The Liberty Box Trilogy

by C. A. Gray

  The light was gray and washed out, filtering through the frosted windowpanes that were cracked and moldy at the edges. Jackson was still asleep beside me, which was a first. I thought he always rose before everybody else. I studied his face for a few seconds, memorizing every curve and line—delaying the inevitable. The moment I got out of bed, the day would have to start.

  But at last I picked up the blue dress he’d given me and went to the little bathroom again. I’d found some toothpaste in the nasty house, which tasted off—I wasn’t sure whether toothpaste could go rancid or not; if it could, this stuff had definitely done it. But it was better than nothing, and I wanted to feel as fresh for today as possible. I stripped off my clothes and used the bar of soap and the little sink to wash as much of myself and my hair as I could. Since everyone was still asleep, I figured I’d have time to let it air-dry before we left for the studio.

  If only I had some makeup, I thought. Not that it really mattered, but I would like to look like myself on camera, today of all days.

  Someone knocked on the door. I quickly put my clothes back on, rinsed the soap out of my hair and wrung it out over the sink. Then I opened the door a crack. It was my dad.

  “Morning Katie,” he whispered. “I have a surprise for you.” I looked down: he held a cracked ceramic mug filled with steaming hot liquid, and I could smell the pungent aroma of coffee. In my former life, everyone knew how obsessed I was with coffee, but I hadn’t had any since the day I received the comm that Will had been killed.

  “How did you—?” I started to ask as I took it from him.

  “It’s nothing special, it’s just instant,” he said. “Found it in the house, and I took a mug too.”

  “But how did you heat the water?”

  “Magic,” he said, his eyes twinkling. As I sipped, he leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Actually there’s a little kitchenette with a tea kettle, believe it or not.”

  I closed my eyes and savored the flavor. The old me would have been much too snobby to drink it, but now even instant coffee was an unbelievable luxury.

  “Come on,” Dad whispered, “let’s go chat in the kitchenette until the others wake up.”

  “Is it within ten feet?” I whispered, concerned.

  “No, but it’s within twenty, so I’ll take the signal disruptor with me and put it in the middle between us and them,” he held it up. I followed him, and he set the disruptor on the floor between the sleeping arrangements and the kitchenette. In the tiny room, there were white plastic chairs, and, of all things, a can of sardines.

  “Breakfast of champions,” Dad grinned at me, pulling the tab. “I think there’s enough for us each to have two.” He shoved the can in my direction, and watched as I ate, washing down every bite with coffee. At last he pointed to the room where we’d slept.

  “So when did that happen?” he asked.

  I knew he meant Jackson. “Last night,” I said honestly.

  “Looks like it had been a long time coming, though?”

  I smiled and nodded. Then my smile abruptly faded at the thought of Will. “I—broke up with Will as soon as I realized how I felt about Jackson. I just didn’t know how he felt about me until last night.”

  My dad nodded back, solemn. “Will is a good guy,” he said. “But he never did seem right for you somehow. He was right for who you… seemed to be, I suppose. After you got back from McCormick, you were never really you again.”

  “But—but you and Mom sent me there! You wanted them to make me into something different! You wanted me to be less rebellious—”

  Dad reached out a hand and put it on my forearm. “Katie. Do you know how it’s possible to want one thing on one level, but then when you get it, you never feel quite right about it? That’s how that was for me.” He looked at the hand on my arm. “I don’t quite know how to explain this, and I don’t know if it’ll help if I do. But I want to try. Katie, I thought—I thought we were happy. I did. I didn’t question the messages, and I believed what I saw and what I was told. When Will was supposedly killed, and when you disappeared, of course I was worried sick. But there was something else nagging at me, and I realized it had always been there. Always. It was like…” He shook his head. “It was like being in the middle of a dream, yet being aware that you’re dreaming at the same time. Do you know what I mean?”

  I nodded, stacking my hand over his on my forearm.

  “Then when you showed up at our house two days ago…” He stopped. “Wow, was that really only two days ago? It feels like a lifetime.” It took him a moment to regain his train of thought. “When you showed up, it was like… I woke up. But I fought it still, because I didn’t want it to be true. I don’t know if that makes sense either. But sometimes when you’re confronted with an unpleasant truth, you react even more strongly than if you still believed the lie.” He squeezed my arm, and turned pleading eyes on me. “What I’m trying to say, Katie, is that I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You saw the truth when you were little, and instead of believing you… we sent you to McCormick. The girl we got back wasn’t our little girl anymore. I knew it, but I didn’t want to know it. And then when you came to our house and you had that signal disruptor with you, and Charlie believed you too… it felt the same. I knew, but I didn’t want to know. So we called the agents on you. All of this is our fault—my fault,” he amended. “If I’d told your mother we weren’t going to call the agents this time, then we wouldn’t have, no matter what she said. So I have to take the responsibility. If I hadn’t done it, you never would have been arrested. We wouldn’t be on the run right now.” He hung his head. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

  I set my chipped mug down and threw my arms around him, now crying in earnest.

  “I forgive you,” I whispered as I pulled away, wiping my cheeks. Now I was glad I wasn’t wearing makeup. “Not sure if I forgive Mom, though.”

  “Your mother…” Dad trailed off. “There’s a lot of your mother in you, Katie.”

  “There is not!”

  “There is,” he insisted. “You both have the same stubborn streak, you just apply it differently. Once you got it into your head that things were a certain way, you closed your mind to all possibilities to the contrary. It took brainwashing to convince you otherwise.” He smiled wistfully. “Your mother had absolutely decided that what the Potentate said was gospel. She was open to no evidence to the contrary, no matter how strong. It was impossible to reason with her, short of the barrel of a gun to her head.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t see how that’s like me at all.”

  Now Dad gave me a genuine smile. “But you’re doing it right now,” he said. “You don’t want it to be true, so you’re not even listening to me. Do you know how similar you were to her from the time you got back from McCormick to the time you disappeared? You worshipped the ground that the Potentate walked on. That and your beauty got you on camera at twenty-two years of age! The same quality of stubbornness can work in either direction.” My scowl deepened, and Dad laughed. “That whole wilting violet thing your mother did yesterday? A lot of that was shock, I grant you. But you used to act like that too, you know. Like you were incapable of doing anything for yourself. Used to drive Charlie crazy, because everybody knew it was an act, except you. I couldn’t believe how tough you are now.” He beamed at me. “But this finally feels like the real you. The girl I lost all those years ago—she’s back.” He turned around and pointed in the main part of the warehouse. “And that guy in there sees you for who you really are. I like that about him.”

  I smiled. “Ha. Yeah. That, and the fact that he saved all our lives.”

  “That helps, too.” Dad grinned back. He patted my hand, and the smile faded. “As much as I don’t want you to have to do this today, Katie, I just want you to know that I’m proud of you. I think you’re doing the right thing.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I whispered.

  We were all silent
on the drive to the broadcasting studio, except for when I gave Charlie directions. We resumed our positions in the car: Charlie driving, me riding shotgun, my parents and Jackson in the backseat. Jackson reached up and held my hand openly this time. I clung to him like a life raft.

  “This is it,” I said, pointing to an industrial-looking building with antennas on the top. I was a little surprised at the contrast between my memory of the glamorous studio I’d toured a few times, and this place. Everything was gray for blocks and blocks. I only recognized the building by the street names, and the antennas.

  “What a ghetto,” Charlie muttered. He turned to our dad. “I’ll leave the engine running and the car in park so you guys can make a quick getaway.” We’d agreed that our parents would come in to the studio with us initially before we started broadcasting, because they had the signal disruptor. Clearly it didn’t work on everyone, but it worked on some people, and nothing could lend credence to our story like the window of reality the signal disruptor offered. Charlie told Dad, “When you guys come back down, you can take the car over to the service station there.” He pointed to a boarded up gas station a block from the studio, close enough that we could all run to it.

  “Hold on,” said Jackson as we all reached for the door handles. “Before we do this—everybody needs to stop and breathe.”

  “I just want to get this over with,” Charlie muttered. My mom let out a little whimper.

  “I know,” said Jackson, “but we’re all in fight-or-flight mode right now, and we don’t necessarily want to do either one. We just want to go in there and have a reasonable conversation. So let’s get centered first.”

  He led us in a few deep breaths, counting to eight as we breathed in and out. Honestly I wasn’t even listening to him. I felt impatient to get in there, too.

  “Kate,” he said pointedly. Apparently he could tell. “We’re about to be without the signal disruptor, and last time that happened, you saw what they wanted you to see. Remember?”

  “No, I didn’t! I—” I stopped. I’d been thinking of the dungeon. But I had thought the bullets on the roof of the Potentate’s palace were real.

  “The only defense you’re going to have in there is your own mind,” Jackson reminded me. “For that, you’ve got to be focused.”

  He really could be so annoying sometimes.

  “Fine,” I muttered, and forced myself to breathe in and out as Jackson counted. As he did, I played out scenarios in my mind of how the interaction might go with each person we’d meet along the way: Candice at the front desk; Grant and Michael and Henrietta in the studio itself. The rest of the staff would probably do whatever they did. Grant had asked me out once, before he knew I was dating Will—and even afterwards, I could tell he always had a crush on me. I might be able to use that to my advantage. Henrietta was the local anchor in Greensborough, and she’d practically hero-worshipped me. Michael was a bit more of a tough cookie; it was hard to make him smile. I was never sure where I stood with him, but I was pretty sure nobody else knew either.

  “All right,” Jackson said. “Let’s go.”

  I opened my eyes. Charlie left the car idling and we walked up to the filthy glass door together. Without discussing it, I took the lead, and walked in first. I saw Candice’s eyes pop, and she did a double take.

  “Kate Brandeis!” she breathed.

  I forced my face into a smile. “Hi Candice. We’d like an audience with—”

  She sucked in a breath, ignoring me. “Is that… Jackson MacNamera?”

  I’d lost her. She stood up and backed away from her desk, her eyes never leaving Jackson’s face.

  “Don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me!” she begged, her hands in the air. “I’ll—I’ll do whatever you want, just please…”

  “We’re not here to hurt you, Candice,” Jackson said, holding his hands in the air too in the universal sign of peace. “We’re not here to hurt anyone. You’ve been lied to about us. We’re only here to set the record straight.”

  “Hey,” Charlie cut in, waving to get Candice’s attention. “Do you notice anything different about this place, since we’ve walked in?” He swept his finger around the room.

  Candice looked confused as well as terrified. “N-no,” she said. “Different?”

  Charlie sighed. This certainly would have been easier, had Candice been ripe for convincing. But apparently she wasn’t.

  “Candice,” I said again, “we’re going to use the broadcasting studio. If you’d like to help us, that would be wonderful. If not—”

  “Please don’t hurt me!” Candice begged, her arms over her head now.

  “We’re not going to hurt you!” I said, exasperated. “If you promise not to alert anyone that we are here, you’re free to go.” I turned to Jackson. “Right?”

  He nodded, and walked past Candice as if she’d given us the go-ahead. The rest of us followed him. I glanced back and saw that she was still frozen in place, staring after us.

  “That went well,” Charlie muttered.

  Normally when I walked in to this studio, I wore heels which click-clacked on the gleaming black tiles polished to a high sheen, reflecting back the track lighting on the way to the glass elevators. This time, my filthy sneakers smudged dirt on the cheap linoleum, and bare lightbulbs illuminated the path to an elevator that looked like it might decide to stop working at any second.

  “Let’s take the stairs,” I murmured.

  I’d never been in the stairwell in this building before, but I felt trapped when the heavy door on a spring shut behind us. In here there were no lights at all.

  “I don’t like this…” whimpered my mother.

  “Shh, it’ll be all right, honey,” whispered my father.

  I climbed to the second floor, and could barely make out the door when we came to it and pushed it open. Then I led the way down the hall, covered with threadbare carpet, to the studio on the left.

  Grant and Michael were both in there with their backs turned to us, probably editing something. I cleared my throat.

  Michael turned around first. His face was impassive as ever, but he raised his eyebrows. That was about as much surprise as we were likely to get from him.

  “What the—?” Grant murmured, his back still to us. That had to mean the appearance of the room had changed for him, once we came in range. He turned around too, and blinked at me.

  “Kate?”

  “Hi,” I said, and held up my hands. “Before you freak out, please just let me explain.”

  Chapter 37: Kate

  Grant and Michael called the rest of their crew into the studio at Jackson’s insistence, so that we’d only have to tell our story once. I did most of the talking, since I was the one they all knew. I could tell that the signal disruptor was only working on about a quarter of them. But when Jackson said the others were free to go if they wished, nobody moved.

  “You aren’t… going to kill us?” ventured one middle-aged woman named Janice. I thought I remembered seeing her once before, working in production.

  “Not if you don’t try to kill us first,” said Jackson. “We don’t want to hurt anybody.”

  As the majority of the group moved uncertainly to leave, Michael announced, “Any one of you who leaves here and calls the agents on us won’t have a job tomorrow, and I’ll make sure you never work in this industry again! Don’t think I won’t know who did it, either.”

  I smiled at Michael as they left. “Thanks,” I said.

  He didn’t smile back. “Kid, I didn’t know it till now, but I’ve been waiting for the chance to film this broadcast for years.”

  I cleared my throat and shouted to the remaining skeleton crew, “You all see the change in the room here, right? It looks different to you than when you got here this morning?” Everyone who stayed nodded, and I said, “Well, it’s because of the signal disruptor my parents have. They’re going to be leaving shortly and you'll likely see everything g
o back to the way it was. I just wanted to warn you.” Some of them looked confused, but they would have been even more confused if I hadn’t told them what to expect.

  Michael gave me a curt nod. Then he signaled to Maryanne, the makeup artist, and pointed to me. “Do something with her face, with you?”

  Under different circumstances I might have been offended by his phrasing, but I’d been in this industry long enough to know that he was right. Passable in real life still looked horrible on camera. I glanced at Jackson, who was over with Charlie and Grant as Grant taught them both about the technical side of broadcasting that I’d never bothered to learn anything about. Jackson caught my eye and winked, and I tried to give him a brave smile. Then he gestured with his head to my mom and dad. My mom was hugging herself, her eyes darting around the room like a frightened animal. I cleared my throat and walked over to them.

  “You guys go on,” I said, hugging my mom first, and then my dad. “We’ll catch up. It will probably take us an hour here, maybe two. Depends on whether they’re just going live, or whether we’re recording and editing.”

  Dad said, “If we don’t see you in two hours, we’ll come looking.” He kissed the top of my head and put his arm around my mom. Nobody even noticed them as they left the room.

  As I turned away from my parents, Maryanne signaled to me to come over to where she stood so she could start working on my makeup. But as I made my way over to her, with a flash, the cracked plastic folding chair became plush leather again, and the stick-on mirror became a full vanity. I stopped walking. Maryanne herself had transformed: from a wraith to a buxom, rosy-cheeked beauty.

  At the same moment, Maryanne herself froze, looking around the studio in shock. She shook her head once, like she was trying to hit a reset button. I sat down in the chair.

  “You weren’t kidding,” Maryanne muttered to me.

  “It’s still possible for us to see the truth without the signal disruptor,” I told her. “Now we just have to work at it.”