Renata was still wearing the yellow butterfly accessory, which meant she was still in her probationary period right after finishing a punishment. If she was caught making a mistake again this time—or discovered sneaking into Ward Zero once more—the punishment awaiting her would be far from as simple as just three days in solitary confinement.
Perhaps she would forever lose the right to step out of her room; perhaps she would spend the rest of her life just like Ward Zero, locked in a straitjacket on a hard, cold iron bed; perhaps she might even be driven out into the freezing white ice sheets of the outside world... But what awaited her would not be a mere struggle for survival on her own. The ice fields outside were crowded with sentries and patrolling soldiers, men accustomed to the desolate Far North who seemed insatiably hungry for women, sparing not even children...
Renata could not imagine what kind of punishment she would face this time. There had never been a precedent here of a child committing a fault and receiving a secondary punishment after wearing the yellow butterfly accessory. Renata could already picture how the white-clad nurses would storm into Ward Zero in a moment, how the Head Nurse leading them would roar at her with a fierce and murderous look, perhaps stunning her with an electric baton before injecting sedatives directly into the veins of her neck—that was exactly how they had treated Ward Zero last time! This time, even if Ward Zero tried to disgu…
Chapter 682