by Zoe Cannon
Her mom took a closer look at her. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
Becca shrugged. “It’s just work. The things I see in the videos every day. Sometimes it gets to be a bit much.”
Her mom shook her head. “It’s more than that.”
Jameson would have been furious with her for getting this close to danger. But Jameson wasn’t here. “I saw something. In one of the videos. A dissident died—the interrogator killed him. And I guess it just hit me the wrong way. It seemed so…” Jameson struggling against her hands. Jameson’s limp body sliding to the floor. “Cold. She killed him so easily. And then she just walked away.”
“It’s always difficult at the beginning,” said her mom. “How I dealt with it—how I still deal with it—is to remind myself of the significance of what I’m doing. Everything we do is necessary to preserve the world the dissidents want to destroy.”
But what purpose had Jameson’s death served? That horrible moment when she had felt the life leave his body—how had that helped in the fight against the regime? What could possibly excuse what she had done?
“There’s just so much. And it never seems to get anywhere in the end.” Jameson. All the others. The dissidents whose interrogations she typed up every day. All dead, and for what?
“Let me give you some advice.” Her mom placed a hand on Becca’s knee. “It’s something I had to figure out for myself—maybe I can save you the frustration I felt before I did. I went into Processing thinking I could singlehandedly stop the dissidents. A lot of us do, I think, even if we don’t admit it. But there will always be more dissidents. They’re a disease there is no cure for. If we were to discover every dissident in the country tomorrow and execute them all by nightfall, the next morning there would be someone spouting dissident propaganda in the street. I wish I understood why it works that way, but it does.
“There will always be more dissidents—but that doesn’t mean that what we do is pointless. Stopping the dissidents is not an all-or-nothing proposition. If I execute one dissident, that’s one more who isn’t doing any harm. That’s someone who could have engineered a plan to overthrow the government, or instigated a riot that killed hundreds, or simply corrupted more people into thinking like him. And yes, there’s another dissident out there somewhere who could do any of those things—but if I hadn’t stopped the first one, there would have been two. You can’t stop them all. But everything you do for Internal, no matter how insignificant it seems, makes a difference. We’re holding back the tide, and even if on some days it feels like a losing battle, we are the only reason our society can continue on as it does.”
Becca couldn’t do this anymore, couldn’t listen to advice on how to remember that Internal was always winning even when it seemed like they weren’t. How had she ever imagined that talking to her mom could make her feel better?
She reached for something to say. “It’s hard to remember that sometimes.” She wished it were hard to remember. It was far too easy.
“It’s even hard for me to remember sometimes. There are times when I still get discouraged. But that doesn’t make it any less true.” Her mom squeezed her knee. “What we’re doing is important. No matter how insignificant it looks. Don’t ever forget that.”
If only she could. “I should probably go. Let you get back to whatever you were doing.” She could look up Kara’s file later. Right now she had to get out of here. Away from the memory of Jameson’s death. Away from the hole of hopelessness she had dug for herself by opening her mouth to her mother.
“I wasn’t doing anything important. It’s always nice to get the chance to see you, especially when it’s unexpected.” Her mom’s gaze turned questioning. “You never did tell me what you were doing here.”
Was that suspicion she heard in her mom’s voice? She could only hope it wasn’t. “I was just coming over to…” She scrambled for an excuse. “…cook dinner. And clean the apartment. I wanted it to be a surprise. You keep cooking all these nice dinners for me, trying way too hard even though I tell you not to. And you’re here all alone these days. I thought you deserved to come home to something nice for once.”
A tired smile spread over her mom’s face. “I could never have asked for a better daughter than you, Becca. I’m sorry I ruined your surprise.”
Becca saw her chance. She could still do this after all. Find the file, show herself that Kara was safe, ease that one portion of her guilt. “So leave.” She returned her mom’s smile. “Go out for a little while, and forget I was ever here, and maybe when you come back you’ll have a nice surprise waiting for you.”
Her mom stretched her legs out one at a time. “You know… I just might do that.” She stood. “So how long should I spend in blissful ignorance before I decide to come home?”
“An hour should do it.” That would be cutting it close. She would have to do everything she had told her mom she had planned to do, in addition to what she had actually come here for. But she could manage.
“Then I’ll see you in an hour. And it will be entirely unexpected.” She gathered her purse and her coat, and disappeared out the door.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Becca left the living room for her mom’s bedroom. The routine was familiar by now. It took less than a minute to get into her mom’s files, and in less than five she had Kara Jameson’s file open in front of her.
The file showed a picture of a pretty dark-haired girl who looked so young Becca could hardly believe she had been that age herself only two years ago. She studied the picture more carefully than she needed to, noting every resemblance to Jameson—in her jaw, the corners of her mouth, the lean line of her nose.
Stalling.
She’s safe. She has to be.
Because if she wasn’t…
She’s safe.
Becca started scrolling down, past all the information she didn’t need. Past names and dates and useless facts and everything that wasn’t Status.
Please, she begged, mouthing the word over and over. Please. Please.
But there it was in front of her, the thing she should have expected all along.
Status: R100.
* * *
Becca drove slowly down the cul-de-sac, scanning for the address from Kara’s file. The street was lined with freshly-painted houses, all white and pastel blue. The flower beds lay dormant for the winter, but kids’ toys were still spread haphazardly across some of the frost-coated lawns. Mailboxes on wrought-iron posts counted down the house numbers until she reached the one she was looking for, a house indistinguishable from its neighbors except for the indefinable air of desolation that hung over it. There was nothing to show what had happened, but the place already felt abandoned.
So this was where Jameson had lived.
She hadn’t expected something quite so… ordinary. But that was the point, wasn’t it? He was the one who had taught her about being invisible.
Not that it had worked so well for him.
She pulled into the driveway and stepped out of the car. She spun in a slow circle, studying each house for signs of life. Being here wasn’t safe, even this early in the morning. Soon people would wake up and start getting ready for work, and anyone would be able to look out their windows and see her snooping around a dissident’s house.
Which meant she had to get in and out as quickly as possible.
She didn’t know what she expected to find. Contact information for other resistance groups, maybe. Some clue to the plan for bringing down the reeducation program. Something. Anything. Anything that could help her save Kara. Everyone in the resistance knew better than to keep incriminating information around, and Jameson didn’t strike Becca as the type to break that rule—but he had to have broken it, she had to find something, because if this didn’t work she had nothing left to try.
She hurried up the front walk and tried the doorknob.
Locked.
Well, of course it was locked. What exactly had she expected? Had she thou
ght Internal would leave the house open for the neighbors to just drop on by?
A bubble of hysterical laughter forced its way out of her throat. She had made it down into the underground levels and back out again. She had stolen this address from secret Internal files. And a simple locked door was going to stop her.
She crept clockwise along the house’s walls, trampling the flowerbeds as she tried every window, praying none of the neighbors could see her. Locked. Locked. And then, along the back wall, one of the windows slid open.
Grunting with exertion, she pulled herself up by her hands and threw one leg inelegantly over the sill. The rest of her followed, and she tumbled to the floor.
She was inside.
She brushed herself off and got to her feet. She was standing in what had probably been the living room—the carpet was dented in the places where a couch and a coffee table had stood. The air had the smell only an empty house could have, sterile and musty at the same time. Internal had cleaned it up well—already it looked as if Jameson’s family had been gone for years instead of days.
But there had to be something left.
She walked through every room, running her fingers along the walls, tapping the floorboards for hidden trapdoors.
Nothing.
She searched every closet. Every shelf. Every tiny crack between the wall and the floor.
Nothing.
She stood in the vacant living room, speaking aloud to someone who couldn’t hear her. “You told me to save her. So show me how to save her. Give me something.”
Nothing.
“You told me to kill you, and I killed you, and now I’m the only one left. How am I supposed to save her like that? What did you expect me to do?”
Silence answered.
She collapsed to her knees, willing the tears to come. But her eyes were as empty as the house. There were no tears in her; there was nothing but the truth she hadn’t wanted to see.
Up until now, some part of her had believed she must have survived for a reason. The others were gone, but she was still here, and she would carry on their mission, succeeding despite the impossible odds like any good hero. Because it had to mean something, didn’t it? Otherwise she might as well have died along with them.
But it meant nothing. The others had died because that was what always happened to people like them eventually, and Becca’s survival had been a matter of dumb luck, nothing more. She wasn’t a hero; she was just a dissident, useful only for the information she provided, and now she had no one to give it to.
A year and a half ago, she had tried to help Heather. Heather had gone over to Internal instead. She had wanted to help Jake. Instead she had killed him. And now all the Heathers out there, all the Jakes, they would all go into the reeducation centers and come out changed or not at all.
She had tried to save Jameson, and—
She had made him a promise, and—
Her eyes were dry, her legs steady, as she got up and left the way she came.
She closed the window behind her. Made sure no trace of her presence remained. And then she got in her car and started driving to work.
What else could she do?
* * *
For four days she put off doing what was necessary. She smiled and made small talk with Micah, kissed him back when he kissed her, made excuses whenever he suggested getting together after work. On Sunday night, a week to the day after the destruction of the resistance, she finally made the drive to his apartment.
Micah had chosen not to move to Internal housing when he had started working in 117. He lived across town from Becca, at the end of a quiet street, in a building flanked by trees. She parked out front and walked slowly inside, trying to put this off for just a little longer.
Micah opened his door on the first knock. “Becca! I didn’t know you were coming over.” Was she imagining it, or was there something strained about his smile?
“I’m sorry I didn’t call.” If she had called, he would have asked questions, and she needed to do this face-to-face. “Can I come in?”
“Of course.” Still that same tension behind his eyes.
She stepped into the apartment and breathed in its clean scent. Two windows opposite the door spread the evening’s last glimmers of light into the room. Like her own, his apartment was uncluttered, his furnishings minimal. But where hers felt unfinished and sterile, his was peaceful and open and free. It felt like home. Like the future she could never have—except she could have it now, couldn’t she? She was leaving Internal; there was no point in staying, not now. Not when she couldn’t save anyone. Now the only future she couldn’t have was the only one she wanted.
Micah reached out a hand to her, took a step closer. She stepped back. She didn’t want to get caught in his orbit. Didn’t want to remember the things he had said to her that day in her apartment.
She had rehearsed her excuses. But now, standing in front of him, she couldn’t force the words out. The resistance was gone, there was no one left, and now she was about to cut off her last bit of human connection. She hadn’t understood before that getting close to someone else wasn’t only dangerous because of the threat of discovery. She hadn’t understood that after a taste of being understood, being seen, she would always want more.
But she had to do this. Their relationship was tainted, had been from the beginning. The only reason she had let herself stop pushing him away was gone, dead with the resistance. She had no reason to use him now. She had no reason to be with him.
She opened her mouth… but he spoke first.
“Becca.” The words fell into the space between them, heavy with regret. “This isn’t going to work.”
She didn’t know what he thought in the moment after, as she stood with her mouth slightly open, still preparing to speak the words he had just spoken. The only thing she could think of to say was I was about to say the same thing, and rather than sounding cruel or absurd she snapped her lips closed what felt like hours too late.
This was good, wasn’t it? Now she didn’t have to see the kicked-puppy look she had been sure he was going to give her. Now she didn’t have to trot out her excuses, or try to convince him that this was the right thing for both of them.
She didn’t have to lie and tell him she didn’t want what they could have had.
“Why?” Her work voice, careful, controlled. Her mask voice. It sounded all wrong in this apartment, in this conversation.
“I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to give you up. You have to know that.” He shook his head in a jerky motion, eyes filled with restrained frustration and the sadness she had thought she wouldn’t have to see. “I’m being moved out of transcription. I found out a couple of weeks ago. They’re giving me a position in interrogation analysis—it’s not where I thought I’d end up, but they described what I’ll be doing, and it sounds amazing.”
Internal must have told Micah what to say, given him a fake story and a fake job to go with it. Interrogation analysis—nothing anyone would question, nothing anyone would envy. They had told him about the reeducation program, gotten him salivating at the thought of serving whatever demented grand pattern he believed in by torturing and brainwashing a bunch of kids. How was it that he could take something like that and turn it into beauty that made her wish she saw with his eyes, while she was—had been—trying to save children’s lives and all she could see was a losing battle and countless dead ends?
Micah kept talking—not quite babbling the way he had at her apartment that day, but close. “The thing is… I’m leaving for training in two weeks. I found out on Friday. The training will last six months at least, and after that, I don’t know. I’m going to be working in a…” He paused, visibly trying to gather an excuse. Too slow; too obvious. No mask. If he were a dissident, he would be dead already. Something hot and angry filled her chest. He could afford to be careless with his secrets. She wished she could show him what it was like to have to hide.
“In a specialized
processing center,” he finally finished. “And it’s not exactly close—I mean, it’s close enough to drive, but far enough that I can’t just come back for the weekend, not that I can leave during the training anyway. I won’t be coming back to 117. I might not be coming back here at all.” His frustration was naked in his eyes. “I don’t want to leave everything behind like this. Especially not on such short notice. My friends are here. My family is here. You’re here. But this isn’t the kind of thing I can turn down. What I’ll be doing there—it’s exactly what I joined Internal for.”
Torturing kids? That’s what you joined Internal for? She wished she could say it, wished she could make him understand what he would be doing. But like her mother, he believed—and like her mother, he would become an instrument of Internal’s atrocities, someone she should hate but couldn’t.
“So if we stay together,” he continued, “we’ll only have two weeks, and that’s not enough time for anything. I hate it, and I’d give anything to change it, but the only way to stay would be to turn down what they’re offering me, and… I can’t. I can’t give up this chance.” He looked at the floor. “It wouldn’t be fair to either of us to start something that can’t go anywhere. So…” He hesitated. “So it would probably be best if we didn’t see each other from now on. I know we’re supposed to say we can still be friends, but the truth is I don’t think I can be friends with you, because I’m always going to want more than I can have. And there’s no contact with the outside world during the training, so it’s not like we’d get much of a chance to be friends anyway.”
She should be happy about this, right? Now she didn’t have to break up with him, because he had broken up with her instead. Because he had chosen the reeducation center over her. In two weeks he would be gone, and she would never have to worry about his talent for seeing past her mask again. In two weeks, no one would ever see past her mask again. She would be safe. Invisible. Alone.
