We were still frozen, the gun trained on my chest, as the ground to our left started to shift. Leaves rustled and fell inwards towards an ever-widening hole.
Five grubby faces popped up, and men clad in black and gold uniforms climbed out of the hole. They surrounded us, gripping our arms and jostling our bodies. “Don’t fight,” I whispered to Joseph through gritted teeth. His eyes were fierce, his body barely controlled. One of them shoved me towards the hole in the ground. I pitched forward into the dirt, landing hard on the heels of my hands and knees. Out of the corner of my vision, I could see a leg clad in black wind back like a cog in a clock to kick me
“Rosa!” Joseph yelled in warning, straining against the weight and muscle of three soldiers trying to hold him back.
I rolled to the side and the soldier kicked the air, losing his balance and falling on his butt.
I should have kept my mouth shut, but that brain-to-mouth connection broke long ago. My mouth blurted out a laugh before I could stop myself. The soldier sprung up and his hand was around my throat, squeezing. I breathed in and out as calmly as I could and tried not to kick him in the groin, which he’d left wide open. I stared up at his black coil of hair, noticing the spatter of grey and the coating of dirt. The colors reminded me of the monkeys, and I snorted, thinking they were better trained.
“Something funny, you Own Kind brat?” he snarled, his unnaturally blue eyes watering in irritation. I shook my head vehemently, rubbing the back of my head back and forth, deeper in the mud. He pushed my head violently into the dirt, which was thankfully soft, and then released my throat. He stared down at my shaking body in disgust, his eyes narrowed. “You know, your skin is the same color as the dirt. Get up before I lose you in it!” he spat, while the other soldiers laughed.
I scrambled up, shaking the mud from my hair. Joseph’s eyes were wild with alarm. I caught his gaze and whispered, “I’m ok,” as we were pushed down a ladder and into the ground.
*****
We were in a wormhole, a thick, wet, dirty hole only wide enough for two people to walk down at a time. My back was peppered with round bruises from being cattle-prodded with the point of a gun and my shirt was covered in mud. It smelled like the earth did under layers of dead leaves: rich, moldy, and damp.
Joseph was silent. We both were. We had told them we would only speak to Este. Right then, I would have rather been a worm, squiggling through the dirt with no other purpose other than to move forward and keep on wiggling. We were walking into a huge unknown, assuming the Superiors would be reasonable. We were counting on the others not to be discovered and hoping and praying Deshi was alive. My fingers wrapped around the fabric of my shirt and clenched in nervousness, as though gripping something, anything, would stop me from slipping down the flimsy ladder of hope. The current of all these unknowns was so strong, threatening to grasp us with frosty fingers and drag us away.
The ground underfoot abruptly changed from soft and spongy to hard, as our feet slapped against something firm and plastic. A light flickered on, and we found ourselves standing in front of shining metal doors.
One of the soldiers pushed a button with the end of his gun, unwilling to let go of it for even a second, giving me a sideways sneer as he did. The button lit up, and the doors glided open noiselessly.
“Basement One,” a creepy female voice uttered over our heads. My eyes slid towards the internal buttons as we stepped inside. G, B1, B2, B3. Cold pinched my shoulders. What was beneath us? I looked to Joseph, and his eyes showed the same amount of dread and confusion.
A pale finger pushed the ‘G’ button, and I sighed with relief.
The elevator shuddered, and the alien feeling of my stomach being left at B1 while the rest of me went upwards took over. I braced myself against the wall, glancing up at a poster of an All-Kind kid with a phone to her ear, with big, blue eyes and an unblinking, sinister expression. The slogan read, ‘What did you see? What did you hear? Report immediately.’ My God. I caught myself mid-eye roll and stopped.
The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened with a ding. The silken voice overhead said, “Ground floor.” But all I could see was another metal door. This one was tin with a simple slide bolt, sunlight peeking around the edges.
One of the soldiers rattled the bolt, shoving his shoulder into the door while swearing, and lifted the door up so he could get it open.
The sun hit us like a helicopter searchlight, and we poured out and onto the pavement. I turned around in time to see the last soldier closing the door to a rickety, old shed, similar to the one I’d seen the guards playing cards in front of in Pau. I squinted at the rusty, pale green structure and shook my head.
My head twisted around, trying to take in as much as I could. So this was the Superiors’ compound. It was certainly more open, only the one exterior concrete wall. Small dwellings were squashed closely together. Servants and workers quarters, Salim had explained.
As if on cue, a rough-looking woman poked her head out the door, her clothes simple but clean. She caught my eye, raised her eyebrows in alarm, and quickly slammed the door.
Two years ago, I’d seen this place briefly from the air, and it had looked completely open. But now that I was inside it, I could see the divisions. My eyes stretched over the tightly packed homes and snippets of wire fence between the gaps as we were strong-armed down the street, the soldiers crowding around us like they didn’t want people to see. The one holding me squeezed my arm painfully when I craned my head over their gold-tipped shoulders to watch three people pushing a trolley full of cleaning supplies down the narrow street and chatting. It was like Ring Eight in size, but without the sad sight of baggy, boney old people shuffling around with no aim. I returned my gaze to the back of the soldier in front of me, when the one holding my arm shook me violently. “Eyes forward, Own Kind. You’re not on a tour.” I clenched my teeth to stop a remark flying out my mouth. This guy could be a comedian.
We were marched towards a gap between two houses, dark shadows causing me to shiver with cold in my thin, white t-shirt. Another slide bolt lock, this time with a padlock on it, was opened, and we were in a field. High corn waved, back and forth like shaking heads, on either side of narrow path. So high that it skimmed the top of Joseph’s head. This was like some bizarre dream. I reached out to graze my fingers over the swaying sheaths and felt a nasty bite when my fingers connected with metal. This was not on Salim’s maps.
One of the soldiers laughed. “Careful, it’s electrified.” I peered closer and noticed the fence, a few stalks deep into the field. I rubbed my hand against my pant leg and sighed. What next?
We walked for half an hour, the setting sun glinting gold over the tips of the feathery hairs encasing the corn. My stomach growled when I caught the bright yellow kernels peeking out the top like teeth.
Joseph was behind me and every now and then, he’d bump into me, just so we could touch. We didn’t know when we would be able to touch again, so every bump felt like the electric shock I’d received earlier.
The soldiers were quiet and, with the eerie sound of the corn moving in the breeze and complete isolation and disorientation, it was hard to believe we were heading to the center of the Superiors’ compound. Which was maybe the point. Nothing seemed as I would have expected. It threw me.
We finally hit another gate and, as a soldier drew out a large ring of keys and started flipping through them. The overpowering smell of rotten fish wafted through the wire and up my nose. It was like someone had booby-trapped the gate with a thousand tins of anchovies, which had been sitting out in the sun for days.