[click here for the first half of this story]
I gave the guard a long look. “I’m not playing.”
His eyes glinted and he nodded to the others. They’d known this was coming and were prepared. In a second my arms were twisted back and the spokesman used a giant knife, running it straight up the front, to cut my shirt free. He held the knife at my chin for a moment and smiled before putting it away.
The two guards released my arms and pulled the fabric down, tossing it to a corner. My heart raced and my headache seemed to beat in time with the blood being pumped through my veins.
They probably weren’t going to replace that shirt now and I would freeze come winter. Maybe the table inside held a clean shirt. I still wouldn’t fight for it.
The door clanged open and I was pushed inside. I saw the other two men at their doors, already in wary stances. Each of them held batons like the one my friendly guard had hit me with. So much for willow switches. The Director had raised the stakes.
I spotted a baton at my feet, but didn’t bend to retrieve it. Instead I looked up to the glass, at the Director and his guests. They were the same men who’d been present three nights ago and all five were ignoring us for now. I could see them talking and laughing, one of the men sipped at a champagne flute.
None of the noise behind the glass filtered down to the arena. The only sounds at the moment were the three of us breathing, and the steely sounds of cold air being pumped into the room from somewhere. Between the welts, I felt my skin become goose-fleshed and my arm and leg hairs stood on end.
I wrapped my aching arms around myself and shivered. I leaned against a steel pillar next to the door, searching for a spot on my shoulder that hurt the least, and took in the room. Three tall steel chairs had been added to the steel table. In the center of the round table, sat a white ceramic dish filled with what looked like a creamy soup. Steam rose from the liquid and from the hot piece of bread set on a napkin next to the dish. A single soup spoon waited for the diner.
The tableau almost would have fit in an industrial-decor pub. A frothy pint of beer would have completed the scene.
But those chairs were, in fact, weapons. The winner only needed one chair. And those two men were more thin, and, I assumed, more hungry, than I was. They’d clearly been in the Facility longer than I had.
Each of the two men took turns eyeing the prize, glaring at each other and at me, judging distances, hefting their batons, hoping he had enough strength to overpower the competition and down the soup and bread before being yanked out of the arena by a set of guards. To enjoy the food undisturbed by two other hungry contestants meant only one man could be left standing.
I shivered again and considered my options. I wouldn’t pick up my baton or seek to injure them. I didn’t like the man I had turned into three nights ago and had no desire to let that man dominate my existence again. But I also didn’t necessarily want to stand here while the others beat on me, or even beat on each other.
This setting, this food, our willingness to participate by injuring each other, is what gave the Director, his guests, and all Nobles their power. If we could remove our participation in their schemes, we would remove their power. But I wasn’t deluded enough to think that a passionate speech would keep these two hungry prisoners from killing anyone who stood in the way of that warm meal in the center of the room.
I decided to give them names. I hadn’t seen them before, so I tried to imagine what their mothers might have named them, or what their loved ones might have called them before they ended up in here. The man on the right was slightly taller than the other one, and about my height. Not being able to guess his given name, I chose a name from the Bible—one of the forbidden books I had recently read. His facial hair was longer than mine and the other man’s, so I mentally gave him the name, Jeremiah, the sullen prophet who foretold the destruction of Jerusalem. I’d envisioned Jeremiah as a prophet with a long beard. Jeremiah on the right.
To my left was the shorter, scruffier man. He seemed more dangerous. His eyes were darker. Jeremiah’s eyes carried some sadness, but this man was full of hate. I wanted to name him Cain, but that name deprived him of humanity, so I chose Judas. A bad name, to be sure, but Judas had been good for a season before turning against the man named Jesus.
I gave them another name in my mind and heart. Friends. They were my friends. They didn’t know it, but they were. Jeremiah, friend. And Judas, friend.
A voice interrupted my internal dialogue. “You may commence.” The single speaker above the room gave a squelch as the Director released the button he’d used to speak from behind the glass. All five men were seated at their chairs, glued to the scene below them.
I wondered briefly if audio from the arena was piped into their room, or if that was too gruesome. But the time for pondering was over. Without speaking, Jeremiah on my right, and Judas on my left had decided, with my weapon still lying on the floor, I was the most vulnerable. They advanced on me from their corners.
I had decided on my strategy and rushed the table. Judas was fast and reached me quickly enough to swing his baton at my head before I reached the table. I saw the swing coming and ducked. Jeremiah grunted as he dived for my legs. His baton caught my right shin and I heard the crack of bone before I felt it. I knew it was broken when my leg wouldn’t hold my weight and I slumped to one side.
Fortunately, the extra step I’d been able to take, plus the fall, had gotten me to the closest chair. It slid slightly on the corrugated metal floor, but held me upright. I was grateful it hadn’t tipped when I landed on it.
Judas had staggered when his swing missed my head, but he was up now. Jeremiah got to his feet and joined him. I was between them and the closest chair, the hot soup and bread inches away. I was now injured, in addition to being defenseless. It wouldn’t take them long to dispatch me, but then they would have to turn on each other. If that happened, my money was on Judas. He was smaller, but more agile and more angry.
I wouldn’t let that happen. Not tonight anyway.
My idea was a sacrifice. It wouldn’t change the world. It probably wouldn’t change Jeremiah or Judas or their circumstances. They could easily be brought here again tomorrow night and one of them would kill the other, along with another man, for a warm bowl of soup or some other delicacy.
I had about two seconds to make this work before Judas and Jeremiah took their next blows, so I twisted where I stood, grabbed the ceramic bowl filled with soup, and twisted back. The bowl was hot and burned my hands. Thick cream sloshed to one side as I brought the bowl to a stop and the heat seared a couple of fingers.
In the instant it had taken me to grasp the bowl and twist back, my two friends, Jeremiah and Judas, had raised their batons. Judas had diverted his baton as he’d realized what I was doing, and it harmlessly sliced the air to my right side. I knew he didn’t want to spill the soup. Jeremiah, not quite as fast as Judas, had never started his down-stroke.
Both men watched me now, unsure how to remove me from the equation without spilling the treasured dinner on the floor. My hands burned, but I refused to acknowledge the pain. I embraced the pain. My right shin was broken. The healing welts on my arms, legs, and back, pulled at my skin and itched. The heat on my hands and fingers was almost unbearable. But the pain meant I was alive.
My strategy involved only one possible outcome. It was designed to remove the Director’s power, if only temporarily.
In my mind’s eye, I had pictured myself get to this point and, almost as if in slow motion, release the bowl, the thick ceramic splintering against the steel floor and hot, creamy soup splashing up and spilling out from between the shards.
Now, with my friends unsure what to do, a second outcome became possible. I wasn’t sure how it would go; whether Judas and Jeremiah would go along, but either way, after tonight I’d probably be dead. Whether at the hands of these two prisoners, or the Director’s guards, my life was over. I had nothing left to lose.
I looked up, smiled quickly at the Director, and extended the bowl to the two men. I nodded to each of them, my friends, and to the soup. My hands no longer felt the heat of the soup, only the hard curves of the dish.
Before the men I’d named Jeremiah and Judas could react, all three doors burst open—
I shuddered and sat straight up in bed, waking my wife.
“What’s wrong?”
I checked my right shin. Not broken. I felt for the welts on my arms. There were none. “I just had a bad dream. Sorry I woke you.” I paused for a moment, thought about this nightmare, and whispered, “Go back to sleep.”
