"Einav Ben-Ari!" The judge's voice boomed again. "I find you guilty on all counts. I hereby demote you to private, strip you of all your medals and honors, and sentence you to death." The crowd roared its approval. "Before your execution, Private Ben-Ari, you will spend thirty years in a maximum security prison cell, where I urge you to reflect upon your crimes and seek peace with whatever god you worship. May he have mercy on your soul."
The gavel fell.
They dragged her outside the courthouse into the searing sunlight. A crowd awaited. Cameras flashed. Protesters chanted or cheered.
"Warmonger!" somebody shouted.
"Alien killer!"
"Free the heroine!"
"Fascist!"
"Free Ben-Ari! Free Ben-Ari!"
Signs. Lights. Colors. People tossed their shoes at her. Scuffles broke out. An MP shoved Ben-Ari into a van, chained her to the seat, and they drove.
Time passed in a haze.
Something inside her felt dead.
They took her past towering walls. They strip searched her. They deloused and decontaminated her. They dressed her in an orange jumpsuit. They shoved her into a rocket. They blasted her into the darkness. They took her to an asteroid with its own moon. They marched her down a cell block as men jeered and tossed excrement at her.
They shoved her into a cell. She saw a concrete slab topped with a thin mattress, a smaller concrete slab for a stool, a metal toilet, concrete walls.
The door slammed shut, sealing her in shadows.
Ben-Ari lay down on her cot. For the first time since her trial, she wept.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Marco sat at his desk.
His ears pounded. His head spun.
"Good morning, sir," he said. "Would you care to hear about our new credit card insurance premium pla—"
A dialtone hummed. A thousand voices clattered around him.
"Good afternoon, ma'am!" he said. "I'd like to offer you a free sample of Happy Joy Bubbles, a brand new ash-cleaning detergent, straight from Japan, that—"
A ring tone like an air raid siren in his ear. A thousand phones, rising, falling from a thousand desks, and fluorescent lights hummed, a thousand insects overhead.
"Children, please, is your father home? I have a special offer for him, two toolboxes for five easy payments of—"
Around him the other salespeople all chattered like insects. A heavyset man with a turban was selling toasters, and Sergeant Singh died in the tunnels. A young Asian girl giggled as she sold a mutual fund, and Lailani ripped out Elvis's heart. A light died overhead and the flashlights died in the tunnels and the centipedes moved in.
"Yes, sir," Marco said into his phone, "or your money back guaranteed, but I assure you, these are quality steak knives capable of cutting through a shoe. A shoe, sir! And—please, sir, don't hang up."
The siren again. A flat sound. All clear. All clear.
"Emery, if you don't start selling some products, your ass is on the street."
Marco stood in the boss's office, head lowered, hands behind his back. The man pounded his desk, snorted, pointed at the door, gave Marco one more chance. He left, the soldier who had killed the scum emperor, a scolded boy. He returned to his desk, one in a thousand in this warehouse of human cattle and buzzing lights.
"Yes, ma'am, just like on the television! A vacuum that can suck up marbles. I guarantee it."
He shuffled away from his desk. A coworker pointed at him, whispered something to his friends. They laughed. A man pounded Marco on the back. "Good job, war hero!" A few people snickered.
Marco stepped outside into the storm. Another day at the call center ended. Was it his second month now? His third? He no longer knew. It felt like years.
He plunged into the subway station. Countless commuters crowded around him, shoving forward, a great sea of humanity, shoulder to shoulder, crotch to ass, sweat to sweat, coughing, sneezing, and a train slammed its doors shut. "No more room, wait for the next one!" And they shoved, and another train rolled by, then a third, and Marco squeezed onto the fourth, shoved his way in. He stood in the sardine can, the other commuters pressing against him.
The train died in the darkness. For long moments, they stood still on the tracks, and Marco was in the mine again. His legs shook. He had to get out. He had to! When the train moved again, he exited at the next stop, still far from home. He sat on a bench, and he trembled. His legs wouldn't stop shaking and he couldn't stop thinking of the mines. He waited an hour for the crowds to die down. He took another train, tried to ignore the shouting drunk man at the back. Tried to ignore the woman laughing as she pissed her pants. Finally he made it to his stop, belly roiling with hunger.
He shuffled by the pimps and the prostitutes.
"Hey, Marco!" the thin pimp cried. "You going to buy a lady tonight?"
The burly pimp held out his photo album. "Choose. Choose!"
The prostitutes, imported all the way from Thailand and Indonesia, stood in the shadows. Meek. Afraid. Aging. Bandaged, bruised. Marco shook his head and walked on. Past the man rifling through the garbage, he made it indoors. The elevator was dead. He climbed ten stories and returned to his apartment, and he felt dead.
Addy was already home. She still wore her security uniform. She had a new black eye, and again her fists were lacerated. Marco wanted to ask her what happened, but her look silenced him.
Don't, her eyes said.
So he didn't.
They sat at their new table. A cheap piece of plastic, made for lawns, not kitchens. They still could not afford chairs. They sat on flimsy plastic stools. They ate silently. Some pasta. Some tomato sauce. They had no money for meat tonight, not while paying back two months of rent. Not after buying the table.
They lay down on air mattresses for the night, and cardboard covered the windows, makeshift curtains. It was all the furniture they had.
Before he drifted off to sleep, Marco pulled out his notebook. He wrote another chapter in Le Kill. Tomiko, his masked heroine, was trapped in a factory farm, a great slaughterhouse for humans. Rows and rows of cages filled the building, crammed together like desks in a call center. Using the magic of her ancient kabuki mask, she summoned her katana from the demons of the underworld who had captured it, and she sliced the bars, escaping her cage. She freed all the captive humans, and they fled into the night, forming an army to fight the corporation and its evil president.
The train screeched along the tracks. It broke down again. For long moments, they languished in the hot tunnel, and Marco's chest constricted, and his belly ached, and his skull felt too tight, and he couldn't take it, couldn't take being in this tunnel, crammed here in this sea of flesh, with the scum scratching at the subway, and he knew it was them. He could smell them. He was ready to scream, to pass out, by the time the train moved again.
He was late to work.
"Damn it, Emery, I don't care what you did in the war!" His boss pounded the tabletop. "I'm docking you an entire day of pay. And don't tell me you were only an hour late. I don't give a fuck. You sell something today, or I'll kick your ass onto the street. Don't think you'll get special treatment here because you were some hot shot in the army. You're worth less than my shit here."
As Marco walked back to his desk, he felt the eyes on him. Hundreds of eyes. Everyone was staring. He heard them whispering, laughing. When he finally reached his desk, he found a picture of himself there, right by his phone. Somebody had drawn him in a crude cartoon, the words 'Ass-kissing Emery' written beneath it. He heard them laughing. He felt their eyes.
He sat down.
"Good morning, ma'am! As seen on TV, the new super iron can smooth out any wrinkle in—"
"Yes, sir! Our new six-shooter hunting rifle can hit a whistling bird from two kilometers away, and that's no exaggeration. Buy now, and we'll toss in a free—that's right, free—bottle of Hearty Haven BBQ sauce."
He sold a rifle.
The trains screeched.
He made his
way home.
His head spun when he finally stepped off the train, and his legs trembled.
He shook his head at the photo album.
He crashed onto the air mattress.
The trains screeched.
"Yes, sir, we—"
His boss yelled.
The commuters crammed against him.
The train died.
"Choose a girl! Choose!"
"We're experiencing delays in service."
"Damn it, Emery!"
More drawings on his desk. More jeers. Somebody printed a photograph of him, hung it in the kitchen, scribbled on his face. A toothless smile from the junkie. More bruises on Addy's face.
"Ma'am, we—"
The train horns.
He slept.
Was it month seven? Eight? He no longer knew. He was dead. He had died on Corpus. He was trapped in the mines, forever lost in the darkness, forever in his nightmare. Repeating. Repeating. Lost.
He slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was reading and writing that saved Ben-Ari's sanity.
All she had in her prison cell was time, the boundaries of her mind, and words to explore those boundaries.
A cell of concrete. Two by two meters large. Not even large enough to pace. Barely wider than she was tall. A slab of concrete topped with a thin mattress. Two more slabs of concrete, forming a crude desk and stool. A toilet by the bed. No window. Twenty-three hours a day here in isolation. A few days down. Thirty years to go.
Once a day, they escorted her outside of her cell. She showered with child abusers and serial killers. They sat her by a barred window and let her stare outside at a concrete wall and a narrow view of the stars, just a strip of darkness with one or two dots of lights. Then back into her cell for another twenty-three hours of creeping madness and desperate efforts to stave it off.
Thirty years, Ben-Ari thought, sitting in her cell under the flickering fluorescent light. Thirty years of this hell until they execute me.
She would be in her fifties when they finally hanged her. Would any shred of her sanity remain by then?
She would join no prison gang. With a single hour outside their cells a day, prisoners formed only loosely organized gangs. With Noodles still on the lam, she was the only Jewish prisoner, hated by the Aryans, shunned by the other gangs. Showering quickly. Keeping to herself. Beaten when cornered. Thankful when she returned to the safety of her cell. One time they jumped her. She fought back, hard. They gave her bruises. She broke their bones. They left her alone after that, but she was always cautious, always relieved to return to her cell.
Her cell. The boundaries of her mind. Words to explore them.
They gave each prisoner a choice of a single holy book, the only reading material allowed. Ben-Ari chose the Old Testament. She had never been overly religious. Her father had been a staunch atheist, railing against the evils of faith. As a child, as a form of rebellion, Ben-Ari had dabbled with religion, had secretly read the Bible, worn a Star of David, prayed at night. As a soldier, she had lost her faith. She had seen too much horror, too many friends killed, to still believe. She had explored much of the galaxy, and she had seen no sign of God. And yet here in the darkness, the old rituals comforted her. Her faith was still shattered, but the comforts of words, of memories, of older times—they warmed her in the cold.
For hours a day, she read the book, savoring every word. She let herself escape into those old stories. She traveled with her ancestors, the Israelites, out of captivity in Egypt. She fought with King David against the Philistines. She lived in an ancient land of sunlight, of palm trees and rustling vineyards, and she heard the song of turtle doves and of maidens dancing over grapes, crushing them for wine. She walked through the streets of Jerusalem in the desert, hearing the words of prophets. She was trapped in a concrete cell, but in her mind, she lived in an ancient kingdom of sand and sunlight. Here was her escape: if not through prayer then through ritual, through words, through imagination and collective memory.
When she wasn't reading, she wrote.
At first, they had refused to give her more than her bible. It was months before a guard walked in, grunted, and handed her a stack of notebooks and a box of pencils.
"Thank your friends on Earth." He snickered. "They protested for you. You get paper and pencils now."
"What protests?" Ben-Ari asked. "Who? What are they saying? Is Kemi Abasi in prison too? And what of—"
But he slammed shut the door to her cell. Her mind went wild, imagining thousands of people marching down the streets on Earth, calling her a heroine, demanding her freedom. Freedom she still didn't have. But perhaps they had alleviated her conditions here in prison. The guards would not move her to a minimum security installation. They would not give her more books or a television. But they gave her paper. They gave her pencils. And Ben-Ari was grateful.
And she wrote.
She started at the beginning.
She wrote about her birth, six weeks premature, struggling for life—the stories her mother had told her. She wrote about her mother's death, stung by a bee, a death so mundane for a family of warriors. She wrote about her father, the famous colonel who had traveled the galaxy, forging alliances with alien races.
But mostly, she wrote about her war.
They brought her more notebooks, more pencils, and her wrist ached every day, but still she wrote. About entering Officer Candidate School at eighteen, a path laid out for her at birth, and graduating at the top of her class. About her first assignment at Fort Djemila, training boys and girls who would grow into heroes, into legends. About leading those heroes to Corpus, to fight the scum in the mines. About leading them into the hives of Abaddon, finding the emperor in his pit, and crumbling that alien empire.
And she wrote about the marauders, this new threat for humanity. About leaders weary of war, bankrupt, afraid, feeding prisoners to this enemy, this beast whose hunger could never be sated.
You may feed the wolf scraps for a while, she wrote. But sooner or later, he will bite off your arm.
One day, when they gave Ben-Ari her ten minutes at the small barred window, Earth came into view in the narrow strip of sky. A pale blue dot, barely visible in the distance. The world she had fought so hard to defend, the world that might now fall.
She did not know the lifespan of marauders, the length of their patience. She did not know if they would pounce tomorrow or next century. But one thing she knew. They were preparing for war.
"All my life, I fought for you, Earth," she said to that distant light. "But now you're in great danger, and now I cannot help you."
And so, she knew, there was only one thing she could do. One way she could still save her planet.
She was trapped in the most secure prison in human history, marooned on an asteroid in the depths of space. And she would have to escape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
He stood by the window, staring at the brick wall.
He paced the apartment.
He felt trapped in a cell.
He stood outside in the storm, letting the ash hit him.
He lay on the floor of his apartment. He stared at the ceiling.
I can't, he thought. I can't.
It was the weekend. It was two days in this prison cell. Two days before he returned to the inferno of the subways, the boss, the phones, the desks.
I can't. I can't. I want to die. I can't.
Addy came home from work that evening. She worked Saturdays too. She walked straight to the bathroom, favoring the right leg, and a cut bled on her fist. Marco knew better than to challenge her, knew she wouldn't speak of her job underground. But he saw the haunting pain in her eyes.
I can't.
He paced. He stepped outside into the storm, back again. Addy locked herself in her room.
I can't. I want to die. Please let me die. I can't.
"We need to splurge," he said the next morning.
Addy sat in the corner, staring at th
e blank wall. Her day off. She wore gray sweatpants, a white tank top, white bandages on her knuckles. Her eyes were sunken, her hair limp. She looked older than her twenty-four years. A cigarette dangled from her lips, the only luxury she allowed herself. Their only furniture was still the flimsy plastic stools. They were too poor to afford more than rent and cheap food.
"We're broke." Her voice was cracked. "And we need to save to buy a house in the suburbs. Or to fly home to Earth."
"Fuck that," Marco said. "Fuck the suburbs. Fuck Earth. Fuck them both for today. Today we need to splurge. I have to get out of here, Addy. From this apartment. I have cabin fever."
And I have PTSD. And I have depression. And I want to die. And I can't. And I have to get out of here.
They left the apartment.
They walked through the storm.
They sat in a small Chinese place, eating greasy noodles. A Robot Wrestling match mumbled on the TV. They did not speak. They had no words. They kept glancing up from their noodles, meeting each other's eyes, then looking down again. They ate, silent.
"Not as good as hot dogs on a rake," Marco finally said. And finally Addy cracked a smile.
"That was pretty funny, when we did that," she said. The rain streamed outside the windows.
Marco nodded. "I liked that night." He sighed and looked down into his bowl. "There haven't been many good times lately, have there?" Suddenly his throat felt tight. "Boot camp was worse. Less sleep. Harder on the body. But . . . we had fun there. We had our friends. I feel alone here." Suddenly his words were spilling out, and he struggled not to shed tears. "I miss my dad. And Lailani. And our friends. I hate my job. I hate going there every day. I'm already dreading the next time I have to get on that subway. I see people on the subway, Addy, and their eyes are dead. They just stare ahead, eyes blank. Some of them have gone mad. They talk to invisible friends, and . . . sometimes I think I see a figure. A girl in a kabuki mask. And I think I'm going crazy, and I'm scared, and I'm trapped here, and I'm depressed, and . . ." He exhaled slowly. "I'm sorry. That was a lot. I know it's hard for you too."
Earth Fire (Earthrise Book 4) Page 20