Refuse

8

The jail cell in the deputy sheriff’s office in the mids was cool and dark, and the feeling of incarceration was more than just tangible. The whole world seemed to press in on her, and she could feel, in a very real way, the impression of history and the ages swirling in the air around her. There was a world out there… outside… and there had been a world long before someone built this silo, and all of that—the old world, and antiquity—maybe it was all buried under the ground too, but it was still out there, and there were stories both here and there that, without voices of their own, begged to be told.

Still, here she was, locked up. It felt like she’d marked and passed the moment in her life when it was all coming to an end. Her mind dwelt for a moment on the memory of Alexander and the short time he’d spent in a cell before he’d been sent out to clean. Then she thought about innumerable other prisoners—not just in the silo—but prisoners of conscience from other epochs and from another, earlier world. Alexander had told her that stories of resistance and refusal had always marked the history of humanity.

Maybe she was just being melodramatic. Perhaps she was just a young, foolish woman with dreams of self-importance. Yeah, maybe. Her reverie was broken by the sounds of a key turning in a lock.

Sheriff Tatum entered the cell trailed by the deputy from the mids. Tatum held a file in his hands, but he didn’t refer to it or even allude to anything that might be in it. The file was a prop. Maybe it was intended to subconsciously indicate to her the real power of paper. Maybe her life was in that file, and the dispensation of that life was at the whim of the one who wielded it.

“So,” the Sheriff started, “before you start beating me up with questions, or demand for me to explain the reasons you’ve been brought to a cell down here instead of in the up-top, let me tell you what you need to know. You are here because we have word that your father is currently in the down-deep, way down on 141 and, as a courtesy only, we’ve decided to hold you here while we complete our investigation.”

“So my father can visit me?” she asked. “Really? Because William was arrested with me, he has family in the down-deep. Why isn’t he being held here?”

“The details of the investigation are not really your business, Leah. You are already guilty of aiding in the manufacture of black-market paper. You admitted as much when we caught you red-handed. You had black-market paper in your hands, and there were molds and pulp and all of the other materials and tools for making paper right there in that room.” Tatum leaned back against the bars and cocked his right leg back up and back, resting his foot against the cold steel. “Your father is… a person of interest… in the case, and we’re digging into a number of other irregularities. So just relax and get a good handle on your position.”

Leah nodded and crossed her arms. “So let’s drop the charade about this being some kind of courtesy. Why don’t you just tell me? Exactly what is my position, Sheriff?”

Tatum rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Okay. If you want to do it that way. You’ve been arrested and charged with the same crimes that got your mentor—the man with whom you shadowed—sent out to clean. Perhaps you ought to be thinking about that, and not obsessing with where you are geographically in the silo?”

“My father had nothing to do with this,” Leah said sharply. “He didn’t know we were making paper.”

“Maybe he didn’t… but maybe he did. Frankly, I’ve got a silo that’s on a slow boil, and the making of paper is the least of my concerns.” Tatum looked sideways at the deputy and took a deep breath before continuing.

“Listen, Leah…,” Tatum fidgeted with the file, and then ran his fingers through his hair. His confidence and bravado seemed to melt away and to her, right now, he seemed to be nervous. In fact, if she was reading the situation right, he looked to be more nervous than she was. He continued talking and his voice had dropped a notch, and in it she detected the first ripples of fear; not on the surface, but below the surface, there was fear in his voice. “…there’s word of some stirrings in the down-deep. Maybe some trouble brewing. We don’t know if your father is taking part, but there are people up top who think that he is.”

There it was. The room shuddered, or it seemed to. Leah felt her legs weaken, and her head grew light. Was he talking about an uprising?

“Frankly, I’m not concerned about the paper thing right now,” Tatum said, “and neither is the Mayor. We’ve bigger fish to fry. We want to know what is going on in the down-deep and who is involved. We don’t know if your little paper making operation has something to do with what’s stirring down there, but it would be easy enough for us to assume that the two issues are somehow linked.”

She was starting to feel faint. She blinked and felt the room twist ever-so-slightly around her.

“Your friends are guilty, Leah, and so are you. We haven’t had a cleaning since Alexander went out two years ago, and there hasn’t been a multiple cleaning in over a decade. I need to tell you that your friends’ futures very well may rest solidly in your hands. We need information, and we’re going to need it fast.”

“Wha—,” she was having trouble forming words. The room was moving faster now and she felt her stomach shift with it. “What can… what can I possibly do?”

“We’re going to let you go, Leah. We’re going to let you go, and you’re going to work for us.” Tatum stared into her eyes and he did not blink. “You’re going to work for us, and if you don’t, your friends are going to be sent out, and they are going to die, and you’ll never see them again.”

The spinning magnified, and darkness rose up in her eyes and obscured her view, and then she was falling.

Blackness.