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She lay on the floor. There was nowhere else for her to lie down, the strangely spacious but very cold cell she had woken in had of no furniture of any kind. Nothing but the door made of steel bars at one end and a grate over a drain in the center of the white tiled floor. Across from her through the bars she could see another woman who had not moved even once since she had awoken. As a shriek of pain sounded in the distance Coleen found herself envying her. To not fear to learn what type of hell to which she had been brought to seemed like the greatest gift one could receive.

Coleen stretched her legs to ease out the cramping that had plagued her since she woke. The chill had seeped into her flesh leaving her legs so tortured that she could not even stand and walk confines of the cell to warm herself.

Her legs, she had always been proud of them. She had always been proud of all of her looks if she was honest with herself and here in this brightly lit, stark, cold place she found herself unable to be anything but honest with herself. Her mother had always said she looked the very image of a pre-Collapse actress, Hallie Berrett or something like that. Even if Coleen hadn't recognized the name or even had the smallest clue of what the woman had looked like she still took pride in that fact. Coleen snorted a laugh now, pride in the having the looks of a famous woman long dead. No movie stars in these new days, you need movies to have those.

In the distance, but closer this time came another shriek. Long, drawn out and filled with mortal fear. Coleen gasped and cupped her ears with her hands, wishing she was deaf, wishing she was somewhere else. Wishing for anything that wasn't this place of misery where ever, whatever it was. The shriek stopped. Coleen breathed again and rather than dwell on what the next moment might hold for her dropped once more into memory.

She was just old enough to remember the fear around the Collapse. All of six years old she remembered her parents hoarding food. Her mother gathering together their most treasured and valuable possessions. Her father practicing with his old army service revolver, the same one his own father had carried through a in the twentieth century.

Her mother had told her much later that at first everyone thought the worst had been side stepped. The bombs didn't fall. The troops didn't move out from their bases. Humanity had dodged another bullet and the U.S. and Chinese premiers were hailed as heroes.

No-one it seemed

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