Play the Game

by KathainBowen

AU tag to the Collarverse - Unrest is brewing in America; an underground railroad of sorts is rumored to steal away slaves and sneak them off to freedom. But, will they ever come for Greg?

TO PLAY THE GAME

'It's bullshit,' he tells himself. 'Grade A Liberal Left Wing-nut bullshit, right up there with veganism and global warming, because, a.) if we weren't supposed to eat animals, why are they so fucking tasty and b.) if the world is getting warmer, how come it's 29 fucking degrees outside?'

He rationalizes this as stands before the egg display in his local grocer and simply glares. On the shelf above his Eggland's Best Grade AA Jumbo eggs, in that fruity section of eggs right in front of his eyes, wedged between storebrand cage-free eggs and some other organic eggs, rests dozen boxes of Sunny Fresh Farms Slave-Free Eggs. Yes. Slave. Free. Fucking. Eggs. According to the box, not a single "indentured human" works in any of Sunny Fresh Farm's facilities. Absolutely ridiculous. Upon closer inspection, the eggs are cage-free as well as slave-free. Terrific.

It is only a natural outgrowth of an increasingly liberal world populated by children playing grown-up, too soft to know what's good for them, he supposes in the dark corner of his rational mind. Everything seems to be "free" of something. Cruelty free. Fat free. Salt free. Wheat free. Gluten free. Nut free. Lactose free. Dairy free. Sugar free. Transfat free. Meat free. BPA free. Fragrance and Dye free. Apparently, "free" appeals to people and sells products faster and for a higher price, but slave-free, seriously?

He shakes his head in disgust. His father held down two jobs to keep up with payments on the mortgage, keep his family fed and clothed, and keep the bills paid when times got rough when others allowed themselves to go into collections and just waltzed into their nearest Slave Administration office. Slaves let themselves become slaves, practically asked for it, when all they had to do was work a little, maybe cut back their spending a bit, and avoid going into collection. They deserve their servitude, and no free man or woman should ever get duped into buying slave-free products because they feel bad about it.

Now, there is even talk of people helping slaves escape. Honestly. If he ever catches someone trying to help a slave runaway – especially one of his slaves - why, he'll shoot them personally and claim they attacked him first. Any court of law would side with him. After all, it would be the world of a free man of good standing against a traitor.

He sets his basket of groceries right down on the tile floor in front of the egg display and promptly turns on his heel. He does not worry about the half gallon of milk or the frozen dinner in the basket. He knows one of the store's many maintenance slaves will pick up his discarded groceries and set them back where they belong in no time flat. He pauses only once as he strides out of the store to inform the store manager that this is the last time Detective Michael Tritter will ever shop there.

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She waits. The house is still and silent, but it is only just approaching midnight. She went to "bed" at around nine and has lain in bed in silence, staring at the wide, white expanse of the ceiling since then. Her parents went to sleep maybe an hour ago, but she knows from experience that her mother sleeps lightly at first before drifting into the deep embrace of slumber. The slightest of sounds too soon will have her mother running to her bedside in an overprotective, twittering and nonsensical fit over her precious, fragile baby girl. Then, she will have to spend another hour or two trying to reason with her mother through her idiotic and terrified jibbering to convince the woman that she does not need to go to the hospital and that nothing is amiss in her perfect bubble of a world. So, she waits, well into the darkness, as suburbia sleeps about her.

Do not misunderstand. It is not that she does not love her mother, nor that she does not understand her mother's concerns. The doctors have been reminding her since the accident to be careful, that her immune system can never tolerate the rigors of interactions with the real world since the transplant. Her mother loves her and wants to keep her safe, healthy, and, most important, alive for as long as possible. For however much it irritates her to be curtailed from having a normal life with normal friends and a normal relationship with her boyfriend, can she really fault her mother for her love and instinctual protection?

She waits, her muscles taut and nerves twitching, until the digital alarm clock at her beside reads 1 : 00 in bright, red numbers. Then, she rises cautiously with the practice grace of a prima ballerina or a ninja spy, edging from beneath the covers and across her bedroom to the computer at her desk. She plays the mouse, waking her computer from sleep mode. As her desktop fades back into existence, she unplugs her traditional keyboard with its chunky, noisy plastic keys in favor for the key mat she had convinced Dan to get her in secret, with its relatively soundless rubber keys.

Her mother does not know about the exact details of her relationship with Dan, but even Dan does not know about this. She led him to believe that the rubber key mat she ordered and had delivered to him was for them, so she might chat with him in the middle of the night without waking her parents. Granted, the couple has made good use of the rubber keyboard for a few more risqué chat sessions, but that was not her original intention.

She chews her lip and pulls up a program she wrote herself just two months ago before launch. Being trapped at home has its unique perks; with little to do between homeschooling sessions with her mother, she has become quite tech savvy. The program will run in the background until she logs off, creating a series of nested spoofed IP addresses on timed rotation. Should anyone try to pinpoint her exact location from her IP, she could be in Sydney, Tokyo, Paris, Madrid, a tiny backwater town in Swaziland, anywhere in the world and then halfway across it in the matter of a second. If anywhere were to manage to successfully track her IP and actually find her, well, it is hardly likely upon seeing sweet, sick little Melinda Bardach that someone would think her capable of writing the kind of subversive literature plastered across her website.

She checks her site's e-mail address and breathes as sigh of relief at the welcome news awaiting her from WikiLeaks. Over the last few months, the founders of WikiLeaks have expressed a great interest in her modest little blog and the world wide attention her pathetic excuses of writing have drawn. They have agreed to her terms of the merger. She now has unlimited access to their collection of correspondences and covert papers with material relevant to her blog flagged in advance. WikiLeaks, it seems, supports her cause in the fullest and has ever offered to ferry her blog along with their wiki to new domain name registries and servers on the all too frequent occasions in which their pages are shut down. She will be under their mighty wing from now on, with all the benefits which that entails.

She writes, but not under the name "Melinda." No. Never under that name. Instead, she pens her blog under the name "Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage." Anyone with any good sense and access to Wikipedia knows Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage, author, activist, freethinker, and generally uppity woman passed on March 18, 1898 in Chicago. Gage's name has always felt fitting somehow, as though channeling the woman through the ages in her own writing.

As Melinda writes, it is as though throwing pebbles at a mighty, lumbering beast. She is a small, weak, pathetic little girl, and this is all she can do. Yet, if her meager blog can help in any way to abolish slavery, then Melinda will keep writing until either that day slavery ends, or the day she dies. After all, she has known since the first day back from the hospital that she is as trapped by her condition as a slave by their collar and shackles. A slave might still find freedom in abolition or in working off their debt, a freedom Melinda knows she will never see for herself.

There are rumors going around about a rebellion. The Alliance, they are called. It is said that the Alliance frees slaves and secrets them away to countries without extradition laws pertaining to runaway slaves. She prays, somewhere in her heart of hearts, that the information she broadcasts in her blog is helping them, if they exist and if they are listening.

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He works slowly and methodically to the tune of Vivaldi, humming to himself as he draws up morning rounds. He plays something different everyday, piping music through the entire facility, often a selection of classical music. It is necessary, you see, for music serves to minimize the numbing doldrums of drudgery associated with repeated clinical trials, relaxes the nerves, and drowns out the barbed shouts and chanted slurs of those horrid protestors looming just across the street where local law enforcement has told them they may legally gather to demonstrate.

He efficiently prepares a stainless steel rolling table. First, he covers the table with a sheet of disposable, sterile draping and, then, he sets his prepared syringes with their seemingly innocuous clear contents in a tidy line upon the draping. To that, he adds individually packaged alcohol swabs, a sharps disposal box, and a few other things. Finally, he sets a pencil down on the table. They do not allow pens in this facility, citing an inherent safety risk that pencils supposedly do not carry.

Dr. Ezra Powell nods to the guard at the heavy steel door. The guard, a burly fellow whose name escapes the good doctor, unlocks the door and follows as the elderly man pushes his cart through and into the hall beyond. The hall is still, lined by small kennels lined by cold, steel bars. Most of those kennels are occupied by cleanly shorn beasts too weak at this point to do much more than lift listless eyes to watch as the doctor nears their individual, cramped kennels. He stops at each, long enough for the guard to unlock the kennel, snatch the poor creatures by the arm and drag the slaves from their kennel long enough to receive a quick inoculation before shoving them back into their kennels. Some open their mouths to loose a moan or whimper as this goes on, but Vivaldi's strings drown out any sound from the test subjects.

At the last of the kennels, Powell pauses and frowns. The subject in the last kennel lies too still. He gestures to the guard for him to pull the slave – a young, pale and emaciated woman – from her kennel. The guard hauls her up, but she cannot support her weight. Instead, she hangs limply, held up only by the guard's meaty paws. Powell checks her over quickly and shakes his head; the guard dumps the subject back in her kennel. It is unlikely she will be alive by morning, but such is the way of clinical trials.

At the end of his shift, Powell finishes his files for the trials and locks up his cabinets. He does not clean. A specially trained slave – not from his test pool, of course - will clean and sterilize the entire lab before morning. Before leaving, Powell turns off the music and breathes a sigh of relief to find that the angry protests have died down for the night.

The guard at the front desk tips his head to the doctor and falls into stride with Powell on the way to the door. It is protocol that the laboratory is always locked and under guard 24 hours a day. It was not always this way, but, once those slave-sympathizers discovered the nature of this lab and its subjects, the protests began. After a few altercations with the protestors, the company decided that the cost of additional security outweighed the risk of the protestors beyond the door.

"Hey there, Dr. Powell."

The doctor dips his head. "Evening, George."

"Would you like an escort to your car?" the guard offers amiably.

"No, I'm fine," Powell answers, shaking his head and peering out the door. "Looks quiet out there tonight."

"Yeah, they got bored an hour ago and left," George explains as he unlocks the door for the doctor. "Are you sure you don't want an escort?"

"No, but thanks just the same."

George nods and opens the door for the doctor. "Alright, but I'll be watching out 'til you get to your car."

Powell smiles softly and shakes his head as he walks out towards the parking lot. George is a hulking man with broad shoulders, built like John Henry himself. Yet, he is a surprisingly caring man. George always makes sure the elderly man gets to his car safely and has even saved the doctor from confrontations with the protestors on numerous occasions. However, tonight is quiet and peaceful, and there is not a single person in sight to cause George any alarm.

When he reaches his white Volvo, Dr. Powell swears under his breath. Someone has vandalized his car, scratching deep scores into the rather fresh paint job with a key or either sharp, object. It is not the first time someone has keyed his car, nor will it be the last, he knows. His car seems to be popular among the protestors for defacing. Tonight, the scratches read "MONSTER" and "MURDERER" among a sea of profanities across the hood of his car. The elderly man shakes his head; he just had his car repainted a month and a half ago.

If only the protestors truly understood what he was doing here, what could be gained by this. They were so close now, so very close to finding a cure. Within the course of the next ten years, maybe fifteen, if they were lucky and continued at the pace they were going, cancer could be eradicated. Thousands of people cured with a simply inoculation as opposed to the crippling side-effects of chemotherapy. Does that not outweigh the measly cost of life of a few dozen slaves?

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The tidy report upon his mahogany desk bears ill tidings indeed. Juniper class buoy tender USCGC Elm (WLB – 204) had spotted an unmarked "go-fast boat" to the west of Delaware Bay, perhaps 13 nautical miles off the New Jersey coast and just outside of territorial waters. Upon attempting to hail the vessel, Elm received no response, and the go-fast boat had rocketed away at speeds the tender could not hope to achieve, bearing North. Go-fast boats are traditionally favored by pirates, smugglers, and terrorists alike for their speed and the difficulty detecting go-fast boats in anything save extremely calm seas or within a close range. Armed with that knowledge and the suspicious behavior of the vessel, the Coast Guard has issued a warning for all New Jersey sea-faring vessels and coastal waters.

He frowns. There are rumors, fluttering about, of this so-called Alliance. Pirates and terrorists, attacking major slave traders and owners. Thieves, stealing away precious slaves. Traitors at best, facilitating in the escape of runaway slaves by keeping them hidden and trafficking runaways to freedom. Rumor also has it, they operate primarily at sea, just outside of territorial waters and US jurisdiction. He was not elected governor to ignore the voices of his people nor such glaring evidence that something is afoul.

In the end, it is a simple decision. He signs the paper and hands it to his awaiting slave for general distribution immediately. The Coast Guard can handle the high seas, but he must tend to the land. He orders an immediate increase in security and law enforcement patrolling of all ports and waterways along the coast, as well as all coastal hospitals until further notice.

With his luck, nothing will happen, and the Republicans will just cite this as yet another incident of his over indulgent spending.

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He worries about the slave. Diagnostics is currently without a patient, leaving Greg to work the clinic. Greg does, dutifully, but he seems listless. His every movement is nearly mechanical, as though the spark within him has somehow dimmed. When Wilson mentions this to Cuddy, she tells him not to be concerned. This, apparently, happens every year.

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After his morning clinic shift, the slave slowly, painfully ascends the stairs to the Diagnostics office and to his cubby hole in the back. His fellows give him a passing glance as he enters and drift past them, but they say nothing and return to filing their charts. Evidently, there is no new case for him. That is fine; he is tired and eager to be alone in his cubby, away from the hospital, away from the world and everyone in it for as long of respite as granted between clinic shifts.

It is waiting for him, on his desk, as it does on the first Friday of every new fiscal year. He has been waiting all day, actually, for it to arrive. He limps to his plain, utilitarian desk and lifts the manila envelope, thumbing through it idly. One of the administration clerks has carefully assembled this for Greg every year without fail, and it bears Cuddy's signature and approval. It is an earnings and cost statement, balancing down to his current debt. Greg shakes a little as he spies the current principle and staggers to his bunk.

Three years into his servitude, Greg had calculated based off of his earnings before going into slavery weighed against his debt that he was due his freedom. He had even waited a few months extra, biding his time to be certain that he had accrued enough to even account for any calculation error on his part or interest. At least, that is what Greg tells himself. Truth be told, it took nearly four months for Greg to work up the courage to present his calculations to Cuddy.

The dean had simply scoffed. Earned his freedom? Who was he kidding? She had summarily presented the slave with his file. Greg had been surprised to find that his purchase price was nearly twice his initial debt and included "reeducation" fees to account for the cost of the Slave Administration's rigorous grooming to servitude. Beneath that had been a detailed list of the various costs that went into keeping a slave like Greg and in keeping his department. Clothing. Food. Shelter. Grooming. His internet access. His supplies. His fellows. Cuddy had billed him for everything, including the costs of disciplinary actions filed against him (apparently, the disciplinary officers are highly trained and quite pricy for their ability to deliver "humane" whippings). He had even been physically sickened to find that his weekly medical exams and STD testing – a thing only necessitated by the frequent rapes or "sexual usage" as was the politically correct term – were tallied along with the rest of his costs. Cuddy is a savvy bitch with accounting; she had even factored in interest upon his increasing debt.

Every year since then, Cuddy has provided Greg with his financial file without fail. That first year, he had cried, sobbing himself sick until he honestly spat up on Cuddy's lavish carpet before her guards hauled back to his cubby hole. He had not cried like that in his whole life. Cuddy had seemingly magnanimously given him the day off, but, upon closer inspection of the following year's statement, Greg discovered she had docked his earnings for that fruitless day spent in a sorrow so deep that it had seemed a living thing.

This year, like many others, he just curls up on his bunk, numb. He lies there, hollow and empty, clutching the file close to his chest for a few hours until his alarm chimes and heralds time to return to the clinic for evening shift. There is no sense in wasting any more time crying over this. Not anymore. His debt has skyrocketed over the years, especially after the infarction, and, now, there is no hope of him ever repaying his debt. Greg will wear his collar until the day he dies.

When Greg rights himself and shambles from his office, his fellows are not there. They have all probably gone home to their comfortably private and free homes to do... whatever it is freemen and women do in this day and age. It is a good thing. He does not want to see the curious looks on their faces that greet him yearly after receiving his earnings and losses detailed so plainly, so clinically for him.

He sighs to himself as he enters the clinic and notices the report blaring on the television suspended in the corner of the waiting room. There had been a time when the television played more than just News 12 NJ all day long, but, after several debates over programming forced Cuddy's hand, the television remains on the news. He listens, half-heartedly, as the report describes a possible run in with rebels of the high seas and the ramped up security for New Jersey. Greg shakes his head as the reporter goes on to mention a few incidents from the last few months attributed to slave sympathizers and terrorists known as the "Alliance." Surely, if this so-called Alliance existed, they would have come to save a slave as valuable to their cause as he long ago, for, as Cuddy is so apt to point out, a doctor with his skill is beyond a simple price tag.

The first few hours of his clinic shift pass easily and without thought, moving through life as though behind a screen. His first batch of patients include a downright moronic couple who have mistaken the common cold for the H1N1 virus, a delightfully classless candidate for MTV's 16 and Pregnant who will likely end up with her own locked fashion accessory about her neck some day, and an intoxicated frat student from TCNJ who proceeds to vomit copiously in the exam room as soon as Greg opens the door. Somehow, Greg cannot even find it in his heart to mock them as they rightfully deserve.

It is not until mid way through Greg's shift that a strange patient comes his way. It is a whelp of a boy, seventeen, maybe eighteen years old at the most, yet he has what Greg's grandmother would call "old eyes." Omma had said the same thing about Greg's eyes. The boy has a distal radius fracture, common enough at his age with high school sports and general horseplay roughing with age. However, what puts Greg off is the smell. When he gets close to examine the boy's arm and, later, to splint it, he nearly vomits. The boy stinks of Febreeze, and, beneath that, Greg catches the faint traces of salt and fish, the ocean. He glances down at the boy's shoe and, indeed, spies a solitary flake of large, milky-white cycloid scale at the side of the sole, just before the heel.

Greg blinks in surprise; Princeton-Plainsboro is nowhere near the ocean. If the boy had broken his wrist in a fishing or boating accident, he would have likely gone to the nearest hospital to his port, not waited to drive all the way to the other side of New Jersey it what had to be considerable pain for a freeman. There are plenty of hospitals nearly hugging the coast; Monmouth Medical even overlooks the ocean at the upper floors. The only reason he would come so far inland would be if he were avoiding the coastal hospitals.

The boy studies the guards beyond the exam area with subtle yet wary eyes and even keeps cautious watch upon Greg himself as he finishes applying the splint. The boy is vigilante but hiding it rather well, all things considered. He has every reason to be. Greg's heart hammers in his chest. If his own suspicions are correct…

When Greg binds the last strap on the splint, he leans in close, draws down his roll top slightly to display his collar, and dares whisper in the faintest of breaths, "Take me with you."

The boy's face wrinkles and contorts before settling upon an expression of contrived confusion, and he shakes his head. "What?"

"If I don't get out of here, I'm going to die," Greg whispers, knowing full well it is the truth now that he has made this gambit.

The boy scowls and recites the law bitterly, "Stealing any indentured human or assisting in the escape of any indentured human is a high crime tantamount to murder and punishable by death by hanging."

"Take me with you," Greg insists, hanging tightly to the boy's wrists, desperate now, for he knows that it is equally punishable by death for a slave to even attempt to elicit assistance to escape. "I know you're one of those sympathizers."

"I don't know what you're talking about," the patient shrugs, jerking his arms free of the slave's grasp.

"You're a sailor, why would you be this far inland if you weren't avoiding heightened security on the coast?"

The boy gives a terse shake of his head. "I was helping off load and clean a boat for a friend of mine before he vacuum seals it for dry dock this year. Winter fluke aren't biting, so he decided it wasn't worth the slip space and maintenance until spring if the fish aren't biting."

It makes sense. Many New Jersey recreational boaters own smaller vessels and store them in their driveways through the winter. New Jersey winters are cold, damp and miserable, worse the closer you get to the coast. It is just cheaper and easier. However, Greg cannot force himself to believe that, cannot push the hope mingled with fear down.

"So how'd you get hurt, then?" Greg demands, his voice cracking.

The boy levels a stern gaze upon him and states firmly, perhaps too firmly, "I slipped and fell while we were hosing her down."

"Please," Greg blurts, the first time he has voluntarily used that word in decades.

The boy leans close and hisses through his teeth, "I should report this to your owner."

"I should report you," the slave counters.

"For what?" The boy glares and points out, "If you report me, then you'd be admitting to having solicited assistance in running away."

"Please," Greg begs, choking on his own, cumbersome emotions as a tear escapes his eye. "Please, take me with you."

"I told you : I. Don't. Know. What. You're. Talking. About," the boy growls, forcibly annunciating each and every syllable before jumping to his feet, striding out, and slamming the door behind him.

Alone, Greg cries for some time before the guards come for him. Fortunately, it seems the kid has not reported his attempt to elicit a means of escape to the guards; they only want to make sure Greg is not in there wasting time. They say nothing of his tears, only bark at the slave to pull himself together for his next patient. Greg nods and scrubs his face clean, feeling so very foolish for having even held his breath. He is stupid for having thought that maybe some heroic, mythical group would come save him from his suffering. He is a slave. It is not for him to have hopes. Not anymore.

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Cuddy is surprised when Greg behaves himself that day. In truth, ever since signing off on Greg's financial paperwork this morning, Cuddy has been expecting a visit from any of her security staff. Greg has, in the past, dealt with his mounting debt rather poorly. He had cried and railed in the past, but he generally just accepts his debt mournfully these days. She anticipates the first Friday of the fiscal year with dread, wondering which year will be the year Greg does something truly regrettable over his debt.

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That night, when no punishments befall Greg for his crime of requesting escape, he cries, sobbing great big, childish tears as Wilson holds him close in the hotel room. Wilson shushes him gently, thinking these are merely the same tears Greg has cried each and every time Wilson has taken him for physical intimacy. He does not know that Greg cries because he knows, deep down inside, that his only chance at freedom has slipped right through his fingers.

The only reason Greg has received no punishment for eliciting assistance in escaping his bondage is because the boy did not report him. All freemen, freewomen, and enslaved persons are required by law to report a slave's attempt to escape or elicit escape. Most free people comply with this law in order to avoid hefty fines payable to the slave's owner, while enslaved persons comply to avoid severe punishment. Coupled with the boy's agitation and the circumstances of their meeting, there can be no question in Greg's mind. The boy was at the least a slave sympathizer and, quite possibly, a member of the underground railroads that are known to exist and traffic escaped slaves to freedom.

Greg cries because he knows he will wear his collar until he dies, for the risk to save him would surely damn them.

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It is late when three person crew of the 26 foot Skip Twice finally ties up alongside the seemingly gargantuan yacht dubbed the Freedom's Flight. Jasper hardly utters more than five words the entire passage of nearly twenty nautical miles to the agreed upon rendezvous point. He had been quiet and irritable the entire return trip to port after the accident, but, now, he is downright stone faced and silent.

Jasper is lucky, she knows. Just the night before, on yet another routine "fishing trip" on the little pleasure-craft during a winter swell, he had slipped from the much higher deck of the vessel Verne and tumbled down to the deck of the Skip Twice. He had landed rather poorly, his arms propped out to brace for impact. The crack of his wrist had been nearly audible, and his scream had been downright bloodcurdling. Yet, it could have been far worse. Had Jasper fallen between the two rolling ships, he would have fallen into the frigid North Atlantic and risked hypothermia at best or been crushed between the sturdy hulls at worst. A broken wrist is the least of their concerns compared to what might have happened.

She admires Jasper, secretly, although she will never encourage his particular brand of stupidity by admitting this. Jasper had steadied himself after a few moments and demanded someone bind up his arm enough to head back to port. They had a mission to complete. He had grit his teeth as she splinted his arm between a few pieces of thick cardboard and wrapped it with duct tape. Once their cargo had been transferred to the Verne, Jasper had piloted the Skip Twice back to port, cut his arm loose, and made the conscious decision to drive himself from Atlantic Highlands all the way down to Princeton in order to avoid arousing suspicion. Then, he had returned promptly to the little Highlands marina in order to make another run that night and not miss the rendezvous at Skeleton Hill and the subsequent meeting with the Freedom's Flight.

Jasper exchanges a few words with the captain of the Freedom's Flight, a gruff fellow by the name of Paul Bently. Paul and he shake hands, and, when Jasper nods, Mike and she begin the process of transferring their precious cargo to the Flight. A few crew members from the Flight climb down to assist as they pull up decking and reveal huddled, blinking forms curled up in the bowels of the Skip Twice.

They move slowly and gently, waiting patiently for the recently freed slaves to extricate themselves from the safety of the dark little cubbyholes beneath the decks. Both the crew of the Skip Jack and the Freedom's Flight have learned through the years to allow the former slaves to move at their own pace. Neither crew can afford to allow the newly freed to have much freedom until after psychiatric evaluation and counseling at their final destination – a location not disclosed to the crew of the Skip Twice as they play the highest risk of apprehension by the authorities as a result of operating so close to shore. They have all learned the hard way to be cautious among the freshly freed. However, this limited freedom of movement is the first small liberty of the many that will follow after years of servitude.

Jasper scans both radar and the horizon as the crew of the Skip Twice and the crew of the Freedom's Flight slowly assist the six former slaves that had been concealed below to transfer to the larger vessel. Someone aboard the Freedom's Flight is also monitoring the horizon for any activity outside of their two vessels and a smaller, go-fast boat patrolling just beyond the periphery of their radar function. Generally, Jasper has his hands in every part of the former slaves' journey from the pick-up point at Skeleton Hill Island to their drop off to the many larger, long distance fairing vessels somewhere between twelve to twenty nautical miles off the coast of New Jersey.

Jasper says nothing until the transfer is complete and the Skip Twice is well on its way back to Highlands. He is unnerved by something, and she does not blame him. Jasper has risked everything. His parents – both staunch abolitionists - had been killed in an altercation with police at a peaceful demonstration that snowballed into a riot some years back, and he had used his settlement money to purchase the Skip Twice and start on this crazy endeavor of attempting to free the slaves. If they are ever caught, he will lose everything, including her.

As Sandy Hook comes into sight, he blurts out rather flatly, "He was a slave."

She furrows her brow. "Who?"

"The doc that patched me up last night," Jasper whispers, raising his splinted arm slightly.

She blinks in shock. She has never, in all her life, heard of a slave working as a physician of any form. It is unheard of in virtually every country in which slavery is legal. This slave must be of particular value to be allowed to practice medicine.

"He asked me to take him with me. He begged me to save him."

Her heart contracts sharply, melting to meet his pain, and she places a tender hand upon his shoulder. "You couldn't have saved him, not with the time table we had to keep tonight, and not without drawing unnecessary attention to us."

"I know…." He mutters under his breath, a bit too coldly for her liking.

She purses her lips together. "We could always put in a good word for him with the higher ups. Pick him up on another run."

"No."

She frowns. "No?"

Jasper shakes his head solemnly. "No. Even if they'd risk an op like that…. they wouldn't risk it for him."

She folds her arms across her chest. "And why the hell not? We could use a good doc on our side, instead of having to drive half way across the state any time someone gets banged up."

"He's crippled." The words fall from Jasper's tongue with a heavy grief.

"Crippled?" She chews her lip; there is still a chance. She calms herself and asks, "How badly?"

Jasper nods, slowly, firmly. "Bad. There's something wrong with his leg."

Her heart falls with his now. If this doctor had been an able bodied man, then the nameless, faceless others that the Skip Twice's crew answers to would certainly leap at the opportunity to secure his freedom in hopes that he might choose, like so many other slaves, to help in the good fight. However, a crippled or otherwise disabled slave cannot make the first leg of his or her journey; the crossing to Skeleton Hill. Skeleton Hill is a tiny spit of land, barely recognizable as an island, on the bay side of Sandy Hook. It is where rebels like the crew of the Skip Twice go to pick up newly freed slaves to ferry them to freedom. On extremely low spring tides, a strip of land connects the island to the mainland, allowing the escapees to walk across, but those occurrences are few and far between. Outside of those rare tides spanning no more than an hour or so, the crossing must be made by swimming. A physically disabled slave could never safely make the crossing, and the higher ranks would never willingly accept such a risk.

She takes his hand in hers and squeezes it tightly. "We can't save everyone, Jas."

"That's just it," he whispers, shaking his head. "We shouldn't have to."