Swallow (book 1 of the Swallow series)

24 January

Even tonight Alex asks me if I'm sure.

"It's a little late for that question," I say.

"No, it's not," he says.

He's never tried to talk me out of it, though. Mads would have. Mads would hate this. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

Alex asks me how I felt when I woke up this morning.

"I didn't wake up this morning," I say. "I don't remember the last time I slept. But I'm sure. You don't have to ask again."

He indulges me while I write the last of it down.

I saw my brother today. I caught him alone on patrol where they said he would be—there are rebel eyes everywhere. They are how I got my bike, how I found my brother, how I got there to see him today. It was all arranged. I arrived by truck, bike in the back, ready to give it to Jule.

I thought: I have to say it so he understands. He has to understand.

He has to.

He wasn't glad to see me. I didn't expect him to be. He was surprised, confused, and so grown up I thought this man in the police uniform couldn't possibly be my brother, but the name tag said "J. FISHER, 1st Lt." He resembled our dad, but our dad never looked that severe and would have never worn a uniform like that.

I'd said it all as plainly and clearly as I could without telling him too much, but he still didn't get it.

"What the fuck are you talking about? What happened? Where the hell have you been? My C.O. has been on my ass wanting to know about you. I was damn near arrested."

"The bike is yours," I said. "Take it and go."

"Martene, what did you do?"

I took his hand. "Listen to me, Jule. You have to do what I say. You have to trust me. Please get out of here. You can leave on a boat from the Port of Tampa tonight. Warn Iris if you can, but you have to be at the port by twenty-two hundred hours. There is a boat captain who'll be watching for you. If you don't, you're as good as dead."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Ten o'clock, Jule. Go, now. Please."

I pulled him to me and hugged him tight enough to last the rest of his life.

"I'm sorry. Here's some money if you need it." I love you, I thought, but didn't say.

"Don't follow me."

I walked to the truck, and he was coming after me, waving his arms in the air.

"What the fuck!"

He tried to follow but we lost him. I don't know what I would have done if we hadn't. I pray he is on his way the Port of Tampa now.

It's dark in the back of this transport truck and it's stuffy. I should be used to writing in the dark by now. Sweat trickles down the middle of my back. My fingers are slick against the pen and it keeps slipping.

It's been parked here since this morning, since before Alex and I arrived. It's not the only one in the veterans' park. There are other trucks and backhoes and heavy machines sitting idle here, but it's the only one with an airplane in the back of it.

The Swallow arrived by truck in the pieces that surround us now and we will assemble it after sunset. When Alex sees that all is in order, he will leave and it'll just be me here without even the journal that has been my connection to all that was and is.

Mads was right about almost everything, but he was wrong about one thing.

I do belong here. I belong exactly here, right now, and nowhere else.

It's almost a new moon tonight. So dark out there, and that will cover me. The darkness I used to fear has been my protection all along.

This is the right time. It has been arranged.

He doesn't know my name. He's never met me, never seen me, not really. He does not know me, but I am going to kill him.

This isn't like it was with Rabbit. I'm not doing this for me. I'm not doing this because I want to. This is for them, the Forgotten Ones. I am shining light on places kept dark for too long. The world will see what he has done—what they all have done—and the world will remember. I'm cutting the head off the snake. One head, one snake. There are more. There are always more. But the rest, I think, will be up to someone else.

You can call me a murderer and you wouldn't be wrong. You can call me a traitor. But I am not a terrorist and I am not a martyr.

I will make it out of this if I can. I believe it's possible. If I do make it or if I don't, that's okay. And if I should arrive someplace in between, I have insurance. I have rubbed the tip of my tongue against the edge of the tooth, reassuring myself it's there, so many times it's sore. I will have my out if I need it.

I can't see tomorrow, but I can see the way to where I'm going tonight.

I belong here. Too many small miracles have kept me on this path.

I lost everything and everyone, but I am here.

I have done good works, but I am not good.

I have done evil, but I am not evil.

I was here. We all were. And I once flew so close to the sun the world looked like it was made of fucking gold.

It was always going to end this way. If not exactly like this, then some other version of it. But the outcome would always be the same. We picked a side. We were never going to have a long life.

I should have been put on a bus to a work camp when I was nineteen, but I wasn't. I should have been executed that same year for saying about the ruling family what no sane person would dare say out loud. I wasn't. I should have drowned in that well, but I didn't drown. I should have been poisoned by rebels, but I escaped. The bullet should have gone through my spine, but it went through books instead.

George from basic, who kept me from the prison bus, the sergeant in charge of the administration building who gave me a job when I could have been executed instead, Puneet, who led me to become a pilot, the family in the apartment in City A and the man who opened that door. Mads. The rebels who I first escaped and then joined.

They all brought me here.

I could have been any one of the people on the paths I didn't take. I am them. I am the civil worker, the teacher, the obedient citizen I would have been if things had been different. I am the farm worker whose skin turns to leather picking peppers under the sun, the woman in a prison uniform with a hunched back and a shovel, moving dirt and watching the years go by, the escort on the arm of a foreign businessman, the woman behind a hood, facing the executioner's rifle in the dark while people cheer from the other side of the fence, the woman wearing the uniform, following the rules, following orders, just doing a job. I am all of them.

I am you, and you are me. And like me, whoever you are, whenever you are reading this, you are a part of something whether you want to be or not. Maybe something good or something evil. It's up to you to choose a side. Everyone chooses.

No doubt you have noticed the place names and coordinates I have written in the margins of every page I have written in this journal. If the whole journal doesn't survive and only some of the pages, or even one page, is left, the coordinates will be there. They're where you will find the sites I have written about or evidence they existed: Atrocities, Tustenegee, Draper, City A, Hospitality House, Cloudland.

I am leaving this journal with Alex, this record of my life, the truth as I know it. The truth as I have been able to tell it to you.

What will Alex do with my pages? That is for him to decide. Preserve or destroy. Words are dangerous, yes, but they are all we have. Our words make us free. Words can outlive us all.

Maybe you will read the truths I have collected and recorded in words.

Maybe they will save you.

Martene Fisher, former first lieutenant, NAUAS