Chapter Thirteen
One month later…
“Free Doctor Knight!” I wave my placard high and I scream at the top of my lungs into a megaphone that makes my thin, hoarse tones go a little further.
I’m standing outside the barbed wire fence that surrounds the base where I last saw Daniel. Megaphone in one hand, placard in the other, I am a one-woman protest movement. This is ineffectual, but it’s all I can really do for him. I betrayed Daniel’s trust. I didn’t listen to him. I didn’t trust him. And now they have him. I don’t know if he’s still in this camp, or if they’ve moved him. I do know that I’m never going to stop looking for him, trying to get to him.
“Ma’am, you need to vacate this area.” A man in a helmet with the letters MP is approaching me. He’s saying what he always says.
“I’m not leaving until you release Daniel. He’s done nothing wrong.” I’m saying what I always say.
“Ma’am, you’re trespassing. You will be arrested if necessary.”
“Take me in if you have to. I don’t care.”
We’ve played this game before. We both know how it ends.
He grabs me and spins me around. The cuffs go on. Cold and hard. Then he marches me to the holding cell they use for arresting civilians. There used to be anti-war protesters in here. I can see the peace signs scratched into the concrete here and there. They’re long gone, and war is still here, so I don’t know what that says about anything.
“Hold her until the PD gets here,” the officer says to the soldier manning the desk. “Recommend a mental health hold.”
“Fuck you, I’m not crazy!”
They shut the door and leave me sitting there, helplessly. I’ve never had to fight for anything in my life. I’ve never had to work for anything either. Now I have to work and fight and I don’t know how. Everything I think to do seems so ineffective. One woman can’t win against an entire military. I’ve lost Daniel. Probably forever. For a second time, I’ve hurt him so badly he might never recover. All he wanted was my help, and I utterly fucked him over. I’ve been writing every commander in this place. In the end, they outright told me that the way they tracked us down was through that call I made when I decided I knew better than Daniel, that he was just paranoid.
I start to sob, crying tears of regret that don’t make me seem any more sane.
“You have to stop this, ma’am. Doctor Knight isn’t based here. Hasn’t been from the beginning.”
A kind, but gruff voice interrupts my tears. I look up to see that they’ve gone and gotten the boss again.
The commanding officer of this place is actually a decent guy. Silver-haired and more calm than most soldiers, he’s dealt with these meltdowns every day since they took Daniel. We’re starting to have a relationship of sorts.
“He’s serving his country, ma’am. Maybe you can let him do that.”
“Against his will!”
“I reckon he made his choices best way he could. Just like we all do. Just like you need to do. You’re too pretty to waste your life yelling at a fence.”
It’s all so simple for him. I should just give up and go home. I should just stop fighting.
“If someone took your wife away from you, would you just accept it? Or would you yell at every fence you had to until you got her back?”
“Well,” he admits. “I don’t know about that, but you and the doctor weren’t married.”
“We’re closer than most married couples are.”
“That’s what women who aren’t married tell themselves.”
I take it back. He’s an asshole.
“And what do fuckwits who steal people tell themselves?”
He smirks. Nothing I say bothers him, because he doesn’t take me seriously. “Ma’am, Doctor Knight is doing good and valuable work here. Maybe he wasn’t keen to volunteer, but we need him. He’s a good man.”
“I know he is! And he’s my man! Not yours!”
It’s hopeless. Militaries have been capturing scientists since the dawn of time. I know they’re never going to let him go. He’s too brilliant not to be on their team. Maybe he can find some way to negotiate some better conditions. Or maybe… I feel my throat close up at the very thought… maybe he’s just done with me. I made his escape impossible. I caused a huge scene at the base. Every misfortune in his life has been due to me. So maybe I should let him go. Maybe he wasn’t telling me to go and have a good life. Maybe he was telling me to fuck off so he could have a life of his own.
“I’m going to let you go,” he says, that horrible look of pity on his face. “But on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You take a day off from this. You go home and you think about things. And then you come up with a more constructive use of your time.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
That’s enough for him. He lets me out of the cell. I go back to the little yellow car all this trouble really started in, and I pull out. Go home, huh? Think about more constructive ways to be a total victim to these assholes? Fuck that. I swing the wheel around. Plant my foot flat and head the vehicle toward the gates of the base.
They’ll call me crazy, I think as the front of the car hits the center of the gates and sends one crashing entirely off its mounts, the panel clinging to the front of my car as I proceed across the neat green turf beyond. They’ll call me a terrorist, I consider as steam cascades from the smashed-up radiator. Maybe they’ll even kill me. Is it weird that I don’t care?