December, nineteen ninety-eight, somewhere in Europe.

  They were coming.

  She wanted to break free, but she knew it wouldn't do any good. They'd bring her right back again. Aulikki's friends had been disappearing one by one—friends might have been too strong a word, actually. She'd call them associates, living companions at best. They watched each other's backs, but other than that, there was no warmth, only fear. They lived together, and naturally built up some kind of group bond, but it was purely for self-protection.

  Every girl in there was afraid when they'd come, and today, they were coming for her. Likki wasn't sure how she knew it was her turn, but she did.

  Likki cursed herself every day for getting taken. She knew she was getting older, knew they'd be keeping an eye out for her. She was exactly the type they always wanted, the best they could sell. In some weird way, she felt pride at that—she was wanted, even if only by some sick men with horrible perversions.

  But she'd messed up. She'd been heading home, carefully tracing her steps as always, but she hadn't checked every street. They were waiting for her. Likki was certain someone else on her street had given her up.

  There was no way they could have found the entrance to her newest living space. She was so careful, so meticulous about making sure nobody ever followed her. Only the few other people on her street, normally all trustworthy, could even hint as to where it was hidden. They'd caught her just outside, preparing for the jumps and gaps it took just to get in.

  She wondered if anyone would ever find it, on a tiny ledge stuffed between two buildings, high in the air, warmed by the outflow of a building's ventilation. It even had power. She'd managed to gather a nice collection over the last few years, ever since she'd fled from her original home on the other end of Helsinki. She even had a miniature refrigerator and a cooking stove, leeching off an outlet in the side of the building from a carefully concealed extension cord she'd taken out of a hardware store. It was the perfect little home for her, high above the world where she could watch everyone.

  Likki wondered if she should have gone back across the city. It would have been painful, but… maybe she wouldn't have been taken.

  The door banged open. Men walked in, masked in black. The other girls in the room shrank back, but they zeroed in on Likki… exactly as she expected.

  She tensed up. They could try, but they weren't going to take her without a fight.

  In her hands behind her back, Likki held the rusty nails she'd pried out of the wall. She clutched them between her knuckles, waiting. The men walked across the room, which suddenly seemed impossibly long and narrow. They kept coming, as a wall filling the whole space, and every step took an eternity. Likki waited, and waited… and waited.

  The first man was close enough.

  She leapt forward, not a sound escaping her lips, and plunged her fist into his chest. The nails pierced his clothes and sunk deep into his skin.

  "Kurat!" Shit!

  He tried to shove her away, but she was already moving. Likki withdrew her hand, and to her relief, the nail heads were strong enough that she could pull them out easily. Blood dripped from the ends, but her grip was still tight.

  To her surprise, the other men simply laughed. The one she'd stabbed was raging, still making swings at her as if drunk, but the rest simply seemed amused. Likki didn't really understand, but she didn't care. As long as none of them got near her, they could laugh all they wanted.

  The first man shouted some long string of Estonian she couldn't quite understand. Something about his companions and being a bunch of assholes, but his accent was too thick for her. The rest of them calmed down, though they obviously weren't taking their friend seriously. The largest of the group—and therefore the leader, by the usual standards of brutes like them—pointed at Likki.

  "Tule meile. Nüüd." Follow us. Now.

  Likki shook her head. She wouldn't speak aloud to them either. Her hands were still at the ready, nails extended like claws. If anyone came close, she'd take them down.

  The first man growled incomprehensibly and rushed her again. Likki ducked under his wild punch and struck again, right in his stomach. The nails raked lines of blood across his skin. He grunted in pain and backed away.

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  The other men weren't laughing anymore. They were watching. The man took another swing at Likki, which she dodged yet again. He was a terrible fighter, relying only on strength. Likki could take down a man that stupid any day of the week without breaking a sweat. The nails found their way into his arm this time, as he desperately tried to block. She lost one of them, but still had more than enough nails to spare and keep him at bay.

  "Lopettaa." Stop.

  Something about his tone made Likki look up. The leader had drawn a gun, and was pointing it at one of the cowering girls in the corner. He stared Likki in the eyes. The girl was too afraid to move or fight back, and they both knew it. He didn't need to say anything. Everybody understood what he was threatening.

  But he made one mistake. Likki wasn't friends with any of these girls.

  The man in front of her was still distracted. Likki stepped forward and slammed her knee into his groin. As he dropped low, her fist slammed into his face.

  He crumpled, right at the same time the leader fired his gun. Everyone in the room winced at the burst of pressure on their ears. A few of the other girls shrieked.

  The cowering girl collapsed, one bullet square in her brain.

  Likki didn't budge a muscle. She didn't know these other girls. She wasn't part of this group. She'd only lived on that side of town for a year, and never made any friends, or even anything close to friends. These weren't her people—if she even had people.

  The leader looked surprised at her lack of reaction. He hesitated, then lowered the gun. The other two men from the original group of four were watching the one on the ground bleed out. One of them made a sick joke, and the other made a face. The leader shrugged, and fired the gun again.

  The man on the ground stopped groaning.

  "Sa võitled hästi," said the leader, with a vaguely impressed look on his face. You fight well.

  She wasn't sure what he was trying to say. The leader gestured his two men away, and asked her to follow. Likki did, cautiously, with the nails still in her hands. They didn't seem to be taking her anymore, not like they did the other girls. She still had her weapons, for one. It might be a trap, but anything was better than the dark room, with its pale green walls and the fresh corpse on the carpet.

  Likki wondered if they were going to clean it up.

  They went into another room in the building, much better lit, and with comfortable chairs and blankets. Likki was offered coffee, which she declined, and then hot chocolate, which she cautiously accepted. She drank it one-handed, still on her feet in the corner with the nails held tight in her other.

  The leader sat down at a small table and began to explain. They were members of an Estonian organization born out of the collapse of the Soviet Union, now looking to expand their operations further west. She'd been picked up and sold to them straight out of Helsinki by the Russians, and she was to be moved out today and put on the market.

  Likki shook her head. "Kukaan ei omista minua." Nobody owns me.

  The man nodded. He agreed with her. In fact, he wanted her to be an enforcer for them, rather than working a bed or getting sold to a high-profile client. After seeing her able to take out a much larger man with ease, he was impressed.

  She hesitated. She told him she wouldn't do anything like what the Russians had done to her. No kidnapping girls off the streets. He agreed, again to her surprise. They would use her to protect shipments, retrieve lost items, whatever else needed doing. He felt she'd be far more valuable to them out there, especially since she seemed "cold as the ice on the street outside".

  Likki didn't agree with him. She knew he thought that because she hadn't stopped him from killing the other girl, but it wasn't because she didn't care. Likki hadn't protected her because she knew the other girl was dead already. They would have killed her, or she would have been sold off and killed later. Likki had a chance, but the other girl didn't. Stopping for her sake would simply get them both killed.

  If that made her cold, so be it.

  She finished her hot chocolate before answering, just in case they were going to take it away. After she agreed, the man escorted her—without touching her, nor letting any of the other men near her—down to an armory. He told her to pick out a weapon, and they'd teach her to use it. Anything that caught her eye was hers, if she worked for them.

  Likki browsed, but nothing stuck out. There were pistols, knives, even a sword stuck in a corner. But, at the end of the row, Likki found a wooden rifle. The brown stock reminded her of the tree, the one she'd slept under back home. Carefully, she picked it up off the rack and examined it.

  For a moment, she wondered if it was armed, but the man quickly explained it wasn't. If she wanted to kill him, she'd have to use her nails again. Likki didn't react, so he continued to explain. The rifle was actually from Finland, which made her feel a little bit better—Finland, in her mind, was far better than Estonia or Russia, or anywhere else they were going to take her. It was called an M/28-30, and it was a little old-fashioned, but it still did its job—it killed people.

  She took it off the rack and held it up, like she'd seen in an American show once in an electronics store window. It felt right, pressing into her shoulder, with her eye tracing the lines of the rifle all the way down to the tip of the metal barrel.

  "Tämä on minun," she said, the first words she'd spoken since agreeing to the work, back in the other room. This is mine.

  The man raised his eyebrows, but Likki ignored him. No matter what he, or anyone else said, that rifle was hers, and would be forever from that day. She'd take care of it, she'd keep it safe, and she'd use it well. She'd protect it, and in return, it would protect her.

  They left shortly after, and got into a truck that pulled away from the compound into the deep snow. Night was already falling, since it was so late in the year. Glancing around, she didn't see any street signs, or really any sign of where they were in the world. All she knew was that they weren't in Finland anymore, according to the man driving the truck. Likki looked up out of the window, the rifle across her lap in the back seat, and gazed into the sky.

  She found her star, and wished for her, just as she had last year and the year before—that this December would be better than the one before it.