by Zoe Cannon
Tonight she could make it work for her.
“You’re right on time—I’d say it’s just about done.” Her mom turned and smiled a little too widely. “I know you said you missed my macaroni soup.” There was a question in her voice, a hint of uncertainty that Becca still found disconcerting even after this long.
“I haven’t eaten anything that smelled this good in ages,” Becca assured her.
“You really should start eating better.” Her mom ladled twice as much soup as Becca wanted into a bowl. “Are you still living on nothing but sandwiches and frozen dinners?”
“Pretty much.” The ordinary mom-talk was starting to give her the strange double vision she had every time she talked to her mom. They had been each other’s confidantes for most of Becca’s life, and now as soon as they started talking the old closeness came right back as though nothing had changed. But at the same time, every word was scripted, every action calculated. While part of her simply enjoyed the time together, another part of her stood back and held her mask in place.
Not that it took much to keep her mom fooled, these days. Her mom had a huge blind spot when it came to Becca; that was the only explanation for why she hadn’t seen through all of Becca’s lies a year and a half ago, even though Becca had never been able to get away with lying to her before. Even though her mom could see through other dissidents’ deception well enough to make her the most respected, and most feared, interrogator in the country. But despite the protection her mom’s willful ignorance gave her, she couldn’t afford to let her guard down; she hadn’t let herself relax from the time she had joined the resistance until she had moved out. Willful ignorance could only go so far.
Her mom handed her the bowl. “Have you at least bought some furniture yet?”
She sat down at the table in her familiar spot. She had forgotten how cramped the kitchen was with two people and an actual meal that required cooking, instead of one person and a peanut butter sandwich. “Not yet.”
Her mom gave her a disapproving frown as she slid into the seat across from her. “I keep asking you to let me buy you something. A couch, maybe.”
“I’m fine. Really.” Once she started filling her apartment with furniture, it would start feeling like home. And it wasn’t. Her apartment, her life… all of it was temporary. Only hers until the Enforcers came for her. The more she let herself forget that, the harder it would be when they finally showed up at her door.
Her mom sighed, but changed the subject. “What do you think of 117 so far?”
There it was. Her opening. “Actually, I was hoping to talk to you about that.” She took a breath. “I need your help.”
“You know you only have to ask.” Her mom gave her another one of those smiles. “What do you need?”
“I had my evaluation today.” She hesitated, trying to find the right words. “I overheard something afterward. The evaluator was talking on the phone with somebody. She thinks everything that happened—you know, with Jake and everything—makes me look suspicious.”
Her mom studied her soup. She didn’t say anything.
“She wanted to report me, but whoever she was talking to wouldn’t let her. But she’s planning on having everything I do at work scrutinized and analyzed and double-checked.” She brought a little anger into her voice. “She wants to have me treated like a traitor.”
Her mom flinched at the word “traitor.” She still didn’t like talking about the events surrounding Becca’s arrest. Still tried to avoid any reminders of how close her daughter had come to becoming the enemy.
Good. That would be useful.
“I was hoping you could… I don’t know, overrule her somehow.” She kept her voice under strict control, maintained the perfect balance between deference and righteous indignation. “If something like this gets into my file, I’ll be under suspicion for the rest of my life. They’ll always see me as a potential dissident. I won’t have any chance at a decent career—and what if a dissident whose file I happened to see escapes? They’ll assume I’m responsible.”
Her mom sighed as a look of regret crossed her face. “As much as I’d like to help you, Becca, I don’t think there’s anything I can do.”
If her mom didn’t help her, she would only have three choices. Leave Internal. Watch dissidents die day after day and do nothing to stop it. Or help the resistance, and get caught, and die. “You have the influence. You got 117 to hire me even after what happened. This is nothing compared to that.”
“Becca…” Her mom hesitated before meeting Becca’s eyes. “I already know what your evaluator recommended. I heard about it this afternoon, and I made my decision then. I’m not going to stand in her way.”
Becca’s breath caught in her throat. “Then you… you think I’m a…” If her mom suspected her, it was only a matter of time before she found out the truth. It was what she did.
“No!” Her mom took a breath and lowered her voice. “Of course I know you’re not a dissident. But Becca…” She let out a long breath. “You don’t deserve to lose your future or your chance to make a difference in the world because of some bad decisions you made in high school. I got you the job so that you would have that chance. And if anyone ever accuses you of dissident activity again, I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. But the truth is, you did make bad decisions, and I won’t use my influence to shield you from them.”
Becca’s soup sat untouched and forgotten on the table. “So you’re going to let them call me a traitor. You’re going to let them kill my career before it starts.”
“There are limits to what they can do. I won’t allow them to place you under surveillance outside of work, for example. Nothing you’ve done warrants that—it would only be an invasion of your privacy and a waste of Internal resources. But yes. I’m going to allow their suspicions.” She folded her hands together as she leaned in toward Becca. “As your mother, I will protect you and the future you’re meant to have, but I will not stand between you and the world. And I won’t misuse my influence to make your life a little easier.”
Becca poked at her soup. The noodles floated in the broth like dead fish.
Three choices.
The temptation she kept locked away deep within her mind eased the door of its prison open a crack. Walk away now, it whispered. While you still can. If you stay, you’ll die. You’ll be dying for nothing.
For the first time since she had joined the resistance, she didn’t shove the temptation back to the dark recesses of her mind. Maybe it was time to listen.
Internal would find her out eventually. There had never been any question of that. Although dissidents were discovered inside Internal on a regular basis, it was rare for an infiltrator to avoid discovery for more than a few years at best. She had known from the beginning that the odds were against her. But now, with the extra scrutiny they were placing her under, any slim chance she’d had of lasting even five years inside Internal was all but gone—at least if the resistance actually did anything with the information she gave them.
But what was she supposed to do if she walked away? Go off and lead a normal life and try to forget? She couldn’t do that now any more than she could when the temptation had first presented itself to her, when her mom had offered to send her across the country—away from 117, away from all the reminders of what had happened, and, although her mom didn’t know this part, away from the resistance—to move in with her dad. She couldn’t live with herself if she turned her back on everything Internal had done—if for the rest of her life, every time she saw the Enforcers take someone away, she averted her eyes and told herself it wasn’t her problem.
So walking away wasn’t an option. The whispers of temptation faded from her mind and fluttered away. She fought the impulse to call them back.
Two choices, then. Stay and do nothing, or help the resistance and die.
And that wasn’t a choice at all.
The only thing she could do, then, was make sure she did some go
od before they came for her.
It didn’t matter how much riskier helping the resistance had just become. No risk was too high when she was already doomed, and if her life was going to end in one of those cells underneath 117, she was going to make it matter first.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Funny how much calmer she felt now that her fate had been sealed.
“It’s okay,” she told her mom. “I understand.”
Guilt and worry creased her mom’s eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I don’t like it, but I get it. You have to do what you think is right.” She took a bite of soup. Most of the heat had escaped by now, but it still tasted the way she remembered. The taste of home, of simpler times, was almost painful.
“I love you, and I would never suspect you of betraying Internal. I hope you know that.” Her mom watched her eat as if whether she liked the soup was a matter of life and death.
“Of course.” Becca swallowed another spoonful of soup as she made a decision. “Hey, I was wondering. After dinner, do you think I could grab some pictures from your computer? I was thinking of making a mother-daughter collage for my apartment, and I need some photos of the two of us together.”
She ignored a stab of conscience as a smile lit up her mom’s face. Maybe she had been wrong in her evaluation. Maybe she could manipulate people after all.
But it would get her what she needed—access to her mom’s computer. To her mom’s files. To whatever she could find about R100.
No more waiting. She couldn’t afford to wait. When Jameson came back—and he would come back—she would have information for him.
* * *
The sound of dishes clattering into the dishwasher followed Becca down the hall and into her mom’s bedroom. Becca sat down at her mom’s computer desk and dug the security fob out from the top drawer. With the ease of practice, she typed in the numbers displayed across its slim silver face.
Then she got to work.
The first time she had tried to find something in her mom’s files, she had succeeded only through sheer dumb luck. She had gotten some practice with the arcane interface since then. It wasn’t like the dissident bin; here there were no friendly messages, nothing but long case numbers and a dozen menus that made no sense unless you knew what you were doing.
By now, Becca knew what she was doing.
Her mom knew everything that went on inside Internal. With the amount of power she had in 117, there was no way there was anything she didn’t have access to. If there was anything that could tell Becca what R100 meant, she would find it here.
Becca began skimming the first file. Another dissident, a couple of years younger than Jake—practically a kid—whose status read R100. Nothing that told her what the status meant. Nothing useful.
Next file. Column after column of numbers, some kind of arcane accounting information. Also not useful.
Next file. Someone had registered an official protest demanding that the R100 program be shut down. The document was peppered with phrases like “black hole of funding” and “endangering our security.” But no real explanation. No hints as to what R100 actually was.
“Are you finding everything okay?” her mom called.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of great pictures here.” She rubbed her forehead, which had begun to pulse with the beginnings of a headache.
Next file.
As soon as she read the first sentence, she forgot about her headache. Forgot about her mom. Forgot everything but the words in front of her.
I was right, was her the first thought. The resistance will care about this. They’ll have to.
And then, Jake. At the thought of him, all her triumph melted away.
It would have been better if he had been executed like she had thought. He would have preferred it to this, certainly. Not that he was likely to still be alive by this point.
She wanted to stop. Forget about all of it. Forget what she had done to him.
She forced herself to keep reading.
She couldn’t change the past. But now that she knew about this, she would tell the resistance, and they would put a stop to it. It would never happen to anyone else.
But what if Jameson never came back? She didn’t have any other way of reaching the resistance. How would she—
“Why don’t I help you out?” Her mom poked her head through the doorway.
Becca jerked in her chair. She closed the file as her mom stepped into the room. Had she been fast enough? Had her mom seen?
She studied her mom’s face for any trace of suspicion, and found nothing.
“It’s fine.” She stood. “I think I have what I need.”
* * *
A week later, when Becca had all but given up on hearing from him, Jameson fell into step beside her on her third lap around the track.
He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “You asked to meet. Are you in danger?”
If I were in danger when I asked to meet, I’d already be dead. “Where have you been?” She snuck a glance at him. He wore the same neutral expression as ever, with no hint of where he had spent the past week, no bruises to suggest time spent on the underground levels. Not that that meant anything, really. They knew how not to leave marks.
“One of our infiltrators was captured last week.” He said it as if he were talking about a stranger on the news. “She had information that could have compromised the resistance. I couldn’t afford to meet with you until I knew I wasn’t being watched.”
The infiltrator inside 117. The one Micah had tried to gossip with her about. “She was one of yours?” Someone else from her resistance group had been working inside 117. Maybe they had passed each other in the hall. And she had never known.
She swallowed her resentment. She understood how it had to work. The less information anyone had, the better. But when would they let her be a real part of the resistance? When would she get to do more than give them information they didn’t want?
Maybe never, after what her evaluator had done. She’d probably be caught before she got the chance.
“Are you in danger?” Jameson repeated.
She thought about telling him about the evaluation. But he already didn’t like her taking risks. If she told him, he might order her to leave Internal, to give up on the whole endeavor, and then she would be left with nothing. “No.”
A familiar edge crept into his voice. “Then why are we here?”
“I found something.” She forced herself to stay calm, fought the temptation to show off her discovery to Jameson like a dog that had just learned its first trick. “I was looking through a dissident’s file, and I—”
“I told you to stop looking through files.”
“It was for a transcript,” she lied. “Anyway, the dissident’s status was just listed as ‘R100.’ I’d never seen that kind of code in a dissident’s file before, so I used my mom’s access to look into it.”
Jameson kept looking straight ahead as they passed a woman standing too casually by the side of the path. Probably Surveillance. “What did you find?”
“It’s a new Internal division. An offshoot of Processing. Still experimental. They haven’t decided whether to officially put it into place or not, but they’ll be deciding soon, and it looks like it’s probably going to happen.”
“A new division,” Jameson repeated. “For what purpose?”
“Reeducation.” She took a breath. “That’s what the code means. Reeducation 100. It’s an experimental reeducation center. There are about sixty kids in there right now. They take dissidents’ children, and dissidents they think are young enough to be molded, and they turn them into good citizens.” She suppressed a shudder at her memory of the file. “They have… a lot of different ways of doing it. I read about some of the things they’ve tried. And when something doesn’t work, they shoot everyone and bring in a new batch of test subjects.” Her legs had gone weak. She could have ended up there so easily. If her mom hadn’t rescued
her in time last year, would she have been standing beside Jake, waiting her turn for a bullet to the back of the head when the latest experiment didn’t work out?
Jameson listened, expressionless, as she spoke. When she was done, he shook his head. “I doubt there’s anything we can do.”
No. She had something. She finally had something, and the resistance was going to make it right. They had to. “We need to do something. We need to stop them from putting this into place. Do you have any idea how many people Internal will send to these places if this gets implemented all across the country?”
“It sounds as if the project is already well underway. We would essentially be taking on an entire division of Internal. That’s simply beyond our capabilities.”
Only her months of practice at keeping her mask up stopped her from raising her voice. “First everything I gave you was too insignificant. Now I’ve found something important, and it’s not worth the risk because it’s too big. Is there anything that’s actually worth the risk for you? Do you do anything at those meetings of yours, or do you just sit around drinking tea while the world falls apart around you?”
“You have no idea of the risks involved every time we decide to act.” He still didn’t look at her, but his voice, barely more than a whisper, sliced into her like a dagger. “You’re a child. This is a game to you.”
Hadn’t Jake said something similar to her, back when she had first lost faith in the regime? The difference was, back then it had almost been true. “You think I don’t understand risk? You think I couldn’t hear what you weren’t saying when I asked about the infiltrators before me? I have a few years at most before they find me. That’s it. I know that, and I’m still here, because this matters enough to me that I can accept it. So don’t tell me I don’t understand risk. I’m risking my life every day so I can come here and listen to you tell me again that everything I’ve found is worthless.”
“If you understand the risk you’re taking, then you should also understand why we can’t throw our lives away on something unimportant, or something futile. You’re not the only one whose time is limited. None of us can evade Internal forever. That makes it even more important for everything we do to matter.” Jameson was no longer impassive. His words sparked with life, with anger he would have lectured her for showing. “We don’t rescue everyone. We don’t make futile gestures like trying to shut down what will soon be a full-fledged division of Internal. When everything costs lives, you learn to spend them carefully.”