No Return (The Internal Defense Series)

by Zoe Cannon

  The restraints. Gone now. Her arms were free, and her legs. The chair had disappeared, leaving her lying on the floor.

  No. Not the floor. Rough fabric scraped along her cheek. Bedsprings creaked beneath her.

  “Talk to me, Becca. Please.”

  Not Lucas’s voice.

  She opened her eyes.

  The room shuddered into focus around her. The concrete walls. The hard cot underneath her. The camera in the corner, dead and still, its light gone dark.

  And her mother, kneeling beside the bed, white fingers clinging to the mattress.

  Becca had thought she had seen her mom at her worst last night, when she had stumbled into Becca’s apartment in the aftermath of Alia’s confession. When she had admitted the fear that had haunted her for the past three years.

  She had been wrong.

  Her mom’s hair hung in lank tendrils around her shoulders. Her eyes were two splotches of red against her blood-drained skin. Tiny tremors ran through her body as she mouthed one word over and over. One name. Becca. Becca. Becca.

  “Mom.” She couldn’t manage more than a rough whisper. She had worn the rest away with screaming.

  Her mom stilled. Her eyes brimmed over with tears as they met Becca’s.

  “Becca. You’re awake.” Her mom’s voice broke with relief. “I thought they had… I thought you weren’t going to…“ She reached a trembling hand up to push a few strands of hair away from Becca’s face. “It’s all right, Becca. I’m here. It’s over now.”

  “Did I…” Did I break? She sent her memory back, sifted through jagged fragments of pain and fear and Lucas’s voice. What was the last thing she had said to him?

  “You lost consciousness.” Her mom stroked the top of Becca’s head. “The guards carried you back to your cell. They plan to continue the—” Her voice caught. “—the interrogation in a few hours.”

  If her mom was here, that meant she knew everything. What Becca was. What she had done. “I’m sorry.” Her own voice sounded like it was coming from miles away. Darkness tickled at the edges of her vision.

  Her mom made a pained noise in the back of her throat. “Don’t talk like that. You have no reason to—” She stopped herself. “It doesn’t matter. We can talk about it later. Right now you need to get up. Can you do that?”

  “I…” Becca’s eyes began to drift shut.

  “You can do this, Becca. Focus.” Her mom’s voice, sharp with urgency, cut through the haze. “We don’t have much time. I’m not supposed to be here. I bribed the guards to let me in, and used another interrogator’s codes to shut off the cameras, but someone will figure out where I am soon enough. We only have a few minutes to get you out of here.”

  “To…” Her mom’s face swam in front of her as Becca blinked in confusion. “To get me…”

  Her mom pressed something into her hand. A tablet, small and circular. “Take this. We use it to keep prisoners coherent during long interrogations. It should help you stay on your feet for a few hours.”

  “You’re getting me out.” Her words, her thoughts, came too slowly.

  “I don’t have a choice.” Her mom pushed herself to her feet, swaying slightly. “I can prove your innocence. I can prove what that dissident friend of yours did. All I need is time… but if you stay here, you won’t—” A look of raw pain crossed her face. “There won’t be time.”

  All Becca could do was echo her mom’s words. “Prove my innocence.”

  “Your friend Heather framed you. This is what happens when you trust someone from a dissident family. She convinced someone down at Investigation that you’re responsible for the breakout.”

  Her mom didn’t know.

  She thought it was all a mistake. A misunderstanding.

  Even now, she could only see what she wanted to see.

  Her mom checked her watch. She cursed under her breath. “We have to leave.” She held out a hand to Becca. “I’ll give you all the help you need. But you have to be strong for me right now, all right? You have to get up.”

  Becca didn’t move.

  She doesn’t know.

  Her mom laced her fingers through Becca’s. She gave Becca’s arm a soft tug. “Come on, Becca. You can do this.” Becca had never heard that note of desperation in her mom’s voice before. “Please.”

  Becca pulled her hand away.

  “Mom, I…” Becca shifted her arm underneath her, bracing her hand against the mattress. A jolt of pain ran through her body. Biting her lip to hold back a whimper, she pushed herself to a sitting position. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Later,” her mom promised. “After we get out, we can talk as much as you want. But if we don’t leave right now, they’ll kill you, do you understand? They won’t stop the interrogations until you confess to their lies, and then they’ll…” Her words dissolved into a noise that didn’t sound quite human.

  Becca couldn’t say it. She had to say it. “They’re not lies.”

  Her mom frowned through her tears, uncomprehending. “Becca… they’re accusing you of orchestrating the breakout. Of leading this dissident organization.”

  Becca didn’t want to look at her. But she had to. She forced herself to meet her mom’s eyes as she spoke. “I joined the resistance five years ago.” Her voice faltered. Keep going. “I’ve been leading it for three.”

  The truth seemed to hit her mom in slow motion.

  The hand she had held out to Becca fell limply to her side. She stumbled back. The confusion in her eyes faded to a hollow horror.

  Becca knew the look on her mom’s face. She had seen an identical expression on the faces of countless dissidents, in every interrogation recording she had watched. The moment when the pain became more than they could endure. The moment when they finally knew all hope was lost.

  Seeing her mom break hurt every bit as much as anything Lucas had done to her.

  “Five years.” Her mom sounded like a ghost of herself. “I lost you five years ago, and I never knew.”

  “You didn’t lose me. I’m right here. I’ve always been here.” But her words felt empty. She knew what her mom meant. In her mom’s eyes, she was the enemy now. A dissident. Something less than human.

  I’m right here, she repeated silently. I’m Becca. I’m your daughter. I’m right here.

  But her mom was looking at her like she was a stranger.

  “Why?” Her mom dropped the word to the floor like a shattered piece of herself.

  There were so many answers she could give. Because Internal is killing people—killing them—for saying one wrong word, for thinking one wrong thought. Because we talk about torture and execution like it’s normal. Because people don’t know what real freedom is anymore, let alone that they should want it.

  But only one answer mattered right now.

  Ignoring the pain, Becca swung her legs down to the floor. She pushed herself forward an inch at a time until, with one hand to the wall, she stood.

  Her vision grayed around the edges. She sank her teeth into her lip so hard she drew blood. Keep going. Just keep going. Panting raggedly, bracing herself against the wall, she faced her mom.

  “Do you remember what you told me when I asked you why you do what you do?”

  Her mom didn’t answer.

  “You told me you couldn’t walk away from what needed to be done, no matter how hard it got. You told me that living by your principles was always the harder path—but that it was always the right one.”

  No response.

  “Every day for the past five years, I’ve woken up to fight a war I knew I could never win. I’ve given up my future. My chance of survival. I’ve watched people I care about die—people I promised to protect. But I don’t regret the sacrifices I’ve made. I took the harder path. I fought for what I believed in.”

  She paused to take a breath. Sweat dripped down the wall from under her hand.

  “My principles aren’t yours—I know that. You’ve fought against people like me
for longer than I’ve been alive. Maybe you’ll never understand the choices I’ve made. But I hope you can at least respect that this was the only life I could have chosen. The only way I could be the person you taught me to be.”

  Silence.

  Her mom didn’t speak. Didn’t react. She just faced Becca with that same horrible look in her eyes. The look that said, I don’t know you. You are not my daughter.

  Tears pooled in Becca’s eyes, blurring her vision, building a merciful wall between her and her mom. But then the tears fell, and she could see clearly again. Could hear, over and over, the words her mom wasn’t speaking.

  I don’t know you.

  You are not my daughter.

  “I love you,” Becca whispered through her tears.

  Slowly, as if any wrong move could topple her, her mom turned away.

  And without a word, she left.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Becca slept.

  In her dreams, Lucas morphed into her mother, then became himself again. Together they hovered over her, holding shiny silver tools stained red with her blood, whispering words as sharp as their knives.

  Tell me everything, Becca.

  You are not my daughter.

  Tell me everything.

  “Becca.”

  A hand came down on her shoulder.

  Lucas’s hand. Lucas’s voice.

  She jerked away. Her back slammed against the far wall. A cry left her lips as her eyes flew open.

  Lucas’s eyes, inches from her face, stared back at her.

  Tell me everything.

  A noise of fear escaped her before she could stop it. She jerked away from Lucas, away from the knife in his hands. Back and back and back until she hit the corner of the wall, the corner of her bed.

  Her bed. In her cell. Not the interrogation room.

  Lucas’s hands were empty.

  “It’s all right,” Lucas murmured. “The cameras are off. We have a few minutes.”

  Safe. I’m safe.

  For now.

  She tried to let out her breath. Tried to stop herself from flinching back as Lucas shifted closer. He’s not going to hurt me.

  Not yet.

  Lucas slid himself back, away from Becca, until he reached the opposite corner of the bed. Until she could breathe again. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “For what I had to do back there.”

  “You—” You did what you had to do. You did exactly what I would have asked.

  But that wasn’t the only thing he had done.

  “You helped Heather come up with her plan.”

  Lucas nodded. “I did.”

  “You would have made someone else confess to leading the resistance.”

  “Yes.” No emotion in his voice. No shame; no regret.

  “An innocent person.”

  His face was as unreadable as it had been in the interrogation room. “I do what’s necessary to protect the resistance.”

  “By becoming everything we’re fighting against?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head, ignoring the wave of dizziness that washed over her. “There are lines we don’t cross. I could have stopped all this by having Ryann tortured—but the cost was too high. It might have saved our lives, but it would have destroyed the resistance.”

  “You made the choice you did because that’s who the resistance needs you to be.” His opaque gaze met hers. “But they need me to be something different.”

  Another shake of her head sent the room spinning. “The resistance needs people who won’t compromise our principles, no matter what that means. No matter how hard it is. You had it right that night in the clearing—we need people like my mother.”

  “The resistance needs people like Raleigh Dalcourt,” Lucas agreed. “They need people who value their ideals above all else—above their own lives or anyone else’s.” He kept holding her gaze. “And they need someone willing to do whatever it takes to make sure some of you stay alive to fight for those ideals.”

  She wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him she was wrong.

  But why had she given him this job in the first place, if not so he could keep the rest of them alive by becoming the enemy?

  She had known what she was asking him to do.

  She had done what was necessary.

  “I can’t support what you did,” said Becca. “I can’t tell you it was the right thing to do.”

  He nodded, as if her response was exactly what he had expected. “If you could, you wouldn’t be what they needed.”

  For a moment, neither of them spoke.

  Lucas’s slow exhale broke the silence. “The cameras will be back on soon.”

  “Go,” said Becca. “It’s okay.”

  Lucas hesitated. “I didn’t just come here to apologize.” He looked down at his hands, which lay folded in his lap. “I came to ask you a question.”

  His voice remained level—but something in the way he spoke made the hairs on Becca’s arms stand on end. “What is it?”

  “The interrogation has to look believable,” said Lucas. “You know that.”

  Becca nodded.

  “That means you can’t give in for another full day at minimum. Two would be better.” He paused. “And it’s going to get worse.”

  Two days. Becca’s chest tightened. She tried to keep her emotions off her face as she nodded again. “I know.”

  “That’s not all it means,” said Lucas. “With most prisoners, I can manipulate the interrogation in their favor—ask the wrong questions, back off at the right moments. Not with you. They’ll be watching too closely.” Another pause. He studied his hands as if they could tell him how to say what he needed to say. “I don’t doubt your strength. But it’s easy to reveal information you didn’t intend to reveal. It’s easy to forget about everything but making the pain stop. And if you cross that line, there will be nothing I can do to stop it—not without giving us both away.”

  “I won’t break,” she assured him. I won’t. I can’t. The tightness in her chest grew.

  At last, Lucas looked up again. His cool gaze pierced through her, as if her mind were as open to him as his was closed to her. An interrogator’s eyes. “Can you be sure of that?”

  “I—” I’m sure, she tried to say. But the look in his eyes wouldn’t allow her to lie.

  “You came close earlier.” He didn’t release her gaze. “Didn’t you?”

  Memory flooded over her against her will. The interrogation room. The merciless light burning through her eyelids. Metal cuffs digging into her wrists as her back arched. Lips moving in a silent plea. I can’t. No more. I can’t.

  And Lucas’s cold voice, filling the room, filling her thoughts until nothing else remained.

  Tell me everything.

  She opened her eyes—she hadn’t realized she had squeezed them shut. She sucked air into empty lungs. “I didn’t break.”

  Another hesitation. When Lucas spoke again, his words were careful. Precise. “There is another option.”

  Becca shook her head. “I tried to find another way. There isn’t one.” She tried to smile, tried to look brave, but the courage slid off her face like a mask that didn’t fit. “I just have to hold out long enough. That’s all.”

  Lucas didn’t return her attempted smile. “I’ve been studying the other prisoners’ files,” he said. “Even without the confession Investigation wrote for you, it may be possible to mitigate the damage from their interrogations.” He gave her a look she couldn’t read. “That is, if you don’t have the chance to tell Internal what you know.”

  It took Becca a moment to understand.

  Lucas protected the resistance in two ways. He made sure his interrogations didn’t get too close to anything that could compromise the resistance’s secrets. And when that wasn’t enough…

  “You’re offering to kill me.”

  “It would be quick,” said Lucas. “And as painless as I could make it. Internal wouldn’t be suspicious—I kn
ow how to make a death under interrogation look like nothing more than a careless mistake.”

  No more torture. No more struggle. No more fear of failing, of breaking, of betraying the people who were counting on her.

  She could just… let go.

  No. The plan. I have to finish this.

  She opened her mouth to refuse. A question came out instead. “How much of a chance would the resistance have?”

  “A small one,” Lucas admitted. “But more than they’ll have if you break.”

  I won’t break.

  But Lucas was right. She couldn’t be sure. If yesterday’s interrogation had gone on much longer, she didn’t know what she might have said. And it would only get worse from here.

  She was weak. She was human. She was no different from any other dissident whose interrogation she had transcribed. And they had all broken, in the end.

  Maybe she couldn’t do this. Maybe the best thing she could do now was to accept that, and let Lucas salvage what he could.

  There’s a difference between accepting and giving up.

  But if she broke… if she failed…

  There’s a time to let go and accept what’s coming—but there’s also a time to hang on and fight with everything in you.

  Maybe this was a hopeless fight. But so was standing up against Internal. She had done that anyway—and for a little while, she had changed the world.

  Maybe she would lose, in the end… but until then, she would take the harder path.

  She would keep going.

  She held her shaking arms out to Lucas, palms up, waiting for him to fasten the cuffs around her wrists again. “Take me back,” she said. “If we have another two days to get through, we shouldn’t waste any more time.”

  * * *

  The resistance was gone.

  They lay in front of her, all the people she couldn’t save. Bodies slumped against a concrete wall, a neat bullet wound at the base of every skull. Bodies laid out across the parking lot as blood ran down the pavement in rivulets. Coating Becca’s feet. Coating her hands.

  Somewhere, far away, someone was screaming.

  Micah’s arms tightened around her. “It’s all right,” he murmured, his breath tickling her ear. “I’ll always be right there with you.”