Steeling myself, I wipe my tears with the edge of my shirt. I don’t have time for tears. If I just sit here and cry, Isaac’s death won’t matter. And it will. It has to. The only way that’s going to happen is if I document what I see, find a way to safely remove the cuff from my ear, and get out of this horror show.
I shrug off my jacket, and throw it across the top bunk to mark it as mine. Then I squeeze through the tight space in between the beds and take stock of the room.
It’s quiet. Dozens of women crammed into this tight space. Barely any of them are speaking. Most lie on their beds—sleeping, or pretending to be. A few make their way to what I think is the bathroom. One or two head toward the door that Liz pointed out to me. I wish I could take out the recording device and capture this image, but I can’t take the risk of someone noticing. Instead, I memorize every detail as I weave through the tight spaces between the rows of black metal bunk beds each made up of a single off-white sheet and ungenerous pillow to the hallway Liz had shown me.
Wet hay and gravel crunch under my feet when I step from the long concrete hall into an open-air space. If this were a normal farm, I imagine the area would be expansive enough to exercise horses. In this farm, the area doesn’t hold four-legged animals. Here, people sit against the walls, or talk as they walk in twos and threes around the space like inmates in some kind of prison movie. One older woman runs laps around the perimeter as if training for a marathon. There are no Instructors on the ground with us. Instead, there are a dozen of them situated on balconies ten feet above us, giving them a perfect view of everything happening.
But while the people catch my attention, it is the line of matte-black steel slats, a few inches in between each, that rise from the floor to a dozen feet in the air and divide the area into two sections that holds it. Women on this side. Men on the other. The top of each slat is cut to a sharp point like some kind of medieval torture device, making it both imposing and grim. I can’t imagine any way that a person could scale the flat, smooth metal bars, but the spiked tops would certainly keep them from safely climbing to the other side. Which I am guessing is the point.
This is the fence. Now to find Wallace.
An eerie fog hangs over the courtyard as I walk past several groups of women toward the fence. A few women are quietly talking with some of the men through the slats. One older lady has reached between one of the narrow openings in the metal barrier and is holding tight to a younger man’s hands. There are more men in their side of the arena. Several are throwing some kind of ball. The cover of it looks like it was made out of a pillowcase.
I run my hand along one of the slats of smooth, cold metal and peer through the six-inch spaces between them. Finally, I spot a man seated on the ground at the far end of the arena who holds up his hand when he sees me turn his way.
I cross to the other side of the courtyard, lower myself onto the wet hay and gasp as I look through the slats. Dried blood stains Wallace’s shirt. A crimson-stained bandage covers one side of his neck. Wallace gives me a tentative smile and for a flash of a second I see Isaac looking back at me from the other side of the slats—bruised and beaten.
“It looks worse than it is,” Wallace assures me.
“What happened?” I ask, forcing the image of Isaac to the side.
“Someone overheard us talking in the truck. When they realized I used to work for the government . . .” He closes his eyes and leans his head against the brick wall. “Turns out being a Marshal means that everyone in this place has a reason to hate me.”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
Wallace studies me through the slats. “You didn’t ask what a Marshal is. You know what they are. What I was.”
Another mistake. The right words can change lives, but so can the wrong ones. This time I don’t make denials. I just pull my knees up against my chest and wait.
Wallace shrugs. “You’re smart. I wouldn’t trust me, either.”
“Right now I don’t trust anything,” I say. “But you knew where we were going and you seem to know what to expect now that we’re here. That means you know more than I do.”
“And knowledge is power. Right? If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now.” He surveys the arena. I do the same. One of the men playing “ball” is watching us with narrowed eyes. When he sees me looking at him he turns his head away, but the two women speaking with the men at the fence continue to cast furtive glances our way. Or maybe I’m just paranoid after Liz’s warning.
“Do you know why you’re here?” I ask.
Wallace shifts so he is directly facing me. “I started asking the wrong questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
He frowns and looks at the ground. “Both my parents are police officers. My entire life I’ve been grateful that things are safer in Chicago—in this entire country—than they used to be. I decided I wanted to help keep things safe—like my parents. My dad helped me train. When I applied for the academy, I was accepted immediately and graduated first in my class.”
Wallace looks up. “Right before graduation, I was given an opportunity to continue my training with a special law enforcement unit. A group of investigators who were quietly commissioned to work in cities around the country after the FBI was disbanded. You couldn’t apply to the unit. My dad told me he’d tried. You had to be chosen for the Marshals. I was chosen.”
I hate the glow of pride in Wallace’s voice because I understand it. For most of my life, I wanted not only to be as good as my mom, but to eventually be better. To do greater things for the city. It was part of what drove me as an artist and made me determined to succeed even when I was certain my mother thought I would fail.
“So you said yes.”
“Of course I did.” He grins. “I mean, the Marshals were elite. They tracked down and detained terrorists. They do the most important work of any law enforcement agency in the country.”
“If it’s so important, why doesn’t anyone know about them?” I ask. “Why not tell people how great the Marshals are?”
“We can’t. Not without giving the terrorists what they want—the chance to create uncertainty and fear. People deserve to feel safe.” Wallace shrugs. “At least that’s what they told us during my extra year of training. I studied city schematics and was lectured on crimes that weren’t reported on the news. I learned about places like the one you were brought to when the Marshals took you into protective custody.”
“Protective custody?” I say the words back to him, but mine are sharpened with sarcasm. “I was kidnapped, drugged, and had a barcode embedded in my ear—against my will. Does any of that sound protective to you?”
I wanted him to realize his choice of words mattered. His phrase made the process sound gentle. Anyone who heard those words spoken would certainly believe the government acted out of concern for my well-being. They painted a picture of kindness and empathy directly over the inhumanity of the ear tags and cages or this arena with the spike-topped fence and the host of guards.
Like the book Dewey showed me on the history of slavery in America. The words drew a picture of the unspeakable things humans convinced themselves was okay because of a difference in skin color. Slavery was mentioned in my schoolbooks, but nothing prepared me for the descriptions of the families ripped apart and sold to different owners or the beatings and abusive treatment. When I looked back at the texts my teachers had us read, I noticed the word “worker” was frequently used in place of the word “slave.” With a change of that one word suddenly an entire history of pain and dehumanization is softened into something less shameful.
Wallace’s eyes narrow. “We were trained to call it protective custody.”
“Have you drugged people when they tried to call for help?”
“My job—”
“Did you lie to their families about what happened to them?”
“The less people know, the safer they are. Publicity would only encourage others who want to appear on the new
s to cause disruptions!” Wallace jumps to his feet and stalks away. I stand as well and notice that more eyes have turned our way. The men playing ball have stopped and are watching Wallace pace in a circle while running a hand through his unruly curls.
Finally, he takes several deep breaths and walks back. “I’m sorry. It’s hard to think that . . .” He shakes his head. “You probably can’t understand, but we all believed everything they said.”
That’s something I do understand. I wanted to deny everything Atlas told me—everything that I read in the books the Stewards had kept from being destroyed. Had it not been for my mother’s death, I doubt I would have ever questioned what I had been told to believe. After all—it was working for me.
But Marshals murdered my mother. Marshals are the reason Isaac had been brought here, beaten, and killed. Just because I understand why Wallace believed in the Marshals’ mission doesn’t make any of it right.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
“There was a girl,” he says quietly as a gentle misting rain begins to fall.
Of course. I roll my eyes.
“Not like that,” he snaps, then lowers his voice. “She was twelve. Two months ago, my partner and I were ordered to pick up her father. He was part of the terrorist group that’s been operating in the shadows for years—or what I was told was a terrorist group. Protocol is to get the subject isolated from family or acquaintances before we take them into protecti—”
He glances sharply at me and shakes his head. “The man picked up his daughter from school and was walking her home when we were told to take the two of them. They said she was a part of it. That he had already enlisted his daughter in his mission and that she was recruiting her friends with the group’s propaganda. You’ve read the real history, so you know—the same way young children were recruited to be suicide bombers before we shut our borders and weeded out that kind of destruction. So we moved in to capture them both. I was in charge of taking her.”
He turns so I can’t see his face. I can barely make out his words when he continues, “He knew who we were when he saw us. I was putting her in the car when he went down like all the others we tried to take in. I can still hear her scream. His daughter was in front of him and he killed himself so we couldn’t bring him in. But she thought we had killed him.”
They did. He might have used the deadman’s switch or some other method to kill himself, but they were the ones that pushed him to do it.
Others in the courtyard make their way to the entrance. I hold my ground as Wallace continues, “The girl didn’t know why her father died. She didn’t seem to know anything about what he was involved in. She was confused and scared and looked at us like we were crazy when we mentioned some of the terrorists’ code words. They said she’d been trained to tell convincing lies when we brought her to the Unity Center and that she would help us locate the rest of the terrorists.” He crosses his arms and shrugs. “I moved on to the next assignment, but I couldn’t forget that girl. She didn’t know anything. We should have never taken her.”
It makes me think of the sparkly T-shirt I saw in the Unity Center bin. Obviously, it wasn’t this girl’s . . . but I can’t shake the image from my mind.
“I’d never doubted the information we’d been given before. But this time . . .” He rests his forehead against one of the steel slats. “I started asking questions. I thought it was important to learn if an error was made so we didn’t make the same mistake the next time. They told me there was no mistake. The girl confessed her crimes and was sent here to help gain a sense of civic pride. My partner said to let it go.”
Two of the women walking around the courtyard have come closer. Neither of them is looking at us. Still, I keep my voice low and ask, “You didn’t let it go?”
“I should have.” He sighs. “I went to the funeral for the father, instead. To be honest, I’m still not sure what I thought I was going to find. What I didn’t think I’d see were two caskets—father and daughter—who were supposedly struck by a car whose brakes had stopped working. My bosses said she had been transported here to the farm. They lied. And I started wondering what else they were lying about. That’s what I was trying to find out. I snuck books out of a recycling center and read things I’d never heard about before.”
“Like what?” I lean against the slats.
His eyes flick to me. “Things like the unions. Like words I never knew existed, listed on a piece of paper our field office worked to get off the streets.”
He was talking about the pages that my mother, Atlas’s father, and Dewey created. The papers that I helped some of the Stewards distribute to people on the streets of Chicago trying to show them the truth. We thought that no one had paid attention or cared enough to do anything with the information they read.
Wallace had read it, though. Maybe it had meant something.
“You know something about those papers?” Wallace gives me a sharp look as I consider what to say.
He was a Marshal, but now he’s here—tagged, just like me and everyone else in this place. If I want to get out of here, I need all the help I can get. And yet . . .
“No,” I lie.
“Are you sure?” Wallace asks. “Because—”
A low, grating horn blasts three times. The woman who was running changes direction. A gray-bearded man gives the makeshift ball one last toss, and those who were still walking or sitting in the courtyard turn and head for their respective entrances.
“We have to go,” he says, pushing away from the bars. “Meet back here tomorrow?”
I watch the women hurrying inside, and nod.
“Remember—avoid unwanted attention from the Instructors. Keep a low profile if you can. If they don’t pay you any special attention you’ll have a better chance.”
“A better chance at what?”
“Surviving.”
“Wait,” I call before he can walk away. “What was her name?”
“What?”
“What was the girl’s name?” I ask.
“Her name?” He frowns as Instructors from above shout for us to get inside. “Her name was Anne.”
The rain falls harder as he walks away from the fence and I turn and do the same.
After my mother died, I spent the days and nights after school in my room because being around other people—seeing them laugh—watching them do normal things—was like salt on a wound.
Rose hated that I was alone so much. She called and texted and pushed me to go out with a group of our friends to the movies or hang out at her house after school. She never wanted me to go home until my father was there—so I wouldn’t face an empty house or draw in my mother’s studio by myself. Rose didn’t know about the bottles my father thought he could hide from me or the uncertain sound of his footsteps on the stairs that I couldn’t ignore no matter how much I turned up my music and willed them away.
“Alone” didn’t mean lonely. When I was alone, I could shut out the world. I could lose myself in colors and shapes and textures and use them to place a dam between me and the things I didn’t want to acknowledge. Alone was better when you didn’t want to feel. Seeing people was like holding up a mirror to the pain, and instead of the one image of hurt and sadness—there were two.
Tonight, there is no alone.
Liz has not yet returned to the dorm. I dry off as quickly as I can in the gray, chipped-tiled bathroom with towels stingier than the ones in my high school locker room, then search for my bed even as others around me talk in groups of twos and threes. No one has thrown my coat onto the floor, so I climb up onto that bunk, pull the sheet over me, and ignore the building panic as I carefully remove the GPS recorder from my shoe.
Dozens of women move quietly through the room—lying on the bunks—whispering in corners. I shift the sheet and capture the image of Dana sitting on a pallet haphazardly placed on the ground not far from the bathroom. I take another of a woman curled up in a corner staring hopelessly at
the ceiling. A horn blasts again quickly followed by a low, hollowed-out metallic sound. The room goes completely black for several long seconds before the exit signs over the doorways hum to life and cast parts of the room in a pale, sickly green.
Mood lighting. Just perfect.
I huddle under my sheet as those who have not found their beds navigate the dark by the meager glow and eventually settle. My eyes are gritty. A film of fatigue wraps around me. I’m not sure how well the recorder will capture images in the dark, but I take several pictures anyway before stashing the device back in my shoe. Then I close my eyes and try to find the emptiness in between breaths where I can stop myself from thinking. But there is no emptiness here, because there are people.
Shifting in their beds.
Whispering.
Whimpering.
The quiet sounds of someone weeping in the darkness.
Then from somewhere nearby, there is singing.
A folk song. My music teacher from elementary school would probably recognize it, but the unfamiliar notes sung in the low, throaty voice lends the song an otherworldly quality. Everyone goes quiet as the stanzas float through the darkness.
My heart will be true
My heart will be strong
Through the darkness of the darkest night
That keeps stretching for far too long
My heart will be true
My heart will be strong
Though the seas churn with anger and rage with might
My heart will be true. I will not lose sight
When the mountains are steep and impossible to scale,
My heart will be strong, I must not fail.
There is beauty in trying when there is no end in sight
I must keep on walking if I want to find the light.
When the monsters at night make me cower in my bed.
When all my foolish dreams and false hopes have long fled.
You will know I still love you when you hear this, my song.
My heart will be true.
My heart will be strong.
I pull the thin sheet over my head, but I still hear every word she sings and the tears others shed. I want to yell at her to stop because she’s just making it worse, but that would draw attention so I shut my eyes tight and wait for the song to end.
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