We pull into the driveway of a plain and modest home. The three, large windows facing us have dark curtains pulled tightly shut. Crewe puts the car in park and jumps out, but no one else unlatches their seatbelt. He opens a flap on the rim of the garage door, and presses his thumb to the screen.
“I reprogrammed it for us,” Cy brags as the door opens. “That’s my niche.” Crewe crouches back into the cramped car and pulls us into the garage. This time when he puts the car in park, everyone unbuckles and exits. When I get out of the car, I notice that the garage door windows are covered with cardboard.
“Do you come here very often?” I ask anyone of them.
“Crewe and I try to come for a couple of days each week,” Cy answers as Crewe unlocks the door to the house, this time with a key that dangles from a chain that he pulls from under his tee-shirt. “We drive here in the evening, get set inside, and make our way to Miles County by foot.”
Cy keeps talking as we all cramp through the doorway, but I’m not paying much attention to the answer to my question. Everyone but Crewe walks through to the house to a large, central room. He lingers in the kitchen where knives and guns line the counters.
“We seek from dusk until dawn,” Cy is still saying. “Then, we walk back and crash.” He releases the word crash in timing with an exaggerated flop onto a couch. It seems as if this space would be the media room, but no projector or media screen is present here. Even my lowly apartment had a built-in screen for maximizing tablet media. This doesn’t even have an ancient television set. I suppose if it ever did, they’ve since removed it.
Scattered across the better part of the floor are incomputable gadgets. They are ugly, bulky technologies of the old world, which sharply contrast with the small and sleek ones I am used to. The only built-in feature in the room is what was probably an electric fireplace. The space has since been gutted and supplied with real wood, which Galvesten now perfects. Cy motions for me to sit in a downtrodden chair beside him.
I feel guilty sitting when it seems there is work to do. Galv is lighting paper beneath the ideally stacked logs in the fireplace. After fighting with the zipper on one of the medical bags that was brought in from the car, Della now carefully extracts surgical tools that are stained with my blood. Crewe emerges from some rummaging in the kitchen with a deep pan that he hands to Della, and jerky and apples that he tosses to the rest of us.
“For a year we spent the late afternoon and evening hours walking by foot to all the neighbors’ houses to harvest and strip whatever they had that we might be able to use,” Cy says, as he chomps his food. “We hit the jackpot once, didn’t we Galv?”
“Sure did. These boys found an old gas station. Of course the fuel tank was empty, but there were a lot of jerricans filled with gasoline and gallons of oil.”
“Della, how often do you come here?” I ask her.
“The doctor and I come along whenever Crewe tells us to. We’re on his team. If the two of them decide someone is ready, then they tell us it’s time for a trip up to Miles. We go and get the hospital ready while they get the recruit. It was actually never a hospital, the place where you woke up. It used to be an old folks’ home. It’s just a few blocks down that way,” she points. “There’s a good store of equipment there, and enough beds should something go wrong, like Cy here getting kicked in the face.”
“We’ve never needed a bed,” Cy defends. “But I wouldn’t want to wake up here,” he says, gesturing to the messy floor before us. “Someone might think we were stealing their organs for trade on the black market.” The others laugh at Cy’s joke, but I ponder it for a moment. That was a real crime, another one the chips successfully put an end to. I guess there are some advantages for chip implantation. You just forget about those after living with the restrictive cons for so long.
“How long have you been watching me?” I decide to take another stab at asking Crewe as he digs and divvies ammunition from an oversized cardboard box. Crewe rests his hands to answer my question this time, but he doesn’t lift his eyes from the ammunition.
“About two years, maybe a little less.” Two years? That’s not the answer I was expecting. Crewe hesitantly looks up and sees my astonishment. “I know that sounds bad, but in all that time we probably only saw you ten times. We don’t skimp on the time it takes to read people, to decide their story. We don’t take seeking lightly, Sydney.”
I’m very torn on the subject. As much as I am glad for the fact that they study people rather than brashly abducting them, I also feel so invaded by their watchfulness. Besides, after all that time they still got it wrong.
“How many people have you taken?”
“Not a lot. Seven, including you.” He’s right. Seven is not a very productive count for at least a two-year time span. At the same time, seven can be seen as a lot of people. I didn’t think there was a single other soul in Miles who had ever gotten out. I wonder if any of them used the same outlet or inlet that I used. I can’t believe I never bumped into any of them, or heard about anyone mysteriously disappearing from the county.
“You were the first person I saw when I joined Crewe about a year and a half ago. I couldn’t officially enlist until I was eighteen, captain’s rule. Crewe was the first seeksman stationed at Miles. There were others, like the captain, floating around now and again before, but there was no systematic way to find and help refugees until our force was officially created.”
“Has anyone ever gotten hurt badly? A seeksman or a refugee?” I have a hard time putting it that way. I still want to call the person the abducted or the victim.
“We lost one once,” Galv says. Della lowers her head in a sorrowful manner as she extracts surgical tools from the boiling pot of water. “He was an older man, and a hemophiliac. Of course we didn’t know it. We didn’t have the proper drugs to help him clot. We couldn’t stop the bleeding once we’d removed the chip.”
“It was okay though,” Della tells herself out loud. “His expiration date was sure to come up soon, and he got to die knowing freedom exists and humanity isn’t doomed.”
I hadn’t thought of their mission that way, the way Della emphasized the word humanity. She didn’t mean the human race in the scientific sense—she was talking about saving the human heart. I think about the lack of humanity in the way that the government forced my grandma’s death. I think about the cold railway passengers the day that I was found out. I think about the woman at the coffee shop the morning of the trial. Della aims to preserve and rekindle human relations.
I am intrigued to know if there is a warmer feel between the people of Sheridan. If so, I think that might be the most worthy cause of the seeksmen. I hope Evvie comes tonight and that we come away with her. I want her to have the opportunity to experience humanity.
“Have you ever been close to being caught by the EPA?” I ask, back to business.
“The EPA? No. The cameras on the EPA buildings don’t even belong to their agency. They belong to the government and its longstanding dirty workers. All of this,” Cy points to the covered windows, “is a futile effort to keep us hidden from the BOTs.”
“BOTs?” I ask, hinting for elaboration.
“Black-Operations Teams,” Crewe provides. “They’re the ones to worry about. And the answer is no, we can’t really say we’ve ever been close to being caught by them, because we’d probably never have gotten away. They know we’re out here. They know we do this. But they haven’t attempted to stop us. We’re not sure why. Seeksmens in Six and Four haven’t been so lucky.”
“Deck, you’ll meet him, he lost his partner outside of Four. What was it, two months ago?” Cy wonders.
“I think it’s almost three now,” Della helps.
“About a year ago, a whole team who tried to go inside Six was wiped out,” Cy adds with renewed seriousness.
“How long have the BOTs been around?” I ask.
“Since the United States as far as we know. Maybe by another name then,” Crewe
speculates. “There’s more food in that pantry if you’re still hungry,” he points.
“Or there’s seaweed in your bag,” Cy teases. “We confiscated your knife, but now we’re going to give you a gun. You’re not going to shoot us are you?”
“Not until you teach me,” I kid. I have no appetite due to my apprehension, but even with it, Cy manages to make me smile.
Concealed in the Shadows Page 16
