CHAPTER 3 - The Journey To Hell

Consciousness returned to Jezza like a slow-motion collision. First came the pain, a crushing headache that felt like her skull was being compressed in a vise. Then the nausea, rolling through her stomach in waves that made her want to curl into a ball. Finally came awareness, terrifying and complete.

The surface beneath her vibrated with mechanical precision, and her wrists burned where plastic restraints cut into her skin. The sound was unmistakable, a constant droning hum that could only mean one thing. She was on a plane.

Jezza's eyes snapped open, and panic crashed over her. The cargo hold was dimly lit, filled with shadows that seemed to move and breathe. She wasn't alone. Three other figures lay nearby, all women, all bound with the same plastic restraints, all wearing expressions of dawning horror.

"Welcome back, sleeping beauty." The voice came from a woman in her thirties with sharp Mediterranean features. "I'm Velmora Vasquez. My father owns half the oil wells in Venezuela, not that it matters anymore."

Jezza tried to speak, but her throat felt like sandpaper and nothing came out except a rasp.

"Don't try to talk yet, the drugs mess with your vocal cords." Velmora's voice carried the hollow efficiency of someone forcing herself to stay functional through terror. "I've been awake for six hours now, so I've had time to figure some things out. We're on a private jet, been in the air for about eight hours based on the fuel stops. Heading southeast, judging by the sun position when they loaded us."

"Southeast where?" The voice came from another woman, younger, with a crisp British accent. "I'm Camille Morrison. My family owns Morrison Shipping, for whatever that's worth now."

"Australia, most likely." Velmora's voice went grim. "That's where most of these operations end up. Remote, easy to control the borders, and plenty of wealthy clients who pay premium prices for educated women."

The word hit Jezza like a physical blow. She looked down at herself and realized her engagement ring was gone. Her designer dress had been replaced with generic gray clothes that smelled of industrial detergent. Everything that had marked her as Jezza Clarksville, heiress to the Phantom Tech fortune, had been stripped away like it never existed.

"How?" Jezza's voice came out as a croak. "How did they get all of us?"

"Different ways," said the third woman, who looked barely eighteen. "I'm Anya, from Moscow. My father is in government. They took me from a nightclub, told security I was drunk and needed medical attention. Nobody questioned men in uniforms."

"Private party for me," Camille added bitterly. "My own engagement party, actually. One minute I was dancing with my fiancé, the next I woke up in the back of a van with a needle mark in my arm."

Velmora's laugh held no humor. "Charity gala in my case. I was giving a speech about funding women's shelters. The irony isn't lost on me."

Jezza closed her eyes as fragments of memory started coming back. The champagne that had tasted wrong. Alex's face hovering over her as she collapsed. Margaret's voice saying something, but the words were jumbled and confused in her drugged mind.

"My stepmother," she whispered. "And my fiancé. They planned this together."

"Family makes the best enemies," Velmora said softly. "My uncle set me up. Promised me a business meeting that would secure my independence from my father. Instead, he sold me to pay off his own debts. Blood means nothing when money's involved."

The plane began its descent, and with it went Jezza's last hopes that this was some terrible nightmare she'd wake up from. Through a small porthole, she could see endless red earth stretching to the horizon, broken only by occasional scrub brush. Australia. The other side of the world from everything she'd ever known.

"Listen to me, all of you." Velmora's voice took on urgency as the plane's engines changed pitch. "Whatever happens next, whatever they do to us, you have to remember who you are. They're going to try to break us, to make us forget our names, our families, our worth. Don't let them take that."

"What if we can't stop them?" Anya's voice was barely above a whisper.

Velmora met each of their eyes in turn, and something fierce burned in her expression. "Then we survive long enough to make them pay. Every single one of them."

---

The plane touched down with a jarring impact that rattled Jezza's already aching bones. Through the porthole, she could see a small airstrip surrounded by nothing but scrubland and razor wire. No other planes, no terminal, no signs of civilization beyond a cluster of prefabricated buildings that looked more like a military compound than an airport.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the cargo hold, followed by voices speaking in clipped, professional tones that made Jezza's blood run cold.

"Four packages for processing. Documentation says they're medical transports, psychiatric patients being transferred to a private facility."

"Understood. We'll handle intake from here. Your payment's already cleared."

The cargo door opened, flooding the space with harsh sunlight and furnace-hot air that stole the breath from Jezza's lungs. Three men entered wearing generic security uniforms that could belong to any medical transport company, but their eyes held the cold efficiency of people who'd done this many times before.

"Ladies, we're going to make this simple." The leader had an Australian accent and scars that suggested military background. "You can walk to the transport vehicle, or we can carry you. Either way, you're going to your new home. But I promise you'll prefer walking."

Velmora was the first to struggle to her feet, her movements stiff but defiant. "Where are you taking us?"

"Somewhere you can get the help you need." His smile never reached his eyes. "All of you have been diagnosed with severe psychiatric disorders. Paranoid delusions, violent tendencies, danger to yourselves and others. Your families were very concerned about your deteriorating mental states."

"That's a lie!" Camille struggled against her restraints. "My father would never commit me to anything. He doesn't even believe in therapy!"

"Your father signed the commitment papers himself, love." The man produced a tablet and swiped through official-looking documents. "Said you'd become increasingly unstable, talking about conspiracy theories and claiming people were trying to hurt you. All very sad, but treatable with proper care and medication."

Jezza stared at the screen as he turned it toward them. She recognized her own signature on forms she'd never seen, her father's signature too, and her stepmother's elegant handwriting authorizing her indefinite commitment to a facility called Riverside Recovery Center. The forgeries were perfect, down to the slight tremor in her father's hand that came from his arthritis.

"Now then, let's get you ladies settled in your new home."

The walk to the waiting van felt like a funeral march. Each step across the scorching tarmac took them further from any hope of rescue, deeper into a nightmare that was becoming more real with every breath of the Australian heat. The compound ahead was surrounded by three layers of fencing, each topped with razor wire that glinted in the harsh sunlight. Guard towers punctuated the perimeter at regular intervals, their spotlights dark in the daylight but promising constant surveillance through the night.

"Welcome to Riverside," their escort announced as they passed through the final checkpoint. The gate's electronic lock engaged behind them with a sound like a coffin closing. "Your home for as long as it takes to cure what ails you."

As Jezza watched the gate seal shut behind them, she realized Velmora had been wrong about one thing. This wasn't about wealthy clients paying premium prices. This was about making them disappear completely, erasing them from the world as thoroughly as if they'd never existed.

---

The intake process was designed to strip away more than just their clothes and belongings. Every personal item, every reminder of their former lives, was catalogued and removed with systematic efficiency. Jezza watched helplessly as they took her mother's necklace, the one piece of jewelry she'd worn every day since her mother's death.

"Please," she begged the intake officer, a woman whose uniform identified her as Medical Staff but whose demeanor suggested military training. "It was my mother's. She's dead, and that's all I have left of her. It doesn't have any value except to me."

"Your mother's dead because you killed her, 47." The woman didn't even look up from her clipboard. "According to your medical file, you've been having violent delusions about matricide since age sixteen. The necklace is a trigger object that reinforces your psychotic episodes."

"That's not true! My mother died in a car accident when I was eight years old!"

The woman finally looked up, her eyes flat and emotionless. "Are you contradicting your official medical records, 47? Because that kind of argumentative behavior suggests your medication dosage needs immediate adjustment."

The number hit Jezza like a slap. She wasn't Jezza Clarksville anymore. She was 47, a number on a clipboard, a problem to be managed and medicated into compliance.

Velmora, now designated as 23, caught Jezza's eye from across the processing room where another officer was cataloguing her belongings. Her expression carried a message clearer than words could convey. Remember who you are. Don't let them take that too.

But as they were led to their cells, individual concrete boxes with a cot, a toilet, and nothing else, Jezza wondered how long anyone could hold onto their identity in a place designed to systematically destroy it. The door slammed shut behind her with the sound of her former life ending, and in the darkness that followed, she began to understand that dying might have been kinder than what they had planned for her instead.

She pressed her back against the cold concrete wall and tried to remember her father's face, her mother's laugh, the feeling of safety she'd taken for granted her entire life. But already, the memories felt distant and unreal, like they belonged to someone else entirely.

In the silence of her cell, Jezza made herself a promise. No matter what they did to her, no matter how they tried to break her, she would remember. She would survive. And someday, somehow, she would make every single person who put her here pay for what they'd done.

The thought was small and fragile, barely more than a whisper in the dark. But it was hers, and they couldn't take it away.