screamed back at us, or cried, or begged us to let them go. They didn’t understand what had just happened, couldn’t see their former guards being herded onto the docks in plastic handcuffs, taken away by California state SWAT teams.
“Ange!” I called over the din, “Ange Carvelli! Darryl Glover! It’s Marcus!”
We’d walked the whole length of the cell-block and they hadn’t answered. I felt like crying. They’d been shipped overseas — they were in Syria or worse. I’d never see them again.
I sat down and leaned against the corridor wall and put my face in my hands. I saw Severe Haircut Woman’s face, saw her smirk as she asked me for my login. She had done this. She would go to jail for it, but that wasn’t enough. I thought that when I saw her again, I might kill her. She deserved it.
“Come on,” Barbara said, “Come on, Marcus. Don’t give up. There’s more around here, come on.”
She was right. All the doors we’d passed in the cellblock were old, rusting things that dated back to when the base was first built. But at the very end of the corridor, sagging open, was a new high-security door as thick as a dictionary. We pulled it open and ventured into the dark corridor within.
There were four more cell-doors here, doors without bar codes. Each had a small electronic keypad mounted on it.
“Darryl?” I said. “Ange?”
“Marcus?”
It was Ange, calling out from behind the furthest door. Ange, my Ange, my angel.
“Ange!” I cried. “It’s me, it’s me!”
“Oh God, Marcus,” she choked out, and then it was all sobs.
I pounded on the other doors. “Darryl! Darryl, are you here?”
“I’m here.” The voice was very small, and very hoarse. “I’m here. I’m very, very sorry. Please. I’m very sorry.”
He sounded… broken. Shattered.
“It’s me, D,” I said, leaning on his door. “It’s Marcus. It’s over — they arrested the guards. They kicked the Department of Homeland Security out. We’re getting trials, open trials. And we get to testify against
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please, I’m so sorry.”
The California patrolmen came to the door then. They still had their camera rolling. “Ms Stratford?” one said. He had his faceplate up and he looked like any other cop, not like my savior. Like someone come to lock me up.
“Captain Sanchez,” she said. “We’ve located two of the prisoners of interest here. I’d like to see them released and inspect them for myself.”
“Ma’am, we don’t have access codes for those doors yet,” he said.
She held up her hand. “That wasn’t the arrangement. I was to have complete access to this facility. That came direct from the Governor, sir. We aren’t budging until you open these cells.” Her face was perfectly smooth, without a single hint of give or flex. She meant it.
The Captain looked like he needed sleep. He grimaced. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
They did manage to open the cells, finally, about half an hour later. It took three tries, but they eventually got the right codes entered, matching them to the arphids on the ID badges they’d taken off the guards they’d arrested.
They got into Ange’s cell first. She was dressed in a hospital gown, open at the back, and her cell was even more bare than mine had been — just padding all over, no sink or bed, no light. She emerged blinking into the corridor and the police camera was on her, its bright lights in her face. Barbara stepped protectively between us and it. Ange stepped tentatively out of her cell, shuffling a little. There was something wrong with her eyes, with her face. She was crying, but that wasn’t it.
“They drugged me,” she said. “When I wouldn’t stop screaming for a lawyer.”
That’s when I hugged her. She sagged against me, but she squeezed back, too. She smelled stale and sweaty, and I smelled no better. I never wanted to let go.
That’s when they opened Darryl’s cell.
He had shredded his paper hospital gown. He was curled up, naked, in the back of the cell, shielding himself from the camera and our stares. I ran to him.
“D,” I whispered in his ear. “D, it’s me. It’s Marcus. It’s over. The guards have been arrested. We’re going to get bail, we’re going home.”
He trembled and squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and turned his face away.
They took me away then, a cop in body-armor and Barbara, took me back to my cell and locked the door, and that’s where I spent the night.
I don’t remember much about the trip to the courthouse. They had me chained to five other prisoners, all of whom had been in for a lot longer than me. One only spoke Arabic — he was an old man, and he trembled. The others were all young. I was the only white one. Once we had been gathered on the deck of the ferry, I saw that nearly everyone on Treasure Island had been one shade of brown or another.
I had only been inside for one night, but it was too long. There was a light drizzle coming down, normally the sort of thing that would make me hunch my shoulders and look down, but today I joined everyone else in craning my head back at the infinite gray sky, reveling in the stinging wet as we raced across the bay to the ferry- docks.
They took us away in buses. The shackles made climbing into the buses awkward, and it took a long time for
