There was an awkward silence around the circle before everyone started laughing nervously.
“What if we took one of the old tennis balls and threw it to one another and that person has to talk?” Griffin suggested.
“Why are there tennis balls down here?” Clark chuckled.
“Who knows,” Griffin shrugged.
“Wouldn’t that…kind of single some people out? Like, you’ll only choose someone you know?” one of the younger girls asked.
“Well…I don’t know how else we could do this,” Tori laughed.
Josh, who was sitting next to Mark, five people away from me and Clark, looked at two others from the Eight Group nearby, asking them a short question only they could understand. Mark’s face broke into a huge smile as he chuckled silently. The other two started laughing as Josh smiled broadly.
“What?” Griffin asked.
“There is a game we used to play,” Hiroki said. “We pass the ball and each person counts one, two, or three numbers, and whoever has to say the number thirty-one is the loser.”
“What happened to the loser?” Cody called.
“It was a drinking game,” Hiroki answered.
“So, we pass the ball around and each person that has it has to count…and whoever reaches thirty-one has to speak,” Griffin concluded. “After a while, if they’ve already spoken, they will pass the ball to whoever is next to them.”
“Sounds like a good system,” Tori agreed, quickly getting to her feet to get the tennis ball.
“Seriously, why are there tennis balls down here?” I laughed.
Not long after she disappeared, Tori returned with a faded, worn tennis ball. Sitting back in her spot of the circle, she looked at Griffin next to her and at the girl on her other side. “Clockwise?” she asked, motioning to the girl.
“…how does this work again?” she giggled, not understanding the game, looking at the Eight Group members.
“Tori counts one, or counts up to three, and then passes the ball, then you count four, and pass it, and then that person counts more, but no more than three numbers,” Hiroki explained, motioning his hands. “And we stop at thirty-one.”
Now clear on the rules, Tori started the count.
“One…”
“Two, three…”
“Four…”
“Five, six, seven…”
The ball slowly made its way in my direction as everyone counted.
I was beginning to worry that I would be the first singled out. Realizing that I might have to speak made me realize that I had nothing to tell. I did not have a story of how I was brought into the Commission. Out of the entire group, six Commish Kids were seated, looking just as anxious about speaking of our privileged lives in front of those who suffered the Commission torture.
However, the ball stopped two people away from me. The teenage boy stared at the tennis ball, his hands shaking, not saying the final number.
“Just take your time,” Griffin said gently.
“Why do I have to be first?” he murmured with a wobbly smile. We chuckled nervously. It had been a stretch to get everyone to agree to the exercise. However, executing the plan was very different.
The boy was becoming quite distressed when Tori smiled, sitting on her heels and lifting her hand.
“Okay, because it will be hard to get going on this, I will offer myself up and start with my story,” she smiled. The boy with the tennis ball visibly relaxed. Tori took a deep breath and slowly let it out, steadying herself.
“Hello, everyone,” she greeted. “For those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Tori Gilligan, and I am nineteen years old. I was born in Fairfield in the North-East Region. I had a younger sister named Tiffany. She was ten when I was captured,” she started. “The Commission took me because I was in love with a girl named Brianna.” Tori looked down at her hands. “When I was fifteen, I came out to my mother, and she said she had always known, and she still loved me. She agreed to protect me. She never told my father, because he would have turned me in immediately…so, for two years she protected me, even after I had fallen in love with Bri, who sat next to me in my geometry class.” Tori smiled sadly. “But, someone in our school saw us together and reported it to the school board, who reported it to the Commission. We were both taken and separated. I never saw her again, but…I heard that she died on her second day on the table…
“I was put in a holding cell with a serial rapist, who insisted that the reason I liked girls was because I had never been shown real love by a man…and he took it upon himself to ‘teach’ me.” Tori sighed heavily. “But, I was only in that cell for a month before the Commission pulled me out and started experiments on me.” She looked around the circle, finishing her story. She turned to the young man holding the tennis ball.
“Your turn,” she nodded. “It’s alright to take your time.”
He forced a smile and nodded once, looking at the tennis ball he was fiddling with.
“I also liked people of my own sex,” he said quietly. “I never told my parents, but…they turned me in when they found me kissing my friend Luke behind our house. Luke was never called into the Commission…” he added. “My name is Andy, by the way. Andy Korra and I’m eighteen years old. I was taking into the Commission nine months ago…”
He passed the ball to the person between me and him and counted “one.” The person he was handing the ball to hesitated in taking it, waiting for more to Andy’s story. When he did not continue, the girl took the ball and counted “two.”
“Three, four…” I said, passing the ball to Clark.
“Five.”
And around the circle the tennis ball continued.
Grace was the next person to speak. She was twenty-seven and had been taken into the Commission because she was a citizen of Canada, yet did not know so. Her mother had crossed the northern border into the North-Midwest Region when pregnant, and Grace had been born in America. She had been raised believing she was a citizen until her own child was born and Central could not find her name as a legal citizen. Her child was eight months old when she was taken into the Commission of the People.
She cried telling her story. The woman next to her hugged her, comforting her as she tried to continue. Many people were in tears.
Grace ended her story with a small joke, saying that the people who signed off on her marriage and child-rearing license probably lost their jobs as her investigation progressed.
The tennis ball made its way around the circle once more, stopping with a very young girl, who moved the ball nervously back and forth in her small hands.
“My name is Sydney Tate, I’m thirteen years old—” my heart plummeted, “—and I am an experiment for the Commission. My parents came from the northern border when I was eight and we were all caught by Border Patrol. My mom died three years ago and my dad is in the holding cells.”
She passed the ball on, though everyone was upset by her simple declaration of her young age and being an experiment.
The next to speak was Biren, a twenty-one-year-old who had been a student in his home country of India when his parents died from illness. An archeologist in the area at the time had agreed to take Biren to his home in America and adopt him, but Biren only lived for a month in the man’s home before someone reported them and Biren was taken into the Commission as an illegal.
Sonya, the next girl to speak, had been a woman sold into a sex-trade on a small island in East Asia where she was later sold as a bride to a wealthy man in America. As soon as she had arrived in the country, she had been taken into custody, as was the man. She had been in the Commission for nine of her twenty-four years of life.
Tara was another young experiment, only fifteen years old, who had been born to two mothers in a remote town in the South-Eastern Region. She was born from a donor, though she had never known who he was. She was also an illegal birth, born without the proper permit. As such, she had been raised inside and taught never to look outsi
de and never leave the house. When she was seven, she went out into the street to play with some of the other neighborhood children and that was how her parents were caught.
Her recollection of the night of the capture was horrific.
“I remember my moms were arguing, and one of them ran to get me and forced me to drink something that made me really sick. It was some sort of cleaner. She had tried to poison me so that I would not have to live in the Commission. I was really sick when the Commission van came. One of my moms was hit in the head with a club and killed before she even got to the van…my other mom swallowed her tongue and died in the van. When I got to the Commission, they thought I would die, too, but I guess they were able to save me…which is when they decided that I would be a good experiment for the Commission, because I was strong enough to survive…”
While there was a very dark feeling settling over everyone at the horrible stories of capture and torture, there was also a very profound and beautiful feeling of trust and understanding that was strengthening. No one tried to psychoanalyze anyone else, or tell them that they deserved what had happened. Everyone was there to support, not to judge.
Victor was the next to tell his story.
He tossed the ball around in his hands, staring at it pensively before he shook his head.
“My name is Victor Peterson and I am thirty years old. I was taken into the Commission seven years ago…” He trailed off and took another deep breath. He finally looked up, upset. “There is something I want to say. I think that all of you are very strong and incredible people for how you have endured everything you’ve been through in your lives, and I feel as though I don’t really belong with such amazing people…” He bowed his head. “As far as I’m concerned, none of you really committed any crimes…I was taken into the Commission because I was a criminal. I was an arms dealer of illegal weapons. I sold to domestic terrorist groups…and when they were caught, so was I.”
“There is nothing wrong with what you did,” Tori shook her head.
“I’m a criminal.”
“In the eyes of the Commission, we all are,” she told him with a reassuring smile. “You sold weapons to a domestic terrorist group? Were they anti-Central?”
Victor nodded.
“Then you’re okay in my book,” Tori laughed. We all chuckled in agreement.
“Victor,” Griffin called, “we all are domestic terrorists now. You belong here just as much as everyone else.”
“And Victor,” a young man across the circle called, “I am sorry if we ratted you out.”
“Was it you?” Victor laughed.
“Do you two know each other?” Griffin asked.
“I might as well go,” the young man shrugged. I recognized him as Cody. “I’m Cody, and this is my sister Candice, and my brother Zane. We were part of a terrorist group called Central Citizens Liberation Front.”
“I did sell to you a few times,” Victor said with a nod. “But I was ratted out by a minor league player.”
“You were in the CCLF?” Griffin gaped.
“We were born into it,” Zane nodded. “We’re probably the only ones who survived the raid. The Commission found us in our camp one night and killed all the men and women who were able to fight back and captured anyone else.”
I had heard of the Central Citizens Liberation Front. It had been one of the largest domestic threats to America since the foundation of Central. Those citizens had been the ones who had not opposed the Second Revolution, but had disagreed with the radical reconstruction tactics of Thomas Ankell and Bryant Morris. Thirty years previous, there had been a large push to eliminate the group and while it seemed that they had vanished, the group had really moved into the wilderness, living off the land and trying to attack large corporations that supported Central, particularly the Commission of the People. There had been a large bust seven years ago that had led to the capture of the main faction of the group. That eventually led three of the young members to that bunker, telling us their story.
Passing the tennis ball once again, it moved past Tori and Griffin and fell into the hands of another young experiment named Patricia.
“My name is Patricia and I am fourteen years old,” she started. She was adorable, with bright hazel eyes and kinky dark brown hair that continued to fall in her face as she averted her eyes to the ground nervously. “I was born in the holding cells. I don’t know why my mom was there, but I’ve heard it was because she had me without a permit and my father was not an American.”
Deciding that was enough, she passed the ball as Griffin reached his hand behind the person sitting between them, placing his hand on Patricia’s head, smiling.
We heard stories of gays and lesbians, as well as people who had crossed from the northern border from the middle region of Canada, which had been locked in bloody civil war for nearly a decade. There were stories of people who had been slaves in their countries and sent to America when the wealthy bought them for their pleasure, like an exotic pet, emulating the gift system the Commission of the People had worked out.
I listened tearfully to the story of David, Jeremy, and Lauren. Lauren had escaped a life of abuse and illegal sex slavery in her home country and stowed away on a boat bound for South America, where her darker complexion would be less noticeable among the locals. However, the trading ship hit a storm and was severely damaged, so it docked in the peninsula of the South Eastern Region of America. David, who had worked on the docks, found her in the cargo hold and agreed to hide her with his brother, Jeremy. They had been trying to find a way to send her safely to South America when their neighbor caught sight of Lauren through the window and called them into the Commission.
Hope was an experiment who had been called in for harboring seventeen Commission criminals across the northern border with fake papers by using her home in the North-Eastern Region as the final stop in a long train of safe houses that helped Commission victims escape. It appeared that all of the people harboring others and helping them escape the Commission had been quickly pulled out of the holding cells and put on the table as experiments.
The ball finally made its way into the hands of a familiar face.
Minsoo looked around.
“Um…I am Minsoo…but my name is now Sam…” he said with extremely broken English. He sighed heavily and shook his head. “My English is…very bad…” He turned to Hiroki and said something, extending the tennis ball to him.
Hiroki looked at Griffin and Tori.
“Is it alright if I tell the story?”
“Sure,” Griffin agreed.
“He’s the best at English,” Josh declared.
“Well, I guess that this is really the story for Hyunwoo—Mark—Woobin—Josh—Minsoo,” he pointed at his friend next to him before pointing to two other people in the circle, “Ichiro—or Jacob—Keiko and Eun, Hyunwoo’s younger sister. And my story, too. I’m Hiroki, but you can call me Dale if that’s easier.” He moved the tennis ball in his hands, not looking up for several long moments. “We are part of the Eight Group, which handles security inside the Commission. We were brought in eight years ago, and we are all from Ward Eight…” he continued awkwardly. “We were all living in a place that had been bombed during the Second Revolution. Our families had been trapped in the country when the war started and they hid there for three generations. We all grew up there, but…almost nine years ago…”
Hiroki looked at Mark and Josh, who were both looking at the ground, along with Mark’s sister. I blinked, confused and wondering why Mark looked ashamed.
“There was a girl named Mana who went outside of our community. None of us had ever been beyond the fence…but she decided that she wanted to see what was on the outside…” Hiroki sighed heavily and closed his eyes. “Of course, because of the way she looked, she was spotted quickly and called into the Commission. She managed to avoid the van the first time, and when she came back home…she had endangered the rest of our community.”
I looked ar
ound at the members of the Eight Group. Mark’s younger sister leaned against her brother, who wrapped his arm around her in comfort.
“So, what did you do?” Zane pressed.
“The older members of the community agreed to sacrifice her in order to protect everyone else. When the van came by, they pushed Mana out and locked her out of the community so that she would be caught while the rest of us hid until we were safe…” Hiroki glanced at Mark and Josh. Mark did not turn to him, but Josh looked at Hiroki before nodding slowly.
“But…Hyunwoo couldn’t let Mana be sacrificed like that…” Hiroki continued, his voice strained. “So, he went after her. And Woobin followed…”
I quickly turned to Mark and Josh, surprised.
“They saved Mana, and killed the five Commission men in the van…”
“You must have loved her,” Tori whispered, looking over at Mark, having never heard Mark’s past before. Mark looked up at Tori and sighed heavily, his eyes distant. “What happened to her?”
“She was killed when the Commission raided the community,” Hiroki answered slowly. “It was only a week after she had been saved…everyone knew it was coming…”
“Was she your wife?” Grace inquired, looking at Mark.
Mark shook his head. Josh spoke for his friend.
“Older sister.”
I watched Mark and his younger sister, shocked by the story. Mark was completely dedicated to his family. Sean had said that the only way Dana could keep Mark in line was to keep his younger sister as collateral. To hear that he killed for his older sister, even when he knew it would endanger him, made me realize just how loyal he could be to those he loved.
There was a silence that followed where everyone looked at one another, communicating the same surprise at Mark and Josh endangering the hidden community and leading to the largest contribution of members to the Eight Group.
Inside, Pt. 2 Page 39