Access Restricted

by Gregory Scott Katsoulis

“We have sent for someone to take a DNA sample so we can match it against our refugee database,” Arturo told us.

  “Can’t you just look up our family name?” Saretha asked.

  “We do not take names. Names can be tied back to their owners in America®,” he explained. “If your government requests extradition, we can legally claim we do not have a Speth Jime or La Muda. Anyone who made it inside the border has been counseled to change their name.”

  “I’m dropping Norflo,” Norflo said. “Changing my name to Javier. Javier Juarez.”

  “No more Juarze?” Margot commented, but she said it with a smile. Norflo grinned back.

  Did I want to change my name? I’d hated the name Speth my whole life, but changing it now felt like hiding, or being silenced—or, worse, erased.

  Saretha frowned. “I’ve always liked my name,” she said.

  “You will need to keep it, anyway,” Arturo said to Saretha. “We will need to legally establish your identity.”

  “But then can’t the Rogs claim they own her?” I asked. “What happens if they try to take her back?”

  Arturo took a moment’s pause before answering. “They can’t while this case is pending. If we win, they will not be able to make such a claim. You will be safe here.”

  “And if we lose?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  “Then I am sorry to say, we would be obligated to turn you over to the Rogs.”

  “Both of us?” I cried.

  Arturo shook his head. “More than just you and your group, I’m afraid. A loss in international court will have terrible consequences for you, for the refugees and likely for all of Téjico.”

  A dreadful, bitter anxiety roiled through me. “The Rogs don’t play fair,” I said.

  “We know,” Arturo answered.

  “Should we not do this?” I asked, ashamed for wanting to flee. Kel had told me to go and be happy. “Couldn’t we just find our parents and go far, far away from the Rogs?” I didn’t know what lay beyond Téjico, but maybe there were more and better things.

  “I wish this were possible,” Arturo said. “It is not up to me. But I also hope you will make this last sacrifice. I know you have been down a very hard road, and this is a lot to risk. For all of us.”

  I swallowed hard. “Swear to me it’s worth it. Swear we have a real chance.”

  “I swear,” Arturo said with conviction. He truly believed it, but I couldn’t. He didn’t know the Rogs like I did.

  * * *

  I didn’t want to rest. I wanted everything settled now, but we were put up in a hotel, anyway. Margot and Mira were given one room, Norflo another. Saretha and I were placed in a third.

  We each had a bed of our own, something Saretha and I had never experienced. They were huge and soft—a million times more comfortable than the pullout couch we’d shared in our Ad-subsidized apartment.

  Saretha flopped down on the bed near the window, spreading out her arms and sinking into the mattress. The other bed, I guessed, was mine.

  “We’re going to see Mom and Dad,” Saretha said, her eyes closed. “We’re going to be together, finally.”

  I sat down on my bed. I hoped she was right. I tried to feel relieved and joyful, but I couldn’t. Worry still nagged at me. We had irrefutable proof that Saretha had been copied, but when had the Rogs ever let truth defeat them?

  And there was another worry, simmering under everything.

  “Saretha,” I said, as gently as I could, “Mom and Dad still don’t know about Sam.”

  She didn’t answer at first. I wanted to look at her, to get some sense of what she was thinking, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My vision blurred—it was so unfair that Sam was gone. I closed my eyes to hold back the tears.

  “I’ll tell them,” she said at last. The warmth was gone from her voice.

  “But...” I started to say that perhaps I should, but I didn’t want to finish. Did she still believe it was my fault? Did I?

  Her bed squeaked. “I’m older,” she said. I could tell she was standing now. “It’s my responsibility.” I let my eyes stay closed, even though I’d suffered Lucretia Rog’s cruel blindness and had wanted so badly to gulp in the world when my sight was restored.

  “Do you still blame me?” I asked her, the words catching in my throat.

  Her answer took too long. “No,” Saretha said at last. The bed sank beside me as she sat. “No,” she said again, with more conviction this time. “Those men killed him.”

  I opened my eyes. She was sitting with her hands in her lap, staring off at the wall. Even the simple hotel we were in looked like a palace.

  “But, Speth,” she said hesitantly, beside me, but not touching. “I can’t not wish it had been different. I can’t not wish you had spoken, and that it had saved him—that the Rogs might have forgiven us. He said he would let me be Carol Amanda Harving. Did you know that?”

  “I suspected.”

  “What if that was our life?” she asked, brushing away her tears. “What if you and Sam and Mom and Dad and I all got to live somewhere special? We could say whatever we liked. It would have been wonderful.”

  “That was never going to happen.”

  “I know,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “But I can’t not want it.”

  “That’s why Rog offered it,” I answered, sitting up. I worried about how present her fantasy was. “Saretha, even Lucretia Rog’s own daughter is so miserable in this world she went silent.”

  “I don’t know what that has to do with wanting our family to be...” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she sobbed, knowing our family would never be whole.

  “No one can be happy in the world they’ve made,” I said. “Not even them.”

  A long pause followed, and Saretha’s face reddened with shame. In a humiliated whisper, she said, “Before you went silent, I was.”

  What You Could Be Like®: $47.99

  I slept for a few hours, though it was still the middle of the day. Saretha was gone when I woke. She needed some time and space to herself, and I understood that. I hadn’t been alone in a long time, unless you counted the sightless, deaf hours I’d spent locked away by Lucretia Rog.

  We’d been given a lovely room with two beds, plush blankets, a chair and pictures of rolling sands on the walls. It was larger and nicer than the room we had grown up in. There was a wide window, covered by two layers of curtains, and the screen across the room was dark and silent. There was even a book on a chain by Saretha’s bed.

  I ran a hand across a wall. I couldn’t feel any printing lines, only a fine pebbled texture. It might not have been printed at all.

  The bathroom had a glass mirror instead of the screens that videoed you back to yourself at home. You could never quite trust those. They constantly popped up Ads about your flaws, and often altered your appearance to What You Could be Like®.

  I hadn’t really studied myself closely since the night before my Last Day. I wasn’t the same person anymore. The girl in the mirror looked tired. She stared at me with a mixture of guilt and fire. Her gaze was a little detached. I brushed back her hair. The pixie cut wasn’t very pixie-like anymore. If I’d seen this girl on the street, I’d have avoided her. She’d have worried me. She worried me now. She was hollowed out. She was angry. And she had a zit on her chin, which made me laugh at my own melodrama. For just a moment, I saw the connection between Sam and me, and my laugh died away.

  The bumps on my neck beneath each ear filled me with anxiety. I wanted to claw out Rog’s auditory implants. They couldn’t hurt me now, but they reminded me of how far she’d been willing to go, and I wondered if they left me vulnerable in some way. I prodded them with disgust. Sera, I knew, must have been treated the same, but she was still subject to Lucretia’s cruel whims. For the moment, I was free. Maybe if we won the case, we could find a way t
o free Sera, too.

  I didn’t want to think about Sera anymore, but I felt I owed it to her. I needed to remember her and Henri and Sam and everyone I might never see again.

  The room was so quiet and my thoughts so loud I had to leave. I went into the hall and crossed to Margot and Mira’s room. The door was partway open.

  “Are you okay?” I asked as I pushed inside to find Margot sitting alone on her bed. She shrugged and put the Pad Kel had given us facedown.

  “Where’s Mira?”

  “Taking a bath,” Margot said, her voice a little strangled. I heard the gentle sound of water from behind the bathroom door and quiet singing. I’d never had a bath—we’d had no tub in Portland, only a shower—but I imagined it was nice.

  I sat next to Margot. She wouldn’t show me her face.

  “Can I see something?” I asked, trying to respect that she wouldn’t want to talk about what was bothering her. She was barely able to nod.

  I reached over and picked up the Pad beside her. I wondered if it would have access to the Téjican WiFi. But when I turned it over, a frozen picture of Henri was grinning at me from the top of his file. Beneath the photo, his status was listed as Deceased.

  “You can clear it,” she said, wiping her face.

  I didn’t want to. I understood. Looking at Henri’s broad, grinning face was agony, but neither of us should forget. His appeal score had been zeroed out because he was dead, but his employment status was still hidden.

  “Please,” she added, seeing my hesitation. I cleared the screen. Henri winked away along with his status. I wished I could remove the tag, that it would change what had happened. But these tags weren’t magic. The definition of deceased was still dead. It didn’t actually matter what the database said, or if the definition changed.

  I stared at the Pad now, my mind a blank. I tapped at the news icon, but it just came back with a red flash and a No Connection message.

  “There has been nothing about us on their news,” Margot said, turning on the wall screen for me—maybe to distract me. A Téjican newscaster spoke seriously to the camera in Spanish. “Do you really think your Carol Amanda Harving information will let them do something?”

  “They’ve been caught red-handed. We have proof,” I said, sounding more optimistic than I felt.

  “They will have proof, too,” Margot said.

  “Of what? Their own crimes?”

  “Of whatever they want,” Margot said. “The Téjicans seem to believe they will have a fair trial, but I don’t believe it. Not with the Rogs involved. We should see if we can reach Kel.”

  “Kel?” I asked. “Why?”

  “We will need all the help we can get,” Margot said, her eyes rimming red. “And, however the trial plays out, I plan to take them to account for Henri.”

  “How...”

  A knock came on the door, and Norflo’s head popped in, grinning in a way that didn’t match our mood.

  “Gotta sec?” he asked, holding on to the doorframe to show he wouldn’t cross inside without permission.

  “Sure,” Margot said, taking another wipe at her eyes and changing her face from sad to stony.

  “DNA guy’s here,” Norflo said, beaming at us. “Found two matches for me!”

  “Who?” I asked, as Norflo urged the DNA man into the room with his small kit. Arturo came in after him.

  “We don’t keep a database of names,” the DNA man said, shooting a look at Arturo. “Someone should have told you.”

  “I did mention it,” Arturo said. “But I can go over it again.”

  “We get it,” I told him. “So you don’t have any idea who the DNA matches are?” I asked Norflo.

  “Gotta be my brothers,” Norflo said. “Unless it’s the ’rents. That would be amazing. I can’t wait to see.”

  How could he be so happy about it? Didn’t that mean his parents or his brothers had taken off and left him behind? Norflo didn’t seem to care. Maybe they’d all agreed to be okay with whoever made it to Téjico, but we hadn’t. Our family hadn’t had a plan like that.

  I hadn’t said a word to Saretha about being disappointed our parents hadn’t looked for us, but that feeling was replaced by a worse one. I didn’t know that my mom and dad were in Téjico. We’d followed the trail of refugees from the fields, but that didn’t mean my parents were with them. I’d been fretting about the idea that they hadn’t looked for us, but it would be worse if they had. What if they headed to Portland alone? What if they never made it anywhere?

  “We’re only looking for close matches,” the DNA man said. “And we can provide you a health and heritage profile if you wish.”

  “I came up Mexican, Ecuadorian and Argentine,” Norflo said proudly.

  “Argentine,” I said, repeating the word I’d read on an illicit slip of paper long ago.

  “Means something,” Norflo said with a smile. I wasn’t quite ready to change his name to Javier in my head just yet. Arturo clapped him on the back.

  The DNA man held up a pair of small appliances the size of a spoon handle. They were wrapped in clear plastic packages, labeled DNA Sampler. He handed one to Margot and one to me, as if we would know how to use them. Margot turned hers over in her hand.

  “You place it in your mouth and gently brush the tip against your cheek until it chimes,” the DNA man said.

  I peeled mine out of the package. Margot handed hers back. “I do not feel there is any point for me,” she said. “I do not have any heritage you are looking for.”

  “Unless you object, I’d still like to put you on file,” the DNA man said.

  “After all, what if someone comes looking for you?” Arturo asked.

  “That is not a concern,” Margot replied. The DNA man regarded her with sympathy and took the sampler back with a nod that showed he understood.

  It took just a few seconds for my tester to chime. The DNA man held out his hand, and I passed it to him.

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  “I need to send the data out,” he said as he dipped my tester into a small slot in his kit and held it there. “It will take a few minutes.”

  “What are you guys doing?” Mira asked, her body wrapped in a towel, but still somehow dripping all over the floor.

  “Put on your clothes, please,” Margot said.

  “My clothes smell,” Mira answered. “What are you doing?” she repeated.

  “A science test with spit,” Margot said. “You will not want to do it. Go get dressed.”

  Mira ran over to Margot, awkwardly holding up her towel. “I want to try it!”

  “No,” Margot said.

  “What if I get dressed first?” Mira asked. Arturo looked away to keep from laughing.

  Margot seemed to struggle with this for a moment and then relented.

  “Fine, she and I will do the test as well.”

  Deoxyribonucleic Acid: $48.98

  “Are you part Chinese?” the DNA man asked Margot.

  “One eighth,” Margot said. “On my father’s side. Why would you ask? The test should show you in a moment.”

  “I can’t do this job and not be curious about such things,” the DNA man said, removing her tester from the kit. “Her, too?” he asked, looking at Mira, who was now dressed and itching in her dirty clothes.

  “She has a different father,” Margot said in a low, reluctant voice.

  “What difference does it make?” I asked, wondering if that had anything to do with why they didn’t seem to care about going back to Portland.

  “For this test? None,” the DNA man said.

  “But you should know, we are supposed to give priority to people with certain heritages,” Arturo added.

  “Priority?” I asked. This sounded deeply troubling. I was tired of the idea that some people were more important than others.
“Priority for what?”

  “Housing. Printers. Jobs,” Arturo said. “America® has a history of mistreating Latino, African and Asian people, to name a few. The Téjican government has taken some steps toward reparations.”

  “I do not have Latino heritage,” Margot said flatly.

  Arturo and the DNA man exchanged a look. “Perhaps not, but Chinese ancestry is considered a subset of Asian,” Arturo said.

  “Is subset bad?” Mira asked.

  “No,” Arturo replied with a smile.

  “It means part of a greater whole,” Margot said.

  “Am I Chinese, too?” Mira asked.

  “Probably not,” Margot said.

  Mira looked disappointed. Norflo widened his eyes at me. Neither of us had known this was going to be so complicated.

  “Are we having a party?” Saretha’s voice made my head turn. She entered the room with a little swish, swinging a bag beside her. She was wearing a new bright yellow dress. It was stunning. She seemed refreshed and happy again.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “Arturo showed me where to have it printed,” she said, sending him a grateful smile. “They thought I was Carol Amanda Harving!” she added with a laugh.

  The DNA man cocked an eyebrow. “Can we get her sample now?” he asked. Arturo passed a sample kit to her.

  Saretha put down her bag. “I had them print clothes for all of us,” she said, then looked at Norflo. “Well, for the girls. Sorry, Norflo.”

  “Meh,” Norflo said, sniffing at his shirt.

  Arturo told Saretha what to do with the test. “If your parents are here,” he said, “that will be excellent for our case. DNA proof of your lineage.”

  “It would be nice for us, too,” I said, feeling a little sour. “Getting to be together. You know, as a family.”

  Arturo looked like I had slapped him. “Of course. My apologies, señorita.”

  “Would that mean our parents would have to testify?” I asked.

  “I am afraid so,” he said. “A great deal is at stake.”

  I shared a look with Saretha. She paused in opening her package. Did she understand what this meant? If we lost the Carol Amanda Harving case, we would all be sent back.