The General looked pointedly at my mother. “Of course, this kind of theft could result in both of your terminations.”
She frantically pushed the black bangs from her eyes, leaning towards the table in such a way that her upper torso half folded. The bright terror in her features wrenched in my gut.
“Please understand. She’s a naive child with funny ideas.” My mother shook her head, tears spilling over her cheeks.
“Exactly. She’s a minor and this is a first time offense. She didn’t intend any harm to anyone.” My father leaned forward as well, both my parents bending as if the joints that held their hips in place simply ceased to exist.
Bending and twisting under the weight of my lies.
They looked broken. Like two broken dolls instead of the weary, stoic parents from twenty-four hours prior. Those parents were distracted but patient, loving but immersed in their passions, devoted to their cause and sometimes to me. They were affectionate and tender but always glancing over their shoulders and squinting ahead, hands pressed above their brows or to their temples. They were preoccupied—racing around the globe to stave off the threat of a virus as if it were their last mission on earth. And it was.
I watched a bead of sweat roll and slide down my father's pock-marked chin. It tumbled off and landed on the collar of his crisp, white shirt. I thought about our efforts to convince them of our innocence. To placate them into believing we were good people with no malicious intentions. There was no court, there was no trial. There was only the cold white room and the intimidating, powerful white man whom Prothero allowed to control our fate. What would he do? Terminate my parent's employment? Put us in prison? Kill us?
“I am interested in where she gets these ideas. Who she associates with outside of the other children at the base?” The General tapped on his tablet, leaning back in the chair and examining us with a pale, lifeless stare.
There was no comfort or promise of redemption in his gaze. Hope drifted further away.
“No one,” I said. My voice was high and sharp, pleading from my throat.
“Are you sure? This entire city is under our surveillance.” He rotated the tablet and a video popped into view.
The video displayed what I feared most: Mateo and I under our favorite tree tossing lime rinds to the birds, laughing and holding hands.
“Who is this boy?”
My parents turned to me, bodies heavy with devastation. They looked at me as if I was a stranger, not their daughter. There was no trace of love or recognition in their eyes. I shifted my gaze to the cuffs. The humiliation and guilt burned all over me. I wished I could burst into flames and turn to dust under their stares.
“It’s my friend,” I whispered, all the spit emptied out of my mouth.
My throat made a dry clicking as I tried to swallow. I couldn’t get past a painful lump trapped there.
“You are associating with a child afflicted by a particularly aggressive strain of the nano virus. We would like you to give us the identity of this boy so we can place him in quarantine,” the General insisted.
I could have told them about Matty. But I did not. This was the first time I discovered how truly monstrous I could be. It doesn’t take implants or burn scars to frighten yourself or others. It only takes the uttering of one name. I gave them the name of the boy who collected limes from our tree and sold them on the street corner. Who, like Mateo, had a number which had rarely been called—until that moment.
When it was over, with the name revealed, I collapsed back against the chair. My head heavy. My eyelids heavy. The General exited the room, looking no more pleased than when he'd entered. Two guards followed in his wake, unshackling my parents and I. Freeing us. But we were not really freed. Not ever again. No one gets caught stealing from Prothero and goes back to a normal life. We signed non-disclosure contractual agreements we didn’t have the time and energy to read. We were escorted back to our barracks by guards.
In the city, Javier Hernandez was seized and tortured and probably killed.
I did that.
I gave them the wrong name.
I saved Mateo's life but ended another
Our family was whisked away to Paris, France twenty-four hours later. Armed guards led us out of Mexico City and onto a jet plane. We were assigned clasped bands to track our movements via GPS. The bands monitored our heart rates, vital signs, acted as our identification and financial documents. Our lives became thin pieces of metal we were ordered to wear at all times.
I was flown across an ocean and haven't seen Mateo since.
I slipped the cuff when I wanted to believe Prothero wasn't tracking my movements. I swapped bands with girls my age to add a further layer of subterfuge to my adventures. A compliment here, some laughter there and Prothero was completely unaware I’d located the address and contact from Matty’s slip of paper. The man in the cheerful, crumbling alleyway next to a Parisian cafe greeted me with a familiar tin box and coin.
The tin contained the first letter. I unfolded the page with shaky fingers and read his shaky script in the childish code we’d devised. Matty writes me in English, transposing the correct alphabet letter for its corresponding number. A=One, B=Two, C=Three, etc. with the numbers spelled out rather than abbreviated. The code is crude, but the numbers obscuring the intent of the message provide a level of comfort and security for a message traveling long distance. His first letter contained code names he’d chosen to further shield us from detection. Mine felt particularly bitter, but in time I grew to appreciate its meaning. Its weight.
Lima,
I hope this letter finds you well and reaches you safe. I waited for you at the lime tree like usual the day you were supposed to leave and you never showed. People in the neighborhood told me what happened. How they led you away in handcuffs. I was nervous and we hid the tin in one of the underground sewer tunnels in case the Peace Officers came for us. They never did.
They came for a boy named Javier Hernandez instead. Lima, I have no choice but to think you did this. You told them it was Javier who took the inoculations and not me. The Officers raided his house and took him and his family. An entire family vanished overnight and they have not been seen again.
I should thank you and be grateful but I’m also angry. Angry that you were caught. Angry that another family is dead or missing. Why didn’t you tell them it was me? What happened to you? Where are you?
I imagine you are in Paris eating croissants and drinking fancy chocolate coffee with your nose pressed to the screen of a tablet, building those computer puzzles and applications you talked about. That is the only way I can survive without knowing the truth.
My mother says the truth is biased. She says there is a good chance you are dead, like Javier and his family and you are never coming back. Please write to me Lima. I need to know you are alive. I need the truth.
With Love,
El Matador
I wrote him back that evening with hemp paper and a pen I stole from the front desk of the medical base. I sat up in my bed with a blanket drawn up over my head, scratching at the page—my parents snoring on the other side of the room. Or maybe they weren’t snoring at all. Maybe they were awake and aware of their treacherous daughter making further contact with her terrorist boyfriend. I don’t know. I don’t remember enough about them to know. Their bodies are smudged, drawn over with lines and their voices echo against the walls and windows of my head like ghosts. Not real people.
The only image I have with any real clarity is the horror of the bombing. It burns inside me and is always, always, always playing in the back of my mind.
One of the hazier memories is of my Dad with his feet propped up at a desk staring blearily into a computer monitor, eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion. I entered the room with my mom, back from the dinner he routinely skipped when he was working. He sat up, stretched and folded my mother into a hug.
He said, looking down at me with my mother wrapped in his arms, “The funny thing about a
virus is that a virus doesn’t choose sides.”
He mumbled this into the taut flesh of her collarbone, staring at me with troubled, watering eyes, the lines deepening around them as he spoke.
My parents were trying to make things better—make the world safer—cure the disease faster. Contain and cure and bring the world peace from the nano virus. Maybe I wasn’t so different from them, as I’d suspected under the lime tree. Maybe our desire to help, to resolve the wrong all came from the same place. I needed to make things right, with Matty at least. I would do whatever he asked.
I wrote him back expressing my terror, my guilt, my safety, my desire for penance. What could I do? What could I do to make up for it? I couldn’t let the deaths of an entire family haunt me forever. But mostly I remember that stupidly innocent boy with the cow eyes and thin hair and slim, hungry frame and dark veins of disease.
He will haunt me forever.
Helping Mateo, I knew it wasn’t a sound proposition. But I was young. I was furious at being threatened and humiliated. I was anxious to make amends to Mateo, to serve an appropriate sentence for taking those lives. Matty offered the only solution to soothe the shame and guilt.
His first requests were easy—not really like stealing at all. He asked me to memorize passwords and inform him of what I saw happening in Paris. Simple tasks. But then what he asked of me became less and less safe with every letter. Most of it was information or memorized bits of data I could obtain using technology. I would sneak into my mother’s office and download the data and files on her computer, capitalizing on her remote access to Prothero’s database and intranet. I was good with tech, even as a kid. It wasn’t hard to set up a program to capture her keystrokes and reveal her passwords so I could gain entry to confidential information.
I should’ve had more pause and reserve when it came to stealing important things from Prothero—but after enough time and self deception the initial scare obtained a surreal quality, like a horrible dream. All I remembered was Prothero wronging Mateo and I, killing Javier and his family in the process. It was so much easier to spread the burden and blame. I lumped my parents into this category for letting Prothero frighten me.
My parents reactions to my theft in Mexico City drove a wedge in the widening fissure of our relationship. They already worked long hours in the trenches on the war against the nano virus and were rarely home. Our brief time together brimmed with mechanical hugs and frosty sentiments. It was as if I’d stolen their child and replaced her with an alien thing. I was a foreign object inserted into our family, a living breathing entity possessing none of the emotions and history of their former daughter.
They were afraid of me.
It was a smart suspicion. I shadowed all of Prothero’s movements in Paris and with helpful tips and stolen secrets of our communications, so did Mateo and the Contras. My knowledge of the inner workings of Paris was another layer added to my loathing of the city and its inhabitants. It wasn’t just the decadence and opulence of its citizens. It was also the creeping disease and underlying threat of death permeating the sweet scent of bread and pastries. I hated how naive they were about what was happening behind their closed doors. I hated myself too.
Then the bomb exploded, taking me far away from those worlds. The bomb took me from both my distrusting parents and my terrorist best friend, flinging me into the atmosphere and landing me into the open, loving arms of Prothero. Right in the belly of the beast.
It was impossible to communicate with Mateo for awhile. It wasn’t as if I’d disappeared, the entire world knew where I was and what happened to me. He knew where to find me. One of the Contras worked as a janitor, cleaning floors and emptying compost and recycling bins at the Prothero funded youth rehabilitation center. I entered this institution directly from the hospital, depressed and exhausted. I languished there for a year until they threw me a bone, an opportunity to be productive with my mangled life by enrolling me in mandatory National Service. I could pay my debts. I could rack up more.
The Contra janitor dropped a letter and kicked it under my bed one evening, while I was scribbling furiously on a tablet. Scribbling and drawing and writing out all the nightmares and isolation. After he left, I slid out of the covers and crouched on all fours to retrieve it.
With teary eyes I read the message.
Lima,
When I learned about the bombing in Paris, and heard that you and your parents were victims, I believe my heart stopped beating. And a second time, when I discovered you were placed under the protection of Prothero. You had been repaired and implanted with computer parts and technology that would heal all your injuries. You are with the enemy now, and you feel alone.
Do not be discouraged. Allies exist all around you. I cannot be there in person, but I am there in spirit. I am fighting and breathing alongside you. You are not alone.
I had the strangest dream last night. You were painting pictures of us under the lime tree where we first met. But instead of the images staying on the canvas, they climbed out of it and danced around the courtyard. You made these paintings come to life. They were mesmerizing, like the drawings you send to me. I would give you an equally beautiful gift, but I am no artist. One day I will see you paint in person, and you will make art so wonderful, it will come alive. And we will dance.
Time is the enemy of all. It kept us apart for too long. I have another dream, but it is not about your paintings. It’s not a thing I dreamt in the night. It’s a vision during waking hours, of you escaping Prothero and meeting me here in Mexico City. It is dangerous. I know this cannot happen. But I think about it. I dream. Maybe you could tell me one of your dreams. We would share our dreams everyday if you were here.
I hope all our efforts are not wasted. We will be able to defeat Prothero and liberate you. You are the reason I fight. You and everyone like you.
With Love,
El Matador
Reading that letter from Mateo, after not hearing from him or any of my loved ones for so long, after losing my parents and control over my body and life—it was enough to sustain me. Enough to help me endure the prisons Prothero placed me in. Up until January of this year, those letters meant the promise of freedom, escape from years of manipulation. Matty promised escape to a terrorist refuge of—of what exactly? The way he describes it, life for the Contras isn’t glamorous or safe. But it’s the only other option available to me. It’s a choice other than choosing to stay here.
Is it strange that I would return to the metaphorical arms of a terrorist when around the same time, my relatives abandoned me? I blame my grandparents especially for giving in to Prothero’s legal team and the pressure they exerted to turn me over as a ward of the state. Now I exist as an entity Prothero can capitalize on—experiment with—and force into national service.
While Prothero originally pitied me and took me on as a special case, they didn’t ever intend to pay my medical bills. I was implanted with organs and received special nano injections, along with a lengthy rehabilitation stay at their top medical facility. My debt has topped out at over fifty million dollars. While the press insisted Prothero generously provided this care and these resources free of charge, the legalities of it were not straightforward. I could work off the debt from within the system, or my relatives could claim me and the millions in fees. My grandparents couldn’t afford to pay that kind of money. It was easier for them if I was a ward of the state. It was easier for everyone if Prothero kept me as their own.
Reading the first letter from Mateo, post-bombing, was a reminder at least one person remembered me for who I was, and wanted to claim me despite all the debts owed. Those sentiments were nice. He was nice. He was thousands of miles away, participating in a resistance against my jailers. And I was rotting in the bowels of Prothero, stuffed full of their tech like a holiday turkey—practically bursting out of the seams with it.
It took several more months after the first post-bombing letter for me to slip Mateo anymore vital informati
on. Old habits are hard to break, and I could break into pieces of tech at the youth center with little difficulty on my part. It was their fault, for letting me commune with the machines. For showing me the possibilities of flight. Prothero was convinced I sat placidly in their labs, fixed and harmless as furniture.
But no matter how much they placated and trained me to obedience, I could defy them. They’d given me every reason to do so. They’d taken my parents from me, even before the bombing. They’d taken Matty, killed Javier and his family. They’d violated my body with technology and manipulated my mind. Prothero stole all these things from me.
Except for this stupid tin. These letters are all I have left. I can’t get rid of them.
And I always need more.
Carmen Martinez, the Contra sympathizer who ferries the letters back and forth between Mateo and I, is a short, hard-bodied lady in her 40s with long peppered black and gray hair, typically tied back in a ponytail. She wears a Prothero uniform because the cherry orchards belong to the government. This food is regulated.
Once the pickers load up all the ripe fruit, the cherries are prepared for shipping at a plant down by the base of The Dalles dam. The technicians move their belongings into a row of houses next to the factory, keeping watch on machines working non-stop to process and package the fruit. More workers flood into town temporarily to load the processed cargo onto bullet trains and barges.
The cherries disappear through various channels out of the Gorge and eventually, so do all the people. Then it’s lonely, silent winter days punctuated by the howl of wind and wild animals. This is how it’s been for the last two years here, and no doubt will continue after I’m gone.
Metal Heart: Book 1: The Metal Heart Trilogy Page 15
