Episode 2garbe

I reached into my pocket and felt the nano-blood ball, the small non-glowing weight of it, warm from my body heat. I had not let it go since buying it. It was nothing, a piece of nothing, but it was mine. It did not shine, and that was precisely why I trusted it.

Then the knock came.

Not a knock, really. A fist against the door, heavy, deliberate, the kind that does not ask to be let in but announces that it will enter anyway. Iron hands. I had heard about them long before I ever saw them, whispered stories in the stairwells of the Dark Place, warnings passed between mouths that did not open wide enough to be caught. Iron hands. Police who wore their violence like a second skin.

The children looked at me. My son’s lip trembled for a moment, then steadied. My daughter stood up, blocking her brother with her small body, as if she could shield him from whatever came through that door. I wanted to tell her to stop. I wanted to tell her she was still a child. But the words were not heavy enough to push through the fear in my throat.

“Stay behind me,” I said, and I was proud that my voice did not shake, even though my hands did.

I opened the door a crack. The hallway beyond was dim, lit by the sickly yellow of a failing bulb, and two figures stood there. They were dressed in dark uniforms with patches I did not need to read to recognize. One was tall, one was shorter, both had faces that seemed carved from stone, no emotion, no flicker of warmth. Behind them, the corridor stretched like a throat.

“Mank,” said the tall one. It was not a question. “You know why we are here.”

“I don’t,” I said, and I kept my voice steady.

Something in the short one’s jaw tightened. “You have been seen. Unauthorized purchase. Unregistered object.”

My heart lurched. The ball in my pocket seemed to grow heavier, like it was trying to drag me down into the floor. I had paid in scrip, untraceable, the vendor was trusted. Or I had believed so. But trust in the Dark Place was a currency that devalued by the hour.

I thought about denying it. I thought about lying, about making up excuses, about trying to seem small and harmless and not worth their time. But I had learned long ago that iron hands did not listen to words. They heard only the sound of their own authority.

“It’s a toy,” I said instead. “Just a toy.”

The tall one smiled, and it was the most frightening thing I had seen in months. “Let us see the toy.”

Behind me, I heard my son make a small noise, not quite a gasp, not quite a sob. My daughter whispered to him, something low and soothing, and I felt a surge of love so fierce it almost hurt.

I pulled the ball from my pocket.

It sat in my palm, dull and grey, no shine, no glow, just a small round object that looked like nothing. It was supposed to be a source of quiet hope, something real in a world of artificial dimness. But now it looked like a weapon, or an accusation.

The short one stepped forward and snatched it from my hand before I could pull back. He turned it over, pressed it, held it to his ear as if it might whisper secrets. Then he grunted.

“Nano-blood,” he said. “Illegal.”

“It’s nothing,” I said again, and my voice cracked. “It doesn’t do anything. It’s just a ball.”

“It is contraband,” the tall one said, and he looked past me, into the room, at the two small shadows huddled together. “And you have children here. Under the Protection Act, we are required to assess the environment.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. The Protection Act. The law that was supposed to keep children safe but was used, always, to tear families apart. I had heard the stories. Children taken, re-educated, made into obedient little soldiers for the Dark Place. I had prayed, in my way, that it would never happen to mine.

“They’re fine,” I said, and I stepped aside, trying to block the doorway more completely. “They have everything they need. I’m their parent. I care for them. We are fine.”

The tall one’s eyes glinted. “You bought an illegal object. In this household. That is not fine.”

I could see my daughter’s face over his shoulder. She was pale, but her eyes were fierce, and I knew she was thinking about running. She was fast, so fast. But where would she run in the Dark Place? There was nowhere. That was the cruelest part.

I opened my mouth to speak again, to plead, to bargain, to do anything, but nothing would come out. I felt my heart pounding in my ears, a frantic drumbeat against the silence.

Then the short one dropped the ball.

It hit the floor with a dull thud and rolled, past the door, past the two officers, coming to rest at the feet of a child who had somehow slipped out from behind me. My son. He stood there, small and trembling, and he picked up the ball with both hands and held it against his chest.

“Don’t take it,” he said, his voice smaller than I had ever heard it. “It’s mine. It’s just a ball. It doesn’t glow. You said glowing things are dangerous. It doesn’t glow.”

The officers stared at him. I stared at him. My heart was a stone in my chest.

The tall one crouched down, bringing his face level with my son’s. For a moment, I thought he might reach out, might grab the boy, and I tensed, ready to throw myself between them, to do whatever I had to do.

But he just looked at him. A long, searching look. Then he straightened up and turned to his partner.

“It doesn’t glow,” he said. “That’s not a violation of the Glow Ordinance.”

“But it’s nano-blood,” the short one said. “It’s listed.”

“It doesn’t glow,” the tall one repeated. And something in his voice was different, almost tired. “Contraband if it glows, if it interferes, if it transmits. This is a ball. A dull ball. The child says it’s his. Let it be his.”

The short one looked like he wanted to argue, but he did not. In the Dark Place, you learned to recognize when the iron hands were not welded to their purpose. This was one of those rare moments, a loosening, a small crack in the machine.

The tall one looked at me. “Keep it. And keep it quiet. If we come back, it won’t be for a ball.”

Then they left. The door closed. The hallway swallowed them up.

I stood there, shaking, and then I turned and fell to my knees in front of my son. He was still holding the ball, clutched to his chest, his eyes wide and wet. My daughter came and wrapped her arms around both of us, and we stayed like that for a long time, a huddle of warmth in the cold.

I took the ball from my son’s hands, gently, and turned it over. It was still dull. Still nothing. Still the most precious object I had ever possessed.

“You were brave,” I said to him. “You were so brave.”

He wiped his nose and looked at me with those too-old eyes. “I know,” he said. “You taught me.”

I almost laughed. I almost cried. I did both, probably.

That night, after the children were asleep, I sat by the window and looked out at the dark city that pressed against the glass like a living thing. The ball sat in my lap, small and heavy and real. Somewhere beyond the rooftops, beyond the iron hands and the laws and the dimness, there were mountains. I had never seen them, but I remembered them from somewhere, from some past life, from the stories my heart told even when I did not believe.

I did not know if I would ever reach them. But I knew I would try. I would keep trying, for the two small souls sleeping behind me, for the tiny dull ball that was not contraband, for the light that did not glow but still existed.

I would keep trying. That was the only faith I had.