Smuggler

Chapter 4

I wake up suddenly, confused. Where am I? Why am I on a bed? Why didn't Maya wake me up before she left?

The events of yesterday come rushing back to me, and I groan and lay back down. The worry and fear that I hadn't allowed myself to feel yesterday hits me like a brick. These people have been nice enough so far, but I am going to run out of useful information pretty quickly. They had obviously captured other people from the city before, but the rest of these cells were empty. That doesn't give me a lot of hope for my life expectancy.

I also worry about Maya. Did she make it home safely? Would she listen to me and lie to the guards, or would she tell them? What would happen if she did? What would happen if she didn't, and now has to continue without me? There are so many things out of my control. Everything is out of my control.

I hate it.

Jason walks up outside my cell. He nods at me as a way of greeting, and hands me a plate of food through the bars. I take it and sit back on the bed to eat. He sits in the same chair as yesterday and stares at me while I eat. Halfway through, I get fed up with it.

"What?" I accuse. He jumps.

"Nothing. I'm just waiting for you. We're going to fill out that map once you finish eating."

I put the plate down. "I'll finish later. Let's go."

He leads me down the hallway, closer to the door. We make a left and walk into to a room with a small metal table in the center of it. There are two older people in the room, a man who looks like a guard standing against the door and a woman looking at the map. Both look at me when we walk in. On the table is a large sheet of paper with small drawings on it. Some of the drawings are labeled with words.

"Can you help us fill in the rest of this map?" asks the older woman. I look at it, trying to get my bearings. I've never used a map before, and I don't know where to start.

"Is this just a map of sector 5, or of the whole city?"

"The whole city. This is sector 5." Jason says, pointing to one part of the map that is separated from the rest by lines. I point at one of the larger buildings in the sector, one that is labeled.

"What building is this?" Jason looks down, reading the label.

"That's the ration office." He says, looking at me strangely. I align myself so that I am facing the way that I would if I was walking out of the apartment building. I trace a line from the ration office back to the apartment, giving me a place to start.

"This is an apartment block." I say, pointing to the building. I work my way out from there, telling them the names of all the legal building that I know of. I debate telling them about any of the illegal places, then decide to wait and see if they ask. They might just be trying to get a full map, and not care about those places.

"Do you know of any other places? Anywhere where illegal things could happen without anyone noticing?" She asks the question mechanically, as if she has asked it many times before and never gotten an answer. I wonder how many loyal citizens they have captured that either didn't know this information, or wouldn't tell them for fear they would use it against their precious city. Suddenly, something clicks into place.

"That's why you wanted a guard, isn't it? You thought one of them would know of any secret ways into the city, places where you could operate. But they would never tell you, would they? That why you don't know yet." I almost laugh at their stupidity, the fact that they think any guard would ever betray the city to a bunch of rebels. And the fact that they think the guards know about these places. If they did, these places wouldn't exist anymore. The woman just glares at me.

"Just answer the question."

I start pointing to buildings and streets. I show them my pickup point, the warehouse, and my message spot. I show them where you can get fake zone passes if you can pay, something that they seem particularly interested in. I show them gang hideouts, places you can get weapons, and pre-war artifacts like books. When I finish, they look far happier than when I started.

"How do you know all of this?" Jason asks.

"I was a smuggler. Most of what I did for a living was illegal."

This makes the older woman thoughtful. The man makes a signal at Jason, who gets up and returns me to my cell. After closing the door, he turns to walk away, then turns back.

"You look worried. What are you worried about?"

"What, you mean being locked in a cell in the middle of a hostile camp isn't enough to get me worried?" I ask sarcastically. "But you're right, I'm actually worried about Maya. Is there any way to know that she made it back safe?"

He sighs. "No. But we didn't go after her. We honored our end of the deal."

I smile. "Thanks. I guess that will have to do. For what it's worth, I'll honor my end of the deal too."

He laughs. "I believe you. Not sure they do, though." He jerks his head back toward the room we just came from. "They're convinced you have some evil plan."

I laugh with him. "No evil plans here, but thanks for believing me."

He nods, suddenly looking uncomfortable. "Well... see ya." He hurries off. I wonder what changed his mood so drastically.