“The police deal with crimes,” the man replies. “We deal with problems.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, hoping the truth—that I do understand all too well—isn’t visible in my eyes. “If this is about the paint, I can explain. It wasn’t anything bad. I wasn’t hurting anyone. They could have asked me about it and I would have told them whatever they wanted to know.”
“Sadly, that isn’t good enough.” He picks up my government student ID that Dewey had created through the Steward network for just this moment. “MaryAnn Jefferson. You should have stayed in Wisconsin when your parents died. If you had, then this all wouldn’t be necessary.”
“I don’t understand what this is. Please!”
“The city worked hard to create an environment where everyone can feel safe and takes great pains to instruct those who do things that disrupt those efforts. This is the first step in that instruction.”
“But—”
“Miss Jefferson, you were caught with spray paint. The paint matches the colors that have been illegally used to deface public spaces throughout the city. While you are sure to have your reasons, discussing it with me won’t do you any good. I’m simply here to start your processing.”
He’s not interested in learning why I was caught with the paint or whether I knew more about the logos throughout the city? But, I—MaryAnn—don’t have anything to do with all those logos. She hasn’t even spray-painted one yet! She shouldn’t be here! Does he simply not care?
He places the screen down on the desk in front of him and says, “Have you made friends at the hotel you have been staying in or with anyone in the city who should be contacted as your instruction continues? Maybe someone who knew what you were doing tonight?”
“What? No.” I shake my head. “I don’t know anyone in the city, yet. I . . .”
“Good,” he says, pushing a button on the screen he lays flat on the desk in front of him. “That makes things easier and it completes this step.” He looks over my shoulder at Marshal Melissa. “Get the rest done quickly or she’ll miss today’s transport and have to wait until next week.”
‘Transport?” My heart skips. Transport tonight? No. “Where are you taking me? I didn’t do anything wrong. Please. If you just talk to me, you’ll see that.”
“I told you, I am only here to start your processing,” the man says with a sigh. “You will be transported to a place where you can receive the instruction necessary to keep you from greater disruptive acts. I promise, it will all go easier if you do what Melissa tells you. The goal is for us to help you learn. The last thing we want is for you to get hurt.”
“If I could only . . .”
“Get up,” Melissa snaps, and pulls me from my seat as I look back at the white-mustached man and say, “Please. Let me stay. At least until I talk to someone else.”
We had counted on me being here for more than a few hours. I need to buy Dewey and Atlas more time to find me and for me to have the chance to take images of what is happening here. People need to see this for themselves.
The man looks into my eyes and there is no malice whatsoever in his expression when he says, “You may not believe it now, but this is for the best.”
The Marshal marches me down the aisle, stops in front of a light gray curtain marked with the number four, and tugs it back.
“Have a seat,” a female official at a workbench at the back of the space says, and she waves her hand at a padded chair in the center, which is flanked by two other uniformed officials. The chair reminds me of one a dentist would use—only my dentist’s chair was never equipped with leather straps.
Oh God. No.
I take a step back, and am blocked by Melissa the Marshal, who shoves me down into the gray padded seat and holds me in place. Someone—I don’t know who—grabs my arm and everything happens so fast.
I try to sit up and pull free, but there are too many people fastening the straps. Still I try to fight. My foot connects hard with a leg. There is a yelp, but there is no satisfaction from that as a strap loops around my left wrist and is pulled tight. Strong hands hold down my legs. Their grip is like a vise. None of the training Atlas and Dewey put me through helps. I fight back the scream clawing up, desperate to break free as another strap fastens my legs, then my ankles.
“This will hurt,” a uniformed officer says clinically. Out of the corner of my eye, I can tell she is holding a heavy metal tool. “If you promise to stay completely still, I can make it hurt less. It’s your choice.”
My choice?
I ball my hands into fists. My heart pounds loud in my ears. I flinch as the uniformed woman beside me gathers my hair and shoves it under my head. There is a prick in my arm. I yelp from the sharp stab of the needle.
“Almost done,” the woman whispers into my ear. I can’t see her. But I can feel her fingers as she touches the top of my earlobe. “Ready . . . set . . .”
I scream and buck against the restraints, trying to get away from the waves of agony that echo from my ear down my body. My stomach heaves as the wave of pain swallows my will to fight.
A tingly coolness of something wet against my ear soothes away the sharpest edges of pain. “Hang in there,” the woman says, patting my shoulder. “Almost done.”
I can only whimper in response.
Tears burn when someone prods my ears. I whimper again at the sting of something heavy pushing against the wound. Then there is a click. The hands let go, but the heaviness in the center of the aching remains. A trickle of warm runs down the side of my neck as someone passes some kind of electronic instrument to the official who is working on me. There are a series of beeps and the official says, “You can release her now.”
Through the haze of tears and pain, I register the fastenings being loosened. The Marshal pulls me out of the seat and the world tilts. My stomach churns. Something oily and hot snakes up my throat as one of the women from the station speaks to me, but the words swim out of reach. Something about pain medication kicking in soon and being fine as long as I don’t try to pull it out.
Pull what out?
My legs are uncertain as I follow the Marshal out of the space and down the dirty blue runner toward another opening in the concrete wall. Slowly, I lift my hand to gently touch my ear. There is something metal and plastic that wasn’t there before. But it takes until I catch my reflection in the polished chrome plate of a light sconce that I can tell what has been done to me.
My head spins. I blink several times, desperate to understand what I’m seeing. It looks like an ear cuff—one of those things that wraps around the outside of the earlobe, only instead of being able to clip it on and off, this one is riveted through the center of my upper ear. The edge of the cuff is deep red, but it is the markings on the front that makes me gag and fills my stomach with slick horror.
A series of black and white lines.
The device in my ear is a barcode.
I’ve been tagged.
Eight
That’s not me, I think as I stare at the barcode. This can’t be happening to me.
I want this to be a terrible nightmare that I’ll wake from. But the pain isn’t imagined. Neither is the line of blood that has trickled down my neck.
This isn’t a dream. It’s real.
A heartbreaking wail rips through the air.
And it isn’t just happening to me.
“If you rip it out, they’ll just put a different one on you—and that one won’t be nearly as pleasant,” Marshal Melissa says from behind me. “Now let’s go.”
Rip it out? My stomach roils at the thought of pulling out the ear cuff. My legs are uncertain as I shuffle next to Melissa down another cold, damp concrete corridor. There’s a line of doors to our left. A large Marshal with close-cropped brown hair is standing nearby. He looks bored despite the weeping leaking from behind one of the doors.
Marshal Melissa opens the middle door and motions for me to enter. “You’ll find a change of clothes on the table
. You’re to put what you’re wearing now in one of the bins next to the door.”
I step into the threshold of the doorway and hesitate. “What happens to the clothes I’m wearing now? What do you do with them?”
She cocks her head to the side. “Why does it matter?”
It shouldn’t. All the clothes I cared about or fit my personality were packed up and carted away by the government weeks ago. But it does matter, which is why I say, “It matters because they’re mine.”
For a second the smug look she’s been wearing falters. There is a glimmer of something human in her eyes. Then she straightens her shoulders and says, “And now they aren’t, so you’d better get changed.”
She closes the door with a bang behind me and I stand, numb, in the small room with the same concrete floor and unpainted walls as the rest of the parking garage. The muffled sniffling of the woman next door bleeds through the pale gray drywall as I sink to the cold, unforgiving floor and gulp back my own tears. If I cry, I might not be able to stop, and I have to stay strong. I can’t give in to my fear.
I knew there was a risk in taking this step. I did it anyway. I told Atlas the risk was worth it. That the truth mattered enough to do whatever was necessary to make people open their eyes to it. But the reality of the cages—the barcode riveted in my ear—the weeping woman next door . . .
Stop!
I swipe at the stray tears that sneaked past my resolve and push to my feet. Freaking out will only make things worse. Atlas and Dewey will look for me, but that doesn’t mean I can just assume they will be able to stop the transport and set me free. I have to think. Observe every detail. Keep myself steady until I get out.
A single stingy light bulb swings over a square metal table with three items of clothing folded atop it and a pair of cheap, elastic booties like people wear in hospitals. I won’t be able to wear my shoes out of here.
Slowly, I remove my sneakers and feel inside the lining of the left one to check the carefully constructed pocket where the tracking device with its tiny built-in camera is located. It’s round, slightly larger than a quarter, and four times as thick. Small enough to hide uncomfortably in my shoe, but too large to use where people might notice.
Taking a deep breath, I slip the device out of its hiding place, turn the pinhole lens toward me, and press the camera button. That done, I have to find a place to stash the device in my new clothing or everything I’ve risked was for nothing.
The provided short-sleeve shirt is lightweight and looks if it was accidentally washed with a stray red sock, which gives the pale gray fabric a slightly pink cast.
Carefully, I pull my black shirt over my injured ear, use it to dab at the blood on the side of my face, and ease on the new top that is far too long and twice as wide. Which gives me an idea. I gather the access fabric and tie it at my waist, then slip the device into the thick knot. It’s not ideal, but after a couple of attempts I am able to move around with confidence that it can’t be seen and won’t accidentally fall out.
I pull on pants made of the same depressing color with a thick elastic waistband and wide cuffs at the bottom that I have to turn up to keep from tripping. Sitting down, I slide my feet into the thin-soled booties, then pick up the final item on the table. It’s a thin, slick black hooded jacket with Velcro and plastic snap fasteners. The lining of the jacket is a fuzzy material that I assume must make the garment warm in addition to waterproof. Something I’m grateful for in the musty chill.
The coat stretches to my mid-thigh. I cuff the wrists so my hands are exposed, but leave the front unfastened so the knot of my shirt can be accessed easily. Now that I’m completely dressed, I fold the shirt, jeans, and shoes I was wearing and walk toward the bins that flank the door. I flip open the lid of the first. The container is almost full. So is the second. I clutch my own clothes to my chest and open the next two. Both are packed with ripped jeans, collared dress shirts, high-heeled boots, and silk ties. I dig into the last one and find cargo shorts, high-top sneakers, and sports jerseys of both the Chicago Cubs and the White Sox, as well as expensive suit jackets piled on top of faded, hole-ridden T-shirts that stink from a lack of laundering. But it is the vibrant teal-and-lemon-yellow shirt I pull out of the pile that almost brings me to my knees. It is the same size shirt I would have worn when I was in fifth or sixth grade. Maybe even younger, I think as I run my fingers across the sparkly silver lettering across the front that spells out: “Believe!”
A scream builds inside me. There are dozens of items of clothing . . . maybe hundreds, all packed into these containers. And this is just one room. The woman who I can no longer hear sniffling was in another. Each of the items represents a person. The quality of the clothing from one item to the next is wildly different. The people who wore them must be as well, yet they were all forced to leave these pieces of themselves behind to be collected by people who don’t care who they are or why these things mattered.
Hands shaking, I fold the girl’s colorful shirt and place it gently atop the haphazard pile of wrinkled garments. Then I slide the camera out of its hiding place and use it again.
“Hurry up!”
Quickly, I secure the recording tracker into the knot and set my own clothing atop the sparkly T-shirt. Then I close the bins and walk through the door, taking the memory of that girl with me.
The medication I was told would kick in has dulled the pain from its original agonizing fire to a dull ache by the time Marshal Melissa and her bright red smile escort me down the cement corridor. Our footfalls on concrete mix with the sounds of clanging metal, hopeless weeping, and the slamming of what I believe are car doors, until once again we are back to the large cages I first saw when I was led off the elevator and into this waking nightmare.
More uniformed officials than I remember seeing before are peering into the cages or punching buttons on their handheld screens. A bunch hover over a table on the far side—beyond the cages. Three trucks are parked behind the cages—near what appear to be loading dock doors. The vehicles are parked with their rear sides to me, so I can’t see any distinctive markings. But they remind me of the moving trucks I have seen all my life—with the back doors open, ready for the loading to begin.
An older official points to a cage at the end and instructs Marshal Melissa to “Put her in there. We’ll start loading up the trucks soon.”
“Good.” Marshal Melissa nods and grabs my arm. “I want to be home in time to do breakfast with the kids before they go to camp.”
Believe. I repeat the word from the girl’s glittered shirt to myself as Melissa swipes her ID card on the lock pad and opens the iron-bar door. I will record these images and get out of here, I tell myself as the Marshal shoves me and I stumble inside.
The door shuts behind me and my determination shudders at the hollow, metallic clang. I place my hands on the cold steel bars and grip them tight as I watch Melissa jangle the door to confirm it is locked. Melissa doesn’t spare me another glance before she strides away.
She doesn’t care that I am a person she helped tag and put in a cage. What does she tell herself in order to make this okay? To make it possible for her to go home to the children she just told someone she was going to meet for breakfast? How can anyone willingly be a part of this?
I wait until Melissa disappears from view before I release my grip on the bars and fumble under the coat for the knot at my waist.
Believe, I remind myself as I confront the space that is my new, horrible reality. I can do this.
“Get the supplies loaded up, then start with holding pen number one,” a slightly distorted male voice calls through a loudspeaker. “Less than two hours until the end of curfew, so let’s get moving.”
It’s sometime after four in the morning. I had no idea how little sense of time I had until now. Knowing just that small fact makes me feel more tethered to the person I was before the Marshals pulled me off the street. I hold on to that feeling and study the others being held with me all the while
pressing the camera button on the device. I hope the lens can capture what I am seeing even as I attempt to keep it hidden from view.
There are over a dozen people scattered throughout the rectangular cage that I’m standing in. Another thirty or forty people are imprisoned in the other connected cells. Maybe more. It’s hard to tell in the dim light.
The smell and the state of attire of the people in my cell make it clear some of them have been here for some time. The man who checked me in seemed to suggest that if I wasn’t transported today, it could be a while until I was moved. If it has been weeks since the last transport, Isaac could still be here. Maybe Atticus, too.
Adjusting my shirt, I slide the device back into hiding, then pull my jacket tight around me.
“Move! Move! Move! These trucks have to be out of the city before the sun comes up.”
Uniformed officials pick up the pace carrying boxes into to the trucks and I walk deeper into the cage, trying to look at every face that I pass. When Atlas and I were arguing about my choice to get captured, Dewey told him I would have a better chance of staying under the radar. He had a list of reasons—but Atlas’s resemblance to his father was at the top. The few photographs of Atticus I had seen told me he was right.
I straighten my shoulders and take a deep breath of the rancid-tasting air. So many of the people in the cages sit alone on the hard cement. Some are curled atop their black jackets or are wrapped in aluminum foil–looking blankets. Eyes follow me. None have Isaac’s sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes.
I step around smears of rotting food and keep walking toward a curtained-off area in the back corner of the cell where two men stand, backs to me. Their heads are bent close together. As I approach, one with unkempt red hair, a scraggly beard, and a build like a slightly out-of-shape football player glances over his shoulder and snarls, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I go still as the other man turns to face me. He has a long scar running down the length of his forearm. His oily black hair is slicked back into a ponytail, which gives me clear view of the ripped, partially scabbed-over skin at the top of his right lobe. The metal barcode cuff is embedded in the left.
Disclose Page 9