The World Without Flags

“I don’t understand,” I whimper, tears coming to my eyes. “I don’t understand why you’d do this.” Tears fall from my eyes, even though it’s the last thing I want to show the traitor.

“You don’t have to understand,” Randy tells me. “It’s just how it is. Like the rest of this world.”

Suddenly the Doctor lurches toward me with a needle in his hands.

“NO!” I shout, trying to move away from him.

“I’m not listening to this all night,” the Doctor says, jabbing a needle in my leg.

Almost immediately, I feel my muscles turn to water.

Darkness begins to leak into my vision and I feel myself fall to the side.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I hear Randy say as if from very far away.

“I did,” answers the Doctor. “Yes, I did. You would tell her everything.”

Their speech melts into night and even though I feel them speaking, like a vibration in my bones, I don’t understand a word. I am aware of nothing but the burning light of the moon and a feeling somehow of barbed wire.

133

A blink later, it seems, I wake up alone in a familiar room, in a familiar metal chair. I’m back in the warehouse I escaped only days before. It seems for a moment that I never left, that Eric is in his cell, and that I never made it to Cairo at all. All that is different is that my head pulses with pain like it’s being struck by a shovel. But the feeling of familiarity ebbs away, and my fear tells me this is new and it’s going to be worse. I was lucky before. This time, there’s no hope of escape.

In front of me, in the place of the aluminum surgical table, Squint is standing, naked, his eyes dripping white worms that fall and writhe at his feet. When I try to move, pain shoots up from my wrists and ankles, as if they are burning. Looking down, I see that my wrists are bloody from the ropes that bind me. I hear the generator running and the hum of the bright lights above me. Otherwise there is only my own scared, uneven breathing, and the booming pain in my head.

I try to do what Eric told me all those times to do. Think, he told me. But any coherent thought is ripped to shreds by the painful boom boom booming in my skull. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping that the darkness will give me some relief, but instead it makes me feel sick. I open my eyes but I feel nauseated and I have to fight to keep from vomiting. I don’t know how long this struggle continues. The pain in my head is so intense, it distorts time. Has it been an hour? A moment? I don’t know, can’t understand anything. Finally I feel the wave of nausea pass over me and recede.

“Oh thank you,” I hear myself breathe. It seems so pathetic that I have to repeat it. “Oh thank you.” I don’t know who I’m thanking. I’m just so relieved. The headache and the nausea together were unbearable, but with the dizziness gone, it seems like something I can endure. “Thank you,” I repeat a third time. Suddenly I remember Lucia in the cabin. I remember how we trembled, how we shivered, how fear gripped us like the winter’s cold around us. So long ago, that first winter. I never think of it. Never. Hardly ever think of her. She holds me and tells me to breathe. “Breathe deeply,” she tells me. I feel her hand in my hair. I feel her hold me close. Lucia.

I breathe deeply. In. Out.

I feel the headache recede. Not entirely. Only just a little relief. And just like that, I can’t remember Lucia anymore. She’s just gone, but she has left me this. I breathe deeply. In. Out.

Think, Birdie.

“Yes, the headache is terrible,” I hear. I lift my head. Doctor Bragg is in front of me. He looks at me with fake sympathy. Or is it real? His dark eyes give me no comfort. There is something in them that I don’t understand: pity, self-hatred, defiance, or a kind of terrible determination to continue like a fatally wounded animal that nonetheless tries to flee. “It’s the quality of the anesthesia, I’m afraid,” he continues. “I have to make do with what is left behind, you see. We all have to make do with what is left to us.” His long face doesn’t change as he says this, although there is something shimmering in his eyes, but I can’t understand it. My heart races inside my chest.

“Please,” I beg. “Please don’t do this.” I fight to keep calm. I have a feeling that if I become too emotional, he’ll just restrain me tighter. I have to be calm. I have to reason with him. “Please.” But I know as I say it that he won’t stop. Whatever he wants to do, he is going to do. There is no argument possible to stop him.

“Let’s not do that, shall we?” This time Doctor Bragg attempts a smile, but it’s much, much worse than nothing. The widening of his lips is purely mechanical like making a corpse smile. “This will be over quickly,” he says, the smile dropping away from him like discarded garbage.

“Please.” I whisper it, hoping that a whisper will make it through to him. But he ignores me.