No Return (The Internal Defense Series)

by Zoe Cannon

  “I should have guessed who you were. You s-sound like her.” Ryann’s shivers distorted her voice. “They showed us interrogations, in the reeducation center. To show us what… what happened to people like us.”

  Behind Becca, Kara made a small noise.

  Ryann didn’t look at Kara. She kept her gaze fixed on Becca’s face, on her hands. “You sound like her,” she repeated. “Raleigh Dalcourt.”

  A wave of nausea rolled through Becca as Ryann’s words hit her. She took in her own speech, her posture, the purpose that had brought her here, seeing it all from the outside for the first time.

  She looked like any interrogator in 117.

  She looked like her mother.

  Ryann trembled harder. Waiting. Becca swallowed back bile.

  I am not my— The denial sprang to her lips.

  She pressed her teeth together to hold it back.

  Yes, she was here for information. But she was not her mother, and there were lines she would not cross.

  She was not her mother.

  But Ryann didn’t need to know that.

  She took another step closer, until only a hand’s width separated her from Ryann. “Don’t change the subject.” She used her mother’s voice deliberately this time. “Tell me about the program.”

  Ryann quivered. “I don’t know much. None of us do. They only told us what they had to. They didn’t trust us—they were afraid we’d go back over to your side.”

  “So tell me what you do know.”

  “It’s Reeducation. They’re running it. We all come from the centers.” She spilled the words at Becca’s feet, babbling almost too fast for Becca to understand. Desperate to get the words out before Becca… did whatever Ryann thought she was going to do. “They kept me there for weeks. Maybe months. They… I didn’t want to help them at first. They had to…” The flow of words stopped as Ryann shook harder. “They had to m-make me understand.”

  Another small sound from Kara, quickly suppressed.

  Becca closed her eyes against the images that Ryann’s words evoked. It didn’t help. Ryann beaten, tortured, bleeding. Ryann screaming. Begging for someone to save her, for the resistance to rescue—

  She forced the thought from her mind. Replaced it with the memory of Meri pressing the notebook into her hands, Meri walking away from her for the last time.

  “I don’t care about that.” Harsh. Cold. Her mother’s voice; the resistance leader’s voice. “What was your mission?”

  It took Ryann a moment to collect herself. “They w-wanted us to get as high up in the resistance as possible. Make contact with the people running the networks, the ones who know all the names. They gave us information. Things we could pass on to our contacts to m-make the resistance see us as valuable.”

  “Has Internal been feeding us false information through you?” How much information had Ryann passed on to the resistance since her return from reeducation? How much damage could she have done?

  Ryann shook her head frantically; her hair flew in all directions. “It was all real. At least that’s what they told me. They said it had to be real or you might figure it out.”

  “How well have the others infiltrated the resistance?” How much time do we have?

  “I d-don’t know. I don’t know. Internal told me it wouldn’t be much longer.”

  Becca didn’t allow herself to react. “How many of you are there?”

  “Six at least. M-maybe more. But I only ever knew Marcus.”

  Marcus. The other spy, the one Ryann had told them about. “Then he’s really one of you? Not someone you framed to make us trust you?”

  Ryann’s head bobbed up and down in a yes. “It’s like the information. It h-had to be real.”

  Then Ryann had given up a fellow spy. A friend. Had he known beforehand what she was going to do? Had she seen his face behind her eyes when she had gone to bed that night?

  Whatever it takes, she heard herself say. And, I’m considering you for a special assignment.

  She, of all people, understood.

  But she didn’t want to understand. Ryann didn’t deserve her sympathy. She moved on. “How much have you told Internal?”

  “I told them what I had been doing for the resistance. Stealing information from my parents’ files. I gave them Liam. And… and Sophie.” She flinched and looked away as she spoke her friend’s name. “Internal didn’t care about either of them. They weren’t… Internal said they weren’t important enough.”

  “And Meri.”

  Ryann shrank back at whatever she heard in Becca’s voice. “Y-yes. Yes. I told them about Meri.”

  “What else do you know about the program?”

  Tears pooled in Ryann’s eyes. “That’s it. That’s all they told me.”

  Nothing useful. Nothing Becca didn’t already know.

  Nothing that could help her save the resistance.

  She took another step forward, until her toes brushed the edges of Ryann’s blanket. “What else?” she repeated.

  “Nothing. There’s nothing else.” Ryann pulled her legs in closer to her body. “Wait. My contact inside Internal. He… his name is Gerald. We never met in person—we passed messages through my Citizenship teacher instead. I can g-give you her name if you want.” Ryann’s voice sped up again. “That’s it, I swear. That’s everything.”

  She sounded like every dissident in every interrogation Becca had ever transcribed.

  And Becca sounded like every interrogator.

  I’m not my mother. I’m not. She just has to believe I am. She fought to control her nausea as she closed the distance between them again. “What else?”

  Ryann tried to push herself back, away from Becca, but her feet grew tangled in the blanket. She toppled sideways onto the forest floor. She writhed, trying vainly to push herself up with her bound hands.

  Becca did nothing.

  After a moment, Ryann gave up. She lay in the leaves and half-melted snow, sobbing, shaking with cold and fear.

  “Are we done?” Kara asked in a strained voice, too low for Ryann to hear.

  Becca didn’t have to be a trained interrogator to know Ryann wasn’t going to tell them anything else. Yes, she almost said. We’re done.

  But she had to know one more thing.

  She waited until Ryann looked up at her again. Then she asked her final question. “Why?”

  For a moment, confusion overtook Ryann’s fear. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. Why did you do it?”

  “You s-said you didn’t care.”

  Becca leaned down over Ryann, just enough to be intimidating. “Just answer the question.”

  “I t-told you, remember? I already told you.” Ryann pulled her legs in closer to her chest. “I had to do it.”

  “That’s not good enough.” Becca clamped down on a surge of anger. “You could have helped us stop them. We would have kept you safe.”

  “I had to do it,” Ryann repeated, almost in a whisper.

  “You didn’t. We would have helped you. We would have given you a place to hide, a new identity—”

  “I had to stop you!”

  The clearing went still. The echoes of Ryann’s shriek spread through the trees, then faded away to nothing.

  When Ryann spoke again, her voice had returned to its normal volume. But some of the fear had bled away, replaced by something Becca couldn’t identify. Pride, maybe. Resolve. “They showed me what the resistance was,” she said. “They showed me what I was really fighting for. And then they told me I could help end it.”

  Becca knew what the reeducation centers did. She had seen it firsthand in Jake. But it had been easier to believe that Ryann was just afraid. Easier than believing that one of her people, someone as strong as the old Ryann must have been, had been turned. Lost.

  Broken.

  “They lied to you.” She studied Ryann’s eyes, searching for some reaction—some sign of doubt, of inner conflict. Some loose thread left behind
when Internal had ripped her mind apart and stitched it back together all wrong. She only saw the same fear as before—and underneath it, a certain set to Ryann’s jaw, a steady conviction that reminded her too much of what she had seen in Meri last night. What she saw in the mirror every day.

  Ryann’s voice, calmer now, echoed with that same conviction. “They showed me the truth.”

  Behind her, leaves began to rustle as Kara started pacing, then fell silent as she stopped herself.

  “They brainwashed you,” said Becca. “They tortured you. Did you listen to yourself a minute ago when you talked about what it was like? You were terrified. How can you be on their side after that?”

  “Don’t,” Kara murmured. “I’ve seen this before. You won’t get anywhere like that.”

  “They did what they had to do.” Almost all the fear had left Ryann’s voice now. “Everything they did—” She shuddered. Caught her breath. “Everything they did, they did to save me. I didn’t understand when my dad brought me to the center. But I do now.”

  It took a second for Ryann’s final words to register. “Your dad brought you there? He turned you in?”

  Meri, she reminded herself. Meri is dead because of her. Sympathy had no place here.

  “He did what he had to do,” said Ryann. “And so did I.”

  Becca had nothing to say. Nothing that wasn’t I’m sorry or I should have protected you. Nothing that would help the resistance.

  “I didn’t want to spy for them. I begged them not to send me. To choose somebody else.” Ryann blinked back the last of her tears. “I didn’t want to tell them about Sophie. I didn’t want to betray anyone. But I had to stop you. Whatever it took.”

  Whatever it takes.

  “And I know what has to happen next.” Ryann took a shaky breath. “I know you have to kill me.”

  “I—” She stopped, fighting the impulse to deny it.

  Ryann seemed less afraid now that she had spoken her fate aloud. She watched Becca, waiting for a response.

  “Yes.” Becca forced herself to look Ryann in the eye as she answered. Ryann deserved that much from her. “I have to kill you. I have to protect the resistance.”

  “Whatever it takes, right?” Ryann tried to smile. Her lips wobbled until she looked like she might cry instead. “It’s okay. I understand.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Becca agreed. The weight of the gun in her coat pocket, the gun she had brought here knowing how this conversation would end, seemed to double.

  She knelt down next to Ryann. She wrapped one arm around the girl’s back, and took hold of her shoulder with the other hand. Ignoring the way Ryann’s muscles tensed under her touch, she lifted as gently as she could, returning the girl to a sitting position. She disentangled Ryann’s legs from the blanket and smoothed it around her lap.

  Then she stood.

  She pulled the gun from her pocket.

  The metal felt alien against her skin. Her fingers twitched, threatening to drop the weapon; she locked them in place one by one. Her vision narrowed until nothing remained but the gun in her hand and the girl in front of her.

  She had held this gun before. Shot it before. Killed with it before.

  But never like this.

  Do what you have to do.

  She raised the weapon.

  Kara grabbed Becca’s arm. “Wait.”

  Becca jerked at the touch. Her hand tensed, finger tightening on the trigger. Stopping with a fraction of a second to spare.

  The world snapped back into focus all at once.

  Becca lowered the gun, heart racing. “What is it?” she asked sharply.

  Kara hesitated. “Are you sure about this?”

  “You know what we have to do. You knew it when you came here.”

  “It’s not her fault.” Kara started to pace. Three steps to the left. Stop. Turn. Three steps to the right. “What they did to her… You haven’t been in one of those places. You don’t know. Eventually you don’t have any choice but to start believing it. I never turned, but I saw it happen. And if you hadn’t gotten me out in time… I don’t know.” Her hands, shaking almost as much as Ryann’s, had gone stark white. “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She’s a threat to the resistance.” She shifted the gun in her hands, testing its weight. “You know what will happen if we let her go.”

  “I’m not saying let her go. I’m saying…” Stop. Turn. “I’m saying leave her here for a while. Or bring her to one of the safehouses. Let me try to get through to her.”

  “And who’s going to guard her all that time? What happens if she escapes?” Becca shook her head. “I spared her once. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  Ryann’s voice came from behind them. “Stop.”

  Kara stopped pacing as she faced Ryann. “I know what they did to you,” she said. “I was in reeducation too. If I—”

  “I said stop. Stop arguing and just…” Ryann’s voice wavered. “Just get it over with, okay? Just do it.”

  The fear had returned to Ryann’s eyes. But it wasn’t directed at Becca. It was directed at Kara.

  At Kara, who was trying to save her life.

  Ryann turned back to Becca. “We both know what you have to do. The longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be for both of us.”

  Becca closed her fingers around the gun.

  And stopped as she replayed Ryann’s words in her mind.

  Something was wrong.

  Do it, she ordered herself. Stop making excuses and do it.

  But her evaluator’s instincts wouldn’t let her.

  She examined what Ryann had said, trying to figure out what kept jangling in her head like a wrong note. It wasn’t Ryann’s fear—that was real. It was something else. Something about the way Ryann’s gaze kept flicking to Kara, as if Kara’s pleas on her behalf represented the real threat. Something about what Ryann had said a second ago. It sounded too coherent, too…

  Too rehearsed.

  She planned this.

  Ryann wanted Becca to kill her.

  Becca wasn’t her mother. She wasn’t an interrogator. But she had seen enough interrogations to understand. And the memory of Meri, of that last conversation, was still fresh in her mind.

  I have a choice, Meri had told her.

  I can make sure I’m never interrogated.

  Whatever it takes.

  “You know something.” Something that could help Becca destroy the program. The specifics of its mission, maybe. Or… “Names. You have names. You know who the other spies are.”

  From Ryann’s sudden intake of breath—not rehearsed this time—Becca knew she had gotten it right.

  Ryann knew who the spies were—and she wanted to die before Becca had a chance to get the information from her.

  It doesn’t matter. Becca had done all she could do here. Ryann wasn’t going to give her the names willingly—she didn’t need her mother’s practiced eye to see that. So she might as well do what Ryann wanted and end this.

  She began to pull out the gun.

  She stopped.

  She hadn’t done all she could do.

  No. Her stomach clenched. I am not my mother. There are lines I will not cross.

  But everything Kara had said to her in the mall… everything Becca had told Meri in her apartment the other night… it was all still true. They didn’t have time to find the rest of the spies on their own. Not when it had taken them this long to find just one.

  Without Ryann’s help—without Ryann’s information—she would lose the resistance.

  Ryann was sobbing now, head bowed, all pretense of courage gone. Terror was etched into every line of her body. Terror of Becca. Of what Becca might do to her.

  There are lines I will not cross.

  But how many lives were her principles worth? How many of her people arrested, tortured, executed? One? Ten? A hundred?

  Were her principles worth the entire resistance?

  Protect the resistance. What
ever it takes.

  She even knew the perfect person for the job. One of Meri’s contacts would know exactly how to get the information out of Ryann. All it would take was a phone call.

  No. I am not my mother.

  She ordered herself to raise the gun. To put these thoughts out of her mind and give Ryann what she wanted. What she deserved.

  Instead she let it fall back into her pocket.

  A day. She would give it a day. To think, to examine her options, to weigh a hundred lives against one. And then…

  She couldn’t let herself imagine that far.

  “…one of us,” Kara was saying. “What happened to her in the reeducation center shouldn’t change that.”

  Still pleading for Ryann’s life.

  “Let’s go.” Becca’s own voice sounded unfamiliar to her ears. “We’re done here.”

  Kara stopped pacing. Her eyes widened in an expression that looked uncomfortably like hope. “You’re not going to kill her?”

  “Not yet.” She couldn’t say the rest aloud. Turning away from Kara, she motioned the guards back over.

  “Thank you.” Kara sagged in relief. “I’ll get through to her for you—I promise. I’ll do everything I can.”

  Tell her. But Becca couldn’t say it.

  “We should use one of the safehouses. They’ll be easier to guard long-term, and she’ll freeze to death if she stays out here more than a couple of days.” Kara started to pace again as she turned to the closest guard. “Bring her to the nearest safehouse. I’ll follow you. Tomorrow we’ll—”

  Becca cut her off. “Leave her here,” she told the guard. “I’ll be back for her tomorrow night.” One way or the other.

  Kara frowned. “What are you…”

  Her voice trailed into nothing.

  Becca could see the instant the truth hit her. The instant the hope in her eyes twisted into something else… something that reminded Becca of the way she had looked at her mom after she had found out what her mom’s job really meant.

  “You’re not actually considering this.”

  Becca didn’t answer.