The morning arrived with all the subtlety of a knife between the ribs. Light, pale and institutional, crept through blinds that had been designed by someone who hated joy, pressing itself against the walls of a room that smelled of antiseptic and money.

It was a hospital room, though calling it such would be generous. The ceiling was twelve feet high, white as bone, and the machines clustered around the bed hummed with a quiet authority that suggested they were far more advanced than anything a mortal physician might prescribe. An IV line snaked from a chrome stand to the back of a small, elegant hand. The hand was Bijou's.

The young woman lying in the bed was Bijou Shaw. Or rather, had been, for six months, and would remain until death or something more dramatic intervened. Before that, she had been Amber-Lynn Benson, née Creed, who had been Cherry Bomb, who had been a girl whose father taught her to kill before she could read, and who had then been kidnapped and broken and rebuilt by a man who considered himself a king.

Six months. Six months of whispered commands at three in the morning. Six months of learning to curtsy, to speak French, to hold a champagne flute so that it caught the light. Six months of being told that the woman she had been was dead, and that the woman she now was was infinitely better.

And yet, when those black eyes looked down at her from their throne of designer tailoring and cold satisfaction, something deep beneath the programming stirred. Not enough to surface. Not yet. But enough to know that whatever she had been before, she had not asked for this.

You remember nothing. Total tabula rasa. No memory, whatsoever. You don't know who he is, who you are, or what you're doing here.