Kristen Simmons: Article 5

“What are you doing?” Ryan demanded.

“Ms. Miller is being taken into custody by the federal government in accordance with Article 5 of the Moral Statutes. She’s going into rehabilitation.”

I was getting very tired all of a sudden. My thoughts weren’t making sense. Blurry lines formed around my vision, but I couldn’t blink them back. I gulped down air, but there wasn’t enough.

“Don’t fight me, Ember,” Chase ordered quietly. My heart broke to hear him say my name.

“Why are you doing this?” The sound of my voice was distant and weak. He didn’t answer me. I didn’t expect an answer anyway.

They led me to the car, parked behind the van. Chase opened the door to the backseat and sat me down roughly. I fell to my side, feeling the leather dampen from my tears.

Then Chase was gone. And though my heart quieted, the pain in my chest remained. It stole my breath and swallowed me whole, and I tumbled into darkness.

“MOM,I’m home!” I kicked off my flats at the front door and proceeded straight down the hallway to the kitchen, where I heard her laughing.

“Ember, there you are! Look who’s back!” My mother was standing at the stove, beaming like she’d just gotten me a shiny new toy. Skeptical, I rounded the corner and stopped cold.

Chase Jennings was in my kitchen.

Chase Jennings, who I’d played tag with and raced bikes with and had a crush on since before I knew what crushes were.

Chase Jennings, who had grown into a rough-around-the-edges kind of handsome; tall and built and so much more dangerous than the scrawny fourteen-year-old I’d last seen. He was leaning back casually in his chair, hands in his denim pockets, a mess of black hair stuffed beneath an old baseball cap.

I was staring. I looked away quickly, feeling the flush rise in my cheeks.

“Um… hi.”

“Hey, Ember,” he said easily. “You grew up.”

MYeyes blinked open as the FBR cruiser shuddered to a stop. Slowly, I sat up, head heavy and clouded, and pushed the hair from my face.

Where was I?

Night had descended, and the darkness aided my disorientation. I rubbed my eyes, catching a glimpse of the blond soldier’s profile through the thick glass partition between the front seats and the back. Morris. I remembered his name badge. I looked out the front windshield, distorted by the barricade. With a jolt of panic, I realized I was searching for a van. One that was no longer in front of us.

Then I remembered.

The MM. The arrest. Chase.

Where was my mother? I should have been watching! I banged on the glass divider, but Morris and the driver didn’t even flinch. It was soundproof. Frightened now, I crossed my arms over my chest and eased back into the leather seat, trying to gain a lock on my bearings.

Without a car or a television, we’d been isolated in our neighborhood. The FBR had shut down the local newspaper on account of the scarcity of resources, and had blocked the Internet to stifle rebellion, so we couldn’t even see pictures of how our town had changed. We knew Louisville had been relatively lucky during the War. No bombed buildings. No evacuated areas. But even if it didn’t look damaged, it did look different.

We passed the lighted convention center, now a distribution plant for Horizons brand food. Then the airport, which had been converted to FBR Weapons Manufacturing when commercial air travel had been prohibited. There had been an influx of soldiers in this area when they’d changed Fort Knox and Fort Campbell into FBR stations. Row after row of blue cruisers were now parked in the lot at the old fairgrounds.

We were the only car on the freeway. Knowing I was out with the MM when only the MM could be out, surrounded by the flags and crosses and sunrise logos, chilled me to the bone. I felt like Dorothy in some twisted Wizard of Oz.

An exit ramp led us into downtown Louisville, and at the bottom of the curve, we rolled through an empty four-way stop. The driver aimed toward a monstrous brick high-rise, which spread out on the bottom floors like the tentacles of an octopus. Its yellow eyes—windows, lit by a team of generators—peered out in all directions. We were at the city hospital.

I couldn’t see the van anywhere. Where had they taken my mother?

Chase Jennings. I tried to swallow, but his name on my tongue felt like boiling water that I couldn’t push down.

How could he? I’d trusted him. I’d even thought that I loved him, and not just that, but that he’d genuinely cared for me, too.

He’d changed. Completely.

The driver parked the cruiser close to the building in a shadowed lot. A moment later Morris opened the back door and yanked me out by the forearm. The three red lines where my fingernails had raked his skin were bright against his white neck.

The hum of the generators filled the night, a sharp contrast to the soundproof containment of the cruiser. He led me toward the building, where, in the gleam of the sliding glass doors beneath the Emergency Department sign, I caught my reflection. Pale face. Swollen eyes. My boxy uniform shirt drooped on one side where Beth had stretched it trying to save me, and my knotted braid hung down my ribs.

We didn’t go inside.

“I always pictured you blond,” said Morris. His tone, though bland, held a hint of disappointment. I worried again what sort of things Chase had told him.

“Is my mother here?” I asked.

“Keep your mouth shut.”

So he could talk, but I couldn’t? I scowled at him, focusing on the place where my fingernails had drawn blood. Knowing I was capable of defending myself made me feel a little braver. He jerked me across the driveway, where floodlights washed over a navy school bus that cast a looming shadow into the parking lot. Several girls were lined up there, guards posted on either side.

As we neared, a chill ran through me. The soldier had used the word rehabilitation earlier, but I didn’t know what that entailed or where this facility—if it even was a facility—was located. I pictured one of the massive temporary foster homes erected during the War, or worse, the state penitentiary. They couldn’t possibly be taking me there; I hadn’t done anything wrong myself. Being born wasn’t a crime, even if they were treating me like a criminal.

But what if they were taking my mother to jail?

I remembered the kids who had disappeared from school. Katelyn Meadows and Mary Something and that freshman boy I didn’t know. They’d been involved with trials for Article violations, for benign things like missing school for a nonapproved religious holiday. It wasn’t like they’d killed anybody. And yet Katelyn hadn’t come back, and Mary and the boy had been gone a week or two already.

I tried to remember what Beth had said about Katelyn, but I was shaking so hard my brain seemed to rattle. Her phone number was disconnected. She isn’t on the Missing Persons boards. Her family moved away after the trial.

Moved away, I thought. Or they’d all gotten on a bus and disappeared.

I fell in line behind a heavyset girl with a short blond bob. She was crying so hard she began to choke. Another was rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her stomach. They all looked around my age or younger. One dark-haired girl couldn’t have been more than ten.

Morris loosened his hold around my bruised arm as we approached two guards. One had a black eye. The other flipped through a list of names on a clipboard.

“Ember Miller,” Morris reported. “How many left until they transport, Jones?’