We entered a dim room, filled with strange sounds and more furniture I’d never seen before. A quiet cry moved up my throat and burst forth when I saw Zakai lying in the tall bed. Suddenly shaking, I rushed to him, gripping his hand in mine, and laying my head on his chest, the tears I’d been holding inside finally falling free.
“Karys,” he croaked, and when I raised my head, his eyes were open. “Karys, Karys.” He lifted his hand and he was shaking as well as he ran his thickly bandaged palm over my hair, my cheek, catching my tear on his exposed fingertip. “My little star,” he said, his voice a mere whisper. “Have they harmed you?”
I shook my head, turning my face to kiss his white bandages, my heart rejoicing.
“No, Zakai,” I said so quietly only he could hear. “They say they came to save us.”
CHAPTER TEN
It took Zakai eight days before they let him leave the hospital, his body still moving slowly and carefully as he managed his cracked ribs and broken wrists. His face looked better than it had, although the bruises remained yellow and mottled, his features still swollen, black rows of stitches mending his cuts.
Everything felt far too big and blindingly bright. I wanted to question it all, to understand it and find a way to stop fearing every step I took, but it was too much, and too overwhelming all at once. For the most part, I lay snuggled up to Zakai in his hospital bed, the steady beat of his heartbeat, serving as my own lifeline too.
As long as I was beside him, safe in his grasp, he slept. But otherwise, he was on edge, his eyes darting from one thing to the next, a million emotions racing across his brutalized face more quickly than even I could begin to categorize.
“What is this place?” I asked.
He stroked my hair, laying his lips on my forehead for a moment. “It’s home because you’re here.”
That was enough. For right then, that was enough. But as I drifted to sleep I heard Zakai murmur, “I can’t protect you here, little star. I’m so sorry.” But he was protecting me. I was safe in his arms.
Cody Rutland came to see us, asking more questions about Sundara, telling us our other family members were safe too, and requesting that we describe the ones who watched. “I wrote some of their names in my notebook,” I remembered.
Cody Rutland looked up. “Your notebook?”
“It was under my sleeping pad. It has a yellow cover. All my stories are in it too.” I met Cody Rutland’s eyes. “I’d like to have my stories,” I said. Those written accounts were my tangible reminder of the life that suddenly felt so far away, the one I both longed for and reviled.
“We’ve confiscated—collected—most of what was on Sundara,” he said. “I’ll try to get your stories back for you, Karys.”
I nodded, offering him the only smile I could muster.
He left quickly after that, and Zakai and I gripped each other once again, the love and devotion I felt for him the only thing holding me to this new and different world. Without his love I would drift away, sucked up into the clouds where I could never return, not even if I chose.
Zakai and I left the hospital on a rainy morning, heading back out into the new confusing world where we once again ended up in the beige building with all the beige walls and beige furniture that I now knew was called the United States Embassy. Inside was beige, and outside was gray, this new colorless world we’d found ourselves in. Cody Rutland smiled when he saw us, his teeth white and straight, and guided us into a room that looked similar to the one I’d first been in after flying in the helicopter.
“I wish I could offer something a little more comfortable to sit in,” he said, smiling. “But I can get you a drink if you’re thirsty?”
Zakai and I both shook our heads. We had drunk water from small white cups before leaving the hospital. Water, I had learned, not only ran through pipes, but came in clear jugs and bottles, with tops you had to twist to open. And when you were done drinking from that bottle, you threw it in the garbage never to be used again. I wondered where those bottles came from and who might make them, but the questions seemed confusing and unanswerable, so I set them aside and focused on the things I knew.
“Where is Tal?” I asked. “Liri? Spider? All the rest?”
“Many of them are being reunited with family members,” he said. “They’re staying nearby for now. I can take them a message from you if you’d like?”
Their families. I’d been their family. Me and Zakai. I nodded. “I’d like that,” I said.
“Okay, good.” He looked between us. “I have some news for you both and I think you’ll be happy to hear it.”
I glanced at Zakai, taking his hand in mine beneath the table.
“Haziq Hadid is in jail where he’ll stay until his trial. Or lie, as the case may be. He had to have most of his lower leg amputated. Apparently he’d suffered a venomous snake bite.”
“Pity,” Zakai said smoothly.
Cody Rutland’s eyes lingered on him for a moment, assessing. “In any case, I don’t expect that he’ll ever see the light of day again.”
Something loosened inside me, causing my shoulders to lower. “He can’t hurt anyone again?”
“No,” Cody Rutland said, “never again.” He paused and I squeezed Zakai’s hand. “Do you have an understanding of how Sundara worked?” he asked. “How it operated? I mean, do you know what it was about?” He huffed out a breath. “I’m not sure how to word this.”
“We were victims of Haziq’s crimes,” I said, repeating what he’d told me. I’d been thinking about that in the hospital. I’d been thinking about what that meant. All my life I’d had some notion that although perhaps Haziq was using us, he was also helping us, and a part of me had been grateful to him. But now . . . I looked around at the world, at the people walking casually on the streets, and through the halls of the building I was now sitting in. They were not starving or suffering. They seemed happy and healthy, unconcerned with the things I’d been taught to fear outside of Sundara. Was it why Zakai was still so angry? Did he see this place as a better life we might have led if Haziq had let us leave?
Or if we’d mustered the will, and figured a way to travel on our own . . . across the desert I’d once thought so vast and dangerous but now wondered—
“Yes, you were victims of Haziq’s crimes . . . and his lies.”
Beside me, Zakai stiffened. I glanced at him and then away. “Many of the people who came to live and work on Sundara told me stories of their suffering though,” I said, and my voice sounded small and weak. I felt small. I felt weak.
“They weren’t lying to you, Karys. This region has a long history of violent confrontations, bombings, and military operations. It’s highly likely that many of the people you knew from Sundara were victims caught in the middle of those turbulent clashes.” He glanced between me and Zakai. “Haziq Hadid took advantage of the fallout from those regions, especially as it related to people he could use for his . . . show.” He paused but then went on. “He used scouts to give him information on the location of individuals he might be interested in taking to Sundara, individuals right for the acts he came up with.”