by Zoe Cannon
She was out of her seat before she knew what she was doing. She edged past Micah along the wall. Slowly, gently, careful not to startle her, she placed a hand on Heather’s shoulder.
Heather lowered her hands from her face. Her eyes, shining with tears, opened a crack, then the rest of the way. She blinked once, twice, three times, as she looked up at Becca. She opened her mouth, but only a small helpless wail came out.
“Here.” Becca took Heather’s hands in hers and helped her to her feet. “Let me take you home.”
* * *
They drove all the way to Becca’s building without Heather saying a single word.
Becca pulled into the parking lot and shut off the car. With the noise of the engine gone, the soft choking sounds of Heather’s sobs expanded to fill the space. Becca opened her door and started to climb out, but with one foot on the pavement she looked back and saw that Heather hadn’t moved.
“Heather?” she said over the chime of the door complaining that it was open. “We’re here.”
No response.
“I brought you to my apartment. I wasn’t sure where you lived.” She had tried to ask on the way here, but Heather hadn’t even twitched in her direction. She didn’t get any more of an answer now.
“You can stay here tonight if you want.”
No response.
Becca swung her leg back into the car and shut the door. She fiddled with the heater until hot air started to blow through the vents. If she couldn’t get Heather out of the car, she could at least make sure the two of them didn’t freeze.
Heather’s hair hung into her face. The ends were damp with tears. A tiny shudder ran through her body with each breath, but aside from that, she didn’t move. She stared directly ahead, the way she had during the whole drive here, but Becca doubted she could see what was in front of her. Did she even know where she was, or was she too lost in her private grief?
She tried again. “Heather? It’s me. It’s Becca. I don’t know what’s wrong, but whatever it is, it’s going to be okay. Just talk to me, okay? Let me help you.”
Heather’s response was so quiet that Becca almost missed it. “I want them back.”
“Want who back?”
Heather didn’t look at her. “I want them back. They were dissidents and I want them back. What’s wrong with me?”
“Your parents.” A little late to start grieving for them, isn’t it? She banished her first reaction to the dark recesses of her mind. That wouldn’t help Heather right now.
Assuming Heather even needed help. Assuming she hadn’t just gotten better at faking.
“They were dissidents.” She spat the word as if the acid in her voice could dissolve the very fact of their existence. “It’s not like I ever knew them. I never knew what they really were. It was all a lie, all of it.”
“They were your parents. Of course you miss them.” Would this be her in a week, in a month? Bent double in someone else’s car, sobbing and wondering what was wrong with her because she missed her mother when the world was probably a better place without her?
No. If she cried, it would be where no one could see, where no surveillance cameras could pick it up. If she cried at all. Maybe she wouldn’t. She still hadn’t cried about Jameson, not since those brief insensible moments in his cell.
“It’s not just that.” Tears distorted Heather’s voice into something almost unrecognizable. “I can’t stop thinking about how they died. I never used to think about them, not since I joined the Monitors back in high school, but then I started working in Investigation and now I see it in my head all the time. I moved into Internal housing and my new apartment looks exactly like the one I grew up in. Everywhere I turn in that place there’s another memory of my parents. I can’t get away from them. And I hate Internal for killing them. I hate Internal and I hate Raleigh Dalcourt. And I look at all the dissidents we’re investigating and—” A shudder ran through her.
“And you want to save them,” Becca finished. “Like you couldn’t save your parents.”
“I’m not a dissident,” Heather whispered. “I’m not one of them.” Finally, she raised her head. She looked at Becca with bloodshot eyes. “Am I?” Barely more than a hiss of sound escaped her throat as she mouthed the words. Even that was enough to make her dart her eyes from side to side as though Enforcers had been lurking outside the car, waiting for that very question.
If Heather was spying for Internal, whatever Becca said right now would count against her. If she so much as said it was understandable for Heather to hate Internal… that in itself would be enough to get her arrested, even if she didn’t go any further.
Becca kept her voice soothing and free of genuine emotion. “I know you’re not a dissident.”
“But I don’t. Know that, I mean. Not anymore.” Heather ducked her head as if hiding from the imagined Enforcers. “I believe in Internal. I do. But I also hate them. I hate them so much it scares me. And all this time I’ve been telling myself my parents deserved to die. But now I keep thinking about them and I wonder—what if they didn’t deserve what happened to them after all? What if none of them do? All these people are going to die like my parents, and I’m helping—” Her sentence ended in a strangled sob.
Becca couldn’t let Heather draw her in like this. Couldn’t let herself be tempted.
It had been so much easier to dismiss Heather the night of Jameson’s death. When she could let resentment and the helpless frustration of that day overwhelm her. When Heather had looked like the hysterical Heather she remembered so well; when she hadn’t looked so… broken. Like a dissident in the final seconds before the video cut off. Like the Heather who had briefly existed after her parents’ arrest and before her transformation, the girl Becca had tried so hard to help.
Like a chance to do it all over.
She could help Heather this time. She could save her from Internal, save her from the anger that was clawing her apart. She could rebuild the resistance—just her and Heather, the way they used to be. They would fight Internal together and stay up all night talking and laughing until Heather’s dad banged on the bedroom door and told them to quiet down.
She knew what it felt like, those first frightening days and weeks of asking the questions no one was supposed to ask. And it had to be worse for Heather. Heather had lost her parents to Internal. She had spent the past year and a half convincing herself they had deserved their fate. She had woven her faith in Internal around her like armor, and now that the armor was cracking she had more than a year’s worth of grief slamming in on her all at once. How could Becca turn her back on her now?
Heather misinterpreted Becca’s silence. “You’re going to turn me in, aren’t you? Please don’t. Please. I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean any of it…”
She knew what she had to do. Offer the empty reassurances she could call so easily to her lips, and then drive Heather home. Show enough sympathy to look human, but not enough to look suspicious. She knew what would happen if she gave Heather anything more, if she told her anything close to the truth.
She knew all this.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I know.”
Stop, she ordered herself. You can still salvage this. You can still walk away.
“I know what it’s like to see dissidents die day after day and wish you could save them.”
Don’t say it. Don’t say it…
“You were right about me. I’m still a dissident. I started working in 117 so I could help the dissident group Jake told me about. Now I’m all that’s left.” Weariness colored her words. “If you want to turn me in and finish what you and Milo started, go ahead. But if you want to help me, the offer is open.”
Heather looked at her with something like horror.
“You’re an infiltrator,” Heather breathed. “Like that woman in 117 a few weeks ago.”
Becca nodded. “Like your parents.”
“I… I can’t handle this right now. I can’t.” Heather clawed at
her car door. Once she got hold of the handle, she flung the door open and hurled herself out into the night.
By the time Becca could think about chasing after her, she was gone.
Chapter Thirteen
Pacing back and forth between the bedroom and the door, startling at every imagined movement and freezing at every sound, Becca waited.
She had thought about running. But she still didn’t know for sure whether she had thrown everything away with her confession. Maybe Heather hadn’t turned her in, and to run now, without knowing for sure, would be to forfeit her chance of ending the reeducation program. That was the maddening part, the part that was going to get her killed. That little spark of hope was still flitting there in front of her eyes like a will-o-the-wisp, and she would follow it willingly into any danger if only she could keep that tiny chance of making a difference.
Besides, running never worked. They always caught you in the end. If she was going to die either way, she’d rather see it coming.
Back and forth, back and forth, as the carpet slowly rubbed her feet raw.
She had tried to call Heather five times. Heather hadn’t picked up. The last time, it had gone straight to voicemail.
If Enforcement came for her, she would go quietly. She would show them with her actions that she had accepted this, that she had known what she was getting into and had done it anyway. She would show them she was proud to face the consequences of rebellion.
Back and forth.
She caught herself against the wall as her legs buckled underneath her. On chafed feet, she stumbled to the living room and into the single chair waiting there. She flicked on the TV and flipped through channels until she found some movie that wouldn’t take much effort to watch. She kept the volume low as she listened for the only sounds that mattered.
Possibly her last minutes of freedom, and she was spending them watching a stupid movie on TV. But there was nothing suitably momentous she could do, no desperate last stand she could make. Life didn’t work that way.
She tried calling Heather again. Voicemail.
Every sound turned into footsteps. The wind against the walls—footsteps. The creaking of a tree outside the window—footsteps. And then, from the hallway, a sound she couldn’t explain away.
Footsteps. For real this time.
Her breath came raggedly. It’s somebody getting home from work, she told herself. Probably an interrogator. They work late all the time.
The footsteps slowed as they came closer. Until they stopped.
Right in front of her door.
Next would come the sound of a key in the lock, and then they would be inside. She turned off the TV and stood. She would be ready for them.
Someone knocked on the door, three soft taps.
She shrieked.
Mortified, she covered her mouth. A bubble of laughter escaped through her fingers. Someone was knocking. That meant it wasn’t Enforcement after all.
She opened the door to find Micah standing in front of her, shifting uncomfortably, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to be here.
She started gathering excuses to explain her scream, but Micah didn’t even ask.
“I’m glad you’re awake.” He let out his breath in a nervous huff as his fingers drummed against his pant leg. “I need to tell you something.”
* * *
They sat together against the wall, just the two of them and all that empty space. Micah stretched his legs out in front of him, then tucked them under his body, then pulled his knees to his chest, all the while avoiding her eyes. Becca watched him, trying to slow her racing heart, trying to calm the energy racing along her nerves. Trying to quiet the voice that whispered, Enforcement is coming. Enforcement is here.
Finally Micah spoke. “You weren’t supposed to tell me about your mother, were you?”
Becca tried to direct her mind away from Enforcement to this new train of thought. “They told me not to talk about it with anyone. But it’s okay—everyone knows now anyway, I guess.”
“You weren’t supposed to tell me, but you did anyway. Because I accused you of closing me out.” He paused. “Because you trusted me.”
Because it was the only way I could find the reeducation center. “It’s okay. Really.”
There was guilt in his eyes when he looked at her. “I lied to you before.” The words came out too fast. “I’m not going to be working in interrogation analysis. It’s a secret program. Something Processing has been working on for a long time.”
He had told her. Just like that, he had told her.
Because he trusted her. Because he thought she had done the same for him—trusted him, told him her secrets.
She felt sick.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “What kind of program?”
“It’s called reeducation,” he said, and Becca had to stop herself from saying the word along with him. “It’s meant to help dissidents’ kids, and dissidents who might be young enough to be saved. I’m going to be working with these kids. Helping them. Turning them into good citizens again.”
Torturing them until they break badly enough that they’ll be whatever you want them to be. Her stomach twisted.
“Helping them how?” Would he admit what he was going to be doing to those kids? Did he even know?
He shrugged. “That’s what the training is for. To show us how to do it. It’s all still experimental, so it might end up going nowhere. But if it works… Becca, this could change everything. There could finally be a real way not just to remove dissidents from society, but to save them. Can you imagine that? Instead of treating them like lost causes—like they aren’t even human anymore—we could genuinely fix them. If dissidents are a virus, this could be the cure.”
As always, the passion in his voice made her wish she could believe. Next to his world of grand purpose and perfect order, what were her clumsy efforts at resistance? Lonely. Futile. Pointless.
“That sounds…” She let her voice trail off. There were too many ways she could finish that sentence, and she couldn’t say any of them aloud.
“I know. It’s an amazing thought, isn’t it?” But then the passion drained from his face, from his voice. He slumped. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. It’s all classified. Most of the high-level people in Processing don’t even know. But… I’m scared, Becca. I want this—you have no idea how much. But it terrifies me.” He leaned his head against her shoulder.
Spilling his secrets to her like they were nothing. Because he was scared. If she had gone to him when she was scared—and when wasn’t she?—she would be in a cell already. Heaven forbid she should have gone to him for comfort after she had killed a friend. For one brief moment, she hated him.
“What’s scary about it?” she asked. “You’ll be doing what you wanted to do from the beginning. It can’t be that much different from interrogation, right?”
“Nobody knows what the training involves. It’s all kept very quiet—even more so than the rest of the program. We aren’t even allowed to talk to anyone who’s been through it, not until we go through it ourselves. But that’s not the only part that scares me.” His muscles tensed against her as he spoke. “People have died there. A lot of people. They even considered shutting down the program last time. That’s what I heard, anyway, although I don’t think we’re supposed to know about that either.”
All those failed experiments, shot and thrown away like they were nothing. Jake, thrown away like he was nothing. She suppressed a shudder. “That’s not so different from 117, though, is it? If you were an interrogator, you’d have to execute dissidents all the time.”
Micah shook his head. “Not dissidents. Guards. Analysts. Counselors—that’s what they’re calling us, the people who are going to be working with the kids.”
They kill their own people. But that couldn’t be right. “Why? How does it happen?”
“There have been a few… incidents. That’s what they call them. A kid overpowers a guard, or get
s hold of a weapon somehow. Usually only one or two people die before the guards stop them—not that that’s any help to you if you’re the one who was unlucky enough to be standing closest. But last time…” He paused for a long moment. “There was a huge escape attempt. The kids almost made it out before the guards stopped them. Half the counselors were killed—that’s why they need to train more of us.”
They didn’t kill their own people. The kids killed them.
After all her time transcribing interrogations, all those case studies in futility, it hadn’t occurred to her that a prisoner might fight back and win.
She imagined the kids overpowering their captors, running for their freedom, and nearly smiled. Then she saw Micah bleeding out on the floor behind them. The sick feeling came back.
And then she realized what he had given her.
He said something else, but she didn’t hear him. Couldn’t hear him through the roaring in her head, couldn’t feel the weight of his head on her shoulder through the staticky prickles all over her skin.
Micah had handed her the key to destroying the reeducation program.
Internal had almost shut down the program after the last escape attempt. If it happened again…
She didn’t need to build connections inside Internal to have the project quietly killed. She didn’t need to storm in with guns blazing. All she needed to do was help the kids escape and make sure they killed everyone along the way. Still nearly impossible, yes. But easy by comparison.
Except for one crucial, horrible detail.
Micah would be there.
The image flashed into her mind again—Micah lying on a cold concrete floor, blood pooling around him. Only this time he was staring with accusing eyes straight up at her. Just like Jake, when the Enforcers had taken him away.
Jake had seen her mother as nothing more than a torturer, an enemy as devoid of humanity as the image most people had of a dissident. You know what she is, he had said to her. And her response, never spoken—Yes. But I also know who she is.