Sector 27- Assignment

by J J Pasinella

  Caleb sat at the metal table in the center of his room inside the resistance base. Alice had just left to go grab them something to eat and it was quiet. Occasionally he would hear children laughing from down the hall, footsteps shuffling here and there on the other side of his closed door. But inside the room was calm, stillness. He stared at a blank piece of paper he had laying neatly in front of him on the surface of the table. It was difficult for him to come up with the words he wanted to write down on it. He didn’t have much time, Alice would be back soon with their dinner, so he needed to come up with something quickly. “Alice, if you’re reading this …” the letter began. After a little while he put his pen down, folded the paper several times and put it in his lab coat pocket.

  The silence was broken as the door swung open and Alice entered the room, closing it behind her. “Okay,” she said, “they had some more of your favorites … beans, and different kinds of veggies.”

  Caleb watched her as she walked across the room toward the table where he remained sitting. He softly smiled at her and said, “Great, you know I love my beans. Thanks, Alice.”

  Alice sat down at the table and stared into Caleb’s eyes. “Hey, are you alright?” she asked, “It seems like something’s been on your mind lately.”

  Caleb looked up from his food and said, “Yeah, I’m fine. A little on edge about tomorrow, that’s all.”

  “So it’s not just me?” she replied, “I’m kind of relieved to hear you say that. I thought I was the only one who was nervous.”

  Caleb smiled. “We’ll be fine as long as we stick to the plan and are careful.”

  After several silent moments, Caleb finished eating his food and said, “I need to go see someone real quick Alice. I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay,” she replied, “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

  Caleb stood up from the table and walked out into the hallway, shutting the door carefully behind him. He made his way down the hallway, toward a room near the far side of the building, away from the central command room. Slowly he approached the half open door and knocked softly. “Hey, do you have a minute?” he asked, peering into the room.

  Patrick turned from the window he was looking out of and recognized that it was Caleb. “Sure,” he said, “What’s up?”

  Caleb gently pushed the door open and walked over to where Patrick was sitting. Patrick stood up and motioned toward the table in the center of the room. Caleb pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, as Patrick did the same. “I have a favor to ask you,” Caleb said once both of them were seated.

  Patrick looked at Caleb curiously. They hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to talk. They knew enough about each other to have a mutual respect, but didn’t have a personal relationship. He found it interesting that Caleb would come to him instead of Alice or Aaron. “Of course. What is it?” he asked.

  Caleb slowly pulled the folded note he had written to Alice from his lab coat pocket and set it on the table. “I know the risk I’ll be taking tomorrow. There’s a good chance that if I make it back inside Sector 27, I won’t make it back out,” he said, as he looked seriously into Patrick’s eyes.

  Patrick nodded his head in agreement and let Caleb continue.

  “I wrote this for Alice … in case I don’t make it back.” Caleb’s tone became more somber as he spoke. “Patrick, I would give this to Aaron, but he doesn’t know about the plan for me to try to get back into Sector 27 yet either. You’ve been doing this for a while now, and you’re very good at whatever it is you do. Do you think you could get this to Alice if something were to happen to me tomorrow?”

  Patrick looked down at the table momentarily, understanding the frame of mind Caleb must be in. He looked back up and nodded slowly, “Yes, Caleb, it would be my pleasure to do that for you. I’ll hold on to this for you, and you just make sure that I don’t have to give it to Alice, alright?”

  Caleb smiled halfheartedly and said, “Thanks, Patrick. I’ll try my best.”

  Caleb stood up from the table and began to head toward the door. “Hey, Caleb wait,” Patrick said from behind him. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m proud of you. You could have stayed out here and lived your life away from the enemy as long as you wanted to, but you really care about what’s right. You’re being very brave and unselfish in trying to help the people left inside the Sectors.”

  Caleb was surprised to hear Patrick say this to him. “That means a lot coming from you Patrick. Thank you,” he said as he stepped through the doorway. He turned back toward Patrick and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

  Patrick nodded in agreement and said, “That we do. Get a good night’s sleep.”

  Caleb closed the door and headed back down the hallway toward his room, mentally preparing for the task ahead of him.

  4.7 (Confrontation)

  Caleb slowly opened his eyes and allowed them to focus. He was laying inside a damp concrete cell. The first thing he noticed was the sharp pain radiating from the back of his head. He took his hand and gently touched the area where the pressure was coming from. A flash of pain was sent through his body and he quickly took his hand off of the wound. From his position on the cold concrete floor he could see the ceiling high above him. The room was small, only about ten feet by ten feet. High up on the wall across from the large metal door was a barred window letting in rays of sunlight.

  Caleb stood up and staggered over toward the window, crashing into the wall, then using it to keep himself propped upward. He felt very weak, tired, and hungry. How long had he been out of it? Where was he now? The last vivid memory he had was that of prying open the fence to slip underneath it before everything went black. There were bits and pieces coming back to him. He remembered Guardians talking inside a Humvee. Then he remembered waking up at one point in the back of a large truck with several other people from inside the grids. But after that, everything was just darkness.

  Caleb remained seated against the wall until the sun had begun to set, leaving the room cool and dark. Beyond the metal door across from him he heard the shuffling of feet, then a loud metallic grinding sound. A small beam of light flittered into the room from an opening in the door. “Here, Caleb. Drink up, I don’t have a lot of time,” a voice spoke sympathetically from the other side.

  Caleb slowly picked himself up and used the wall of the cell as a guide to get across the room to the door. Once he arrived, he sat down with his back against the cold metal surface and a small water bottle was slipped through the opening into the room. Caleb quickly picked it up and started taking huge gulps of water to the point of nearly choking with each one. “Who are you?” he asked, “Where am I?”

  “Who I am is not important,” the voice answered, “But where you are is.”

  Caleb sat quietly against the door breathing heavily, trying to catch his breath from the taxing effort it had taken him to get across the room and drink from the water bottle.

  “You’ve been moved to the Reassignment Sector. One of the Guardian’s caught you trying to sneak out of Sector 27 through the loose part of the fence. It’s been repaired now.”

  Caleb felt defeated. Where would the people escape now? Was all of this for nothing? He wondered what Patrick and the other members of the resistance group were going to think when they found out that he had failed them. Was freeing people from that Sector impossible now? Was it all his fault?

  “Caleb?” the voice broke in again.

  Caleb remained silent, crushed under the feeling of failure.

  “Caleb, are you still with me?” the voice continued.

  “Yes, I’m still here,” Caleb finally answered, “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “It all depends, I suppose,” the voice said.

  “Depends on what?” Caleb asked.

  “Well … it depends on how helpful you are,” the voice replied, now beginning to sound more menacing than friendly.

  “Who are you?” Caleb asked
again.

  There was no answer to the question. “Caleb, I need you to move away from the door to the center of the room please,” the man said with a polite yet stern tone.

  Caleb slowly got to his feet, wobbling, and moved to the center of the room where he sat down in the small space of light that was being filtered in through the window. He heard a loud metallic clanking, then creaking as the door gradually swung open. Caleb put one of his hands up to shield the bright light from his eyes that was shining in from the area beyond the door. An older looking man entered the room. Caleb’s eyes began to adjust to the brightness. He could see the man standing before him now, about Caleb’s height, with long gray hair. He wore a beige coat lined with elaborately designed patterns of gold and silver. “I’ve come down here just to see you, Caleb,” he said, “This doesn’t happen often, you should feel proud of that.”

  Caleb watched as the man paced back and forth in front of him. “Who are you?” Caleb asked again.

  The man bent down in front of Caleb, only inches away from his face. Caleb could see a pair of Guardians standing in the doorway behind the man. “My name’s Nolan,” he replied, “I’m here to try to help you, Caleb. That is, if you will accept it.”

  Caleb remained silent, puzzled by the question. “What does that mean?” Caleb asked.

  Nolan stood back up on his feet and began to pace again. “Like I said, I don’t have a lot of time with you Caleb. They’re going to want answers soon, so how about I ask you the questions from now on, ok?”

  Caleb could detect a slight arrogance in the man’s voice and he turned his head away toward one of the cell walls. “Now, now Caleb. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were tricked into fighting us, and you can be brought back in line again. Don’t make me wrong, Caleb.”

  Caleb continued to avoid looking at Nolan, staring blankly into the concrete wall to his side. “Very well. We can do it the hard way,” Nolan said, as he walked back toward the Guardians.

  Caleb glanced back at Nolan as he walked back over to him with a small silver tray in his hands, followed by a Guardian carrying a heavy wooden chair. He placed the chair next to Caleb, stood him up and strapped him down in it. Then the other Guardian wheeled in a small cart which Nolan gently set the tray upon, right beside where Caleb was fastened in place.

  On the tray were numerous shiny metal objects, some sharp, some pointed, others large and blunt. Nolan picked up one of the objects and pricked Caleb’s finger with the sharp end of it. A small drop of blood appeared on his finger and he said, “Now, Caleb. For each question you refuse to answer, or I find inadequate, I am going to do much worse with this than I did just now.”

  Caleb felt the subtle throbbing of the wound that Nolan had just created on the tip of his finger. Thoughts flooded his mind as he tried to come up with a way out of this situation. “We see everything, Caleb. There’s no sense in trying to hold back anything from us,” Nolan said proudly. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you decided to break back into Sector 27.”

  Caleb thought carefully as to how he was going to answer this question. After a moment he said, “If you know everything, you should already have the answer to that question.”

  Nolan scowled. He knelt down, grabbed Caleb’s hand, held it up and took the sharp, metallic object to his finger and sliced into it. Caleb winced with pain as he felt the warm blood dripping down his wrist and arm. “I can do this as many times as I need to, Caleb. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for you,” he said with a sick smile.

  He lowered Caleb’s hand down. Caleb could see the small pool of blood forming underneath. It didn’t matter. He was determined to withstand the pain and hold on tightly to the thought that the resistance group could still bring the Inner Circle down. They could still free the people from within the grids, with or without him there to help. “Let’s try this again,” Nolan said, bringing Caleb back to the reality of what was happening to him. “What were you doing inside Sector 27?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  Caleb remained silent, preparing himself for the inevitable pain to come. Nolan put the sharp needle-like tool back onto the tray and picked up a blunt metallic object with what looked like some kind of tiny spikes lining its sides. “Would you care to reconsider?” Nolan asked, turning the object around slowly in his hands as Caleb’s attention was drawn toward it.

  Caleb puffed out his chest and clenched his jaw. Nolan let out a long disappointed sigh before he drove the object into Caleb’s shoulder with great force, sending blood spraying out as he pulled it back toward him. Then, before Caleb could react, Nolan jabbed the blunt end of the object into his stomach, sucking the breath out of his lungs. Caleb gasped for air, choking, bleeding, gasping, shaking. ‘How could someone be this evil?’ he thought. Again, another blow to the body, this time it hit him in the ribs, leaving him coughing and gasping for air, hunched over within the heavy wooden chair. He clenched his fists and pulled his arms away from the leather straps as hard as he could in an attempt to free them, but to no avail.

  “You see, Caleb?” Nolan said as he began to walk slowly around Caleb, whose body was quivering, “There’s no sense in fighting us. We control everything. We are the gods of this world now. You can’t beat us.”

  Caleb sat crumpled in the chair, his chest heaving rapidly in and out, still trying to suck in as much oxygen as he could. Through the pain he responded, “You are no god.” Gasping for air, he continued, “You are nothing but an evil, twisted man. I promise you, when your day of reckoning comes, it will be much worse than what you are doing to me now.”

  Another forceful blow struck Caleb’s side, into the ribs that were already throbbing with pain. Caleb tried to hunch further in the chair, bringing his chest close to his knees, breathing heavily, coughing.

  “Enough!” Nolan shouted angrily. He dropped a bottle of water on the floor beside Caleb and said, “I suggest you drink this. We’ll try again later. I suggest you use this time to reconsider how you are going to conduct yourself next time.”

  Caleb watched as Nolan turned and walked out of the cell. One of the Guardians came in and untied Caleb from the chair, leaving him to collapse onto the floor. He dragged the chair back outside of the cell, then Caleb heard the heavy grinding sound of the large metal door being shut behind him. Silence. Caleb tried to sit up, but couldn’t. He reached for the bottle of water that Nolan had dropped and opened it. He lifted his head enough so he could drink, breathing heavily in between sips. This is only temporary, it will pass, this is only temporary, it will pass, he repeated to himself over and over before finally passing out on the cold, damp, and lonely concrete floor.

  4.8 (Confrontation)

  The small, barred window in Caleb’s cell began to fill the room with light again. Caleb could no longer tell how long he had been in this place. Nolan’s beatings and tortures seemed to be getting less severe. Either that or he had just built up a tolerance to them. He had lost count of the number of times he had seen that awful tray of tools. Each one offering a different kind of sensation that eventually all rolled up into one great big blur of pain. Caleb’s body had been disfigured, contorted, bruised and bloodied, but through it all he had held his tongue, and kept information about the resistance group a certainty that only he knew. No matter what Nolan did to him, he would never open up that part of his mind. He sat motionless in the center of the cell as the warm sunlight washed over his body, renewing him for the day. His eyes were closed and he had a contented smile on his face. He was peaceful. When the beatings had first begun, he had come to grips with the idea that this would be the last room he would ever see. He wondered if this was the type of place his father had been in. Since being locked up in the cell, he thought a lot about his father, more so than anything else. He wondered if his father would have been proud of what he had done with his time outside of the grid. It was, after all, his father’s sacrifice that enabled Caleb to break free from that place.

  Suddenly, from behind him,
came the familiar sound of the heavy metal door unlocking and opening. Caleb remained facing the window, fully aware of what was happening behind him, but not yet willing to accept it. He expected to hear Nolan’s voice soon, the voice of his pain and suffering. But instead he heard a different voice, a Guardian harshly said, “Get up, come with me.”

  Caleb slowly turned around toward the door. He saw the cell door wide open leading out into the brightly lit hallway. The Guardian stood motionless with his rifle gripped tightly in his hand, staring directly at Caleb from the doorway. Caleb slowly stood to his feet and painfully limped to the door. The Guardian stepped outside and motioned for him to follow. Once outside the cell, he stood in a long narrow hallway that looked to be running endlessly in either direction. The Guardian gave him a gentle nudge forward with the muzzle of his rifle, urging him to walk that way. Caleb wondered if maybe this Guardian felt some empathy for what he had endured during his time here. There were no rough shoves or words hurled at him. Just quiet, and an occasional gentle nudge on his back if he stood in one place for too long catching his breath.

  It took quite a while for Caleb to make it to the end of the hallway, but when he did he found himself in a large room with benches lining the walls and large glass windows on the front side, letting a plentiful amount of sunlight fill the room. The Guardian silently sat Caleb down on one of the benches and said, “Wait here.”

  Caleb weakly asked, “Where’s Nolan?” not expecting to get an answer in return.

  Caleb was surprised to see the Guardian stop, turn toward him and say, “Gone.”

  Caleb smiled. He had done it. He had withstood the onslaught that Nolan had intended to break him. Nothing else mattered now, he had succeeded in his goal that he set for himself since he had arrived and started taking the beatings. Caleb sat staring out into the sky through the large glass windows on the other side of the room. “Caleb, this way,” a voice said from the left of where he sat.