Imane and I undertake to lift Ho-Jin out of bed, to place him on a chair in the hall, where Karen and Mohamed are waiting for us. My sister is not in the capacity of such an effort, yet she insists on helping me when she came near the edge of the bed. Every step is torture for her leg, as the grimaces on her face show. She did not seem to notice it, though, and apologizes to our brother that the transport must be so unpleasant to him. A very gentle expression, the one she usually wears, like a sham behind the resentment which I discovered in her, spreads over her face when she looks at him. The horror, however, stealthily reappears, causing her to frown, when in a shaky gesture, Ho-Jin attempts to raise his arm. It is like we have to prove to ourselves something so obvious. If we could not see him for who he truly is, love him in these moments, we would never be able to. If we could not swear that we loved him in these precise instants, everything that would have happened thus far would have been all lies.

There are now in the hall, three other people, framing the figure of Shin in the corner, opposite where my father and Karen are waiting for us. The small group seems to be plotting, arguing viciously for orders in Korean. Finally, the man who appears to look the oldest, and the woman approach us. They point to Ho-Jin.

"No, we are going to carry him," Imane persists.

"It's not going to work if you question my decisions," Shin intervenes.

"Imane, leave them, I say in turn."

I want to join her side to help her, but she quickly limps towards Karen. Shin takes the direction of the small pharmacy, which is immediately on the right, from the corridor. Behind the old chest of drawers whose shelves contain the last bandages, dressings, and Fentanyl tablets of the month, there is the sealed door through which the supplies are made.

"They must surely be waiting for us on the other side, Shin. The existence of this passage is well established among the slaves."

My comment is ignored as the other man clears the cupboard. Shin slides a small key into the lock, largely hidden by the second piece of furniture. The space is so small, barely noticeable from the angle where I am standing. I personally know about this path from the status which my father once had. Mohamed, on the very day of his institution as Mayor, requested help from Karen, Ho-Jin, Imane, and me to transport the medical equipment that the government allocates monthly to the various slave communities. Livestock must be kept healthy, except for COVID-19. Otherwise, there would be no cattle in the first place. It is also because of this objective that some caregivers, like Kyle, have been trained in basic maneuvers, supervised by Caregiver Troy.

The door slides slowly. Shin lets the man and woman carrying Ho-Jin get into it first. I hear a little growl.

"Please be careful," I huff, walking after them.

Shin exchanges a few words with the man, then lingers for a few seconds, as the sound of their footsteps seems to fade away. I panic.

"What are you playing at?" I yell.

"Kanoa, calm down," Mohamed shouts.

"Listen to your old man," Shin says.

Pushing me aside, he crosses the door in his turn and signals us to follow him. To my surprise, instead of taking the narrow path to the left that leads to the underground car park, we walk straight ahead. This exit must have been dug recently; Mohamed himself does not hide his astonishment.

"I beg you, don't ask questions," Shin says, his teeth clenched, just ahead of me.

For a few meters, I manage to remain silent, then no longer holding it, I try again.

"Is that what took Ho-Jin's time all these Sundays? So he wasn't ironic when he said that he was "digging his grave"..."

I only have the echo of the creaking wheels of my father's old chair for an answer. We squeeze through the cramped space, several times failing to slide across the uneven ground.

"That is not possible," a voice behind me grumbles.

Mohamed is blocked by a particularly high concrete pile. Karen tries to pull him out, her other arm still supporting Imane, without success. My selfishness again, I was walking all this time with arms dangling. I step back to lift the edge facing me. The wheelchair crosses the bump, making Mohamed jump.

"Your father, Souleymane, had taken this wheelchair as an excuse, not to make me attend FreeRush's meetings anymore, as they were preparing for the attacks. It saved my life in the end, but I think that it is exactly what he was trying to do. The assemblies took place in a room on the third floor of the orphanage, the elevator, coincidentally, never worked when I needed to get there, and no one could carry me. The way to access that room is as impractical as this passage for me... If I understood correctly, this still is where neo-FreeRush's meetings are held."

Karen nods; Imane looks away, also uncomfortable.

"Is that the place where you met my parents for the first time, after you came to Freetown, right?"

"Your parents welcomed me and settled me. Most of the slaves could not tolerate me because of the decision which I had made. They thought that I was mocking them, laughing at their pain, not taking seriously their situation. Souleymane and Aïcha were full of gratitude, but that was not what brought us closer; I... They... I regret so many things... Kanoa, I promised them to take care of."

Mohamed is one of the few slaves to speak of my parents with the respect that stems neither from whimsical admiration for the acts of violence they committed nor from the symbolism associated with their debated status as martyrs. They got to know each other before they radicalized. When they still loved me, I assume, when they believed in enfranchisement.

"I made my own choices, dad."

"Keep moving; we're wasting time."

Shin's voice does seem to be coming far away to reach us. I rasp my skin, trying to slide into the small space between the armrest and the wall to push my father's chair out.

"If I can ask... Did you talk to them after the attacks? Before their arrest, when they were hiding from the police, moving every week from one state to another? Did they try to contact you? How... did they manage not to see, not to hear the voices in their heads of all the people whose life they took?"

Karen's voice is like a whisper.

"Since this woman, this Mistress Salvi died, I... If I hadn't said anything to Imane..." she sneers nervously.

"Stop treating me like a child; I take my own responsibilities," my little sister retorts vehemently.

A current of air stops our exchanges. Only a few more steps and we emerge into a space partially plunged into semi-darkness. The only source of light is from the two headlights of the vehicle in which Ho-Jin's body is being transported. I imagined a much larger truck, and it seems impossible to want to fit in all the figures that congregate in the shadows. I do not notice them at first. As we advance towards the truck, however, the unrest intensifies despite gestures to keep quiet from the men and women all dressed in black, appearing to be leading the operation alongside Shin. Our ears are filled with words that we cannot comprehend. I speed up so as not to lose sight of my brother. Children, a group of very older adults, a pregnant woman, everyone jostles in the back of the truck. No one seems to want to notice my dad's wheelchair, so I elbow too. It is confusing coming from me, even in this context. I apologize silently to the slaves on the way. Some things about me have not changed entirely yet. Obviously, those are the only ones I would like to really transform, including this shyness and this lack of a strong, consistent personality.

However, it is soon our turn to get in; I let Karen and Imane engage. One of the women helping the passengers to reach the raised edge points to my father's chair and shakes her head. I try to meet Shin's gaze. With a heavy accent, another of his men attempts to tell me that my father will take up too much space. Panicked, I turn to Mohamed. The man ignores us for a while, makes several people climb up, and calls Shin. After a few words exchanged, he brings down those same people. They complain, and they are ordered to step back and stand on the side. We bring Mohamed up first, then the chair. Before I go up, Shin whispers to my ear.

"You brother, your father, and his chair count as three people. This was not what was discussed, so find a solution before my partners get angry."

Getting inside the truck, I try to find my family without stepping on too many wrists, ignoring the sullen glances in my direction. Far in front of the truck, Karen and Imane seek to form a barrier around my brother, who has all the other passengers' attention on him.

"You will have to take him on your knees," I say, seeing my father struggling to get back to his chair.

A benevolent hand holds it in place for him to settle into, but I cannot see its owner's face. After thanking him, my father proceeds to receive Ho-Jin on his chest. Karen and Imane install him more securely, immediately freeing the space occupied by his body. I quickly slip past Karen. I hear the load resuming. Before the last small figure sits down, the two large metal doors close. It is pitch black for a while, then the phones turn on, dimly lighting up in all directions.

"You have to hold his neck better... Wait."

Imane swivels around, offering her back so that my father can drop Ho-Jin's bust. In turn, I move on my right, occupy the few free inches left, to prevent the phone, pointed in our direction, and from revealing my brother's face, already mocked by some frightened children. Karen takes his hand, tracing with the tip of her finger, over the bandages, a poor star, as she used to do, when new scarifications appeared on Ho-Jin's wrists. Despite his apparent frivolity, Ho-Jin, above all, hates having the truth being hidden from him, especially when it comes to appearance. He would have resented me not telling him that he has a stain on his cheek. So those kids, he would have confronted them for the teasing regarding his face.

A slight tremor hits us from the front of the car. The engine is restarted. The metallic purr fills our entire space, taking the place of conversations, which are stopped. Everyone is listening. Slowly, the truck begins to move. I try to guess the driver's maneuvers to fool the uncomfortable feeling that is winning over me. I loosen my fists, wiping my sweaty palms on my t-shirt. Squinting, I have a glance, which I want to appear threatening, in the direction of the phone, that refuses to give up revealing my brother's scars. Eventually, the light goes out, not because I managed to intimidate the voyeur in question, but more likely because the spaces on the sides of the door, between the metal plates, let in some rays of sunlight. I do not understand how time passes anymore, but it is already daytime.

Surely the slaves would not have waited until midnight to get justice by attacking us. I can even say with certainty that at that exact moment, they have just broken down the door of the dispensary. Rushing down the hall, then into the bedroom, they discover with horror how we have just betrayed them in the most horrible way possible. Not all will immediately understand; those for whom this will have been the case will therefore explain with hatred that the blameless Mohamed and his soiled family, his terrorist children, criminals, and descendants of criminals, have just condemned Freetown.

The truck stops several times, setting off waves of regular anguish among the passengers. We still have to be relatively close to the city center to encounter so many traffic lights. After a while, several passengers from the back of the truck pull out small pouches, bags, boxes that they carry, food whose odor, not very appealing, finishes dealing a blow to my stomach. I am starving, but above all, extremely thirsty. The anxiety so far has fed, filled, and sated me, but my body is recovering its rights. This must also be the case with the other members of my family. More and more people around us are starting to eat. I cannot turn away from the spectacle of the little boy with whom I was competing, earlier, to get away from his lamp. I become the voyeur. He simply turns around.

"Here," a small voice from my father's side says.

The man holds out a box with a leftover fruit on one side, some rice mixed with a sauce, a slice of bread whose color, even in the partial darkness, seems abnormal to me. It is a traditional dish from Freetown, satiating, disgusting, but my palate was still lingering on the pancakes I shared with Sky and Celeste.

"I... Thank you," Mohamed replies, grabbing the piece of bread.

-"No, no, take it all."

I can tell that my father is uneasy.

"That's very... kind of you, sir," Karen intervenes. "But you have to understand and excuse our reluctance... I have to ask you: why are you doing this? Because if you expect anything from us, I regret to tell you that we really have nothing to offer you."

"It's already done," he answers. "You've already done everything, and it's rather me, who can never make up to you Mohamed. It's thanks to you that my son got a scholarship. You probably don't remember it; I mean, you've seen so many children throughout the years. And it wasn't me who came to place him in the orphanage, but his mother. We had nothing to take care of him, and we wanted him to have a better chance than us. It's thanks to your teaching that he was able to find an apprenticeship as a mechanic."

Karen hands the box to Imane, who hastens in order to find a solution for Ho-Jin to be able to eat. The man presents her with a small bottle of water.

"Thank you," Mohamed says, instead of my sister. "I..."

"What are you doing here?" I ask quickly.

"Kanoa!" my father scolds me. "Do not feel like you have to answer..."

"By placing him in the orphanage, we have accepted that we were dead for him. The joy we felt upon hearing that his situation had changed was not enough to overcome my wife's progressive covidic crises. I didn't want my son to have anything to do with the slaves anymore, so I didn't try to contact him. He would feel guilty, he would want to help me and miss his enfranchisement opportunity, so I'd rather let him think he was abandoned. So that he would hate me, hate this slave environment, and make sure he never goes back. In any case, not by his own actions, BC19 can be capricious. So I have nothing left here in New York. I hope that when I get back to Korea, my parents... Most of my family are there. Well, it was Shin who brought us here anyway."

He stops speaking, and he seems to be immersed in the contemplation of the rice dumpling which he has in his hand. He finally hands it to me.

"I'm sorry for what's happening to you," he adds, pointing to my brother. "He was a good kid. He helped me and my neighbors a lot to learn and improve our English."

I want to correct him, but I do not have the strength. He cannot speak of my brother in the past tense, as if he was already dead. I watch, filled with a deep feeling of emptiness, Imane crush, mix with water, and make my brother, still on my father's lap, swallow a handful of rice. Part of it comes out, causing him to cough gently. I turn to eat the rice dumpling, wash out the familiar horrible taste with a sip of water. Karen's hand runs over my back. She takes a small piece of the greenish bread, giving another to Mohammad and the rest to our samaritan.

"Life won't be easy in Pyongyang if that's where he'll keep us. But you'll see, I'll do anything to help you, I owe you so much. I'm glad to be offered this chance to redeem myself."

"What is your name?"

"Young-Tae."

"It is... an honor to meet you, Young-Tae."

"We're arriving soon, I think."

He bends his fingers to form half the acronym of the slaves, which my father completes on his side. Then he does not speak to us until the truck comes to a stop again. Calm spreads through the metal box once the stomachs are appeased. Tacitly, we seem to have agreed that the situation is dire, the danger looming, the success within reach, on condition that we all play the game.