Skin Trials

by S Y Humphrey

  Seren felt numb. “I thought you said you didn’t care about my truth.”

  “I pity you, Seren. Mostly as an extension of your father. But I don’t know you. Don’t know whose side you’ll chose. Don’t know what kind of person you’ll become. And if you won’t join the side of justice, your truth is simply a weapon I must destroy.”

  Her voice hoarse, Seren asked, “How do you plan to enter Angola?”

  “By posing as wealthy investors, wanting to build a hotel and boxing ring there.”

  “A boxing ring? At a prison?” Seren balked.

  “They already have a golf course, a rodeo, a private lake for bass fishing and a hunting club.”

  Seren could only listen at how galling this place sounded. She had never heard of it. “Prisons are for… imprisoning people. As punishment. Not for entertaining them as a reward, after they’ve committed crime.”

  “The entertainment isn’t for the prisoners. It’s for spectators and visitors who go there to watch the prisoners as entertainment. The experience makes them feel like they’re living in a plantation society again. Where they are the superior race, and blacks are subservient to their will once more,” Pepper explained. “People come from all over the world to have brunch and tea at high noon while being served their food by black women and watching black men pick cotton.”

  Seren wanted to throw up. “When?”

  “In two days. Our appointment has already been made. We’re hoping by then, they will have relaxed.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “The Blacks will pose as my staff. My hired help. While I’m distracting the warden, a team of our best fighters will find the doctor. Some of them are already inside working as guards. Once we have Dr. Terry, we fly him out on a plane, to an undisclosed location. We depart separately by the same limousine we came in. If you want to go back to Jernigan, we’ll give you a jet pack to go somewhere so they can pick you up. If you want to go with Dr. Terry, we’ll put you on the plane with him.”

  “How are you going to get the plane on and off the ground without them firing at it?” Seren asked.

  “We’ve got our guys there who know where the sharpshooters are,” Pepper answered.

  “And what about the plainclothes covert military agents that are not known to the guards? The government will also have stealth weapons and missiles aimed and ready that they won’t tell the warden about,” Seren pressed. To that, Pepper did not have an answer.

  Sitting up in bed, Seren finally tossed off the covers and reached for the cane. This time, Pepper crossed the room to help her, and they made their way through the house, down the beautiful wooden stairs to the library. NG entered the room carrying large papers, rolled up. He unfolded them to reveal large maps of the area, highlighted to illuminate routes. Several other people entered the room and gathered around the table. He ignored Seren, and began to point.

  “We believe he’s here, based on what our guards tell us who are stationed there. But we need to anticipate them moving him in anticipation of us coming there,” NG said.

  “We also need to have air defenses here, cruise missiles here, and ground troops here and here, to counter them as you’re coming out,” Omu noted while pointing.

  “Concealed of course,” Seren interrupted. “In vehicles that can bypass weapons detectors. And not be captured on satellite or infrared imaging.”

  “Of course,” Omu replied, glancing down at her with an annoyed look.

  Pepper and NG laughed. “Don’t be jealous, Omu, now that you’ve met your technological match,” Pepper quipped.

  They discussed the layout and of the grounds and facilities, including all the camps for housing different races, different gangs and levels of criminals, as well as special needs. And then there was the Red Hat cellblock. Solitary confinement, reserved for the most violent or disobedient offenders.

  “You can also count on the Cavalry being there. They will be withheld until the very end, and will come behind any military forces to intimidate people and get answers,” Seren added. “They torture and kill until people talk. So you should consider if you want to take them out before they arrive. Or deal with them once they show up. Which may be too late if you’re trying to get in and out.”

  Over and over, they rehearsed their roles, their fake names, and even how they would talk. The trip was planned to be for three days, with the goal of making the warden comfortable enough that they wouldn’t expect what was coming by day two.

  “Wherever you’re taking him, you’ll need fighter jets and missiles covering his vehicle until he leaves U.S. airspace.” Seren continued to think strategy while sipping a glass of cold sweet raspberry tea. Finally, she asked, “Where is his wife?”

  They all looked at one another. “Cassandra?” Pepper asked.

  “Yes. Mrs. Terry. Where is she? Once Dr. Terry escapes, my father will find her, expecting the doctor to try and locate her.”

  “She remarried. To a Tier Four. She has a family. Three kids. Her name is Cassandra Grayson. Seven years after he disappeared, she had Dr. Terry declared dead.”

  Seren watched them continue to exchange uncomfortable glances with one another. “What? What is it already? Just stop squirming and tell me.”

  “Seren, she’s the woman you had removed from your school,” Pepper finally announced. “Kit saw her hovering outside your school more than once. Kit clinked us and asked us to run her VScan but we couldn’t. We were intrigued, so we followed her. Went through her trash. She lives in under the radar and has never scanned into the CAGE. The name change had thrown us off, and we didn’t have DNA samples to verify her identity. She was blacklisted in Perfect Society, because she was Lyle Terry’s wife— Jernigan’s punishment for Dr. Terry not cooperating. That’s why I could never find her. We believe she has never scanned into the CAGE database out of anger over what happened to her husband. I mean, that entire system is based on her husband’s work.”

  Seren sank into the chair, images of the woman’s torn face crossing her mind. She remembered how she had treated her. The woman — her birth mother— had tried to hug her. Seren had jerked away.

  “She’s nobody…” Seren muttered, remembered the rule as soon as she started speaking.

  “We believe your mother figured out that you’re alive, just like we did— on old-fashioned television. We think she never bothered you because you had such a great life. Once she saw you were okay, she didn’t want to take all that away,” Pepper answered.

  “What does she do to survive?” Seren asked.

  “She’s actually a very fine surgeon. She and her husband live well. That’s what she uses to barter with.”

  Seren laughed through the tears. “Practicing medicine without a VScan is against the law.”

  NG laughed. “I think she could care less about Perfect Society. The government doesn’t touch her, because she comes from a well-to-do family, and she’s still Lyle Terry’s wife. Your mother. They still want Lyle Terry’s formulas and they’re still hoping they can get them from her. Besides, she tends to be a hard-ass, like somebody else I know.”

  Her mother couldn’t buy a house. Or receive health care. Enter a nice restaurant. Fly on an airplane. Or attend a concert. Seren looked at all of them right then, tears beginning to form once more.

  “You all must think I’m horrible,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, you are,” NG — Jonah— answered. “It’s okay though. We’re starting to see minor improvements through the dirt. If we keep you from Jernigan long enough, we might actually dig up your heart.”

  The people in the room laughed.

  “Why didn’t you all give her that letter?” Seren asked.

  “I didn’t know who she was until that incident at your school. By then, we already knew who you were. We already had our plan. I thought you should be the one to give it to her. Seren… Henrietta… you should be the one to tell her her husband’s not dead. I’m sure Jernigan knows where she is and keeps an e
ye on her. I fear if we contact her now, in the middle of all this, we might get her in trouble,” Pepper replied.

  Seren slowly breathed in, and then released it, peering over the maps.

  “I don’t think you should fly him out by plane. Too dangerous. Too much could go wrong. Maybe he could leave by truck, car or wagon.” Seren ran the different scenarios through her mind, until she finally came up with the last one. “Or I will have to go in there and bring him out myself.”

  She stared at all of the faces around the room, who stared solemnly back at her. “That’s it. It’s me, isn’t it? I’m your only option. That’s why you kidnapped me, and went to all that trouble. This isn’t a simple hostage exchange. I’m literally the only one who can bring him out alive.”

  18

  Angola

  Seren spent the rest of the day practicing a southern twang, making sure she sounded less sophisticated. That she looked at the ground more. She tried to shrug off her tough, confident exterior, so that she could be convincingly subservient. One of the younger black fighters from the South went over it with her, shoving her shoulders forward in a hunch, pressing her chest inward and dragging her feet across the floor, so that she scooted rather than strode. Controlling Seren’s arms, the girl moved Seren’s body in a cavalier, slow and dragging manner, so that Seren would not appear to have too much purpose.

  “You can’t look like you’ve got meaning, or you’re a threat,” the girl taught her.

  Seren wondered how anyone could live that way. Constantly hovering and hunching, to make sure someone else never felt offended by their existence. Later that evening, she sat on Pepper’s long front porch and enjoyed the sunset. What very well may have been her last. She looked out across rolling hills on Pepper’s farm, while the sun dipped into the tall forest of green trees.

  “You’re not afraid to have me out here?” she asked

  “The porches covered, so they won’t capture you by satellite. And there’s no one around for half a mile. My counterintelligence detectors haven’t signaled any drones. But this is as far as you can go.”

  “What’s your day job?” Seren asked.

  “Lawyer. For the government,” Pepper added before they both broke into laughter at the irony.

  “Why was Dr. Terry on your farm?”

  “My father and his father— your grandfather— fought together in Iraq. When your grandfather had serious PTSD that affected his brain, it led to drug use. He died and my father was devastated. My father always felt responsible for Lyle in some sense. Dad said Dr. Terry was amazing. What he could do for people. Dad never let me watch a procedure myself, but I saw the people who came to our front door seeking his help. The desperation on their faces. They would plead in the middle of the night. Bang on our door. My father also attended West Point with Stephen Jernigan. My father came from money. My father was expected to further the white cause. He tried. But he couldn’t. Stephen Jernigan tried to pressure my dad to make Lyle Terry sell his scientific research. When that didn’t work, Jernigan went after Lyle directly. Took everything he had. And buried him.”

  “So you founded the Keepers. A white woman. To help a black man. Imagine that,” Seren let out a low chuckle, sipping her tea.

  “To help many black men. I’m sorry I had to drag you into this. I’m well aware of the predicament I’ve put you in, and if there were some other way, I’d use it.”

  “Really?” Seren studied her.

  “Well, maybe not.” The two laughed again.

  “Do you have a family? How do you and NG - Jonah - know each other?”

  “My husband has no idea about this. That way, if I’m ever caught, he can honestly deny it. Jonah and I went to high school together. Very briefly. Around the same time that all this was happening, he had a devastating situation of his own. Dr. Terry helped him, just before he disappeared. I’m almost certain that Jonah was the last person Dr. Terry helped.” They looked at one another, and Pepper must have seen the question on Seren’s face. “He turned Jonah’s skin white. Jonah didn’t like it, so he allowed his color to return later. But for the time, it allowed him to get out of Mississippi.”

  Seren didn’t press to learn the devastating situation Jonah had run from. She felt pretty sure that, like everything else, she’d learn soon enough.

  That night, Seren enjoyed the singing, dancing, jokes and stories how some of these fighters originally met Dr. Terry. Or of what he had done for their families. How their parents had met him. She decided that southern cooking was the best type of food she ever had, especially the buttermilk biscuits and fried chicken. And that the people weren’t so bad either. In fact, they were quite kind and openhearted, a little too jolly for her taste. Though it was quite entertaining.

  “Jonah, you remember the first time you met Dr. Terry?” Pepper asked, to Jonah’s chagrin. He hung his head with embarrassment.

  “I was there! I saw!” One of the fighters cried while laughing.

  “It was our first time attending one of Dr. Terry’s symposiums. People had driven in from all over to listen to him speak. There were protests and marches outside the school, because people were accusing him of trying to play God. I had begged my father to take us to Ole Miss so we could watch the talk. And Jonah decides he doesn’t like this whole genetic mutation thing. So he starts challenging Dr. Terry,” Pepper recounted the story with a wide grin.

  “What is Ole Miss?” Seren asked.

  “Formerly the University of Mississippi. Before your Jernigan father destroyed it,” someone answered tartly.

  “Jonah and I were sitting with my father in the audience. Jonah raises his hand, and starts questioning Dr. Terry, this world renowned scientist. They go back and forth about whether humans should change themselves to conform to society, and then Jonah starts quoting Dr. Martin Luther King.” At that point, Pepper laughed so hard she could barely breathe. “My dad looked like he wanted to disappear.”

  “But Dr. Terry handled it like a champ. He was so calm and gracious,” one of the rebels added.

  Another rebel fighter turned to Jonah while laughing. “Dude, you were so annoying. Even then, you thought you knew everything. I wanted to sock you and tell you to shut up.”

  Seren enjoyed the playful ribbing as she listened to more stories. But not all of them had happy endings. They also told her of an Arab family that was picked up by immigration forces while driving to get Dr. Terry’s help. They were deported back to their home country, and executed within hours of arriving.

  She lay in bed that night feeling terrified and uncertain. How could she play both sides? She tossed and turned, wondering how she could out-Jernigan Jernigan.

  Was she being foolish? Allowing them to use her this way? Should she have demanded to see DNA test results? She pulled out the locket again, studying the tiny photo inside. That long pointed nose, and intense stare on that gentleman looked all too familiar. Serious and commanding, he looked cerebral, like he had spent too many nights locked up in a lab. As Seren had. The woman, Cassie, looked like the firm, but softhearted angel who pulled his head out of the clouds. Her beautiful, even-toothed smile was open and confident, the way Seren had felt when she was with Lyndon. Seren wondered where he was then, if he joined her father and waiting round-the-clock for news of her well-being. She wondered if, when she returned and changed her color back, if they could pick up where they left off the night she was exposed.

  The next morning, Seren was given body paint that was waterproof, and hard to remove without chemicals. “This way, we can be sure it won’t come off at an awkward time, like if you’re showering near the black servants.”

  “Even if I am, why would they tell on me?” Seren asked. But as soon as she posed the question, she knew the answer. She expected full and complete loyalty from her own servants. Disclosing information to a superior was the ultimate form of loyalty. Without money or connections, it was the only way one could get ahead.

  She was given a sew–in wig, skin inje
ctions to make her features symmetrically even, and VScan eye contacts to take on a fake identity.

  They headed to an airport early the next morning, to make it appear they had flown in by private jet from the Midwest. From there, they started on the two-hour trip to Angola by limousine. Staring out of the tinted window, Sharon look out on more rolling hills where her parents had been raised. Where their lives had fallen apart. She wondered how Dr. Terry had arrived here. And when. If he had been tortured. How long he had laid in that whole. If he was still in his right mind.

  They were greeted at the guard shack when they rolled up, and their vehicle scanned with handheld wands before they rolled onward. Followed by several big trucks, carrying large equipment for an actual prototype demonstration of the hotel. Seren could see them, out in the fields. Hoeing the dirt, shirts off. She cracked her window just a little bit, and here they are tired voices in the morning he’d, singing as they toiled. Their bodies already glisten with sweat, tiles and T-shirts tied around their four heads, or loosely draped over their heads to get some relief from the sun. A few feet away, white men rode on horseback, and Seren looked just a bit harder before she could see the long shotgun resting comfortably on one’s leg.

  Seren collapsed back against the leather seat and drew in a sharp breath. Pepper had not exaggerated. She felt fingers cover her own, and NG who sat next to her, gave her a comforting glance.

  “Welcome to Angola, we’re so glad you’re here,” the wardens short and stout wife said, stretching out her shapeless arm toward pepper.

  “And your money! We’re especially glad to host that!” Warden Billy Clamper said, his round, and long tree trunk of a body leaning back on his heels. A fat cigar hung between his lips, and he had already begun to wet his shirt, perspiring heavily, which beat it up in the greasy strands of scant hair on his bald head. “Don’t worry about all that! Will take care of it! Ringo! Tommy! You get on over here!”