He smiles when I walk across the room and take a seat on the bed directly across from him. From this close, he looks younger than I first thought—maybe a handful of years older than I am. And the bruise on his face is more pronounced. So are the scrapes on his arms and neck. All the injuries look recent—as if he’d received them within the last twenty-four hours.
“As soon as they realize you’re awake, they’ll come for you like they did the others.” His raspy whisper rakes across my nerves like a rusty nail. “They always have questions.”
I press a hand to my stomach to calm the hollow churning—a gesture the man acknowledges with a deliberate glance and an exaggerated sigh.
“Others?” I ask. “What others?”
He shrugs, winces, and rubs his right shoulder as he says, “Three men older than me. Two women a lot older than you. I never got any of their names. I thought they were coming for me when the door opened the last time. Instead, they brought you. I guess they aren’t in a hurry since they already know my answers to their questions.”
“What questions—”
We both turn at the soft click of a lock. The handle rotates and the door swings open to reveal a woman with short, sleek honey-blond hair and darkly lined and shadowed eyes that Rose would applaud. She smooths the fabric of her fitted gray suit jacket and looks around the room.
“Good,” she says as her eyes land on me. Her painted crimson lips curve into an unfriendly smile. “You’re finally awake. You certainly took your time.”
“As if I had a choice. It’s not like I drugged myself,” I snap, before I can think about how stupid it is to fight with my captors.
The man on the bed lets out a low chuckle. The woman’s smile grows even as her eyes narrow. “You don’t want to make this harder than it has to be.”
The Marshal and the man on the bed lock eyes. When the man looks down at the floor, the woman’s grin grows wider and she turns her attention back to me. “You. Get up. You have questions to answer.”
“Good luck,” the man says when I stand on shaky legs. “It was nice having company.”
“Don’t worry, Wallace,” the blond woman says. “You’ll be spending lots of time together soon.”
Behind me, I hear Wallace’s low voice whisper, “I guess they already know your answers, too.”
The blond woman steps out of the way and lets me pass into a brightly lit hallway. The seamless white of the floors, walls, and ceiling is interrupted only by a line of five closed black metal doors on one side of the hallway and four on the right. There is a silver water fountain immediately to my left. Just looking at it makes me realize how thirsty I am.
The door clicks shut behind the blond Marshal. I wait for her to lead me away, but instead she turns toward the door with a huff. “They said they fixed this thing,” she mutters, and starts pressing buttons on the keypad above the lock. Her back is to me. I glance both ways down the hall.
The Marshal casts a quick glance at me, then jerks her eyes forward and I realize what she’s doing. She’s waiting—hoping that I’ll run.
With the bruises on Wallace’s face clear in my mind, I fold my hands in front of me and ask, “Can I get a drink?”
She nods and I take two slow steps forward and press the button. The water barely trickles from the spout and I only have enough time to wet my lips and get a few stingy drops into my mouth before the Marshal snaps, “Enough. Follow me.”
I follow her down the hallway and around a corner to an elevator. The Marshal presses her index finger on a glowing panel that scans her print. The panel turns green and the doors ding open. Had I tried to run, I wouldn’t have gotten far.
The Marshal presses the button for the bottom floor and I glance at the red illuminated number above the sliding doors. The building has four stories. The room I had been held in was on the top.
As the elevator starts moving, I rehearse everything Dewey and I put in place for MaryAnn Jefferson—whose identification I carry with me. The high school she attended in Wisconsin. The reason she came to Chicago. Even the date she filed her application for Gloss—one that is on file but was rejected, if they have chosen to look. All the information is designed to make it look as if I am new to the city—without any attachments to the Stewards or any other group the Marshals are looking for. She is—I am—swept up in the excitement of the new Gloss logo and the danger of putting her own mark on the city. This will get me held, but probably not disappeared permanently. MaryAnn Jefferson is nobody—connected to no one.
Because I am busy reminding myself of MaryAnn’s details, I don’t notice the elevator stopping until the doors open. The smell hits me first. A thick antiseptic scent I associate with hospitals and Nurse Hayes’s office at school. Underneath that is the musty dampness of body odor and the pungent scent of waste.
The Marshal steps in front of me so all I can see is the rough concrete floors and the dim lighting. Then she steps out of the elevator with an order for me to follow and I suddenly can’t breathe.
When I was seven, I went to a friend’s house to see their new puppy. When we were done playing with the fluffy black-and-brown dog that tripped over its own feet and loved licking faces and it was time for me to be driven home, the mother picked up the pup and locked it in a cage. The cage was supposed to help train the puppy. And I suppose it did. But I will never forget how the pup pushed its nose against the bars and whimpered as we walked out the door. I remember thinking that putting animals in cages was the worst thing ever.
I was wrong.
Because these cages are full of people.
In the center of a cavernous, concrete parking garage space are silver metal bars. Hundreds of them stretching from the floor to just above the ceiling. More bars box off the top. The design is not quite the same as the ones from the archives of the City Pride Department—the ones that I “borrowed” Rose’s brother’s summer job security official badge to gain access to and caused Isaac to be taken away. Or maybe they only seem different because there are people huddled inside.
“Move!” The Marshal grabs my arms and yanks me out of the elevator. Her fingers dig deep into my skin, trying to force my feet forward, but if there is pain I can’t feel it and my legs are as heavy as stone. Because now that the shock is subsiding I can see there is more than one cage—there are lots of them, all connected, creating separate kennel-like spaces. And they are full of people.
Gray haired and wrinkled.
Slightly older than me.
Some around the age of my father.
It’s hard to tell how many people there are in total. Some are curled up on the cement floor, wrapped in thin silver blankets, sleeping or pretending to be. Others stare aimlessly as they grip the bars. One woman is yelling at me—no, at the Marshal—that she doesn’t belong here. That this is a mistake. She has no idea why she’s being held here and she wants to go home to her children.
“Please, don’t do this to my children!”
For a moment, I don’t see the woman’s anguished face. I see my mother. Tired. Glassy eyed. Hair tangled.
Whatever I thought I was prepared to see, it wasn’t this. And something hits me. By bringing someone here—by allowing someone to see this—the government has already decided that person will never be set free. If they were, it would ruin them. It would expose them for the evil that they were. Because the truth would get out. And no one could possibly accept it.