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brother.
    He knew this with conviction, with honesty. Though neither his brother's face nor even his simple silhouette was visible in the memory, Obe had no doubt they had seen the magnificent cloud together that day. In this, his favorite memory, he could feel a presence coming from his right. They had looked at the cloud together and said something serene together too. Something about beauty or nature or perhaps even God. But the forgotten conversation didn't matter. What did was that feeling of presence, of love, coming from his side. He had conjured it often in the fortress, and despite the grueling attempt of the women to eviscerate every memory of value from his mind, this was one he had retained. As such, the cloud wasn't just a soothing memory, it was Obe's lone victory against the women that imprisoned and hunted him, and it was the seed of hope that kept him running.

CHAPTER 3

CONTROL
     
     

1
     
    When the women of Monroe's Island emerged from their rooms on any given morning, each consciously took the cleansing breaths of freedom that reminded them this day was the first of the rest of their lives. Such was the island's power; it was a rebirth of feminine souls.
    On this day one woman among them– the twentieth and last of their collective– did not wake because she had not slept. It had been her turn for the loneliest job on the island: midnight guard duty.
    She had served her time in the same manner as she had for the past six years: alternating between strolling long laps around the third floor foyer's circular balcony which loomed above the grand foyer below, staring for long minutes out the north or south-facing windows, or lounging on the wood-framed, cushioned chairs.
    She sat now in her favorite green chair positioned by the north windows, just as she had for the past hour. From the tips of her twitching fingers hung a delicate length of chain. At its end swung a simple pendant made of the purest silver money could buy. No matter the illumination in the room, it always seemed to gleam.
    She was thinking about the day she'd agreed to join forces with Monroe's Island and temporarily give up her former life.
    It had happened fast, of course. One moment she'd been a normal girl of sixteen, her eyes and her future full of life and hope. The next she'd been a broken wreck. The loss of one's identity, she had learned, could be as blistering and destructive as a winter storm. Now, all these years later, she was still working to restore what had been taken from her in less than a single day.
    The pendant twinkled in the strong orange-yellow rays now streaming through the window. She thought quite naturally of the day this new life of hers had truly started. Not the day she'd gotten the pendant, but the day two weeks before then when she'd been date-raped. She thought about the boy she had then thought was quite possibly 'The One' and how he'd surprised her with his forcefulness, his bravado, and his anger.
    Unaware how to handle what she'd been through, she had feigned illness the day after it had happened and again the day after that. Neither her parents nor her friends had paid more than a modicum of concern for her unnatural silence. She had deceived them that easily.
    On the third day, while her parents were gone and assuming she was still fighting the urge to vomit up the chicken soup they'd left on her bedside table, she had called the number she'd found in the rear dregs of a newspaper.
    "Crisis hotline," a surprisingly stern, ugly voice had answered. It was almost a command, not the soothing coo she had been expecting. "How can I help you?"
    The girl had stammered in silence for a few moments, and the voice on the other end changed tone instantly. "Are you alright, dear? Talk to me. There's no recording and you don't have to leave your name if you don't want to."
    Somehow the acknowledged anonymity had been an enormous relief even though she hadn't realized it was something she had wanted. "I…," she