A thickset guard carried a folding chair. He led an armed escort of three men to a semi-enclosed “rec-yard” with a series of steel cages. To Dominique it looked like a kennel. The cages were all empty except for the farthest. Hashim stood there, the dim light of a single bulb overhead. Dominique saw Hashim look up as she and her escorts moved across the frozen yard toward him.

Dominique saw in Hashim’s razor-sharp posture that he still carried his dignity…in spite of the orange jump suit he wore being too large. A reminder the inmates were small and engulfed by a power greater than themselves, she thought.

The door to the cage screeched across the concrete as the thickset guard opened it. Dominique winced.

“It’s music to my ears,” Hashim said with a hint of a smile.

The guard opened the chair and placed it inside the cage. “I’ll be right over there, ma’am.”

He moved to the other end of the area, leaving the cage door opened.

“That’s as hospitable as it gets. I’m glad they told you to dress for the weather,” he said, looking at the heavy down parka she wore.

“Aren’t you cold in just that?”

“You get used to it.”

She looked up at the stars through the fenced-in roof. She knew these same seeds of light gazed down at humans across the globe.

“Yes. There’s beauty even here. When you have the chance to see it.”

He looked up at the stars with her.

“It’s surreal landing in this place.”

“Try living here.”

“They treating you all right?”

“You’re here.”

“They allowing you to write?”

She could see he wasn’t sure what she meant.

“Catherine told me about the poem you gave her. ‘There are stories we carry inside…’”

“‘…That have slipped beyond the veil of consciousness and wait until a certain time,’’’ he answered.

The damp chill reached her bones. But it was more than the cold heart of this place. It was for the merciless glaucoma that had dimmed the world, and created the need for places like this—for the cruel world they’d all helped to create.

“Poetry has always been important to me,” he said, pulling her from her melancholy. “No one seems interested in exploring that.”

“A window to the soul?”

“Nobody’s born wanting to kill. It’s incremental.”

“So, lead with culture? Is that what you’re saying?”

“It has strategic value—empathy.”

She moved in close to him and whispered, “I need a way into your thinking. Their thinking.”

“I figured that’s why they sent you. Others have found the tablet, haven’t they?”

“They know the area where it is, but haven’t gotten to it. Special Forces killed the first wave that came to the warehouse. The second wave died in a sandstorm.”

“There will be others.”

“We know.”

Hashim took a step out of the cage.