by Judd Vowell
“Is she now? Well, let’s see how long it takes me to tame her.”
24.
W hen the door opened to the interrogation room, the director and the captured woman fell silent. They had been in the midst of a verbal showdown, with neither one of them relenting. Simone entered and bowed her head to the woman, as if to give a courteous hello. It garnered no response. Jacob watched and listened from behind the two-way mirror while Simone went to work.
“Thank you, director. You may leave us now,” Simone instructed the director. He left the room with an obvious sigh of disgust. “First off, tell me your name. Given only is fine.”
“Why would I tell you anything?” the captured woman asked calmly, squinting her eyes with a hint of anger.
“Let me lay this out for you, clear and simple,” Simone said. “You’re in a real shitty situation here. We have zero need for you, even if your story is true. You can live or die, for all I care. But I make that call. You answer what I ask, and you’ve got a chance.”
“Might as well kill me then.”
“Now wait. I never said I wanted to do that. I’m a compassionate woman, and if Paul’s email was legit, then I want to get to the bottom of it. After all, there’s two kids involved here. None of us wants to see anything happen to them.”
The captured woman glared at Simone.
“So, I’ll say again: tell me your name.”
The woman thought for a minute. She was smart. Jacob could almost see her brain’s inner-workings moving feverishly to determine a strategy. He knew Simone well enough to know that she could see it, too.
“Anna,” the captured woman finally said.
“Ok, Anna. Now we’re having a conversation. So let’s get right to it: why are you here?”
Anna’s shoulders relaxed forward and down, and she lowered her head. She muttered something inaudible, even to Simone inside the room.
“What was that?” Simone asked.
Anna raised her face but kept her eyes focused on the table in front of her. “Drugs,” she stated plainly.
The answer caught Simone by surprise. “Did you say, ‘drugs’?”
Anna nodded.
“What do you mean by that, exactly?”
“It’s my husband, the children’s father. He’s dying. And the only way we might save him is with a medicine that’s inside the hospital. Which is inside this grid. Paul is...was a family friend. He offered to try and get us inside. And here we are.” Anna displayed a beaten look on her face. She was resigned and tearful.
“So the email was a lie?”
“Yes.”
“You have no intention of joining us?”
“No.”
Simone walked over and put her hand on Anna’s back. She began rubbing her consolingly. “Then I have to tell you this, Anna. No medicine is going to save your husband. He’s going to die. Just like you. And just like your children.”
Anna straightened her spine quickly and reached for Simone, but the restraints around her wrists kept her arms just a few inches from the table.
“I know the truth is painful, Anna,” Simone goaded. “But you need to know it. Now, I’m going to leave you with your thoughts. And when I come back, you better have something else to tell me.”
“Screw you,” Anna seethed through clenched teeth.
“Your husband is as good as dead, Anna. The sooner you accept that, the better friends you and I can be.”
With that, she left the interrogation and came back to the observation room and Jacob.
“If it isn’t true, she’s one hell of a storyteller,” he said as Simone came in.
“I don’t know. I think it’s all an act. I’ll work on her some more, but those kids are the key.”
As Simone was finishing her thought, a knock came at the door. One of the directors opened it and leaned his head into the room. “The children,” he said.
“Yes?” Simone asked.
“They’re already gone.”
25.
T he two captured teenagers had been locked in an empty closet-space in the grid’s utilities building once Simone was done interrogating them. One of the Omega XT ANTs was assigned to check on them every thirty minutes until he would be instructed to leave the door unlocked and precipitate their escape. But before those instructions ever came, he found the closet door open and the teenage children gone. He reported that they had picked the lock on the door from the inside, as there was no damage to the lock at all.
“Not bad,” Simone responded to the director when he told her about the kids’ clever escape, and then to herself, “Smarter than I expected.” She hesitated, frozen in some deep thought.
“What should we do?” the director asked.
“Exactly what we planned,” Simone announced. “Track them, dammit. The only difference is that we have to do it now rather than later.”
“Understood,” the director said, turning to leave.
Simone waited for the director to exit the observation room. Then she said to Jacob, “I’m going back in there. And I’m going to get aggressive with her. We need to move quickly now. You come get me if there’s anything that I need to know. Understand?”
“I do,” he told her. As the day had unfolded, Jacob had become more excited, but also more apprehensive. Worry was something that had never distracted him before, but he cared for someone besides himself all of a sudden. And his worry was for her. “Simone, don’t back down. Push her as hard as she can stand it. For the Soul of Humanity.”
◊◊◊
“So you’re sticking with this ‘dying husband’ story?” Simone asked as she faced Anna again.
The captured woman gave her no answer.
“Aw, c’mon. We were doing so well. Don’t give me the silent treatment now.”
Still nothing.
“Ok, I guess I’ll do the talking. Let me tell you a few things that I know as fact. One, there’s a strong electronic signal that we’ve been picking up here at the grid. It’s not far away. Just down the highway you came from, actually.”
Anna remained silent.
“Two, we’re organizing right now to send an army of ANTs out there to find the source. We’re going down that highway tomorrow. And we’ll find it, I can assure you.”
Anna’s face stayed emotionless.
“And three, your children.”
With that, Anna looked up at Simone.
“That’s right. The kids. They’re gone.”
Gradually, a broad smile spread over Anna’s face. She started shaking her head and laughing. “Of course they are,” she said, staring at Simone directly.
It wasn’t the reaction that Simone was expecting, and it angered her. “Did you hear what I said? They’re gone.”
Anna kept smiling. “I know what you’re doing. You want me to think that they’re dead. But they’re not. Don’t worry, I believe you. You’re speaking with too much conviction. So, of course they’re gone. But my guess would be that they’ve left by their own choice. By their own ingenuity. And that you don’t have a clue where they are.”
Simone returned the smile that Anna was proudly displaying. “Ok, Anna, you’re right. They’re not dead, for now. And they did escape. But only because I let them.” She reached in her pocket and wrapped her fingers around something inside it. “But you’re wrong about one thing.” She pulled a tracking device out of the pocket and held it up in the air. “We know exactly where they are. And they’re going to lead us straight to the answers that you refuse to give.”
26.
S imone and Jacob went to the utility building’s control room to investigate the kids’ progress while she took a break from questioning Anna. She had not broken the captured woman yet, even after hours of interrogation. Jacob actually had begun to wonder if Simone could break her at all. Between Anna’s mental strength and the children’s clever courage, his worry about what they were facing had grown. He hated the feeling, and deliberately tried to bury it so that it wouldn�
�t affect him. He didn’t want emotions to get in the way of the mission.
Hanging in the center of the main control room wall was a large monitor, six feet long by four feet high. The Sector 3 engineers had created a digital map of the grid and the area surrounding it, and that’s what appeared on the screen when Simone and Jacob entered. The map could be manipulated to focus on certain sections or show a broad view of fifty square miles. In the middle of the screen were two flashing blue lights: the kids. The tracking devices were working flawlessly.
“Where are they?” Simone asked as she and Jacob came into the room. There were several people there, including the grid directors and engineers at the controls.
“Holed up in a parking garage,” one of the engineers replied. “Been there for over an hour.”
“Good. Stay on them,” Simone directed. She took Jacob’s arm in her hand and said softly into his ear, “Follow me.”
She led him to a private office down the hall and closed the door behind her. They grabbed each other at the same time and were on the floor before Jacob realized what was happening. “Make me scream, Jacob,” she breathed from underneath him.
And he did.
◊◊◊
The director who woke them was as startled as they were. They had fallen asleep on the office’s couch, exhausted from the night before and the stress of the day so far. The office door swung open and the overhead light came to life, forcing Jacob awake in an instant. The director stood there motionless.
“Oh!” he gasped, when he comprehended what he was seeing. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb you.” He tried to overcome his discomfort quickly and leave the situation. “You need to come to the control room. Both of you. They’re on the move.”
He left the light on, but closed the door behind him.
“Shit,” Simone said. “That was stupid.”
“I kinda thought it was great, myself,” Jacob said with a grin.
She smiled as she slipped back into her bra. “You know what I mean.”
They finished re-dressing and hurried down the hall to the control room. Jacob checked his watch: 11 PM. They had slept for a long time.
“Where are they heading?” Simone asked the engineers.
“West, but that’s all we know for now.”
“Ok. Let’s make sure we’re on top of it when they get close to the border. We need to alert the Omega XT to let them sneak out of the grid without incident.”
Simone and Jacob watched the teenagers from the control room as they moved up and down the grid’s city blocks. Occasionally the blue blips representing them would stop and hesitate for a few minutes. The duo was stealthy, apparently avoiding contact with anyone.
Jacob whispered to Simone at one point, “Why do you think they’re walking so randomly instead of straight to a border?”
“I’m not sure it’s random at all, Jacob,” she replied perceptively.
Simone had been right. The teenagers’ progress through the grid halted two blocks from the northwest border. They remained still for much longer than they had before.
“Zoom in,” Jacob directed. “As close as you can.” The map shrunk down to a city block size. He couldn’t quite make out the building where they were positioned. “What is it? Where are they?”
Simone answered his question, with conviction. “It’s the hospital pharmacy. Where the medicine is stored.”
The two blue blips went inside the building and drifted through it slowly. They held fast after a few minutes, then moved rapidly back to the door that they had come through. Then they were moving again, toward the grid’s western border.
“Anna’s telling the truth,” Jacob said to Simone.
“About the dying dad...maybe,” she reckoned. “But there’s more. And once I make sure those kids are out, I’m giving her one last chance to tell me.”
27.
O bserving the teenagers’ progression through the grid occupied most of the night, and the sun had risen by the time Jacob and Simone shifted to the next phase of the fast-developing mission. The morning’s daylight hours were spent preparing the group of Omega XT that would travel west on the highway following the children. The pair had moved south and then west after leaving the hospital, and they had crossed the grid’s border just minutes before dawn. And something strange had happened not long before: two huge explosions far to the north, but inside the city. Even if Simone had not instructed the Omega XT to move away from the intersection where the kids were crossing, they probably would have anyway. The explosions were hard to ignore.
Jacob and Simone determined to let the children journey for the day before they would begin the pursuit. They were on foot, so they wouldn’t be getting very far. And it would be better for the ANTs to advance under cover of darkness. They planned to leave the grid one hour after sunset.
Once the mission was set and preparations were made, Simone and Jacob went back to the interrogation room. Anna had not been moved. She had been there for more than twenty-four hours, sitting shackled to the table in front of her. Jacob went into the adjacent observation area to watch Simone pull as much information from her as she could. He was hoping Anna would relent, for everyone’s sake. She looked haggard and dazed.
“Look alive, Anna!” Simone shouted as she came into the room. “Not much time now. I need you to be alert.” She set a glass of water on the table within Anna’s reach. “Please, drink.”
Anna took the glass with both hands and raised it toward her mouth. Just as it cleared the table below it, she slowly turned it upside down, letting the water trickle to the linoleum floor until the glass was empty.
“Goddammit, Anna! It doesn’t have to be this way. You help me, and I’ll help you. Can’t you see that?”
“You’re not helping anyone but yourself. I know that. I also know how this scenario plays out, whether I talk or not.” She was looking at Simone from sleep-deprived eyes, but they held a deep-set fire in them. “So I’m not saying shit, especially to you. There’s your help – Simone.”
She said her name with vengeance. Jacob was surprised that she knew it. He searched his memory for an instance when Simone had used it in her presence. But he couldn’t find any moment when she had.
Anna continued. “That’s right, Simone, these walls aren’t exactly soundproof, in case you wanted to know. You make sure and tell that to Jacob, too.”
She had also picked up on his name, and now she was toying with them. Simone remained composed, but she was raging inside.
“What does it matter, Anna? So, you know our names. I’ve told you everything else. Your kids are heading west, just as I predicted. And we’re going after them. Tonight. You want to save them? You tell me what else we’re going to find down that highway.”
Anna laughed, like she knew something that they didn’t. “Here’s why it matters, Simone. Because now I know exactly who I’m coming after when I get out of these chains. Because I know the names of the people that I’m going to kill. You listen to me: if you follow those kids at all, you’re going down. Maybe not ANTI- and maybe not Salvador. But you and your friend Jacob in there,” she looked at the two-way mirror, “you’ll be dead. I promise you that much.”
Simone started clapping, over-dramatically. “Well done, Anna. I’ve got to say, I’m impressed. Here you are, starving and dehydrated and under my thumb, and you’ve got the gall to threaten me. But you know as well as I do that you’re not getting out of this. I suppose that’s something that hasn’t completely disappeared from some of you outsiders: ignorant, blind, desperate hope. It’s sad, really.” She leaned over the table until her face was close to Anna’s. “Now you listen to me – I’m saving you for later. After I finish with your children.”
With that, she straightened and went to the door, hesitating when Anna said one last thing. “You come right back, Simone. I’ll be waiting.”
Simone walked out and slammed the door shut, never looking back to acknowledge Anna’s challenge.
&nb
sp; 28.
D uring the afternoon hours, Simone and Jacob watched the flashing blue lights as they moved west along the highway. They had paused at a church for a long while only a few blocks from the grid. Jacob speculated that they may not go any further, but they eventually started traveling again. As the day was ending, they stopped, this time inside a large fenced-in structure. He cross-referenced the area with their ANTI- maps and determined what the facility was: a former prison camp. “That’s it,” Simone said confidently. “Now we know where we’re going.”
At sunset, an attack occurred on the northern border of the grid. It was a small group of outsiders, but they were using military-style assault rifles and grenades. And they retreated into the city’s empty streets with purpose. It didn’t matter. A group of Omega XT followed them, keeping them engaged for three blocks until they were decimated. The Omega XT’s report said that a couple of them may have gotten away.
Jacob began to worry again. But, by then, it was a double-edged feeling. He was as concerned for their potential failure as he was for their success. He suppressed it like before, but it was much more difficult to do.
“Do you think this has anything to do with Anna and the kids?” he asked Simone after news of the attack reached them.
“No doubt in my mind, Jacob. That’s why we’re taking an army down that highway.”
◊◊◊
They left the grid’s borders protected with a quarter of the typical-sized security force, taking all other Omega XT with them. There were over forty modified jeeps and humvees in the convoy carrying close to three hundred soldiers. They drove three-wide across the highway. It was an intimidating spectacle of power.
Simone carried with her a hand-held version of the tracking map that they had used to follow the teenagers earlier, in case they started moving again. “But they won’t,” she said. She checked the blue blips every few minutes as they rode, making sure that she was right.