15


"Have you ever thought of expanding our population by having children?" Nicolette, the 3--I member, said.


"Definitely," Jeremy said. "There needs to be more different people in the world."


"Yeah... I need some company," a shy girl named Chloe said. "I'm not good at making friends. I'm anxious. Ever since that first time they shocked me..."


"Activists, man!" Marck said. "We need more. So yeah, more kids."


"I wouldn't be able to look after a normal kid," Lester confessed. "But if he had Asperger's like me, it's be easy... I'd practically be able to read his mind."


"Why he and his all the time?" Helen said. "But yeah... we need to make enough people like us where they won't want to mess with us or the likes of us."


"I want someone to love unconditionally," Dannisse said. "If Dope house taught me one thing, it's that I wasn't treated right, and I want so badly to see just one person in my world treating someone else right. I decided that that one person might as well be me."


"Are you ready?" Lester asked Dannisse, beaming.


Dannisse nodded.


After the meeting, Dannisse and Lester went to the Bunker to have sex in front of the captive teachers.


Dannisse and Lester were open, honest people, after all.

16


Lester and Dannisse pushed the slop into the last teachers' cell, then stepped back to watch the teachers' reactions to it.


None of them even complained any more. And that was saying something, as the slop was made from food past its due date ground up and diluted with water. It was the cheapest way to go for the 3--I and the rescued students, who could barely hunt, gather or shop enough to feed themselves.


They drank the slop out of the tin bowls. Drank it right down; all of it.


One of them threw up into his bowl, then drank it again. Dannisse recognized him as Arnold Blum, who had shocked her for tactfully criticizing Hope House in her essay about the subject. Yes, they had all been FORCED to write the essays, and say only good about Hope House. Dannisse had said good things about it, but some bad with it. She had been a new student at the time though... new and naive, falling for the lovebombing during her first week until they had started treating her like swine. If she had been made to write the essay a week later, she would have had nothing good to say about the place at all.


Dannisse had been shocked for telling the truth.


She had told them about that boy at her residence who had been electrocuted in the shower, about the boy in her class who had died in class after being shocked, the girl who had had a seizure after being shocked in the auditorium for not looking straight ahead at the guest speaker (a radical vegetarian who had gone on and on about how all food except green vegetables was evil), about Helen being fined reward points during math "class" for going to the nurse, about being shocked herself for dropping her books on the floor once after tripping on the uneven floor in a hallway.

17


"More breaking news."


Maggie leapt out of bed, falling two bunks down to the floor on her ankle, breaking her ankle, hobbling off at top speed regardless, to the neighboring lounge.


She even had the enthusiasm to count thirteen 3--I members and nine ex-Hope House-students huddled around the television, sitting on the green rubber couch, standing in the doorways, lying on the floor, sitting on the tables.


"The radical activist cult 3--I, or International Incident Initiators..."


("So they're calling us a cult now?" a 3--I member named Phoebe muttered.)


"...have finally spoken."


There were gasps. This could not be good. Yes, they had spoken on the webcam, but that was no secret. Therefore, this must mean that some of the 3--I members in custody must have finally ratted them out.


And then there was a video. A video of a man with scratches on his face, not to mention a huge gash in his cheek. His cheek looked like it had been stitched back together with dental floss. He was wearing a prison uniform. Blue, though, not orange. Christolph thought to himself, They changed the color of the uniforms on purpose so that we wouldn't be wearing our color in prison...so hilarious! Blue... the opposite of orange. Psychological control?


"They're in the woods," the prisoner said in a depressed tone. "In a lodge in the woods."


"NO!" Jeremy shouted, leaping up and slopping his bowl of ramen noodle soup all over himself and the floor, the bowl clanging and clattering away across the floor. Maggie jumped too, and landed on her bad ankle again, injuring it further.


Sharona, Phoebe, Dorsey, Christolph, Benjamin, and the other 3--I members looked like they wanted to do the same thing.


"...a boathouse and large log cabin in New York State."


"That's our decoy lodge! Relax!"


"It's Mileva's grandparents' lodge, and it's empty."


Regardless, it took about half an hour for everyone to decompress after that, though in another hour they were laughing about it.

18


Tanya Turrett was the one that got away.


The people at the Lodge thought she had been caught, the media and law enforcement and caught students thought she was at the lodge.


But Tanya had escaped, dodging from house to house as the police did their door to door sweep.


Now the roadblocks were gone, and Tanya was at her grandmother's house in the country.


"I can't believe they'd do this to children," Grandma said as she bustled about rearranging the house for their new plan. "Let me tell you, my girl, I'll do anything in my power to keep you children out of there and safe. Mark my words."


"What can we do?"


"We'll dig a bunker," Grandpa Turrett said. "We'll hide you all in there, and we'd better start now, because soon they will recognize that you are not with them, and they will come here looking for you."


"That means we'll have to break them out of wherever they're at now," Tanya said.


"I'll find out where they're keeping them," Grandpa said. "And then I'll find out which places don't treat them well." He ushered Tanya and her grandmother outside and headed over to the bulldozer.

19


"They're going to eat us out of house and home!" the 3--I member named Mikelle exclaimed as they watched ten students chowing down around the table in the kitchen.


"At least they're not puking it up any more and then needing more," Sharona shot back.


Marck could not control himself. He had lost 300 pounds at Hope House, but now he had gained back 100 of that, and he had only been here for two weeks.


"It's the medications," Dorsey said. "Like for example, Marck is on Zyprexa. It makes him crave carbohydrates."


"We're gonna need to find some drug that decreases their appetite, and fast," a 3--I member named Gwen said. "We only have so much. I didn't eat at all today, because I had to give my food to a little girl... poor thing, grossly overweight, but she was starving."


"For me it's the anxiety," Dorsey said, stuffing three more cookies into his mouth at once.


"Dorsey, you are not helping matters," Gwen said in a stern, scolding tone, seeming to insinuate that Dorsey should have given his food to one of the students.


"They're all going to get diabetes," Sharona said. "But what can we do? We can't shock them whenever they reach for another cookie. That would be torture."

20

Bang, bang, bang.


Everyone in the mess hall looked up. It was coming from downstairs; they could hear the floor vibrating under their feet.


"Is that gunshots?" Isis asked, looking up, alarmed.


"It's just someone slamming the door over and over again," Jeremy said. "Probly one of the autistic kids."


"Or that OCD guy," Helen said, grinning. "Hey, guys, did you hear of him? That one that wears gloves all the time now? Jason, I think his name is. He washed his hands 85 times, then had to touch the doorknob to get out of the bathroom and then realized he'd have to wash his hands 85 times again, so he got angry and slammed the door 85 times."

But it wasn't Jason the OCD guy.


Gwen and Sharona ran outside and down the stairs, then burst into the girls' dorm to find a bloodied, bruised girl on a top bunk lying quite still.


It was the girl who had tried to kill herself in the bathroom.


Suddenly, though, she jerked to life, spazzing so badly she and Sharona almost fell off the top bunk. Finally, they did... onto something soft.


"AAAAH!"


"SHARONA!" Gwen shouted.


They had fallen on another child, the little girl named Dee who hung out with the 7-year-old boy who had admired Myron, the little boy Helen had taken to Sharona to tell his story on the webcam.


Gwen rushed toward them.


Sharona hurriedly disentangled herself from the suicidal girl and looked up to see if Dee was okay.


Dee was laid out on the floor with her neck at a wierd angle.


Her neck was broken.


"Don't move, Dee, or you'll break it further... I'm so sorry, honey, it's my fault, I'm so sorry!" Sharona said. "We'll get help for you."


But first, there was the other girl to deal with. She was lying still yet again, on the floor where they had fallen, next to Dee, who was screaming and crying in pain while Gwen yelled for someone to come with morphine.


Sharona looked down at the suicidal girl.


Her eyes were half closed. Her mouth was half closed. Her hands were half closed.


She had no pulse. Wasn't breathing either. Her head was in a rapidly-growing pool of blood.


Sharona had rushed to save a sixteen-year-old girl who would have died anyway, and had broken the neck of a seven-year-old girl in the process.


NO! Not true; this couldn't be. Sharona began CPR on the 16-year-old.

21


"That little girl is lucky I got here the other day, or she woulda been paralyzed," the doctor said as the pine box containing 16-year-old Alizee Hortensen was dropped with a splash into its grave next to Myron.


"Ali was a real good kid," the OCD boy named Jason said as he polished the stainless steel plaque in his hand with hand sanitizer. The plaque said "Here lies Alizee Hortensen, free at last."


"She never knew freedom," her friend Mo'nique spoke up. "She was locked up all her life. They even punished her before she got to Hope House. They called her mentally retarded because she banged her head against the wall instead of using faster methods of death, because she was locked up with no weapons... how else COULD she commit suicide? The being labeled as retarded is what hurt her more than anything else."


"I tried to talk to her about it, but she was too traumatized to even admit it had happened to her," the 3--I doctor went on. "I feel her death is partially my responsibility because try as I might, I could not do much to help her. She clearly felt she was still at Hope House, or rather, just at another place that would punish her. It was all she ever knew. She could have easily got her hands on a knife, on medication, on a gun even, but she did not think she could. She thought this was another lockup. And that is why she suffered so much before she died."

22


The one thing Anielka liked about her new placement was that she was allowed to watch the news live, rather than in taped, censored bits. She was now on a high security psychiatric ward, along with some of her friends who had also been caught, but it wasn't as restrictive as Hope House.


After the news was over Anielka went back to her room to catch up on the years of sleep she had missed at Hope House. They had shocked her in the middle of the night almost every night for snoring, then shocked her for falling asleep in class in the daytime.


Anielka woke up to what seemed to be a dream about her friend Tanya Turrett. Tanya was standing over her. But Tanya hadn't been among Anielka's friends who had been sent here. She must have been transferred in just now.


"Hey, Tanya! When did you get here! When were you transferred in!"


"I wasn't. I'm here to get you out of here."


"How the *** are you gonna do that?"


Then Anielka heard how. The boy with the low verbal IQ was shouting out in the dayroom. "NO! NO GO BACK! DON'T WAN GO BACK! NO NO BACK! NO!"


"We're not taking you back, silly. Hope House is burned to the ground. We're taking you somewhere safe."


The boy didn't seem to understand. He kept shouting, terrified he would be taken back to Hope House.


Anielka followed Tanya out into the dayroom to find the staff tied up and gagged on the floor, and an old man and woman with guns leading the patients off the unit.


"I'm kind of sad to leave here," one boy said to the girl next to him.


"We can't risk it," another grownup with a gun said. "They could rebuild Hope House. But if you come with us we promise we will take you somewhere safe. We know activists. We have connections."


The staff behind the desk at the mental hospital had not even had time to call for or summon help. Cornelius, the staff member closest to the button under the desk that the staff pressed to summon the Special Teams, had been darted in the hand as the group had come in, two by two, each pair asking to see a diffferent patient, as patients were only allowed two visitors at a time. The staff lay on the floor tied up and gagged, waiting for Housekeeping to come and find them when it was time to clean the dayroom.


Grandpa Turrett and Tanya hurried the patients out the back door and across the parking lot to the school bus they had rented. Grandma Turrett was waiting behind the wheel.


The former Hope House students were grinning from ear to ear, excited about the adventure. And the second chance at escape. They had given up and decided to simply enjoy their reprieve in the mental hospital until they were sent to worse institutions or Hope Hosue was rebuilt. Now, they could not believe their luck!


The school bus turned off the highway and lumbered along the back road toward the Turretts' farm. The students were all lost in their own thoughts, even as they chatted excitedly.


Anielka wondered where the others were, her friends. Who had been caught and who was still missing? The police had released the names on huge posters, but there hadn't been one on the unit. Myron Jeffries had been mentioned on the news, and she had even SEEN Jeremy and Lester on the news, on the run, talking to the media via a recorded message. Of the others, she did not know.


Steffi Dell had always dreamed of running free in the country and being free to yell without people calling the cops. She grew more and more excited as they went further into the country.


Donnie French, the boy who had thought the Turretts had come to take them back to Hope House, sensed that this would just make it harder. He didn't care where they were going. He didn't care if they killed him. He just wanted away from the torture of Hope House, a place where they wouldn't let him die, and they wouldn't let him live either.


Kray Peters was happy because he doubted there would be structured schooling there and he would be able to play basketball out in the country all the time, instead of just as a reward at Hope House. He could really develop the skill he had, rather than being back at Dope House always being the fish judged on his ability to climb a tree.


After the students were safe in the bunker the Turretts had just built before springing the students, Grandpa Turrett drove the bus back to the place he had rented it from, while Grandma Turrett drove the Turretts' car over the tracks the bus had made in the dirt. She did one side on her way out and the other on her way back. Then she went to a party store, a pharmacy, and a thrift shop to shop for the students.


Wigs, glasses, contact lenses, prosthetic noses, spray-on tanner, stilts for the inside of boots, second-hand clothing. The Turretts grew their own food, so that wasn't an issue. Once the students were disguised some of them could help Grandma Turrett prepare the food. She then went to pick up Grandpa Turrett and drove home for the last time.

23


Forgetting for two seconds of what might become of her, Anielka stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her white skin was now brown. Her blue eyes were now brown. Her long blonde hair was now black and curly. She no longer wore the dress and flats she had been wearing when she had escaped Hope House. She now wore a business suit and Stilettos. And she would probably gain a few pounds too, what with Grandma Turrett's cooking.


But what would they do with the others? Thankfully their neighbors were miles away, but any police helicopter could swoop in on any large group of young people at any moment and ask for their ID.


They needed fake ID.


As Anielka carried a bucket of strawberries over to the bunker for the other students, she wondered where she could get it.


"No prob," Kray said, after Anielka explained the situation. "I'm in with the in crowd, baby." He jabbed his finger into something in the palm of his hand. Anielka saw that it was a phone number, written on his hand.


The cell phone number of a member of the International Incident Initiators.


Half an hour later, Tanya headed out with Grandpa Turrett to a store a few towns over, to buy a disposable cell phone.


A few minutes after the cell phone was purchased, the phone rang at the home of Gwen, one of the International Incident Initiators.


She wasn't there.


But the police were.


Gwen had left her cell phone behind because she didn't know how to turn it off or disable the tracking system.


A female officer picked up the phone.


"Hi," a boy's voice said from the other end.


The female officer, Fatima James, did what she had been instructed to do. Opening her mouth and beginning in Gwen's high-pitched baby voice, she heard herself say, "Hi, this is Gwen Sebastien. How may I help you?"

24


The plane was flying low over the camp.


Too low.


Everyone was panicking. Could this be a military plane?


A bipolar 3--I member named Merrie ran outside with her rifle and started shooting at it.


It went away.


But not before its occupants sent the coordinates of the Camp back to the military.


Immediately, the 3--I members called everyone to an emergency meeting.


They ate as much of the perishable food as they could during the meeting, then loaded the nonperishable food and other essentials, and then themselves, into the vehicles and drove back into the tunnel.


"Where should we go?" Maggie asked a 3--I member named Dunstable.


"I don't know. A few of the 3--I who did not go to Hope House and are thus not known are going to go and get some disguises for all of you. Then we can use their vehicles to transport you guys elsewhere. The Lodge was our headquarters though, so expect to be split up. We don't have another outpost, unless you count our office building that we grew out of. At the time we were using it, there were only about 300 of us in the Initiators. Now there are over a thousand. I lost count. Plus all of you... no way they aren't going to notice a large group of people living there. We can't disguise it as a telemarketing company anymore; not with kids and that many people for such a small building and people banging their heads and yelling."

25


Dear President Obama,


My name is Lucas Guidry. I used to go to Hope House. After I graduated, I served my country in the US Armed Forces. I was shocked when I saw my school on the news.


Shocked in a good way.


Then, within hours, we were called in and once again, I was back at my school. I didn't want to jeopardize my military career, but when I saw my old friend who was still there, and she saw me, and we locked eyes, my conscience took over. I took off my uniform and joined the crowd. I boarded a bus with my weapons. The bus was full of students and teachers from Hope House, as well as members of the International Incident Initiators. I fired out the bus windows and killed three police officers. I am so sorry I had to do this. I am not writing this letter to beg your pardon. But had to are the operative words here. The children must come first.


We got caught at the highway, and I had to surrender my weapons or get killed. We were all split up and it was soon found out who I was and as of now I write this sitting here on federal death row.


Let me tell you something else: I have Asperger's Syndrome. It's a mild or just different form of autism. You recently appointed one of us "Aspies", Ari Ne'eman, to some council on disabilities, I believe, and his organization's slogan is Nothing About Us Without Us. I understand that he is about the rights of us as people as opposed to the rights of others to force us to conform, keep us at bay, and/or harm us. That is why I am writing to you... hoping you can help. Not me... I mean help the students find better placements.


There are many Aspies who went to my school, as well as others without the diagnosis and with full-blown autism.


Thank you in advance for your time.


Sincerely,

Lucas Yann Guidry

26


Merrie Dufresne sat bound and gagged in an office in the office building, praying to God that she would be allowed to choose the method of her execution.


That poem kept running through her head. The one that went "Razors pain you, rivers are damp. Acids strain you, drugs cause cramp. Guns aren`t lawful, nooses give, gas smells awful, you might as well live."


Merrie didn`t like the idea of a gun either. She hated blood.


The only thing she could do (and she prayed for a chance to do it) would be to escape from 3--I, turn herself in to the police, and give up the names and locations of her friends, in exchange for her own life.


Merrie was bound with tape and gagged with this ball-with-a-hole-in-it thing. If only she could just un-gag herself, then she could bite her way through the tape on her legs, at least. Her arms were bound behind her back. Even better, if she could force her way through the tape first.


The door opened. Merrie expected to see her friends from 3--I, or the leaders, but instead she found herself staring at a group of students she had helped rescue from Hope House.


"They`re going to behead you," the girl named Aelis said. “But I want to help you. I`m bipolar too, and have made worse mistakes than you have. I think your friends are hypocrites. I want to save you like you saved me. And I think I know how."


The government had made deals with 3--I... but they were rubbish deals.


Some involved turning in some ex-students for the guaranteed freedom of the others. Some involved returning all the teachers in exchange for all the students` freedom if, and only if, 3-I disbanded and lived across the fifty states instead of all together. Others involved returning all the teachers and students in exchange for the freedom of the 3--I members.


3--I was buying none of it.


They were going to do this thing properly. And if they could help it, no 3--I member or ex Hope House student was going to get hurt again.


That was why they were still in hiding. That was why they were spread out in hiding between Grandpa Turrett`s farm, the old office building, and an old warehouse they had just bought. That was why they had started this whole damn group in the first place, and come to rescue the students from Hope House.

27


“In Massachusetts, there are about twenty Hope Houses.”


Anielka looked up from the cot she had been laying on in the holding cell. Tanya had a knack for getting crowds to listen. Before they had been caught, Tanya had done research on her grandparents' computer and found places just as bad as Hope House.


“At the Calm Compound, Lawrence Hughes was restrained with a staff member sitting on his head. Why? He was blowing bubbles with his milk.”


“You'd better not be trying to tell me we were lucky at Dope House,” fellow student Delia Hanes said.


“That sounds like Dope House to me,” Kray said from where he was standing up on the bars, peering through to try and hear what the circle of cops below him was talking about. Kray continued: “We don't need telling that Dope House was bad. Even if some of us are brainwashed, I sure ain't. I don't need no telling.”


“Shut up, Kray,” another boy said. “It's your fault we're in here. You thought you knew what you were doing when you called the cops thinking it was Gwen's number. So if you think I'll be believin' you after this, you're DREAMING, homeboy.”


“I didn't call no cops!” Kray shouted. Some of the cops outside the cell yelled at him to keep it down and moved away. “I was calling Gwen's number!”


“Are you stupid or something? The cops answered instead of Gwen and you never thought of that!”


“Did you?”


“That ain't the point. You think people should listen to you because you's so damn smart. That's the point. Do I think people should listen to me? No, I don't.”


“You sure are now.”


Kray opened his mouth to add something else, but not before the other boy, Gage, pulled him down, causing him to fall on his head and split it open.


They yelled, and yelled, and Gage kept kicking and punching until he wasn't even aware he was kicking and punching any more. The next thing he knew he was in solitary. He looked out the window in the door in time to see them carrying something covered completely in a blanket out the door. There was blood dripping from it, or rather, running off it.

28
1:30 PM, December 10, 2012. Time for the General Assembly at the local Occupy tent city. Since it was some formal human rights day, they were planning on marching to the police headquarters to read the police the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Sharona and her friend Patrice, an ex-Hope-House staff member, had another plan. They were going to give a speech at the assembly about Sharona's 3--I comrades and all their rescuees, who had just vanished, and the 700 FEMA camps, the branding of Occupy Together and the Internatioonal Incident Initiators as terrorists, and how Bobby Boler's school had been a corporation that was wealthy enough to pay the government to keep it open so that he could get more money. How he had pretended his students had been doing better and thus given them less shocks, so that there would be no marks on their skin to show in court. How the press had lied about how the evictions of the 3—I warehouse and office building had gone smoothly, when in reality two people had died, one from an allergic reaction to the pepper spray and another to a rubber bullet through the eye.


It was not the end. Far from it.

29


The bus full of people from the Camp were taken to a windowless warehouse, where they lived. They watched the news and suddenly wanted to be free. They started taking risks. When they almost got caught, they had no choice but to knock out a police officer, take him back to the warehouse, and keep him hostage.


Meanwhile, at Grandma Turrett’s farm, the students were caught and taken to a psych ward, while Gran and Gramps went to jail… and became heroes for hiding the children. The student rioted and broke out of the psych ward, with the help of some of the hospital staff. The hospital staff took them to their homes and then on to the warehouse one of the students knew about through secret communications with 3—I while still at Hope House.


The parents and guardians all publicly promised to never send their kids back to Hope House or any other place with cruelty. The students who came out of hiding, and their allies, then turned the Camp and the warehouse and office building into centers for troubled kids to actually be loved and respected and improve themselves and their lives. The 3—I members sold their homes and used the money to add floors to their buildings, and lived there.