The iron gate was locked, it was locked, and the key was in my father’s pocket, and his pocket was stitched shut, and I was standing in the mud of the alleyway while the rain fell in sheets that turned the cobblestones into a slick, black mirror, and I said to the man in the grey coat, Please, sir, the seal is broken, the wax is cracked, and he looked down at me with eyes that were not quite eyes but holes where light used to be, and he said, The seal is not broken, the seal is merely weathered, and I said, No, sir, it is broken, I can see the air inside, I can see the dust motes dancing in the vacuum where the soul should be, and he stepped closer, and the smell of him was the smell of wet wool and old paper and the particular, sharp scent of a ledger that has been written in for too many years, and he said, You are a child, and children do not understand the integrity of the boundary, and I said, I understand that the boundary is a lie, I understand that the line drawn in the sand does not stop the tide, and I understand that if you keep the gate closed, the thing inside will rot, and the thing outside will starve, and both are wrong, and both are dead, and he looked at me, and for a second, just a second, the holes in his face filled with something that looked like pity, but it was not pity, it was recognition, because he had once been a child too, and he had once stood in a different alley, under a different rain, asking a different man, and that man had said the same words, and the man had been right, because the system was not broken, the system was the only thing holding the world together, and if you broke it, you did not free the truth, you released the chaos, and chaos was not freedom, chaos was death, and I should have known that, but I was seven years old, and I was cold, and my father was in the building, and the building was the Institution, and the Institution did not care if my father died, because my father was just a number, and numbers do not have souls, and I said, Give me the key, and he said, I am not the keeper, I am the witness, and the witness does not open doors, the witness only watches them close, and I said, Then watch me, and I took the iron rod from the pile of scrap metal that the city had discarded, and I began to pry at the hinge, and the metal screamed, a high, thin sound that cut through the rain, and the man in the grey coat did not stop me, he did not call the guards, he just stood there, his hands in his pockets, and he watched, and I thought, He is waiting for me to fail, he is waiting for the hinge to snap and break my hand, he is waiting for the system to show me that I am small, and I was small, my arms were shaking, the rain was running into my eyes, stinging, blinding, and I thought, This is the justice, this is the fair way, you break yourself against the wall, and the wall does not move, and the wall does not care that you are bleeding, and I kept prying, and the hinge groaned, and the man in the grey coat said, Your father is in Room Four, and I said, I know, and he said, He is not in Room Four, he is in the basement, and I stopped, and I said, What do you mean, he said, The records say Room Four, but the body is in the basement, because Room Four is for the living, and the basement is for the things that have stopped being human, and I said, My father is human, and he said, Are you sure, and I said, Yes, and he said, Then you must be sure that you are the one who breaks the seal, because if you are wrong, if you are just a child playing at heroics, the seal will not just be broken, it will be shattered, and the thing that keeps the order will spill out, and it will eat you, and it will eat the city, and it will eat everything that has ever been fair, and I looked at the hinge, and it was bent, it was ready to go, and I thought, He is trying to scare me, he is using the weight of the system to crush my will, he is saying, Do not do this, do not be a child, do not be foolish, because the price is too high, and I thought, The price is already paid, the price is my father’s silence, the price is the years I have spent in the dormitory, the price is the way my mother looks at me, as if I am a ghost, as if I have already left the world of the living, and I said, I don’t care, and I put my foot against the gate, and I pushed, and the iron rod slipped, and my hand slipped, and I fell into the mud, and the mud was cold, and it was black, and it tasted of iron, and I lay there, and the rain fell on my face, and the man in the grey coat stood over me, and he said, You see, and I said, No, I don’t see, and he said, You see that you are not strong enough, and I said, I am strong enough, I am strong enough to know that the gate is wrong, and he said, The gate is not wrong, the gate is necessary, and I said, Then why is it locked, and he said, Because the other side is not safe, and I said, What is the other side, and he said, The truth, and I said, The truth is my father, and he said, The truth is that some doors must remain closed, and I said, No, and I got up, and my legs were shaking, and my hand was bleeding, and I looked at the gate, and I saw the crack, the tiny, hairline crack in the wax, and I saw the light behind it, the faint, pale light that was not sunlight, but was something else, something that had been waiting for a long time, and I thought, This is it, this is the moment, and the man in the grey coat said, Go home, and I said, I have no home, and he said, Then go to the shelter, and I said, The shelter is a cage, and he said, All cages are the same, and I said, No, and I picked up the rod, and I hit the hinge, and the metal rang, a clear, pure note, like a bell, and the man in the grey coat flinched, and I saw something in his face, a flicker of fear, and I knew then that he was not a witness, he was a part of it, he was a piece of the machine, and the machine was afraid, and I hit it again, and again, and the hinge began to give, and the gate began to swing, and the man said, Stop, and I said, No, and the gate opened, and the light poured out, and it was not light, it was cold, it was a cold that went into my bones, and it was the cold of the basement, and I saw the stairs, the long, dark stairs that went down into the earth, and I saw my father at the bottom, sitting on a bench, his head in his hands, and I saw that he was not dead, he was alive, but he was broken, he was broken in the way that the system breaks things, quietly, efficiently, without any malice, just with the weight of its own existence, and I ran down the stairs, and the man in the grey coat did not follow, he did not stop me, he just watched, and I saw that he was crying, and I did not understand why, but I knew that it was not for me, it was for him, it was for the years he had spent watching, and I reached my father, and I said, Daddy, and he looked up, and his eyes were empty, and he said, What are you doing here, and I said, I came to get you, and he said, You cannot get me, I am part of the wall, and I said, No, you are not, and I pulled him up, and he was light, he was so light, like a bird, like a leaf, and I held him, and the rain was still falling, and the city was still turning, and the system was still running, and I knew that I had not broken it, I had not freed him, I had only moved him from one cell to another, from the cell of the building to the cell of my arms, and the cell of my arms was smaller, and it was warmer, but it was still a cell, and I said, We are going home, and he said, There is no home, and I said, Yes there is, and I carried him out of the basement, and into the alley, and the man in the grey coat was gone, and the gate was open, and the light was still pouring out, and I walked into the rain, and I held my father, and I did not look back, because if I looked back, I would see the truth, and the truth was that the gate would close again, and the rain would stop, and the city would forget that we had ever been there, and I would be just another child, just another number, just another piece of the machine, and I walked on, and the mud sucked at my feet, and the cold bit at my skin, and I held my father tight, and I thought, This is all I have, this is all I will ever have, this broken man, and this open gate, and this rain, and it was enough, it was not enough, but it was all I had, and I walked on, and the city swallowed me, and the night came, and the stars came out, and they were pale, and they were distant, and they did not care, and I did not care, because I had my father, and I had the memory of the sound of the hinge, and that sound was the only thing that was real, and I carried him through the streets, and the people looked at us, and they did not stop, they did not help, they just looked, and they moved on, and I was invisible, and I was visible, and I was alone, and I was not alone, and the rain stopped, and the silence was loud, and I walked on.