"Get your coarse, filthy hands off me!"

Her voice rose above the din, prompting Frank to clap softly.

"You have no right to touch me in the first place, you wretched cretin."

Cretin? He hadn't heard that one in a while.

"The only criminals here are in uniform!"

She had chutzpah, Frank thought, for all the good it would do her. He watched from the window as they turned the corner, the guards leading a bedraggled procession of bruised and bloody country folk. Two of them propped up a woman in blue, whose head lolled precariously from side to side.

"Incoming," he called to the room.

The door opened and humans flowed in, stinking of blood and old sweat and fresh urine. He stepped up to the door to offer a hand and was promptly shoved back inside with the butt of a rifle.

They just kept coming. Within seconds, the room was uncomfortably full. Still, more people shouldered in, stinking and sweating and scratching bloody tracks into their already vandalized skin.

"There's no more room," he called over their heads.

A few more crammed themselves in at gunpoint as Frank maneuvered his way through the room, looking for little Ada. He found her tucked safely in a corner behind the same woman he had left her with. They nodded to each other. With Ada secure, he grabbed the water jug and turned back toward the door.

As a guard prepared to lock them in, Frank shouted, "Hey! We need more water and the crap bucket emptied. Come on, man! There's a kid in here."

"Not for long," the SDO replied.

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Then the door clicked shut, the bolt slid into place, and an impossible situation got a lot more real. There wasn't time to dwell on the officer's cryptic statement. Whoever wasn't already sobbing cried. People who had removed their shirts tried to put them back on without elbowing someone in the face. A man said he needed a bandage because the bleeding wouldn't stop. Someone asked for water. Frank tried to angle toward the small, thirsty voice, but it was useless.

"There's water," he called out. What with all the noise and bodies, it was like talking into a pillow.

So, Frank decided to be true to himself.

"Hey! Yo!" he bellowed. "Listen up!" The commotion died down to a murmur almost instantly. "I'm sorry to raise my voice. This sucks. We're all miserable. But listen up, we have this much water." He held the jug over his head. "If you have empty flasks, send them this way and I'll split the water evenly. If you've been here and had some already, maybe sit this one out."

"And just who are you, exactly? If that's community water—"

"Who's asking?" Frank said, cutting her off.

"That's none of your business."

"Likewise," he said, winking in her general direction.

"Well, I just think if we—"

"Shut up, Sarah," someone said.

"I... I just thought—" Sarah stammered.

"Nobody cares, Sarah." The same weary voice of reason came from the other side of the room. Behind it, someone murmured, mmm hmm. Between the two, it was apparently enough to make Sarah stop talking, for which Frank and a bunch of thirsty people were grateful. Within minutes, flasks were filled and emptied, then filled again. With nowhere to put the empty jug, Frank held it like a baby and leaned against the window.

"Frank?" It was Ada's little voice.

"Yeah, I'm here honey," Frank said. "You okay back there?"

"I have to pee, and she won't let me."

"Girl, me too!"

"What should I do?"

"You tell me," he said earnestly.

"I can just pee right here?"

He closed his eyes and sighed. "Yeah, you can do that. Nobody will be mad."

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Promise?"

"Promise," said Frank.

"Promise," said the voice of reason.

"Promise," said a dozen other beautiful human beings who didn't know little Ada from Adam or Eve.

They took turns sitting, all except Frank, who stood by the window waiting to tap it with the water jug whenever a patrol wandered by. He tried to make eye contact with Elio but couldn't find him.

"You're not from around here," he said to the room.

"We're not," said a familiar voice. With half the room uncomfortably seated, he could see her face. The voice of reason. The woman in blue with the sad, expressive eyes.

"I'm Frank."

"Tansy," she replied. "We're from up north. Scarborough?"

He shook his head.

"North of Allentown," she said.

"Wait, why are you all the way down here? There's probably twenty other lockups from here to there."

"Full," a man said.

"Not all of them," Frank said. "They can't be. Like this?"

The man sighed. "That's what they said. Wouldn't let us in. Said we had to come down here. SDOs weren't too happy about that. They made sure we knew it."

A woman made a strange, keening sound and started crying.

"What, they gave you the rough ride treatment? All that way?" Frank asked, still incredulous, even after everything.

"I guess that's what they did," the man said. "I would probably pick a stronger word."

They switched. The sitters stood, and the standers sat. Frank scanned their faces again and still couldn't find Elio.

That sneaky fucker, Frank thought. He must have snuck out in the commotion. A pang of envy quickly gave way to the faintest glimmer of hope. If anyone could get them out of that shithole, Frank's coin was on the wealthiest family in the state. Not that Frank had any coin. But if he did, he'd wager on the Rivera family to save the day. Or, at least, he'd bet on Elio. Maybe.

Frank was conflicted.

"So," Sarah said, "we're just going to pretend that's why they sent us here?"

He could see her face now. She met his gaze and didn't look away. She was no Sergeant Foster, not by a long shot. But the two women shared an ineffable, hardass-type quality that Frank's body responded to in some very confusing ways. He shifted and looked away.

When nobody answered Sarah, she continued.

"Really? We're going to pretend our special girl here didn't just freak everyone right the hell out?"

Frank took the bait. "What happened?"

It was Sarah's time to shine. She nodded toward the woman in blue. Tansy. "She had some sort of episode, apparently. Awfully dramatic if you ask me. Acted like she was about to pass out or throw up or both. The SDOs started dragging her to the building—"

"Wait, what building?" Frank said. "I thought they were full."

"Can you just listen?"

Frank channeled his inner Bianca and sighed.

"So they're dragging her to the building, telling the rest of us to line up with our hands on the wall. And suddenly," she said, pausing. "Well, I don't know what to call it, but she screams this horrible scream like a drowning rodent or something. And then she falls to the ground and something... well, something happened."

Folks craned their necks to look back and forth between Sarah and Tansy.

"It's like she got heavy. I mean, heavier than usual." Sarah cleared her throat and smoothed the front of her trim and tiny self. "But yes, something like that. The officers kept trying to pull her, but they couldn't. Three of them couldn't budge her so much as an inch. Explain that."

Frank shrugged. "Guess she's stronger than she looks."

Sarah tilted her chin and looked at him like his feeble, pea-sized brain was on full display. "They couldn't even move her arm, Frank. Not an inch. And that's not all of it. Something... surged from her direction. Some weird vibration. It even smelled funny, like grass or something. And suddenly," she said, looking around the room, "we all felt better."

A few dozen people nodded in vehement agreement.

"Right? I mean, my headache disappeared like that," she said, snapping her fingers. "I wasn't thirsty anymore. Calliope here was passing out in the hold, but suddenly she was chipper and chatty. And this guy—"

"Clinton," the man said.

"Okay. This guy Clinton, was bleeding from a cut that suddenly... well, show them. Go on."

Clinton stood and raised his hand to reveal a nasty, 4-inch scab.

"Suddenly, after this weird surge, his cut wasn't bleeding anymore. The whole thing was scabbed over, like it had been healing for a week.

Frank raised his eyebrows, waiting for the hook, or the punchline, or whatever this lady was getting at with her story.

"Well?" she said.

"Uh, okay? I'm not sure what you want me to say."

She rolled her eyes to high heaven. "Well, she passed out, and once she did, everything went back to normal instantly."

"Okay."

"You're not the brightest—"

"Look, lady, I think you think you're making a point," Frank said, "but you're mistaken."

She stared at him, shaking her head in disbelief. "I think you think you're smarter than I give you credit for, but you're mistaken. Look, her little display was maybe a minute, tops, but once she passed out, the SDOs wanted nothing to do with her. Told the drivers to get us out of there, that there was no room anyway and especially not for a bunch of dying freaks."

Frank watched her facade waver at those last words. She was the one to break eye contact, and in that moment, he regretted what he had said to Bianca about getting her plague all over him. How could he have known they'd be the last words he would ever say to her?

"She's right," Tansy said. She stood and eased her way toward the window, where she stood beside Frank and faced the room. Her voice was weary, her body unsteady. She looked like her spirit had been drained.

"Something did happen. I can't—I can't really talk about it yet. But what you saw? Whatever that was? It wasn't everything." She looked around the room, searching for an invitation to go on. With a resigned sigh, she said, "Well, just look."