm, and Kara's feet found the concrete and her knees folded and they let her go down. Her shoulder hit the floor first and then her hip, and the concrete was cold and gritty under her and she stayed where they put her, on her side, and then the gum one crouched down and rolled her onto her back with a hand on her hip.

"There," he said. He looked at her for a while. He had a wide flat face and a sunburn peeling across his nose and he was maybe nineteen. "You know who I am?"

Kara looked at him.

"No," she said. Her voice came out in pieces.

"Nobody does." He smiled. "That's the whole point."

He stood up and unzipped and the others closed in around her in a loose ring, and Kara watched the ceiling — not the seam this time, the light fixture, a long fluorescent tube with one dead fly inside the plastic cover — and let her eyes go there while the first of them knelt down between her legs.

It went on. That was all it did. It went on, and Kara lay on the concrete and let it, and the fluorescent tube stayed where it was and the fly stayed where it was and the bassline kept coming through the ceiling, and after a while she could tell the men apart by their sounds instead of their faces: the gum one was quiet and fast and finished first, and the phone one took his time and talked the whole way through it, a low running monologue she didn't listen to, and the one with the beer breath did what the beer breath said he'd do and then got up and got his cup and drank from it and sat on the edge of Vic's desk to watch the rest. The fourth one never touched her. He stood by the shelf with the framed photograph and watched, and cracked his knuckles, over and over, and said nothing at all.

And then the gum one came back.

He'd washed his hands somewhere — Kara could smell the soap on him when he crouched down, sharp and cheap and green — and he had a look on his face she hadn't seen yet. Not bored. Interested. The way a kid looks at a jar he's about to open.

"Okay," he said. "Hold her."

Hands took her wrists and pulled them up over her head again and pinned them to the concrete. Hands took her ankles and pulled her legs apart and held them open, wide, wider than they'd been, and Kara's hips tilted up off the floor with the pull and her lower back came down hard and she heard herself make a small sound and hated it. The gum one knelt between her legs and looked at her, at the place they were holding open, and he took his time about it, and Kara stared at the fluorescent tube and the dead fly and counted her own breaths and got to four before his hand touched her.

Two fingers first. Then three. He worked them in slow, watching her face the whole time, and Kara's body arched and clenched around him without her permission and her heels scrabbled on the concrete and found no purchase. Then he pulled them out and she heard the wet sound of it and she felt the air on her, cold, and she knew what was coming before he did it, and she turned her face to the side and pressed her cheek into the concrete and waited.

His thumb. Then his knuckles. He pushed four fingers into her and spread them, and Kara's whole body came off the floor — a bowstring, a locked arch, every muscle from jaw to heel — and the sound that came out of her was not a word. The gum one worked his hand in further, knuckle by knuckle, and the stretch was a burning line that ran from between her legs all the way up into her stomach, and her cunt clenched down on his wrist and couldn't close, and he said, "There it is. There she is," and the men holding her ankles laughed, and one of them said something Kara didn't hear, and the fourth one, the one by the shelf, cracked his knuckles again.

He fisted her slow. That was the worst of it. Slow, and steady, and he kept his eyes on her face the whole time, like he was reading something, and Kara's vision went white at the top and came back and went white again, and her mouth was open and her throat was making a sound she'd never made in her life, a long thin note that broke in the middle and started again. The concrete under her back had gone slick with sweat. Her heels drummed the floor. And the gum one watched her and worked his hand and said, quiet, almost kind, "Come on. You can take more than that. I seen the video."

She came. She didn't want to and it didn't matter — her body clenched down around his wrist and her back arched off the floor and her thighs shook against the hands holding them and she made a sound that was almost a sob, and the gum one laughed and pulled his hand out of her and held it up so the others could see, wet to the wrist, glistening under the fluorescent light, and the men around her made a noise like a crowd at a fight.

"Now," he said. "Somebody get the other thing."

The one with the beer cup set the cup down and went to a duffel bag on the floor by the shelf — Kara hadn't seen the bag before, it had been there the whole time — and came back with a length of black cord, thin, doubled. The gum one took it and knelt down beside Kara's head and looked at her, and Kara looked back at him, and for a second neither of them moved.

"I'm gonna do your tits now," he said. "You can say no."

Kara's mouth worked. "No," she said.

"Okay." He shrugged, and wrapped the cord around his knuckles, and reached down and took her left breast in his hand and squeezed it, hard, the way you'd test fruit, and Kara's breath went out of her and her back tried to come off the floor and the hands on her wrists held her down. He squeezed until her nipple stood up between his fingers and then he took the cord and looped it around the base of her breast and pulled it tight and knotted it, and the ache was instant and enormous, a deep burning pressure that pulsed with every beat of her heart, and Kara looked down her own body and saw her breast flushed dark and swollen and cinched, and something in her chest turned over.

He did the right one the same way. Tighter. He pulled the cord until the skin dimpled and Kara's nipple went hard and dark and she made a sound through her teeth, and then he sat back and looked at his work and said, "Yeah," and reached out and flicked her left nipple with his finger.

Kara screamed.

It was short and it was loud and it went up into the ceiling with the bassline, and the men around her laughed, and the gum one flicked the other one, and she screamed again, and then he took her whole breast in both hands and squeezed until she saw white and twisted, and the cord bit in and her vision went gray and came back and the fluorescent tube and the dead fly were still there, still there, still there. He bent down and took her nipple in his mouth and bit down — not hard enough to break skin, hard enough to make her hips come off the floor — and Kara's hands curled into fists above her head and her heels dug into the concrete and she did not beg, she did not beg, she said nothing at all.

When he sat up, her breasts were mottled red and purple above the cords and there were teeth marks on both nipples, and he looked at them and then at her face and then he reached down between her legs and pushed two fingers into her again, easy this time, and found her wet, and smiled.

"See," he said. "Told you."

He pulled his fingers out and wiped them on her thigh, and stood, and the ring of men closed in around her again, and somebody knelt down between her legs, and somebody else took her hair in his fist and turned her head to the side, and Kara lay on the cold concrete floor of Vic Marchetti's office with her breasts bound and burning and her body still shaking, and above her, through the ceiling, the concert was still going — a guitar solo she almost recognized, and then a crowd roar like water, and then the bassline, and then nothing but the bassline, and Kara watched the dead fly in the fluorescent tube and counted the men by their boots and waited for the next one to start.