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 around 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.
Griffin cleared his throat and leaned forward, glancing at Mark.
“So…” he started slowly, “you’re the middle child?”
Mark smiled and laughed silently, closing his eyes as the others of Mark’s old community also laughed.
“And the only son,” Tori noted. “You’ve come a long way, Mark.”
Mark lowered his head and laughed still, shaking his head, refusing to look up.
The tennis ball began making its way around the circle once again.
Dean, who was sitting next to Miranda, got the tennis ball next, but he passed it to her, saying that he was a Commish Kid and had no story to tell. Miranda took it and sighed worriedly.
“My story is pretty short…” she began. “I was a Commish Kid also, but…Dana Christenson framed me…” She sighed again and closed her eyes. “The truth is, when I was brought into the Commission, everyone was told that it was because my little sister and I had been part of a drug trafficking chain. The truth is that I am a criminal, but not for drug trafficking. I was pregnant when I was captured.”
That did not seem to surprise most of the people in the circle, but the Commish Kids straightened immediately, shocked by the confession. My eyes went wide as I stared at her before looking at Clark, who was just as startled.
Miranda took Dean’s hand.
“We were not going to tell my parents. I did not want to get an abortion. I wanted to have this baby.”
“But you are so young…” Griffin hissed.
“I know…” Miranda nodded sadly. “I knew, logically, that there was no way to keep the baby. But the truth is…” She shook her head, her eyes closing. “I was born as a legacy into the Commission of the People and I had hated what Dana did to the people he captured. I never said anything. I was afraid. I knew I was stuck in there for life, and I vowed that I would not subject any children to growing up in a place without compassion and respect for human life. But…when I found out I was pregnant…I really wanted to have a child with Dean…”
Dean wrapped an arm around her and held her close.
“Dana did find out about my pregnancy, but instead of follow the laws and go through the abortion procedure, he imprisoned me in the Commission of the People holding cells. And then he took my little sister because she was the only other one who knew the truth…” Tears rose to Miranda’s eyes. “I…I don’t know why Dana…” She looked at Mark. “Mark, you’re close to Dana. Do you know why he framed me?”
Slowly, the experiment shook his head, reluctant to admit that he did not know.
“You’re not…still…” Tori questioned, looking over Miranda expectantly. Miranda shook her head.
The tennis ball moved once again, bringing more stories of victims who had been wronged by the Commission of the People. I remembered when Clark and I were looking through the extremely long list of people locked in the holding cells and deciding who to break out, the various stories had sickened me. I had been horrified that just because some of these people loved differently, or had been victims of their parent’s treason against the country, or been slaves sold from other countries, or believed in a higher power, or even had only disagreed with the way the government was run, they were locked away forever. And no one batted an eyelash.
If the people of America could hear these stories, if they were forced to look at these people one-on-one and hear of the horrible ordeals they had suffered through, they would wonder why it was that the Commission thought they were dangerous. In the post-Secondary Revolution America, ‘victim’ had come to mean ‘criminal,’ ‘different’ had come to mean ‘dangerous,’ and anything that wasn’t in line with everyone else’s way of thinking was simply ‘wrong.’
Seeing these people open up to one another, take comfort in others and provide comfort to the same people who had comforted them made me realize that we had strength over the Commission. We could see past skin color, facial features, love styles, and thought processes and connect on the basic human level of wanting to be accepted and loved.
There was laughter and tears through the stories of the Commission criminals. We all cried with Ivo, who took comfort in Griffin, who understood how war time could leave a soldier with PTSD and how the government abandoned his needs and led him to living on the streets until, in a traumatic panic, he accidentally killed someone who tried to mug him. When he realized what had happened, he killed those who pursued him, terrified and traumatized.
We laughed with Griffin, who tried to light-heartedly tell us his story, joking about the way he
was brought into the Commission and the way he felt about his capture.
We all wanted to comfort and fight for Celina, who had been a student intern in Central and was repeatedly molested by the cabinet member she was an intern for. She ended up accidentally killing the official by pushing her down in an attempt to escape another molestation and causing her to hit her head on the corner of the desk. As she cried, explaining how sorry she was that she had killed a Central Official, many people crowded around her and held her close, telling her that she was not to blame.
We heard about Nicki, who had been a lesbian married to a man she did not like and fell in love with her co-teacher abroad, continuing the relationship when her co-teacher came to visit America and was caught by the Commission. We listened to the heart-wrenching story of Meg, who had been fourteen in an illegal brothel owned by her uncle and captured by the Commission when she was sixteen. PTSD had caused her to kill her holding cell mate when he had come onto her, which eventually led her to becoming an experiment.
Some of the experiments, such as Park, Jenny, and Typhen were actual criminals. Those three had been in a drug cartel and had killed Commission members by blowing up one of the vans. Sophia turned to a life of crime when she killed her abusive husband and spent years running away from the police and the Commission to eventually be caught robbing a bank. Benjamin had had sex with a male prostitute on American soil when he was in the country as a delegate from his own country and was quickly apprehended and taken into the Commission.
The humans were as diverse as the experiments, telling heartbreaking and terrifying stories. Some were criminals, though we had been sure to keep the truly dangerous criminals in the holding cells. Many were just victims of the rules of the Commission of the People and who qualified as ‘dangerous minorities.’ There were a few that disagreed with the Central government, some had been refugees from other countries, trying to find a better life, others had fallen in love with people that they shouldn’t have and there were a few who simply worshipped God.
Yet, despite the diversity, everything felt harmonious in the bunker that day.
Chapter Fifty
I was back in my blue school blazer and it was suffocating.
The school bus was stuffy and too loud. I was hypersensitive to every noise and bump in the road. As much as I tried to quell it, I was angry and upset at the people around me who were gossiping trivially over winter break flings, parties, and trips. A part of me wanted to turn around and yell at the students to shut up and that no one cared. I wanted to tell them that I had become a criminal over the break. That I had infiltrated the most powerful organization in the world and broken out criminals of America to organize a rebellion and show the other teens how insignificant their parties and relationships were in comparison.
Everything in this microcosm of the real world seemed insignificant. I wanted nothing more than to be in the fort, talking about our next move, exchanging ideas of how to take down the Commission of the People.
Instead, I was in classes that no longer seemed important. Becca was the only one who did not ask me what was wrong. She understood that I was feeling out of place, as if she knew that I belonged in the fort rather than in the classroom.
Even Mr. McDermott’s class, despite our fascinating subject material, seemed dull. I was bouncing my leg, staring out the window at the overcast day, waiting for the snow to start falling again so I could watch something move outside the school.
“How was your break?” Mr. McDermott asked, leaning against his front table, tapping the digital copy of An Angel Without Wings against his palm. There was a chorus of enthusiastic answers.
“Did anyone travel?”
A few raised their hands.
“Great…” He smiled devilishly. “But, you still had time to read the seventy-nine pages, right?”
Everyone laughed. Even I managed a small grin.
“Just a little bit of light reading,” Mr. McDermott teased. “I know that these chapters were definitely not easy to get through. This is the darkest point in the book, but—obviously, since you are sitting in this classroom today—things got better.” He reached behind him on his table and grabbed his tablet, turning to face us. “But, before we talk about this lovely, sunshine-filled part of the book, just a few reminders. In case you forgot, you have your term paper due in March. And your final exam for this,” he waved the book, “will be at the beginning of April. The reason I do this is so that you have April, May, and June to fill out your university applications and decide where you’re going.” He smiled broadly. “That’s right, you’re almost out of here!”
And moving into a bigger jail…I groaned internally.
“Also, I know I asked you for your rough drafts on Friday, the fourteenth, but then I remembered that we don’t have school on the fourteenth. It’s the Liberation Parade.” Mr. McDermott laughed at his memory lapse.
My brain focused on that sentence as though I was a predator that had caught sight of its prey moving in the brush. My entire body went on alert.
“What?” Becca asked, surprised by my sudden movement.
“The Liberation Parade?” I hissed. “That’s on the fourteenth?”
“Yeah…”
“So, we’re going to move those rough drafts to the following Wednesday, okay?” Mr. McDermott announced. “Don’t forget, if you have any questions, come talk to me as soon as possible.”
My breath had stuck in my throat. I had to resist every urge not to squeal and do an excited dance in my seat. My brain was racing beyond my control as I saw the plan unfold in front of me. My eyes searched abstractly in the wood grain of my desk as I thought through everything I had ever seen on television for the Liberation Day Parade. I knew I would have to meticulously plan and I would have to make sure that Griffin, Tori, and Mark all agreed, but I had figured out our first strike back against the Commission of the People.
“Now, I know that this was a very difficult section of the book to get through, which is why I gave you the entire break to read,” Mr. McDermott grinned, opening the book. “What was the hardest part for you guys to read?”
Several hands went up, causing me to snap back to the present, even though my mind was still working over something completely unrelated.
“Yes?” Mr. McDermott pointed to someone.
“The part where Thomas found Diana, Paul, and George hanging from the tree was horrible to read,” one of the girls in the front whispered. “I mean, Paul was only six years old and the army mutilated him and then hung him upside down from a tree. That’s just sick.”
“It is, that’s very true,” Mr. McDermott agreed whole-heartedly. “There are three incidents in the book that mention such mutilation of the members of the Second Revolution. Was the one with Paul the hardest for most of you?”
Everyone nodded. I did, as well. Even though I had only skimmed through the pages, I remembered feeling sick when I read, in vivid detail, about the three bodies hanging from the tree. Now that I had seen a dead body from our breakout from the Commission, the imagery hit far closer to home.
“That’s understandable,” Mr. McDermott nodded. “J.A.N.E. does not spare the details of how these people were mutilated and displayed. That’s part of what makes this book so realistic.” He stood and grabbed the remote from his table, turning to the front board.
“I am going to show you the images of these three mutilated attacks. If you have a weak stomach, or want to leave the room, I understand and I will come get you when the pictures are gone.” He watched the circle in the middle of the screen turn as the images loaded. “There are a few reasons I show you these pictures. These are the same scenes that are described in the book, and they are the ones that, as you read, were used to outrage the public into joining the Second Revolution movement. Also, as you know, J.A.N.E. is an anonymous writer, so these pictures make it even more difficult to pinpoint who J.A.N.E. actually was because it is possible that the writer was able to describe such vivid det
ail from looking at the pictures revealed to the public.”
I shifted nervously in my seat, looking around the room. I had become sensitive to the images of the dead since seeing the room filled with corpses. I was worried I would have to be one of the ones who left.
The first picture flashed up on the screen and most of the girls gasped and looked away. Even the boys cringed and shied away from the brutal image.
I remembered the scene in the book describing Janice, wife of Thomas Ankell, finding the body of their friend Kyle Brodie tied to the flag pole of the local community college, naked and beaten to death. His skin was purple and red, marred with gashes from where the nails had been on the end of the board that had beaten him.
“This is Kyle Brodie,” Mr. McDermott said, clicking the picture to show another large photo that was made of three various angles of his dead body, including the one with the sign reading “Traitor of the U.S.A.” hanging around his neck.
“Now, Washington said that this was a plant, and that the people of the Second Revolution killed one of their own for trying to defect, and that the United States Military had nothing to do with his death. Does anyone know how people were able to tell that the army had committed this crime?”
There was a silence before Taylor raised her hand.
“Taylor.”
“The sign says ‘Traitor to the U.S.A.,’ but Thomas Ankell said in many speeches that when the country had not been united in over a century and that when the government was replaced, the states would be done away with and he would create the nation of America.”
“Exactly,” Mr. McDermott nodded. “Ankell never referred to the country as the United States of America. He personified the country only as ‘America,’ never as the U.S.A.” He clicked to the next picture.
“Heather and Vanessa Smith were the second mutilations to be mentioned in the book. By the way,” he turned to us quickly, “don’t think that these were the only instances where the Washington Army mutilated members of the Second Revolution. The reason why we focus on these three is because they were the ones that Thomas Ankell used as examples most. They were among the most heinous of crimes committed against the revolutionaries.”
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