Slide

EMBER Ember Rogers couldn’t believe what was happening in front of her. She held her hands up in the air, breath quickening in her chest then throat, as a man with a giant AK-47 pointed the weapon at her. She stared down the barrel, the sight of her father’s motionless body throbbing in her peripheral vision. The man motioned with the gun. “Move.” She walked like she was shoving through water, her hands behind her head, with her sniffling and trembling coworkers. Ember had grown to care for all of them after working in the Suriname Embassy for the past two years. Ember wasn’t going to abandon them. Even if it meant her life. They had stormed in at the perfect moment. Ember was with her father in his office, looking over papers and meetings that would occur tomorrow. Ember felt especially stressed, for whatever reason, as it often came to her in waves. She had learned to ride out these emotional blips with deep breathing exercises as well as meditation. Ember made a mental note while listening to her father to take time for a serene bath and meditation later in the day. It was just then that she heard a commotion in the lobby, then the distinct sound of bullets firing off walls, ceilings, and eventually, flesh. Panic surged in her heart. She locked eyes with her father and instructed him like a military General. “Get down,” she ordered. Her father followed suit and crawled beneath his desk. Ember felt the smacking of her heart within her chest as she made her way toward the office door and peered out. Her eyes widened at the sight of multiple bodies lying on the recently waxed linoleum floors. Her panic froze her on the spot as multiple men in masks whipped around the corner and pointed guns in her direction. “Get out of there!” one man screamed. Ember hadn’t been happy to have to come to Suriname in the first place. She was twenty-eight, but she still felt very young. What she desired to do was to explore the world and her own interests. But her parents were ambassadors and had moved to Suriname when she was only sixteen. She held a lot of resentment toward them, mainly her father, who often put his career goals before his family's well-being. She stepped into the hall and slammed the office door shut, trying to lock it before the men reached her. Ember was frightened, but she was also resourceful. She almost had the key in the slot when a man kicked her wrist, and the key flew out of her hand and slid across the shiny floor. Ember gasped, already feeling the pain radiating in her arm. The same man pushed her aside and kicked the office door down. Even though multiple men had loaded guns aimed at her, Ember did everything within her power to stop the man from getting to her father. Within her body, she felt so much rage. Rage at the fact she and her parents were in the country for so long, that her parents had taken away so much of her future, and now they were going to take something else from her grasp again. She tried to grab the man by the neck, leaping to wrap her forearm around him and press it against his throat. But other men came in behind her and restrained her by her swollen wrist. “f**k!” she bellowed. Ember watched in slow motion as the man moved like a robot behind the desk, pointed the gun, and fired. She barely heard her father make a sound. She was pulled back into a crowd of black-clad men as her father was brutally murdered, his body left to lie still beneath his desk. Even in her grief-stricken state, Ember found it ironic that her father’s final resting place would be his office desk. It made her anger all the more palpable. A few of the embassy workers had sealed off an area that led to the roof. As she held her arms on her head, tears she didn’t even realize she’d been crying were streaming down her face. Then she heard the low rumble of a helicopter. Her father must have hit the silent alarm as he huddled under his desk. She saw the workers moving in an assembly line fashion through the glass as the men tried to break through. Ember thought about running onto the helicopter and escaping all the chaos. The relief seduced her, but the expression on the faces of her coworkers, the people she’d known for years, convinced her otherwise. They were taken out and roughly shoved into multiple vans. Despite their despicable violence, the bad guys were organized and highly coordinated. Ember wondered if they knew who she was, as they seemed to have directly avoided killing her. They shoved her into a truck with multiple workers. Some of their faces were bloody, while others' eyes glimmered with intensity. Ember could hear the helicopter blades spinning in fast whooshing sounds as the vans drove away. To get through this moment, she imagined her grief traveling far away from her, like a shadow that had detached itself from her form. Ember could feel the rampant eyes of her workers boring into her, looking for something, anything, that would reassure them in that moment of terror. “It’s okay,” she whispered. Ember didn’t know if it was going to be okay. She was frozen in her emotions, unable to completely cry and unable to completely feel her anger. They arrived at their destination and unloaded their prisoners, one by one. Ember followed their orders and tried not to meet anyone’s eyes. She told herself to wait until she had a moment to herself to think and to breathe. She gazed around the surrounding area casually, noticing the small size of the tents, assessing that they were being held in an encampment of sorts. She didn’t know why she was gathering the information, but her mind felt like it needed something to do. The men placed her inside a tent of her own, tying her hands behind her back and placing her on a chair. She grimaced as one of the men bent her arm back, her aching wrist bringing itself back into the light.