Everything happened so fast.
The MPs rushed out of their cars, heading straight for us. I screamed as they got closer, and I realized they were going for Kael. I tried to run toward him as my brother was shoved to the ground. An elbow or fist was flying toward my face, so I lifted my hands up to block myself and heard Kael’s voice booming.
“Not her!” His voice shook me.
When I couldn’t see him anymore, I panicked. I didn’t even know if I had been hit or not.
“I was breaking it up! I don’t have a weapon!” I heard Kael’s voice again and my eyes found him.
I was no longer thinking about shielding myself. The only thing on my mind when I saw an MP reach for his black baton was Kael. The officer’s focus was on him as the other two officers approached. Kael was on the ground and about to be blindsided, as the officers got closer. His leg!
He would have direct contact with Kael and Kael wasn’t the violent one here.
Another scream rang through the air; it was a woman’s voice.
The officers turned to me. I looked at Kael again, then for Austin, who had found his way to the Bronco. He managed somehow to lift his drunk ass up inside and lie down. Hiding from it all.
While one of the officers stepped toward me and the others to Kael, I moved quickly, shoving myself in front of him. He grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to push me out of the way, but I put up a fight.
“STOP!” I screamed, recognizing that I had been the one screaming the whole time. “FUCKING STOP! HE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!”
My pleas finally got through to two of the MPs, who then stopped the one with his weapon out. The tallest of the officers cursed and shoved at his partner, and I wondered how the hell these power-tripping assholes could possibly be protecting anyone. I couldn’t fathom why they were even going after Kael in the first place.
“What the fuck is your problem? He wasn’t even involved! He was trying to break it up! Give me your badge number or whatever I can fucking report you with!” I shoved the shorter officer who was holding the baton with everything in me. He lost his footing and stumbled back. The other two were staring at me but weren’t moving. I couldn’t control my anger. I tasted salty tears on my tongue and all I could think about was grabbing the baton from this fucker’s hand and bashing his head in with it.
“Karina, no!” Kael’s voice brought me out of my blind rage. “Come here,” he said, softer this time.
Everything was still blurry as it slowed down, but Kael was safe now, though limping to the curb, calling for me again. I went to him and sat a few feet away, catching my breath and trying really fucking hard to calm down. Kael’s hands were holding the bottom of his pants tightly around his ankle.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. I blinked away the tears that were stinging the corners of my eyes. I had dirt or something in them.
Kael nodded. “Are you?”
He had a cut above his eye, and it made murderous waves of anger flow over me to see him hurt. “Yes, but you’re not. I want to fucking kill them. How dare they come at you!”
He groaned, still rubbing his ankle. Kael’s hands were visibly shaking as he lifted them up and balled them into fists. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes and went back to rubbing near his ankle.
“Do you want me to look at it?“ I began to offer.
“No. I’m fine.” Kael stopped me in mid-sentence, yanking the pants all the way down to the top of his sneaker.
He looked past me, then to my eyes. “They’re coming. Answer their questions and try to stay calm. If you don’t, it will only incite them further.”
The three MPs were walking over to us, so I didn’t say anything until they began their questioning. I thought about calling my dad, weighed the possible pros and cons, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I heeded Kael’s warning and tried my best to stay calm. It was so infuriating and difficult, but I managed for a while.
“Let me see some ID, soldier.”
“So you’re telling me you two just happened to show up here and you know the Fischer boy?”
“He’s my brother. And like I told you, we came here to stop the fight,” I snapped at them. Kael’s hand touched my leg, gently squeezing. I again tried to be calm.
While they wrote whatever bullshit down on their little notepads, I glared a hole through their skulls. Kael was silent, but I could feel that he wasn’t okay. I had finally caught my breath, and the shock of it all was beginning to set in the longer we waited for them to continue their interrogation. Kael answered everything with an even tone, despite the situation and the fact that he’d done nothing wrong and was nearly fucking beaten by them. If anything, I should have been the focus of their animosity, having screamed and put my hands on an officer. That should have landed me in the back of a car pending an arrest. But no—no consequence for me, it was only about Kael.
Apart from Kael, they seemed to be more interested in how we knew Austin than in the fact that Austin was the one who’d caused all of this. In that moment, I couldn’t have cared less about my escape-master brother, who needed to pay for his crimes. I almost told them where he was hiding. I was that mad. Kael sat there with such stillness. He barely blinked as he answered their questions in a controlled, flat, but polite voice. He refused to let them get the best of him, I assumed. I wished that one day I would be as emotionally disciplined as Kael. His eyes were steady but somehow I felt that he wasn’t as calm inside as he appeared to be. The cold night air made little puffs of smoke come out of all of their mouths. I decided that the three of them were now my mortal enemies and I would NEVER forget their names: Solomon, Kruger, and Deek. Especially Solomon, the troll-like man wielding a baton with an evil behind his eyes that enraged and terrified me. Give a man power and he’ll rule, then ruin the world, my mother always told me.
She was proving to be more right every day.
The temperature had dropped significantly since we’d arrived. I had lost track of what time it was and how long we had been there. I was still in my work clothes, but my adrenaline kept me from being cold. I paced next to Kael as he still sat there, his legs extended in front of him.
The other guy involved in the fight had already left without being questioned; it was only Kael’s identification they had collected and scanned. Their awareness of Austin’s name triggered a connection to our dad, so they didn’t even bother to look for my brother. Nor did they seem to care who Austin’s assailant was, and they didn’t go after him either.
When I quietly told Kael it wasn’t fair, that this was all completely wrong and had to be against regulations, he explained that if I wanted to survive here next to an Army post my whole life, I shouldn’t question authority, that it wasn’t safe. Things were the way they were, and I wasn’t going to change it.
“If you want to fix things, go for something that’s possible. Smaller. You’re not going to change what’s ingrained into American culture.”
“And that’s it. You’re just going to take it?”
“You know you’re lucky that after putting your hands on an officer you don’t have a bullet in your head. If I had done that it wouldn’t be the case.” Kael’s eyes darted from my face to the night sky, but when the men looked back at us, he was composed again.