God made the final connection. “Then, slowly, the oppressor adapts the culture to their own ways so incrementally, the weak barely recognize it’s happening.”
“Sí,” Steel added. “Things like the oubliettes, however, were some of the worst-feared punishments. Anyone who knew what they were would never want to be contained within one. They were a very effective deterrent and didn’t need to be adapted.”
“Be that as it may,” God said, “an oubliette isn’t standard for a European village home.”
“Daleyza’s family home isn’t typical. It is, quite literally, a mission built in the earliest days of the Spanish occupation. The oubliettes were basically the jail cells for those who broke civil and religious laws, which, at that time, were essentially the same thing.”
“To those of the mission, religion was the law. To those not in the religion, they were held accountable to the laws they didn’t follow.”
“Yes,” Daleyza said. “When my family decided to go into the drug trafficking business with the Colonels, they needed a place that would allow them to operate close to transportation channels, yet be outside of a major city. Bariloche is a tourist capital in our country. It was the perfect place to hide. Not only that, but it made trafficking product easier.”
“How?”
“The tourists themselves. They made it so simple because they often put themselves in dangerous situations, believing themselves to be safe when they were anything but. Americans were the worst. The cartel would kidnap tourists who separated themselves from the main tour groups. After incarcerating them in the oubliettes of the mission for a short period of time, they offered their prisoners freedom in exchange for becoming mules. The captives had no real means to identify who detained them because, while they were staying in the city, they weren’t taken from there. Not only that, but they wererarely taken from the same places, or if they were, with gaps between kidnappings so that no pattern would form.”
Steel took over. “Offered a chance at freedom after suffering the oubliettes, most were willing to take the chance at being caught with the drugs. It might not save them from imprisonment if they were caught at the border, but an American detainment facility was a far better option. A chance for due process and a sympathetic judge. Maybe someone would believe their outlandish tale. Even if they didn’t, they were still better off in an American prison.”
“And if the mules were caught,” Daleyza continued, “the cartel was out nothing except the drugs. Sacrificing tourists is definitely more fiscally efficient than losing your own employees, who might feel they were owed protection if caught. When it didn’t come, they might turn on their employers.”
God nodded. “And you can’t give up information on someone if you don’t know who took you in the first place. Smart. So where are these oubliettes?” God asked.
“Below the church,” she supplied. “There’s an entrance behind the baptismal font. When opened, it leads to tombs underground, where missionaries of importance were buried. Beyond those tombs is the entrance to the oubliettes.”
“Is there any other way into the oubliettes?”
“No. There are only two ways out of the oubliettes. The first is to walk out the door, into the tombs, and up through the church.”
She stopped.
“And the second?” God asked.
Daleyza looked at Steel, then back at God. “Death.”
23
AUGUST 24, 2024
Daleyza
The group sat,spread out among several tables, but because they all had comms in their ears and the microphones on their watches turned on, they gave the illusion of only speaking to each other when they were all conversing. She had removed hers, shoving it into her pocket, unable to focus on their discussion. At some point, she would need to tune back in, but Ildefanso had seen her unobtrusively remove it, and he would let her know when she needed to put it back in and contribute.
Although he’d held her in the forest, her body had been unable to reciprocate. She’d wanted to. Inside, she’d screamed at her arms to curl around him and take the comfort he was offering her, but they wouldn’t respond.
Now he sat beside her, his arm spread across the back of her chair, for all the world looking like her husband or boyfriend, as they sat across from Gem and Nemo. Two couples at the top of CerroOtto, admiring the view while drinking hot chocolate, eating lunch, and enjoying each other’s company. At least, as far as the world around them was concerned.
Not that she’d been contributing to that image. Once they’d moved inside the facility at the top of the mountain, the conversation with God had to be curtailed, and she’d shut down again. All her energy allowed her to do was stare out at the scenery as the restaurant rotated. She wasn’t even really seeing anything.
“Oof.” Ildefanso sat upright from his relaxed position with a wince, and he appeared to be rubbing his shin under the table.
“I think Scheherazade needs to go outside,” Gem told Nemo during a break in conversation.
Obtuse to her message, the man frowned as he looked down at the dog lying at his side, happily munching on a piece of unsugared apple strudel. “She was just outside.”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized through her teeth. “I meant, I need to go outside.”
“Kitty cat, if you need the ladies’ room?—”
She grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and pulled violently. “You’re a moron, you know that?”
