by Alana Terry
They descended a staircase, and the air grew even chillier. She guessed if they let her look she would see her own breath, choppy as it was. She tried to rub her hands together, but her wrists chafed on the cuffs. She couldn’t feel any railings to either side of her and was afraid of tripping.
“Watch your step.” She recognized Dustin’s voice and actually welcomed his hand on her bicep. His grip was forceful, but it almost felt as if he were holding her, supporting her quivering legs, preparing to catch her if she lost her balance.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the gnawing feeling in her stomach had grown until her entire abdominal cavity was a vacuum, void of life, void of emotion, void of matter. They slowed to a stop.
“Sit here.”
Kennedy’s shin bumped a couch. She felt the scratchy fabric with her hands and turned her face away from the musty smell. How long had it been rotting down here? How many other victims had used it before? Was she alone? She pictured herself in a room as cold and bleak and empty as the holodecks in those sci-fi shows she sometimes watched with her dad. Blackness. On and on forever even though your body was in a room, enclosed by four walls. She lowered herself carefully onto the couch, half expecting a rodent to come scampering out from underneath, ready to complain at whoever disturbed his rest.
Someone grabbed her wrists. His hands were warm. Didn’t he know it was below freezing down here? She might die of exposure if nothing else.
She let out her breath when he unlocked the left side of the cuff. She forced herself to thank him, but her voice was still so small, so scared. Had her dad known? When he dragged her through all those seemingly pointless training scenarios, when he grilled her about how she’d respond if she was ever abducted, did he know how small she would sound?
Unfortunately, the man with the warm hands didn’t take off her other cuff but attached it to something metallic sticking out of the wall behind. She wanted to argue. They could trust her. She would cooperate. She wouldn’t run. But they’d know she was lying. She reached up to finger her blindfold.
“Don’t.” It was Dustin’s voice.
She let her free hand drop to her lap.
“That’s better.”
Should she bother to scream? Other than the knife he pulled to get her in the car, she hadn’t noticed any other weapons. No guns to her temple like in a thriller novel. No long blades pressed up against her jugular. The men hadn’t talked to anyone else since they came in. Were they the only two guarding her?
She licked her dry lips. What did it matter? Two men or fifty, she wasn’t getting out of here. Not yet. But still, if they weren’t armed, wouldn’t that make a rescue attempt a whole lot more likely to succeed?
She heard the men shuffle away, listened to the rumble of their voices as they conversed in a low murmur somewhere far off. Were they deciding what to do with her?
She wished her father hadn’t told her so many statistics about abducted women and what might happen to them. Which horrible fate would she face? A lifetime of slavery in an underground sex ring? Or would she end up in a freezer, cut into pieces and stuffed into bloody Ziploc bags? Would they find her next week at the bottom of the Charles River? What was the least painful way to be murdered?
She shook her head. She couldn’t go on thinking that way. Instead, she listed the reasons she still had to be thankful. They could have hurt her even more getting her into the car. Her stomach felt sore, but she didn’t think she was seriously injured. Bruised up a little, but what would that matter if she got out of here alive?
Who were they? Hired men, perhaps? Had the Chinese government heard about her parents’ clandestine missionary work? Was she some pawn now in an international conflict? She chided herself for watching too many spy shows with her dad. If only this were more like those. Then someone like James Bond would come and free her and kill her captors without breaking into a sweat or getting his tuxedo stained with blood.
“You hungry?” the man with the gruff voice asked. He sounded a lot older than Dustin, but Kennedy hadn’t gotten a good look at him before she was blindfolded.
The question startled Kennedy. What was this — a bed and breakfast for hostages? She was famished, and her mouth watered at the prospect of food, but she shook her head. Tell them what you need, she remembered her dad saying. But she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be dependent on them. She didn’t want to admit she would be here longer than a few minutes. She didn’t want to acknowledge she was miles away from her dorm, maybe even in a different state, and nobody realized she was missing. How long before Reuben or Willow would get worried and start asking questions? A week? If these men had a copy of her phone and access to her email, couldn’t they keep up the ruse of her disappearance indefinitely?
Maybe. But she wasn’t going to accept that as a possibility. Right now, she was going to swallow down her heart, which kept threatening to leap out of her chest. She was going to ignore the rumbling in her stomach that felt as empty as the earth’s upper atmosphere. She was going to think about pleasant things, like about the fact that God hadn’t allowed them to force themselves on her, and she was going to plan a way to get out.
“Then we’ll check on you in the morning,” Dustin said. Footsteps receded in the direction of the stairs. And then Kennedy — who had spent the last ten years in Yanji with its half a million residents, who now lived in a dorm with four hundred other students and shared her meals with nearly two thousand other college first-years — was left behind in stifling, deafening, soul-haunting solitude.
CHAPTER 13
She never knew what complete silence was until now. Her ears rang with it. Her mind waited for something — a shout, a yell, the horrifying pop of gunfire.
Nothing.
She reached up and touched her blindfold again, half expecting somebody to grab her wrist and stop her.
No one.
“Hello?” The sound of her own whisper sent goose bumps shivering up her spine. She thought of her high school psychology class, about how people could actually go crazy from sensory deprivation. Was that what this was?
She took off the blindfold with her free hand, but it was as dark as it had been. She couldn’t see her own fingers and wished she had it back on again. Somehow knowing for certain she was in utter darkness was ten times more frightening than being blindfolded and only suspecting it.
Think. She had to think. Calm her mind and look at her situation rationally. Like her dad would. She thought about the advice he gave the Secret Seminary students for handling solitary confinement. Develop a schedule. Keep a routine. Find some way to track the time. And pray.
Pray.
She thought about the refugees her parents had taken in back home. How many of them experienced darkness like this? What did they do? She thought of Hannah, the only girl who completed the whole Secret Seminary program. When Kennedy flew out to Massachusetts for college, Hannah was only a week or two away from returning to North Korea. Where was she now? Kennedy pictured Hannah’s serene face. If Hannah were here, she would find a way to kneel in spite of the handcuff and spend the whole night in prayer — prayers for others probably, not even herself.
But Kennedy wasn’t like that. She could never be as spiritually mature as Hannah or the other Secret Seminary students. She had never been asked to sneak into a closed nation where the penalty for evangelism was torture and death. She had never risked her life to share a Bible verse with someone else. At the All American Girls’ High School, with all those preppy daughters of wealthy businessmen, Kennedy hadn’t really shared her faith at all. That wasn’t who she was. She liked watching action movies. She liked reading mysteries and shopping for clothes. She liked spending time with her friends. What was the crime in that? She still loved God, still believed in the Bible. She even had a vague notion of considering full- or part-time missions once she graduated from medical school in eight years. So why did it always feel like she wasn’t doing enough?
She shivere
d from the cold and hugged her free arm around herself for extra warmth. Couldn’t they have given her a blanket or something? Why had she been so stubborn and refused to tell them what she needed? She made a mental list of things to ask for when the men returned. Something hot to drink. A blanket. A pillow. She wondered how she was supposed to use the bathroom and thought again of how many others might have been chained all night to this very couch. Better ask for a sheet, too.
Her own materialism stared her accusingly in the face when she thought again about the members of her parents’ Secret Seminary. What would they have requested? A Bible, no doubt. Well, she’d be surprised to find one of those here. This didn’t seem like the kind of establishment the Gideons would keep stocked. This was definitely no hotel. If it was, she would order up room service, eat a big, fattening dinner, and lie down on a clean, puffy pillow …
Why was she always so focused on her own needs, anyway? Why can’t you be more like Hannah? She could almost hear her mother’s accusing voice. Kennedy’s mom spent hours each day with the Secret Seminary students, training, teaching, praying. Kennedy would come home from school and her mother would look shocked, surprised so much time had passed, surprised her own daughter was home and already interrupting their meeting.
Kennedy still spent time with her mom in Yanji, but it wasn’t the same. It was always at night after her homework was done. Her mom would invite her to eat chocolate and watch old black and white movies in the bedroom. Kennedy wasn’t part of the Secret Seminary, so nobody expected her to spend an hour on her knees praying. Nobody expected her to copy Scripture every day or memorize huge chunks of the Bible. Even when the North Korean students fasted, her mom still got up and fixed Kennedy breakfast each morning and gave her enough money to buy her lunch at school.
Why can’t you be more like Hannah?
Kennedy gritted her teeth. She wasn’t Hannah, and frankly, she didn’t want to be. Why couldn’t she be herself? She loved God. She prayed during the day and almost never ate a meal without thanking him for it first. So what was she missing? Why did it feel like she was never going to meet anybody’s expectations?
When the first hot tear splashed onto Kennedy’s arm, she tried to sniff all those negative emotions away. Sometimes she hated the Secret Seminary students, their courage, their commitment. She resented all the time her mom spent fussing over them, resented all the pride her mom lavished on them. Her mom was more impressed with the students for copying a book of the Bible than she was with Kennedy for being named valedictorian of her high school class. Her mom threw a lavish feast whenever a new refugee was baptized, and the whole household spent the day as if it were Christmas. What about when Kennedy got accepted into Harvard’s early-admission medical school program fresh out of high school? She didn’t get a feast or a new Bible or an impromptu worship service to thank God for her achievements. Instead, she got a few extra hugs, a whole backpack full of mystery novels for her summer reading, and a two-hundred-dollar gift certificate to her favorite online clothes store.
Even her dad babied her when he made her sit through the crisis training part of the Secret Seminary. The North Koreans would likely face interrogation at some point after returning home. He spoke about it as if it were a fact, and he gave them the practice and encouragement they’d need to endure. But even though he made Kennedy suffer through the exact same lectures and participate in the same role playing as the others, he didn’t really think she could make it. That’s why he made her watch those extra hours of self-defense videos before she left for college. With the Secret Seminary students, it was all about turn the other cheek and love your enemies. With Kennedy, it was kick him in the groin and make a scene ’til someone comes to rescue you.
Why? Because she wasn’t cut from the same mold as the rest of them. She wasn’t ever going to risk her life for Jesus. She wasn’t ever going to be anything more than a Sunday-morning pew warmer. Her parents smothered her with gifts, let her go to dances and parties that no pastor’s kid in the States would be allowed to attend, and only expected her to go to “church” in the den one morning a week. Maybe she was ready for more. Maybe her soul had been crying out for more, but her parents were too busy with their precious, anointed missionaries-in-training to notice.
And where was God? Where was he when she listened to her housemates in Yanji praying and asked him to make her as bold as they were? Where was he when she sat bored in church and begged God to fill her with the passion she saw in the refugees? When she was packing her things to move to Harvard, she prayed for Christian friends to meet her there. And God answered with Willow, the least likely student on campus to ever accept Christ, and Reuben, who claimed to be a Christian but refused to set foot in church.
Somewhere in the pit of her stomach, a howl threatened to rise. She kept it trapped in there for as long as she could. She scrunched down her jaw and tried to swallow it back down, but still it welled up from deep within her core, gathering strength and volume as it rose. It echoed against the walls, stinging her ears, chilling her marrow. She had never heard anything like it, not even in the movies. Almost animalistic, utterly hopeless, the sound of a spirit condemned to death.
By the time her tears ran dry, her ears still rang with its hollow echoes.
CHAPTER 14
“Wake up. Come on.”
She didn’t know what time it was, day or night. She didn’t remember falling asleep on the musky couch. All she knew was she definitely wasn’t rested.
She squinted in the beam from the flashlight, too disoriented to try to create a mental image of the room. She recognized Dustin as he stood by the couch and waved the flashlight in her eyes. “We need your help.”
Kennedy had to find a toilet, and she wanted to wash some of the grime off her face. She was thirsty. He shone the beam at her, and she tried to raise both hands to her eyes before she remembered the cuff.
“You’ve got some medical training, right?” His voice was smaller now, rushed and anxious like a nervous fox.
“I’m pre-med. It’s just my first year.” Her voice was scratchy. How long had she been asleep? She tried to remember if Dustin was wearing the same flannel shirt as when he captured her, but she had been too busy getting beat up and thrown into a car to pay attention to the color and pattern.
“We need your help.” His tone was still authoritative. Demanding. But Kennedy sensed an underlying desperation.
“I have to use the bathroom.” She was pleased that her voice didn’t give out on her. She sounded put together. Confident. If only she could feel that way, too.
“We don’t have time for this,” he mumbled to himself as he pulled a key out of his pocket. “All right, I’m going to show you where the bathroom is. You try something funny, I shoot you. Got it?” He swept up part of his shirt to show Kennedy the bottom of some kind of holster. Her spine stiffened at the sight.
“Yeah, I understand.” She hoped he didn’t feel her quiver when he unclasped the handcuff. She shook out her arm, relieved to be free of her restraint. Her legs were unstable when he led her to the bathroom, a big rusty setup which was more like a huge walk-in closet that happened to contain plumbing.
“Go on.”
He stood outside, and she squatted over the rusty bowl so she didn’t have to actually touch it. She tried not to think about the sound of her pee echoing in that great big room for everyone to hear. Well, if Dustin was an experienced kidnapper, he would be used to it.
Once she was done she walked to the sink, still unsteady. The water smelled like sulfur and was so cold it stung her hands. She decided not to wash her face, but she forced herself to gag down a little sip from her palms. The icy chill sent pangs of torment shooting to the roots of her teeth. She might not get anything else all day.
Or was it still night?
“You done?” He pounded on the door, and Kennedy looked around for one more second. Sometimes in the movies, there was a small ventilation window, or a pipe to climb.
Nothing.
She stepped out of the bathroom.
“We’ve got someone you need to look at.”
Dustin put his hand behind Kennedy’s back. She could smell his BO and decided he must be wearing old clothes. Her odor probably wasn’t much better. How long until she was able to take a shower? And if it was in that rotten-egg water, she’d probably pass anyway.
“She’s having some sort of asthma attack or something,” he told her. “Choking and crying up a storm.”
Kennedy wondered who he was talking about. Was this some sort of sex-slavery operation, then? Kennedy knew human trafficking was a huge problem in Asia, and her parents had even taken in a few girls who escaped from the hotel district in Yanji. But when her dad cited facts about forced prostitution in the US, she hadn’t really paid attention. Something like that could never happen to her.
Could it?
“All right,” Dustin called up the stairs. “Bring her down.”
Kennedy heard the girl’s wheezing, choking sobs even before she saw her in the poor light. She held her breath. What had they done to her?
“She won’t hold still.” Kennedy recognized the thick Boston accent of the driver. He came down the steps, struggling to carry the body that was kicking and flailing in his arms.
Kennedy’s legs felt like they were supporting twice her body weight. There was no way the child was of age. Kennedy stepped forward, afraid the girl might thrash her way right down the staircase and break her neck.
“I need to talk to my dad!” She sucked in her breath in noisy, choppy spurts.