Chain Gang All Stars
: Part 2: Chapter 32

The shock of being there pressed all around her. She was there but also slipping away from herself.

“Okay, I’m taking y’all’s muzzles off in here because there’s a rowdy group out there.”

A place is a pin. A space-time specific. A drawing on a map.

“There you go, all free—I mean not fr— Well, you get what I mean.”

A home is an origin story. A home is a thing to carry. A home is a wild field of energy that floods floods floods. Call me. Call me home.

Jerry read from his tablet.

“All right. Welcome to Old Taperville, your Hub City host. Here you’ll complete required Civic Service obligations prior to participation in the BattleGround matches you may or may not have scheduled three days from now. Your schedule is fixed and, uh”—Jerry scrolled through, squinting at the words in front of him—“there it is, any intentional substantial deviations from your Civic Service obligations will result in your immediate termination from the CAPE program. I know y’all have heard this before but they’re pushing on all this so just sit tight.” Jerry looked through the rearview camera displays lodged into the front of the van. “Your Civic Service work will begin the moment you exit the transport vehicle. You will immediately be escorted to a press conference in a predetermined, accessible community venue.”

Jerry looked up briefly—“It’s a nice setup they got for y’all here, at a high school”—then went back to reading “…Um, following the end of the press conference you will be immediately escorted to your Civic Service locations. Today you will be working alongside members of the community at the local farmers market in Old Taperville Parkside Square.

“Following the Civic Service you will be escorted to your designated Hub City Lodging, which will act as primary holding. In Hub City Lodging spaces you will be given a perimeter within which movement is accepted. Movement outside of that perimeter will result in immediate termination. You will also have access to the full network of Link Market goods, purchasable via BP. You will be given access to training materials and there will be a personal computation terminal available in your assigned Lodging room. Following a forty-eight-hour period, those Links scheduled for the BattleGround, and those who choose to use allotted BP to spectate, will be transported to the predetermined BattleGround Arena and taken into fight custody. Noncompliance with, uh, any of the directives stated therein can result in immediate termination.”

Staxxx heard all this and listened to almost none of it.

She thought, Home is another person, a half you replace.

“You and me,” Thurwar said.

Another half, whole. It’s one, you replace.

“You and me,” Thurwar said again. And it brought Staxxx back to herself.

“You and me,” Staxxx said. She looked up and saw Gunny Puddles staring at her. He smiled and his sharp teeth showed a contempt that helped ground Staxxx further. She held his gaze and smiled back.

“Can I get a confirmation that you understand?” Jerry asked. The Links said yes.

Staxxx looked down at her wrists, which were joined together now, bound to each other as if they were in standard handcuffs. There were people just outside the van and they were chanting her name.

“Okay, thanks, you guys. I’m gonna open the door and then y’all are on your own. I don’t wanna hang around for all this. A lot going on out there today.”

Staxxx’s eyes had to adjust to the light of the day. The Links shuffled their way out of the van. Thurwar, usually the last to come out, got up too. Living as a Link, they internalized a kind of showmanship. It was understood that the people were waiting for a specific one of them, who should be the grand finale of this small event that was getting out of the vehicle.

Staxxx was alone in the van. The light poured in. They were screaming, not the name the world had pressed to her body, but the one she was gifted when she became a body in the world.

Hamara

Hamara

Hamara

STACKER

The chant was deafening. She felt the people screaming energy and clarity into her being. She took breaths. Looked at her fingers aching to join together in some sudden urge toward prayer. She kept them apart.

Hamara

Hamara

Hamara

STACKER

When Staxxx was a child, her mother, when she was still clear-minded, would say, “Be careful who you give your name to, girl. You don’t know how they gonna use it.” Staxxx had been taught that when someone said your name, what they said next had energy. What was said about you had power.

And now her name had been disseminated around the country in ways she could not control. To hear these people carry it so powerfully, to hear her name this way. It was nothing like the screams for thee Hurricane Staxxx. This was something different entirely.

“Damn,” Staxxx said aloud. She sat there, the rest of the Links waiting for her.

“C’mon now,” said a soldier-police guard as he poked his head into the van. “Your subjects are waiting, convict.”

“They are,” Staxxx said, and she moved forward, felt the synthetic cool bleed into the natural, warm open air. She stood on the van step and let the people see her. They screamed as if now, finally, they were getting what they’d always wanted. As if seeing her there, standing with her hands bound together, was the home they’d always been searching for. She raised her arms above her head and the people screamed more. The shock of sound almost made Staxxx lose her balance and so she leapt into the air, down to the ground. She kept her hands up, and though the magcuffs gave nothing she was able to make a tiny X with two index fingers and lifted them as high as she could. A sea of Xs, made of arms and fists, flooded the crowd. They were less than one hundred meters from Xavier, her high school, the place where people had first screamed her name. Her stomach was warm with a nostalgia tinged with the sharpness of being a human in captivity; she felt as if she were being pulled apart and stuck back together every other second. She wept as she walked.

HAMARA

HAMARA

HAMARA

STACKER

She kept her hands up as she walked behind the rest of A-Hamm, just behind the armored soldier-police, who swung their batons at the crowd with a gleeful, swift, and casual energy.

A woman stood on the concrete base of the flagpole. She held a megaphone. The American flag hung above her, limp.

“And we won’t stop until my sister is freed! I see you, Hammy, and we are with you. We won’t rest until you are out of this.”

The people screamed at this.

“We are all with you!” the woman yelled.

Staxxx had stopped walking as soon as she heard the voice. The voice of one of her best friends in a different life.

“Tracy,” Staxxx said, though there was no chance that Tracy could actually hear her. Staxxx kept her hands high and looked Tracy in the eye. Tracy held her gaze and nodded before screaming back into her megaphone:

Hamara

Hamara

Hamara