by Zoe Cannon
Would Heather’s old loyalty toward her best friend supersede her new loyalty to Internal? Becca didn’t think so.
Becca couldn’t be sure Heather was working for Internal… but she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t, either. And paranoia was always the safest route. Jameson had taught her that too.
“Maybe… maybe we can get together sometime.” Heather’s hungry eyes searched hers. “We could talk. Like old times.”
“Sure. We could do that.” Safe behind her mask. Giving nothing away. Voicing her suspicions would be all but admitting her guilt. That was the way the Internal logic went, anyway.
“I’m sorry. For following you, I mean. It won’t happen again.” For a second she looked like she wanted to say something else. Then she turned and scurried away.
Becca watched her until she disappeared into the distance.
Once her last glimpse of Heather had faded, she started walking again. She circled the block, checking reflections in store windows, listening for footsteps that matched the pace of her own. No sign of Heather. No sign of Internal. Heather hadn’t doubled back, and unless they were keeping themselves very well hidden, no one else had been following Becca alongside her.
Becca turned to look back in the direction Jameson had gone. An empty sidewalk stretched out in front of her. No Jameson. No resistance. No chance of stopping the reeducation program.
She trudged ahead anyway.
Maybe she would grab something to eat before she went home. Maybe she would just walk for a while. Anything sounded better than heading home to sandwiches and failure, to the knowledge that right now Jameson was telling the rest of the resistance to accept that the kids in the reeducation center couldn’t be saved and move on.
She stopped in front of a crowded fast-food restaurant, weighing the unease of facing a crowd against the isolation of going back home.
A hand clamped down around her arm.
Before she could pull away, the hand dragged her through the doorway. A rush of warm air greeted her as she landed in a haze of light and conversation.
She bit her lip to stifle a scream. She looked around wildly, trying to get her bearings. A line of people in business clothes stretched all the way to the door, with more weaving their way through the crowd to reach the tables. Her captor pulled her away from the line, down the narrow hallway that led to the bathroom. He pushed open the door with his elbow and yanked her in after him. As soon as she stumbled through, he released her arm; she caught herself against the wall to keep from falling to the damp floor between the sink and toilet.
Jameson stood in front of her.
He flipped the lock, then rested his back against the door. His face was impassive as ever, but she sensed he was inches away from blinding fury.
He bit out each word with violent precision. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
* * *
Becca’s explanation satisfied him about as well as she had expected it would.
“We can’t risk keeping you in the resistance,” he finally said, as cold as she had ever heard him. “Not after something like this. You’re done.”
Becca sucked in the cheap disinfectant that hung in the air. She couldn’t breathe. She had known the risk she was taking, but for him to rip it all from her like that… she hadn’t even gotten a chance to try. “Just let me talk to the others.” She could barely hear herself. “If they feel the same way, then fine. Kick me out. But at least give me a chance to say what I want to say.”
“You know how this works. Everything goes through me. You’ve put all of us at risk by following me like this. You’re kept isolated from the others for a reason. You say you understand the risk you’re taking by working inside Internal, but you’re not acting like it, so let me remind you why it has to be this way.” He leaned in closer, enunciating each word carefully. “You are going to be arrested. Maybe tomorrow, maybe five years from now, but it will happen. You’ll be locked in a cell deep underneath 117, and you’ll be tortured until you tell them everything you know.”
She knew all this, of course. But hearing it out loud, from someone else’s lips, still made her heart clench. It was different, somehow, when it was only in her mind. It didn’t feel quite so… definite.
“The more you know,” Jameson continued relentlessly, “the more you’ll be able to tell them. To protect the resistance, you need to keep a wall between yourself and the rest of us. And tonight you tried to tear down that wall down for the sake of your own impatience.”
“I—” She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to salvage what remained of her relationship with the resistance.
He interrupted before she could try. “Not only that, you didn’t even do it competently. You were followed.” He held up a hand to cut off any argument she might have offered. “Don’t worry. I spotted her almost as soon as I spotted you, and I made sure she was alone. We’re no longer in danger. But if your plan had succeeded, you would have led her straight to the others.”
The condemnation in every word burned against her skin. He was right. As usual, he was right. And yet. If she didn’t do this, Reeducation would become the next Internal division, a factory taking people like Heather and Jake and spitting them back out again as compliant citizens. Or else turning them into failed experiments, suitable only for execution. Bodies lying forgotten somewhere.
“I can’t let it happen.” Her voice was steady. Defiant. A challenge.
“I’ve already explained to you why nothing can be done about Reeducation.”
“That’s your opinion. The others might not agree.”
“Reeducation is not your biggest problem right now.” Jameson folded his arms across his chest. “I was being optimistic with my earlier explanation. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. But as it stands, even if you agreed to give this up right now and go home, there would be no place for you in the resistance. What you tried doesn’t just prove your recklessness—some would take it as proof that you’ve been spying for Internal all this time.” His eyes reflected all the emotion of two stones.
At first she could only gape at him. She had known he would be angry when she showed up at the meeting uninvited. She hadn’t considered the possibility of being mistaken for a spy. But she should have. It made sense, after all. Too much sense.
The implications of what he had said hit a second later. No matter what she did now, it was over. If he thought there was even a slight chance that she was an Internal spy, he would never risk working with her again.
She fought back unexpected tears. She wasn’t going to cry. Not in front of him.
But maybe there was still something she could do. Some way to get them to trust her again.
There had to be something.
“If I were a spy,” she said slowly, “what would you do?” Half calculating options in her head. Half just needing to know the answer wasn’t, Shoot you immediately.
“Exactly what I’m doing now,” he answered. “Cut off all contact with you. Any more extreme response would draw too much attention from Internal. For our purposes right now, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a spy or just a reckless child. The solution is the same either way.”
“And you’d be arrested. If I didn’t have a way of getting to the others, I would take what I could get and hope you could be broken easily.”
Jameson tensed. He spoke his next words with deliberate care. “Are you confessing to something?”
“No!” She shook her head so hard her hair flew from side to side. “I’m not spying for Internal. I’m just saying that if I were, that’s what I’d do.”
She couldn’t tell whether he believed her. “Is there a point to you telling me this?”
“Take me to the others. Let me say what I came to say. Then let them decide whether I’m a spy or not. If they keep me prisoner there, or—” She swallowed. “Or kill me, you’ll be no worse off—Internal won’t suspect anyone but you, and I would have given you up to them anyway.”
She waited. He said nothing.
She hesitated for only a second before continuing. “If I’m a spy, you can even torture me for information if you want. I’m sure you know how it’s done.”
And how would she convince them she wasn’t a spy? The heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she was only digging herself in deeper.
I need this chance, she reminded herself. For the next Heather. The next Jake.
Jameson’s eyes unfocused for a moment as he pondered her words. Then he shook his head. “Your logic is sound, but everything I said before still holds true. I have no reason to take you to the others. Even assuming you aren’t with Internal, it’s better for all of us if you don’t know who the others are.”
“I won’t know who they are anyway. I won’t know their names. I’ll have vague descriptions, but that’s it.”
Somebody knocked on the bathroom door. “Is anybody in there?” a woman’s muffled voice asked.
“Just a minute,” Becca called.
Jameson stepped in closer, so close they were almost touching. He whispered his next words so quietly that she had to strain to hear, even with only inches of air between them. “You’d know the location of our meeting. And you still haven’t given me a good reason to allow you to do this. You’d come, explain the situation to everyone, hear the others tell you it’s too risky, and leave. What would any of us get out of that?”
In the eternity it took her to think of an answer, she was amazed Jameson didn’t get fed up with waiting and leave. She was amazed the woman outside didn’t break down the door. Surely enough time had passed for them both to go old and gray, for them to wither away and leave nothing but skeletons here on the bathroom floor.
But she did find the answer. “Me.” Her whisper barely stirred the air.
Jameson frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“You get me. Working inside Internal, just like before.”
Jameson’s frown gave way to his familiar look of mild impatience. “I already told you. You’re done.”
“You know infiltrators always get found out in the end. And I might not know who the others are, but I know you, and you could lead Internal to the rest if I gave you up. Every infiltrator is a danger to the resistance—but you still use us. Which means you must need us. And how many other people will be willing to face the risk of working inside Internal? How easy will I be to replace?” She fixed him with a level gaze. “Plus, I’m Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter. Everything she can access, I can access. Maybe I haven’t been able to do much for you yet, but that doesn’t mean you think I’m useless. If you did, you’d have cut me loose a long time ago. You need me.”
Jameson gave a slight nod, almost undetectable. She couldn’t tell whether he knew he had done it.
“So if you let me make my case to the others, you get my guarantee that I won’t do anything like this again. And you get me, feeding you information from 117 and from my mother, for as long as I last.” She trapped his gaze with hers. “If you don’t, you lose me and anything I could have given you. And I don’t think you’ll find a replacement so easily.”
The woman outside the door banged harder. “What are you doing, taking a nap in there?”
It took another eternity for Jameson to respond. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll take you to the others. I’ll let you say what you want to say. But if the others think you can’t be trusted, you won’t be leaving. Is that something you’re willing to accept?”
She gave herself a moment to think. This wasn’t a decision to take lightly. If this meeting went wrong, she would die—not at some unspecified time in the future, but tonight.
But how many people would die if she couldn’t convince the resistance to save them? If she didn’t even try?
Since her meeting with Jameson at lunchtime, she had gone over her options over and over again, and had come to the same conclusion every time. She couldn’t stop the reeducation program without the resistance. She could give them any information she found, but that was where her usefulness ended. The most she could do on her own was fake a transcript—for all the good that would do—and with how closely 117 was watching her now, the deception would be discovered before it had any impact.
Convincing the resistance was her only chance.
It was the kids’ only chance.
She nodded. “I can accept that.”
Jameson stepped away from the door. He started to open it, but Becca held up a hand to stop him. She motioned him over to the corner across from the toilet, where he wouldn’t be visible when the door opened.
More banging. “Hello? Do I need to call a manager?”
Becca dug through her wallet until she found her Internal ID badge. Then she opened the door.
“I’m with Internal Defense.” She held the badge out just long enough for the scowling woman to see the prominent Internal Defense logo before slipping it into her pocket. “I’m investigating possible dissident activity in this restaurant.” She gave the woman a look she had seen her mother use. “Is there any particular reason you’re so interested in getting in here?”
The woman shook her head, blood draining from her face. “No. No, not at all. I was just leaving.” She all but sprinted down the hallway and pushed past the crowd to slip out the front door.
By the time Jameson stepped into the hallway, the woman was long gone.
Chapter Five
Jameson led Becca down a couple of side streets to the edge of downtown. The first hints of sunset had begun to spread across the horizon as they stopped in front of a bookstore tucked between a jewelry store and a building for rent. Future Perfect Books, the sign read. It took Becca a second to place the name. Future Perfect Books—a bookstore specializing in “patriotic literature.” The one whose ads she kept seeing on the park’s bulletin board, a new one every week.
Jameson knocked on the door.
Becca raised her eyebrows. “Here? The resistance meets here?”
“One of our people owns this place,” Jameson answered under his breath. “Our way of hiding in plain sight. And we have plenty of customers who know how to ask for the other things we stock. We have a variety of dissident literature here, for example. We distributed an underground newspaper, until the woman in charge of maintaining the paper was executed.”
The door opened.
The woman on the other side of the door stood almost as tall as the doorway itself, with solemn eyes and a gray-streaked braid that reached past the middle of her back. She started to motion Jameson in. Then her eyes flicked to Becca. She froze in mid-gesture, her gaze turning hard.
Jameson sighed. “I can explain.”
“This is the girl, isn’t it? The daughter.” She spoke each word crisply and precisely.
“We should have this conversation inside.” Jameson put one foot over the threshold.
The woman barred the door with her arm. “Why did you bring her here?”
Jameson didn’t try to push past her. “Let us in and I’ll explain. I believe she can be trusted, but if we decide otherwise, we won’t let her leave.”
The woman fixed Jameson with a disapproving frown. “She can’t disappear without people asking questions. She’s Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter. Besides the practical aspects, we are not Internal Defense, to execute our fellow citizens on a whim.” But she opened the door a little wider and dropped her arm back to her side. “What’s done is done, I suppose. She’s already here, which means she already knows where to find us. Now all we can do is mitigate the damage.”
Becca stepped into the bookstore behind Jameson. The pulpy smell of new books entered her nose as the door swung shut behind her. Rows of shelves stretched ahead of her, packed with books like Guardian Angel: A History of Internal Defense’s Surveillance Division and The Traitorous Mind: The Neurobiology of Dissident Thought. Her shoulders nearly brushed the shelves as she wove her way through the narrow aisles after Jameson and the woman. Ahead of her, the woman murmured something t
o Jameson, too quiet for Becca to hear; Jameson responded.
Their path took them to the back of the store, to a wooden door half-obscured by a poster that depicted a dinner plate full of books with the caption, A Well-Fed Mind is the Root of Good Citizenship. Becca hung back as the woman unlocked the door with a small key and eased it open—now that she was here, she didn’t know how to face the others, didn’t know how to respond to their inevitable hostility. But when Jameson tugged her toward the door, all she saw was darkness.
The woman flicked the light on.
The room was the size of Becca’s bathroom at home. More shelves overflowing with books lined the walls, but these books had dog-eared pages and battered covers, and titles like Techniques for Resisting Interrogation and True Citizenship and the Obligation to Dissent.
The others weren’t here.
Jameson pushed Becca the rest of the way into the room before she could react. “You’ll wait in here until we’re done discussing your situation.”
Becca moved to leave, but Jameson’s body filled the doorway. “Wait,” she protested. “You at least have to let me—”
“We can’t risk you having any contact with the others until we decide what to do with you,” the woman said from over Jameson’s shoulder. “Whatever you came here for will wait until then.”
Becca could have tried to fight her way past him. But even if she made it to the others before Jameson stopped her, they would never hear her out if that was how she made her introduction. This was what she had agreed to. She had known there was a chance that they wouldn’t even meet with her, that she would never make it out of this room.
She wouldn’t fight. She would wait for their decision.
She stepped back and nodded.
With what might have been a ghost of approval on his face, Jameson closed the door. She heard the sound of a lock softly sliding into place. Then two sets of footsteps padded away.
Becca picked up one of the books, a thick volume titled The Demise of Free Thought. She flipped through the first few pages before setting it down again. She couldn’t concentrate. Not now. Not when, somewhere in this building, the resistance was deciding whether she would live or die.
