The Solidarity Fund

He built a movement to honor a life, only to watch the money he raised burn a courthouse to the ground.

“For Christ’s sake, Ben, are you gonna push or just stand there?”

The door wouldn’t budge. I put my shoulder into it again, the cheap wood groaning against the weight of bodies on the other side. It was like trying to push your way into a sold-out concert through the main stage. The air that seeped through the crack was thick with the smell of sweat, patchouli, and cheap beer. It was the smell of victory.

“I’m trying,” I grunted, giving one last heave. The door flew open, and I stumbled into the noise. It hit me like a physical wave—a hundred conversations, music thumping from a speaker in the corner, the clink of bottles. Our little donated office space, usually a quiet mess of stacked pamphlets and half-finished protest signs, was a living, breathing thing.

Someone slapped my back. “He’s in! The man of the hour!”

I just grinned, letting the momentum of the crowd carry me toward the corner where I’d left my laptop. Every face I passed was lit with the same manic energy. We did it. We actually did something. My laptop was still there, perched on a precarious stack of books, its screen a beacon in the dim light. I pushed a few empty bottles aside and sat, the worn cushion of the chair sighing under my weight.

The page was still open. Our page. The fundraiser for Maria’s family. A simple picture of her, smiling in her nurse’s scrubs, her eyes kind. And below it, the number. It was still climbing. Even now. A constant, flickering pulse of green digits.

$87,451.

We’d set the goal for ten thousand. Just enough to cover funeral costs, maybe help her sister with rent for a few months. We’d hit that in three hours. The story had gone viral. A nurse, a mother, killed during a federal raid on a free clinic they’d mistaken for a safe house. The sheer, brutal injustice of it had lit a fire under people. Not just our people. Everyone.

I watched the numbers tick over. $87,493. Another donation. Then another. $87,513. It felt unreal, like a video game. I was just some poli-sci major who knew how to set up a webpage, and now… this. This room full of people, this impossible number on a screen. This was real.

A small notification popped up in the corner of my screen. A direct message from the fundraising platform. My heart hammered against my ribs. I clicked it open.

It was from someone named Sofia. Maria’s sister. I’d sent her the link yesterday, not even knowing if she’d see it, just wanting her to know people cared.

*I don’t know what to say,* the message read. *We’ve been crying all day. But seeing this… seeing that people see her. Not as a headline, but as my sister. My beautiful sister. Thank you. You have given us a space to breathe in the middle of the ocean. Thank you.*

I read it twice. Three times. The noise of the room faded into a dull roar. *A space to breathe.* The words were a physical comfort, settling a deep, restless ache inside me I hadn’t even known was there. All the meetings, the arguments, the failed marches, the feeling of screaming into a void—it all evaporated. We had done something good. Something pure and undeniably good. I leaned back, the cheap chair creaking, and just breathed it in.

“There he is.”

Ryan’s voice cut through my haze. He appeared beside me, a plastic cup of beer in one hand and an easy, magnetic smile on his face. He wasn’t loud like the others, but when he spoke, people listened. He was the center of our small universe, the one with the vision and the guts to see it through. He nodded at my screen.

“Almost at ninety K, kid. You broke the internet.”

“It’s insane,” I said, my own voice sounding distant. “I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it.” He took a sip of beer, his eyes scanning the crowded room before settling back on me. “You gave people a way to fight back that didn’t involve getting their skulls cracked. That’s powerful.” He leaned in closer, his voice dropping. “We need to move that, by the way. Soon. An account that big is gonna start drawing the wrong kind of attention.”

I nodded. “I was going to transfer it to Sofia’s account tonight. The one she listed.”

Ryan shook his head slowly, a thoughtful look on his face. “No. Not directly. Not a lump sum that big. That’s a flag for the Feds, guaranteed. They’ll freeze it before she can even buy groceries, call it ‘funding criminal elements’ or some other bullshit. We can’t let them touch it.”

He was right. Of course he was right. I hadn’t even thought of that. “So what do we do?”

“We clean it first. Standard procedure,” he said, like he was explaining how to change a tire. “We’ll bounce it through a mixer. Convert it to Monero, break it up, send it to a dozen wallets before it ever gets to her. Untraceable. Safe. The way it should be.”

It sounded complicated, but his confidence was infectious. He saw angles I couldn’t. That’s why he was in charge. “Okay. Can you… show me how to do that?”

“Already got a wallet set up for it,” he said, pulling out his phone. He tapped the screen and showed me a QR code. “Just send the full balance there. It’s a dedicated transfer account. Once it’s in, I’ll handle the rest. I’ll make sure the family gets every last cent, piece by piece, clean as a whistle.” He clapped my shoulder, a firm, reassuring gesture. “You did the hard part, Ben. You gave them hope. Now let me do my part and protect it.”

He walked away, swallowed back into the celebration, leaving me staring at the QR code he’d texted me. Protect it. Yes. That was the mission now.

The party died down hours later. The energy bled out, leaving behind a mess of crushed cans, sticky floors, and the quiet hum of the mini-fridge. I stayed until the end, soaking it all in. By the time I walked back to my dorm, the sky was a bruised purple and the campus was silent.

My room was cold. I didn’t bother turning on the main light, just the small desk lamp. Its yellow glow felt intimate, personal. This was the final step. The quiet, important part. I sat down, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. My heart was thumping again, but this time with a calm, steady sense of purpose.

I logged into the fundraising site. The final total was frozen on the screen. $92,114. Amazing.

I navigated to the withdrawal page. Scanned the QR code from Ryan’s text. Pasted the long string of alphanumeric code into the destination field. I checked it twice. Three times. Everything looked right.

I clicked ‘Confirm Transfer.’ A little green checkmark appeared. ‘Your withdrawal has been initiated.’

That was it. I leaned back, a huge, shuddering sigh of relief escaping my chest. It was done. Safe. Protected.

Just to be sure, I refreshed the page a few minutes later. The main dashboard loaded. And my stomach dropped through the floor.

Balance: $0.00.

Okay. That was right. It had transferred. I clicked on the transaction history, just to see the confirmation. To see the record of the good thing we had done.

There was only one entry. A single transaction. A withdrawal of the full amount to the wallet address I’d pasted in. Time-stamped three minutes ago.

But that wasn’t what made the air go thin in my lungs. Next to it was a status update. A word I didn’t expect to see.

‘Completed.’

It shouldn’t be that fast. Ryan said it would be broken up, bounced around. That took time. A single, instant transfer wasn’t cleaning it. It was just… taking it. A cold knot formed in my gut. No. I was being paranoid. This was part of the process. I just didn’t understand it.

I pulled out my phone. I’d just call Ryan. He’d explain it. My hands were shaking so badly I misdialed twice. On the third try, it rang. And rang. And rang. Straight to voicemail.

“Hey, it’s Ryan. Leave a message.”

“Ryan, it’s Ben,” I said, my voice tight. “Hey man, just… the transfer went through. It looked a little weird, maybe faster than I thought? Just wanted to check in. Call me back when you get this.”

I hung up and sent a text. *Hey, transfer complete. All good?*

The message delivered. The little blue checkmarks just sat there, staring back at me. Unread. I tried calling again. Voicemail. Another text. *Ryan, call me. Seriously.*

Nothing.

The silence in my room was suddenly deafening. The only sound was the frantic, panicked thumping in my own ears. Where was he? Why wasn’t he answering? The cold knot in my stomach tightened into a sphere of ice.

My phone buzzed in my hand, and I almost dropped it, fumbling to see the screen. It wasn’t Ryan. It was a news alert.

**BREAKING: Fire Reported at Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse.**

I stared at the headline, my mind struggling to connect the dots. The courthouse. That’s where they’d held the press conference announcing the raid on the clinic. A protest was scheduled there for next week. My finger, moving on its own, clicked the link.

A live feed showed blurry footage of orange flames licking the stone facade of the building. Smoke billowed into the night sky. The article was sparse on details, mostly speculation. But then I saw it, a paragraph at the very bottom.

*An anonymous communiqué has begun circulating on encrypted channels, purportedly from the group claiming responsibility. The message decries federal overreach and ends with a chilling statement: “This was a warning. Our work tonight was funded entirely by the generous donations of a supportive community who understand that true justice must be taken, not asked for.”*

A supportive community. Generous donations.

The words didn't compute at first. They were just letters on a screen. And then the ice in my stomach shattered, flooding my entire body with a cold so profound it felt like dying.

My fundraiser. My ninety-two thousand dollars. A space to breathe.

Through the thin glass of my window, I could hear the sirens, not distant anymore, but growing closer, turning onto my street.