Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

As soon as they had stolen into Nell's bunk room, Nell ran down the corridor and got to the elevators. As she awaited the elevator, she was more scared than she had ever been; the sight of the cruel red ribbons in the small hands of the girls had for some reason struck more terror into her heart than the sight of knives in the hands of Fists.

A shrill commotion arose from the bunk room.

The bell for the elevator sounded.

She heard the bunk room door fly open, and someone running down the hall.

The elevator door opened.

One of the girls came into the lobby, saw her, and shrieked something to the others in a dolphinlike squeal.

Nell got into the elevator, punched the button for the lobby, and held down the DOOR CLOSE button. The girl thought for a moment, then stepped forward to hold the door. Several more girls were running down the hall. Nell kicked the girl in the face, and she spun away in a helix of blood. The elevator door began to close. Just as the two doors were meeting in the center, through the narrowing slit she saw one of the other girls diving toward the wall button. The doors closed. There was a brief pause, and then they slid open again.

Nell was already in the correct stance to defend herself. If she had to beat each of the girls to death individually, she would do it. But none of them rushed the elevator. Instead, the leader stepped forward and aimed something at Nell. There was a little popping noise, a pinprick in Nell's midsection, and within a few seconds she felt her arms becoming impossibly heavy. Her bottom drooped. Her head bowed. Her knees buckled. She could not keep her eyes open; as they closed, she saw the girls coming toward her, smiling with pleasure, holding up the red ribbons. Nell could not move any part of her body, but she remained perfectly conscious as they tied her up with the ribbon. They did it slowly and methodically and perfectly; they did it every day of their lives.

The tortures of the next few hours were of a purely experimental and preliminary nature. They did not last for long and accomplished no permanent damage. These girls had made a living out of binding and torturing people in a way that didn't leave scars, and that was all they really knew. When the leader came up with the idea of shoving a cigarette into Nell's cheek, it was something entirely novel and left the rest of the girls startled and silent for a few minutes. Nell sensed that most of the girls had no stomach for such things and merely wanted to turn her over to the Fists in exchange for citizenship in the Celestial Kingdom.

The Fists themselves began to arrive some twelve hours later. Some of them wore conservative business suits, some wore the uniforms of the building's security force, others looked as if they'd arrived to take a girl out to a disco.

They all had things to do when they arrived. It was obvious that this suite would act as local headquarters of some sort when the rebellion began in earnest. They began to bring up supplies on the freight elevator and seemed to spend a lot of time on the telephone. More arrived every hour, until Madame Ping's suite was playing host to between one and two dozen. Some of them were very tired and dirty and went to sleep in the bunks immediately.

In a way, Nell wished that they would do whatever they were going to do and get it over with fast. But nothing happened for quite some time. When the first Fists arrived, the girls brought them in to see Nell, who had been shoved under a bed and was now lying there in a puddle of her own urine. The leader shone a light on her face briefly and then turned away, completely uninterested. It seemed that once he'd verified that the girls had done their bit for the revolution, Nell ceased to be relevant.

She supposed it was inevitable that, in due time, these men would take those liberties with her that have ever been claimed as angary by irregular fighting men, who have willfully severed themselves from the softening feminine influence of civilized society, with those women who have had the misfortune to become their captives. To make this prospect less attractive, she took the desperate measure of allowing her person to become tainted with the noisome issue of her natural internal processes. But most of the Fists were too busy, and when some of the grungy foot-soldier types arrived, Madame Ping's girls were eager to make themselves useful in this regard. Nell reflected that a bunch of soldiers who found themselves billeted in a bawdy-house would naturally arrive with certain expectations, and that the inmates would be unwise to disappoint them.