I have never set foot in such a large health center; everything is vertiginous, dizzying, and disorienting. The effervescence, the sound of clatter, the noises of the machines, and the anxiety of the relatives. It has nothing to do with our small dispensary in Freetown.

When we got off the ambulance, the caregivers who took Sky in charge had asked me to wait in a corner, along with other slaves. A woman passes on a stretcher. Her clothes are stained with blood, and her arms are swaying limply from left to right. At this sight, I dive back into Mistress Salvi's gaze. Her Form not leaving me ever since Sky's crisis, trying to convince me, insufflate false culpability. I no longer attempt to ignore her, turning to her looking for comfort. I squeeze my fingers around my chest, wanting to escape her embrace, which threatens to crush my heart. One of the nurses accompanying Jade comes to meet me.

"Are you Kanoa? Miss Freeman asks for you. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about her medical condition, as you aren't a member of the family. Did you managed to reach one of her parents?" he asks.

"Anna, her physiotherapist, has to take care of it, but I do not know where she is at the moment."

We walk down long corridors and take the elevator several times before arriving at the infectious diseases department. The nurse ushers me into the room and quickly slips away again.

"How are you feeling, Miss... Sky?"

I refused when she required me to do so, to call her by her name, pretending to a certain level of intimacy between us. Now that I have seen her in her most vulnerable state, seeking to bring us closer and fill the emptiness that our difference of status imposes on us, I could no longer put any sense in the naming and phrasing "Mistress Freeman."

"My head's still spinning, and I can't feel my leg at all, but otherwise, I'm... fine," she whispers, smiling weakly. "Where's Anna?"

"She is trying to reach your parents."

"My dad's not in town, and my mom told me that she will be in the operating room all day. She doesn't like to be disturbed there. Even less by things concerning me, no matter how urgent."

"It was a pretty violent crisis," I comment after a moment of silence.

"Like another bad omen, the confirmation of what's happening to us."

"What do you mean?"

She gets up in the bed, letting slip a cushion that I pick up and place at her feet.

"The source of the discord between my parents is a letter that my father received from the New York State government, refusing the renewal of his freed citizen's card. This had a direct impact on his work since he is suspended until he can prove that he will be able to validate his work permit. My mother also fears for her position. The boxes in my room are to send my stuff to my father's apartment in Chicago, where he received a temporary license to practice."

"I did not know that the enfranchisement was subject to renewal conditions." I blurt out, shocked.

"There is a whole list of conditions surrounding the Enslaved Green Card Lottery and the enfranchisement, regularly updated to the detriment of the slaves. These are secret closets that the freedmen swear never to mention. Otherwise, they will return to their status as slaves. To tell the truth, I'm not a gift either for my parents; I mean, I don't fit in the mold of what they see as a successful enfranchisement. Between the fact that I'm crippled and that I lead an Activist quest, they do have some reasons to get us out of the freedmen's quotas and downgrade us, like if we were criminals."

The door opens to another caregiver.

"I'm sorry, Miss, but we can't reach either of your parents, and I have to talk to you urgently."

I stand up, but Sky holds my hand back, her fingers gripping my wrist forcefully.

"I want him to stay."

"Unfortunately, I don't have good news regarding your leg."

As the doctor gets bogged down in complicated explanations, as she becomes entangled in her words, using diagrams and gestures to be understood, the embrace of Sky is still tight on my hand. Tears flow silently down her cheeks. My left fingers come to rest on the right, and I hold her hand.

"You are, according to the psychologist who consulted you, capable of discernment and in a position to make this decision. I would like to tell you that we have time, but the sooner we take care of your leg, the better are the chances for the surgery."

"Kanoa," she says, turning to me. "I want you to go to meet Kyle. You won't have time to go back and get the camera; try to do your best with your phone. You will tell me how it went tonight. By then, the operation will be over, right?"

"If you're okay with us preparing you now." the doctor replies.

"I..."

"It's an order from your employer," she opposes, wiping her tears. "What we're doing with this document, it exceeds, it goes beyond that, you understand? I want us to go all the way."

My heart starts pounding. I believed this documentary fantasy to be a Master's whim; I realize optimism is a sincere choice of philosophy for Sky. I have always, consciously or not, refused that it was mine.

Although I grew up in a very reactionary environment, whether it is Mohamed or my parents, I am afraid of falling into extremism, like a fatality pre-established in my genes. Some will say that I walk away and that I do not take responsibility for what I am. There is some truth to this. The guilt and responsibility imprinted in my blood have reduced my contribution to the belief that we, slaves, will cease to exist under this denomination. To access our rights as humans, by the simple fact of living, surviving, holding on to my existence that is so insignificant, and insulting to the Masters. This is my response, my reaction.

However, I am, very happily and rightly, in love, dependent, and in search of carefree moments shared with my family. So that makes it a lot more complicated; it is not just about me. I have selfish motives for the revolution, which are only aimed at their well-being and our happiness. Both would be secured by a bitter fight to overthrow enslaving governments, but my reserved slave nature makes me only see the short term. Those who are impatient with revolution and change, as justified and necessary as they may be, end up fleeing the fight, as I have undertaken myself or else drown in violence.

Revolutionary? Every mass movement ends up destroyed by the hand of man, in whom I do not trust. This is not generic blame, a condemnation which wants to appear profound so that I can illustrate a false "intelligence, spirit, mind". I am not trying to put myself above or outside that criticism; that censure and disapproval. I do not trust myself for the same reason either: I am a human being, despite the laws, an inconstant and incomplete human being.

Revolutionary? I enjoy fiction enough not to associate myself with a Harry Potter, a Darrow In Andronedus or a Naruto Uzumaki, and dreading to become a despotic Akira. Despite everything, I cannot remain entirely in my dismay, my defeatism, my pessimism in the face of the fighting spirit displayed by Sky. To my confused heart, my troubled desires, I try to oppose that it is not love, which I feel for her; it is just a complex and changing admiration. But it is not enough to calm them down.

"Okay," I end up mumbling.

Her hand slides between mine, falling back onto the white blanket. I get up to quickly leave the room. I am drowning in my thoughts, on my way to Freetown, definitely worried. The street is deserted at this time of the day. Most slaves were on duty, and those who are too young are playing in the orphanage.

The source arranged the meeting near the African bloc. While waiting for Kyle, thinking about the questions that I had read this morning, my guesses concerning the identity of this FreeRush member explode in my face. Yet, it is so obvious. A rude trap set not for Sky, but me and me alone. I run to the orphanage and confirmed my reasoning. The sound of Mohamed's creaking chair is heard in his office.

"What are you already doing here?" he says with a start when I open the door.

"I... You... Sky had a problem, she's at the hospital. She charged me to continue her research and speak to Kyle. But you already know that, right? Why did you pretend to be a FreeRush member, play a "source"? All those lies, I cannot believe you would have gone this far to convince us!"

"Mistress Sky," he corrects. "You know that these familiarities with the Masters often end badly for us... I knew you would eventually unmask me, but I had to continue to illustrate the risks of the journey you wanted to take. I wanted you to open your eyes to what awaited you. The messages had been pre-programmed by Jax. It was before I found out about Mistress Salvi. I also intended to tell you about neo-FreeRush. Listen, it is not what you think; I am a honorary member... I do not take part in all the..."

"The illegal, the low morally standardized stuffs, you know, like the shootings, the drugs, the violence, to quote yourself! You are just watching, supervising, acknowledging, that is it! And sometimes, you use that position to play your little masquerade so that you can teach your children about your values! Sky... Mistress Freeman had a crisis that will cost her her leg! All the fuss around her documentary has something to do with it! You realize that ..."

"You can never escape BC19; unfortunately, that has nothing to do with me, Kanoa! I think that if you want to find someone to blame for her condition, you should pay more attention to her parents' situation. Wanting to fly too close to the sun..."

I have never talked to my father the way I am doing it at this moment. I cannot explain where this courage comes from, seemingly hidden all those years behind my unquestionable obedience. The need to not letting ingratitude and ungratefulness appear. The need to repay for that education, and that care put in me despite my ascendance, for the system of values preventing me from drowning in the guilt of my parents' actions. With those decisions of him, everything is crawling down. With that saying of him that addresses Sky's responsibility in her suffering, showing so little compassion, because she is her parents' daughter, I lose it.

"So, is all this about some sort of revenge? Is this all you have to oppose? Mistress Freeman does not deserve anything that is happening to her. Just like us," I say dryly. "And at least, Mr. Freeman dared! Your hypocrisy..."

"What are you implying?"

"That you spend your time criticizing and spitting on all of those who dare to dream about freedom, in a way that is different from your point of view, whereas you have renounced it for a long time, to defend your convictions! Convictions that did not stop you from continuing to associate yourself with FreeRush! This vision that you defend, all those texts quoted, it is not based on anything at all!" I scream. "You are not a real slave; I am sorry if you regret your decision of becoming one to ease your conscience, you cannot understand what it feels like to desperately want, even for just a second, to access the Liberation, at any given price! At least, the Grinbergs do not hide what they truly..."

"Was I not right when I told you not to trust them? To give up upon the illegal emigration? To drag your brother with you? Now, look at the situation in which you got us into!"

"Even if you keep denying me the position, I am Kanoa's big brother, your disappointing eldest son. I make decisions for myself," Ho-Jin interrupts us. "Stop treating me like an abnormal, helpless... already deceased, skin cutting... pain enjoying sicko and instead, explain to me the art of being a good-hearted villain. Those rumors about you, I could not believe it, I fought against them. Nobody could say anything on perfect Mohamed without risking the future of their children. Even Shin was bound by the gang code, so he could only tell me that appearances are deceptive. And how deceptive!"

He and Karen are still standing in the doorway.

"I wonder then what you must think of me, Mohamed, me who demolished the face of that woman," Karen says with a crazy look on her face, her eyes wide open. "Are you proud? Did you know that's what I had to do to join the ranks of neo-FreeRush?"

With her makeshift ankle splint, she painfully drags her leg towards us.

"I... it is more complicated than you think. I never did anything that was not in your best interests. In our best interests. I have always had to make some concessions to my principles to keep running the orphanage. But ever since I lost the title of Mayor, I... I..." my father whispers, turning to me.

Ho-Jin puts a comforting hand on the armrests of his chair. He has new bandages on his forearms. It makes my anger decuple; I cannot look at my father anymore.

His moral ideals weighed on my brother's and sister's shoulders with all their nonnegotiable narrowness, severity, and strictness, relentlessly. Each of us developed or sharpened unhealthy coping mechanisms to exteriorize the frustration and the punishment from endorsing them, along with the difficulties encountered in our everyday life as slaves. My reaction, my fury, does not come from the deep nature's questioning of Mohamed's decision, whether he did good or wrong. As he taught me, impartial judgment in this life occurs rarely. I would never have allowed myself an impertinent remark if he had shared with us the need to deal with criminals. If this were to grant us to survive, as we have had to do until now, I assumed that we would all have made compromises with our conscience.

But the fact that he dissimulated it from us makes me feel like an idiot; I should have guessed that it was impossible... These statements against FreeRush, the gangs, the violence, the Salvis, the drugs, the dirty money, the trafficking... what hypocrisy. I take it personally because my father's values ​​are also mine. Now that his speech and ours no longer makes sense, everything that I have ever said or done is marred by this beautiful insincerity, this regarded dishonesty. The Form of Mistress Salvi laughs softly in a corner. Her size has doubled, enriched with this newly discovered falsity, a feast of guilt and bad faith.

"Is that what your family looks like? All broken arms, just like you, Mohamed. Or broken legs, if you forgive me a bad wordplay and the vulgar joke. I know how you slaves are so sensitive about your covidic handicap, disability, deformity, isn't it right, Kanoa? Happy to see familiar faces, by the way."

I am seized with cold sweat as I recognize the voice that comes to fill the room, almost chasing the presence of the Form.

Mr. Salvi, accompanied by Rachel and Isaac, graciously offers a handshake to my father.