Article 5

I saw three discolored lines on his neck. Fingernail scratches. My scratches.

“Tucker Morris.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly. As if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

Silence.

“Aren’t you even curious why I’m here?”

“Does it matter? I’m sure I’ll be executed either way.” My voice was flat. Emotionless.

“That’s morbid.”

“Am I wrong?”

He smirked. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know who you mean,” I said with my jaw locked.

“Withholding information won’t help your case.”

“What will help my case?” I asked sourly.

“Being nice to me might.” There was a buoyancy in his tone. Almost as if he were flirting. I nearly gagged.

“I will not be nice to someone who participates in the murders of innocent people.” The words burned my tongue but did nothing to my dead heart.

“So he told you? I thought he’d chicken out. Just like he did with her.”

There was a flash of anger. I wanted to claw at him again, like I had when he’d taken my mother. But then the desire was gone. All that remained was bitterness.

“You’re a bastard, Tucker.”

“I should say the same.” He grinned at his own cleverness. “But watch your mouth. You can’t talk to a soldier that way.”

I scoffed. What was he going to do? Kill me? Get in line.

He hesitated. “Jennings already has abduction of a minor, assault with a deadly weapon, theft of federal property, and at least ten other petty charges tacked onto his AWOL. This isn’t someone you want to protect. He obviously wouldn’t return the favor.”

I hadn’t given him the chance to protect me—I’d left when he’d been guarding my door. By the time he realized I was gone, I’d probably already been thrown into this cell.

I wondered what my charges were. Something about running from the reformatory. Theft and assault. What else? Fraud for our non-government-approved marriage? For some reason, I found the tally mildly amusing. I didn’t even care if they pegged me as the sniper now.

“Why are you even here? I thought you were in a transport unit or something.”

“I made rank. I’m on a fast track. I’ll probably be an officer soon.”

“Congratulations.” I said. My tone didn’t faze him.

“Your trial’s been moved to the end of the week.”

“Damn. You couldn’t fit me in today, huh?”

“I bought you three more days to ponder your fate. I’d like to make sure you get the full experience of incarceration. That’s as a favor to our mutual friend.” His jaw twitched as he spoke.

Tucker was flat-out evil. He was even more despicable than Chase.

“I’m detailing you to cleanup until your sentencing.”

He opened my door and motioned for me to step outside into the hall. My legs were weak from days of not walking, and my head spun for a few seconds. I was surprised Tucker let me out without handcuffs.

The woman who had woken me earlier in the day was busying herself scrubbing floors. She had a sudsy bucket beside her and wore elbow-length rubber gloves.

“Delilah, this is Ember Miller,” said Tucker from the doorway.

She glanced up and then hoisted herself to her feet.

“Yes, sir.”

“She’ll help you until her trial.”

Delilah nodded submissively. Tucker pulled me aside before turning to go.

“I’ll be down the hall at that office. Come see me when she’s done with you.”

“I can’t wait.”

He chuckled as he walked away.

“Grab a brush. We’re scrubbing floors. And then it’s cleanup of another kind.” Delilah wasn’t much for small talk.

We went room by room, cleaning the floors, making the beds, scrubbing the toilets. Only two of the rooms were occupied, and those we did not enter immediately.

While I was working, a handcuffed man with sallow skin and bruises on one cheek slumped down the hall. He was accompanied by four guards, one of whom carried a silver briefcase. They pushed him roughly into an empty room. A few minutes later, all four guards disappeared the way they had come.

“Just gone to trial,” commented Delilah. I wondered morbidly what the outcome had been.

When we were finished, I followed Delilah downstairs to the cafeteria, where we picked up two trays of gray mush from a soldier wearing a hairnet. I watched as several soldiers were cleared in and out of the building’s main entrance by a guard behind a thick plate of glass. Every time the door opened, a spine-curdling buzz spiked my eardrums.

Back upstairs, Delilah used a key hanging on a thin metal chain around her neck to open the door.

The man inside was curled into a ball on the back side of his bed. He wore a canary yellow jumpsuit and rocked back and forth pitifully, muttering something to himself.

“Food,” Delilah said, laying the tray on the opposite side of his bed.

She shut the door, and marked the checkbox beside MEAL on the clipboard hanging from the handle.

In the next room, a man with olive skin leaned against the wall, biting his nails.

“You got a blanket or something?” he said quickly. “Oh. Hey there,” he added when he saw me. I stared back at him curiously.

“Food,” Delilah said again, leaving the tray on his bed.

A guard passed by, heading down the stairs.

“Where’s he going?” I asked Delilah.

“Rounds. They walk the halls every thirty minutes.”

“It seems like there should be more security for a jail.”

She shook her head. “This is a small detention center. Only holding cells. Temporary stays. It’s minimum security. The prison’s in Charlotte.”

Delilah was very matter-of-fact.

“Hope you have a tough stomach,” she said.

“Why?”

“Now it’s time for the real cleanup.”

I followed her to a storage room, which held supplies. Bleach. Gloves. Prisoner uniforms. Towels. Blankets. I thought she would grab one for the man in the cell, but she did not. Instead, she retrieved a deep laundry cart with a metal cover. Then we headed toward the third occupied room, the one holding the soldier who had just completed trial.

I looked at his clipboard. In large letters was written one word: COMPLETE.

There was a fleeting moment where I remembered a conversation between Rebecca and me at the reformatory. Sean had told her that he had heard the term complete used for the Article violators. That was when I’d naively thought my mother had been sent to rehab.

I knew when the door swung open why Delilah had asked me about my stomach.

The man before us was lying twisted on the narrow bed. His knees were stacked on the mattress while his shoulders faced the ceiling. His brown hair was still tangled, and a bruise still blackened his pasty cheek.

But he was now dead.

My mind conjured an image of the man who had starved in the square. How thin and fragile his body had looked. How I assumed he had fallen asleep, when really he had wasted away.

This was different. This man looked dead. Not peaceful. Not sleeping. But ashy and cold and tortured, as though his mind had been taken by death before his body was ready. I knew then why people close the eyes of the