CHAPTER NINETEEN
●○► THE CHALLENGE
Sephred leads us to the elevator not far from the place we meet him. We walk a little faster because the screams turn more terrible and it pierces our ears like knives. Finally, we reach the elevator. Sephred presses the “Up” button then we wait. In less than ten seconds, the doors open and we immediately step inside to escape the noise. The doors close as Sephred presses the last button on the wall of the elevator. We begin to rise.
Six seconds. That’s how long it takes then the doors open again. The screaming people are still there, but at the sixth floor, it is not as loud as it is at the ground floor.
“Here is where we prisoners stay,” Sephred tells us as we step out. “But we are not allowed to go out of our cell unless we are near to be freed.”
“Wait! You’re a prisoner here?” I ask.
“Yes, I am,” he replies.
“And that means that—”
“That I’m going to be freed very soon.” He cuts me off so I didn’t continue my conclusion. He smiles at me quickly then looks away. Even if he’s no longer facing me, I can still see him smiling in my mind. I see the glee in his eyes, the excitement in his lips. I know by the look in his face that he wants to go home already.
We follow Sephred in every direction he goes. I don’t know if he’s telling the truth that he knows Beth. The three of us don’t know the Criminals Chamber, so we have no idea where we’re heading to. On our left and right are prison cells. Every prison cell has more than ten persons inside. All of them wear gray shirts and gray pants. Some are crying. But most of the prisoners look completely devastated. The sight of them makes me feel sympathetic.
“How much further?” Janine asks. I sense the excitement in her voice.
“Hmm,” Sephred mutters. “Not that far now,” he says.
“How many minutes more to get there?” It’s Bryan.
“Maybe three.”
Everyone feel so happy about that. There’s only three minutes left then we’ll finally see Beth. I’m wondering if she’s fine. I can’t stop thinking whether she’s been treated well or not. I hope she’s okay. I wish nothing bad has happened to her.
Excitement begins to rule my body. My hands feel so cold, and my body shudders uncontrollably in nervousness. I count my heartbeat so I know how long it is taking. Right now, I’m thinking of what I’m going to do when I see Beth. I’ll cry, maybe.
Sephred turns to a corridor and we follow him. We are walking in two minutes and thirty seconds now so I guess that this is already the corridor where Beth is. Well, I hope it is. I don’t want it take any longer. I want to see her now.
Finally we come into a sudden halt. We stand in front of a cell that is as wide as the floor/bed of our little house. Inside are four girls, sleeping and using their hands as pillows. They sleep on the cold tiled floor. I’m wondering how cold they feel while they’re sleeping at night.
“There she is,” says Sephred, gesturing a hand toward the girl who sleeps beside the right wall.
I follow the direction of Sephred’s hand. Then I see Beth open her eyes when I gasp.
***
“Beth?”
Her name escapes my mouth so suddenly. It takes more than five seconds before tears start running down my cheeks. I can’t believe that she’s finally there; she’s just a few meters in front of me now.
“Mary?” she mutters, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “Janine? Bryan?”
“Hi, Beth,” says Janine. I glance at her and see her crying as well. She steps to the bars of the cellar and tries to reach for her.
Immediately, Beth gets to her feet. She begins to sob as she reaches for Janine’s hand.
“Janine!” she exclaims. She embraces her through the bars of the cell. When they draw back after a minute, Beth turns to me and I go over to the bars to hug her.
“I missed you, Beth,” I tell her.
“I missed you too, Mary,” she replies.
I pull back after a minute. When I see her face filled with tears of joy, I feel as if I don’t want to go home already. I want to stay here with her. I don’t want to go home without bringing her.
“How are you, Beth?” asks Bryan behind me.
“I’m fine, Bryan,” she answers softly. “Thanks for asking.” She smiles at him.
“Do they treat you well?”
“Yes and no.”
I narrow my eyes and ask, “Why?” before Bryan can.
Beth just shakes her head. “I don’t know how to explain. I don’t know where to begin.”
“Come on, Beth,” says Janine. “We wanna know what happened to you while you’re in her.”
She takes a deep breath and sighs through her mouth. “Okay.”
But before she begins with the story, Sephred’s voice booms behind us. “Wait,” he says. “Save that for later.”
We all turn to face him. “Why?” I ask.
“You might want to get her out of here first.”
“How?” inquires Bryan.
“You have to pay for her parole,” says Sephred. “Or you can just wait for six months before she gets out.”
***
I can’t believe my ears from what I just heard. Six months? I think. That’s a pretty long time. Janine and Bryan, especially the others back home, surely don’t want to wait for six months to get Beth back. I’m sure our friends in Town Redlight don’t want us to come home without her. We’ll make them so disappointed. If we return without Beth, going here will just be a useless thing. We have to get her. But I don’t know about that because I don’t want Bryan to spend a lot of money again for us.
Like I said, I don’t want to owe him that big.
I’m sure Janine doesn’t want that, too.
“We’ll pay for it,” says Bryan firmly, nodding, glancing at Sephred for a second. “How much?”
Sephred shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head.
“Where are we going to pay it?”
Before Sephred can answer his question, I interrupt, “No!” Bryan glances at me quickly and locks his eyes on me. “You’re not going to spend a lot of money for us again.”
He sighs. “What should we do then, huh, Mary? Wait for six months till she gets out?”
“There has to be another way,” I tell him.
“Mary,” he speaks my name softly. “There is no other way to free Beth. If we go back home and wait for six months, we wouldn’t know what’s gonna happen to her. There are a lot of things that are gonna happen in six months. And we’re not sure if those things that are going to happen are good or bad. She can die, Mary! If she gets sick here, the people running this building won’t even care to give her some medicine.
“Now what do you say about that?”
He manages to keep his voice low, calm and soft. But I feel so scared when he tells me that. I’ve never seen Bryan behave like that. He has never told me something in that voice. For a second, I just stare up at him, lost for words. I take a deep breath then suddenly a tear rolls down my cheeks.
“Please don’t cry,” he tells me, raising a hand to my face and brushing a finger below the bags of my left eye. “I don’t want to see you crying, Mary.”
But I can’t help it. Tears start to well up in my eyes and spill.
“I said stop crying.” It’s already an order. I have to stop already, I think.
After a minute, I open my mouth. A low grumble escapes then I close it again. I forget what I am going to say. I break my stare at Bryan and glance at Beth who is holding the bars of the cell. She smiles at me weakly, and I smile at her encouragingly. I don’t like the look in her face. It pains me so I look at Bryan again. This time, I finally remember what I’m going to say.
“I just don’t want to owe you that big again.”
He stares down at me and looks into my eyes as if he’s getting inside my mind. The expression in his face is blank and unreadable. I want to know what he’s thinking and what’s going on in his mind. There’s a long silence between us. And he still won’t surrender in our staring match. I think I just made him think about it deeply. I am right! He already knows that I’m right.
Sephred steps between us and looks from Bryan to me then back at Bryan again. “So, dude,” he says. “What’s your decision?”
Bryan sighs heavily. He looks at Sephred with a confused look. He hesitates for a second. He locks his eyes on him and finally says something with a firm voice.
“We’re still going to pay for the parole.”
***
“If that’s what you really want, Bryan, then I’ll let you do it.” My voice is like a whisper when I say that. “But I will come with you.”
He smiles at me encouragingly, walking to me slowly with small strides. When he stops a few feet away in front of me, he raises his arm and pats my shoulder with a light hand. I smile back at him. And I see his lips form two words: Thank you.
I nod at him.
He glances in Sephred’s direction and sighs through his mouth. “Where are we going to pay the parole?” he asks gently. His hand still rests on my shoulder.
Sephred clears his throat for a second. “In the lobby,” he says simply.
Bryan nods in assent. “Okay. Let’s go, then.”
As Sephred starts to walk through the corridor, he says, “Let’s go,” firmly.
It takes us more than a second before we react. Bryan and I glance at Janine who is talking to Beth with low voices. “Janine,” I call. She turns to look at me quickly. “Are you coming to the lobby?”
She just shakes her head. “I think it’s best for me to stay here. I wanna be with Beth. We have so many things to talk about.”
I nod at her explanation. “Okay, then. See you later.”
“See you.”
Bryan reaches for my hand and holds it as we begin to run after Sephred who is more than twenty feet away. When we near him, we slow down and start walking. He looks at us over his shoulder and makes a low grumble at the back of his throat.
“Where’s Janine,” he asks.
“She stays with Beth,” I answer. “She says she wants to be with her this time.”
He nods slowly, turning his head away from us. A few moments later we finally arrive at the elevator. He presses the down button and takes a step away as the doors slide open. I take a deep breath as we get inside the elevator. When I am inside, the screams that come from the first floor ring in my ears like a whisper. I grip Bryan’s hand and move closer to his arm.
The doors slide together then we start to go down. For a second, the screams feel nothing to me anymore. It only seems like a tiny whisper to me now, not a terrifying noise that sends extremely nervous shivers down my spine.
After six seconds the doors open again. I look at Bryan and see a worried expression in his face. He looks down at me in wonder and frowns. His mouth opens and three words pass his lips.
“Are you okay?”
I hesitate.
He stares at me.
“I don’t know,” I reply. It is the truth. “I don’t really know.” I am shaking my head now.
He smiles down at me encouragingly. “You will be okay,” he assures, and leans down to kiss my forehead. I close my eyes and hear a kissing sound as he draws back. I open my eyes.
“Let’s go,” he tells me.
Sephred is waiting for us outside the elevator, watching us. When we get outside, we stop in front of him because I think he has something to say. I narrow in my in curiousness.
“The lobby is full of guards, right?” he says, and Bryan and I nod. “There are two things you have to remember once you get there. First, don’t look at man who will talk to you first. Look at person beside him when he talks. Second, if anyone of them asks you to do the other way to free Beth, do not ask what the other way is. You have to decide immediately. Once you have decided, it’s already final. There’s no turning back. . . .You have to do the other way. Understand?”
“There’s still another way to free Beth besides paying the parole?” Bryan asks quietly as if he cannot believe his ears.
Sephred nods his head slowly. “Yes,” he says. “But it will be harder than you think.”
Bryan sighs shakily. His eyes narrow at Sephred as he cocks his head to the side. A sound produces at the back of his throat. “Mmm.” He takes a breath. “What are the possible challenges?” he asks curiously.
Sephred shrugs. “I don’t really know, Bryan. You just have to prepare for whatever the challenge is.” There is a long ten-second pause. “Now, go into the lobby,” he finally says. “Good luck to the both of you.”
***
We now go inside the metal door where we came from. It is Sephred who closes the door for us once we are inside. I reach for Bryan’s hand and hold it tight. I look up at him and sort of invite him with my eyes to proceed upstairs. We take the steps after he nods.
“What do you think will the challenge be if we choose to do it instead of paying the parole?” Bryan asks me in a low voice while we’re at the middle of the walk upstairs.
It takes me a few seconds to reply. I think about it first. “Person exchange?” I say. “Well, I don’t know what it’s going to be. Let’s just hope it will not be that hard.”
“Yeah, I hope so.”
When we arrive at the top of the stairs, nervousness strikes at me again. With a very low voice, I keep saying the two things that Sephred has told us below: Do not look at the first person who talks, and do not ask what the challenge for us will be. Just two things, I think. Easy to remember.
Bryan is the one to open the door. When we are already in the lobby, he closes it slowly and gently behind me. I take his hand in mine and hold it tighter than ever. We begin to walk over the front of the counter to face the three.
“How was the visit, young girl and young man?” the fat man in the middle asks us while we walk.
I pinch Bryan’s hand to let him remember what Sephred says, that we should not look at the first man who speaks first. I glance suddenly at my boyfriend, trying to hide my deep breaths. Thank God he is not looking at him.
“Good,” Bryan answers; his eyes are fixed on the man beside the fat man. “Well, not really, no.” He shakes his head. “But we saw our friend already.”
“Ahhh,” the fat man says, nodding his head at what Bryan says. “That’s great that’s great. Where’s your other friend, then? The other girl?”
We still don’t look at him. “She stays there to be with our friend,” Bryan says. “She wants to be there to be with her.”
“Okay,” Mr. Fat Man says flatly, nodding his head again. “So,” he adds after a few moments, “why do you come here?”
I turn to look at Bryan and meet his sea-blue eyes. They blink at me and his eyebrows knit together above the bridge of his nose. I know, by the look in his face, that he’s also thinking what I’m thinking. There is a moment of awkward silence.
“What do you need?” Mr. Fat Man asks.
And now we turn to face him.
Oh, no! I think. Wrong move. We should not look at him. Why did we look at him?
I wait for something to happen to us, to him. . . . But nothing comes. His face doesn’t get angry and he doesn’t slam his fist hard on the table and say, “Why did you look at me?!” No. Nothing happens. Maybe what Sephred told us doesn’t work anymore when he speaks his second, third or fourth sentence. He just looks at us in the same way, normally, like he doesn’t even know that looking at him is not allowed.
Afterward we finally tell him what we’re up to.
***
“There’s another way to free your friend, you know,” the man beside Mr. Fat Man informs us.
We know, I want to tell. But the words are stuck in my throat. Instead, I find the word, “How?”
He chuckles softly. “By doing a very hard challenge. It’s so hard that people take a very long time to do it. Do you want to do it instead of paying a very large amount of money? You have to decide now.”
I stare at the man’s golden hair, examining his pale face, brown eyes, wrinkled forehead and large nose before I speak. “How much do we have to pay?” I ask, already expecting that it will cost millions of deps. I look down.
“You decide first,” he tells me.
This is hopeless.
There is a minute of silence. I look up at Bryan and stare at him for a long moment. I slowly, gently shake my head and feel a tear roll down my cheek before I even know it. What are we going to do? What are going to decide? We both don’t know the price of the parole and the challenge that they’re going to give us. What should we do?
Bryan purses his lips a little, a thinking look flashing in his face.
“I don’t want you to pay,” I whisper to him softly.
He sighs at the top of my head. “Well, I don’t want you to get hurt if the challenge is going to be physical and get you involved with it. I don’t want that.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“At least if we pay, we’re sure that none of us will get hurt.”
I shake my head. “But it will be millions, Bryan. I’m not gonna owe you that big.”
“If it’s the only way, then—”
“No, Bryan,” I interrupt. “We have to do the challenge. We have to. I’m sure it will not take millions if we go to the hospital to heal it.”
He is silent for a second. He looks away from me and I see a tear fall from his left eye. I’ve never seen him cry before. I’ve never even seen a tear fall down from those beautiful eyes. I raise my hand and reach for his face, brushing the drop of tear in his cheeks and preventing the others from spilling.
“Don’t cry,” I tell him.
“I’m not crying,” he mutters and looks at me. He eventually stops his eyes from spilling out tears. “So, we’re going to do the challenge?”
“Please?”
I wait for a ten seconds. He nods his head half-heartedly, and says in a measured voice, “Alright, then.”
***
So it’s done. We’re going to do the challenge. I’m so glad that Bryan finally agrees with me. I move closer to him and fling my arm around his neck whispering the words, “Thank you,” over and over again. When I draw back, we receive sharp gazes from the three people at the counter. Mr. Fat Man has one eyebrow raised at us like he’s confused of our decision. I know he heard everything Bryan and I talk about. He already knows what we’re going to choose. After a moment, his lips stretch into a thin smirk.
“We’re—we’re going to do the challenge.” Bryan’s voice is a mixture of worry and pride. I blink my eyes and absorb what he says word by word. It’s not good to hear. It is not bad either.
Mr. Fat Man smirks, nodding. “All right,” he says. Then he beckons us to come closer to the counter. “Come here.” He leans forward and puts an envelope in front of him. “Here’s your challenge.”
It takes us a moment or two before we move and take the envelope. Bryan hesitates to open it when it’s already in his hands.
“Do it,” I order him. “Open it, Bryan.”
Then slowly, he opens it, gently taking the paper outside and unfolding it. I see large words in block lettering printed in the center of the paper. I squint at it first then start to read it. I don’t understand it. I can’t. I read it again and now I fully understand it.
I wish we should have chosen to pay the parole.