The Torturer's Daughter

by Zoe Cannon

  She didn’t know the answer.

  “Becca.” Her mom spoke her name in a strangled whisper.

  Becca didn’t wait to hear what she would say next.

  She ran.

  Chapter Twelve

  A month and a half ago, Becca’s phone had woken her in the middle of the night. She answered before she was fully awake. Heather didn’t say anything at first. When she did speak, her voice was choked with sobs; she stopped every few words to take another strangled whimpering breath.

  Becca could only understand a few words here and there. Disconnected fragments, half-intelligible. Nothing that made any sense. Nothing that told Becca what had happened. She offered what little comfort she could, and gripped the phone tighter every time Heather said something else she couldn’t decipher.

  “Please come,” Heather managed through her hysteria. “Please.”

  Still murmuring reassurances, Becca left the apartment. She padded down the hall and rang Heather’s doorbell, not caring if she woke Heather’s parents. Nobody answered.

  “I’m right outside,” said Becca. “Answer your door.” Maybe it wasn’t locked. Becca reached for the doorknob.

  The door was hanging slightly open.

  Through the phone, a series of louder sobs, interspersed with breaths so fast Becca thought Heather might pass out.

  “Where are you? Just tell me where you are and I’ll come find you.”

  No response except more gasping breaths.

  Becca nudged the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside. An eerie quiet hung over the living room. She flicked on the lights.

  The couch had been gutted. White stuffing spilled out from the cushions onto the floor. Books, pulled from the bookshelf seemingly at random, littered the floor. The computer that normally sat in the corner was gone, wires spilling across the desk where it used to be.

  She thought she heard Heather gasp, then realized the sound had come from her own throat.

  This couldn’t be what it looked like.

  “Whatever is going on, I’ll help you,” said Becca. “I promise. Just tell me where you are.”

  A long pause. Then, finally, a clear sentence—one she had never imagined hearing.

  “I’m at 117.”

  Now, six weeks and an eternity later, Becca sat in the corner of the playhouse, knees pulled up to her chest. She dialed Heather’s number with trembling fingers.

  Moonlight shone through the slim rectangle of the doorless entrance. A spider skittered across the illuminated part of the floor, away from Becca, across the pattern her shoes had made in the grime. Becca squeezed closer against the wall.

  “Hello?” Heather’s bleary mumble sounded like it was coming from outer space.

  Becca tried to speak. Nothing came out. Finally, too late, her mouth had gotten the message to stop talking.

  “Hello?” Heather repeated. “Becca?”

  “It’s me.” Becca barely recognized her own voice.

  “What’s going on?” Heather asked through a yawn.

  “I’m at the playground.” She whispered the words without meaning to. As though if she spoke any louder, Internal would hear and come for her.

  “What are you doing there this late?” Heather’s voice was thick with sleep and confusion. “Are you okay?”

  “I need—” She needed the old Heather. That was who she had tried to call. Instead she had gotten this stranger, the one who had talked about turning her in.

  “What do you need? What happened?”

  Why had she called Heather? She knew who Heather was now. What she was.

  “Never mind,” she said, still in a whisper. “It’s nothing.”

  She hung up—and dialed the number she should have called in the first place.

  * * *

  Jake sat with her for hours. He listened to her explanation of what had happened with her mom, and all her fears about what might happen. When she had nothing else to say, he sat with her in silence.

  Becca glanced at her watch. Three in the morning. Was her mom out looking for her? Was she sitting in the living room, waiting for her to come back? Or was she already at work again, torturing a confession out of another innocent person?

  “Is there anything I can do?” Jake asked, the first thing he’d said in… she didn’t know how long.

  Becca opened her mouth to say no. There was nothing he could do to make her mom forget what Becca had said to her. There was nothing he could do to make Becca less helpless; he couldn’t give her the ability to save herself and all the other dissidents Internal tortured and killed.

  But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? He did have something he could do for her.

  “I need you to give me something.” She spoke quickly; she needed to get the words out before she could talk herself out of this.

  “What do you need?”

  “Contact information for the other dissidents you were involved with,” she said in a rush.

  Jake started shaking his head before Becca had finished speaking. “No. I’ll give you anything else, but not that.”

  So close. She was so close to finding a way out of this intolerable in-between… but Jake could stand between her and the solution forever if he wanted to. “I have to do something. I can’t keep going like this, knowing the truth and not being able to do a thing to change any of it. If my mom… if she really does report me… then it won’t matter. But if she doesn’t…”

  “You don’t want to get involved with them.” Jake brushed away a fly that had landed on her leg. “They’re useless. They had my sister set up that newspaper, but for what? What good did it ever do? And after what happened, they wanted me to help them like my sister had, but they wouldn’t do anything to help us.” The fly landed on his arm. He smacked it so hard his hand left a red mark where it had struck.

  Part of her wanted to give up and leave it at that. But what would she do then? Keep going the way she had been? A week of this had made her boil over. How was she supposed to keep it up for the rest of her life?

  “Anything is better than nothing,” said Becca. “At least they’re doing something.”

  “Something that could get them arrested. Do you understand the danger you’d be putting yourself in?”

  “I’m already in danger just for the things I’ve already said. Heather could easily have reported me for what I said to her. My mom might still report me.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” Jake shifted so he was sitting in front of her instead of beside her. “With your mom in Internal, you’ve been untouchable your whole life. You think you’re still untouchable. You think actually fighting the government is the same as saying the wrong thing to somebody.”

  “Saying the wrong thing to somebody could get me arrested just as easily. It happens all the time. If I’m in danger anyway, I might as well do something that matters.”

  “You don’t have a clue how things actually work outside the little bubble you’ve been living in. I bet you think everyone believes all the propaganda Internal puts out, don’t you? Now you’ve finally figured out what Internal is really like, and you think you’re going to save the world. Good luck with that—but don’t expect me to help you get yourself killed.”

  Was Jake right about her? Was she too naïve to understand what this would mean?

  She didn’t care. She had to keep herself from ending up like her dad, forced to deny her dissident thoughts not only to protect herself but to stay sane.

  “What do you think I should do, then? Just sit back and pretend none of it is happening? I have to do something!”

  “This isn’t some kind of game! Have you forgotten what happened to my sister? To my mother?” This was the Jake who had threatened Laine, the one who had thrown Becca out of his house.

  But this time, Becca didn’t shrink away.

  “Of course not!” Her voice rose to match his. “Why do you think I want this? I can’t just ignore what’s happening and get on with my life as
if nothing’s changed. If that’s all I’m going to do, why does it matter what I believe? I might as well do what Heather wants and join the Monitors.”

  “What do you think you’ll really be able to do to make a difference?” Jake pried at a rusty nail sticking out of the floor.

  Embarrassed to admit that she didn’t have any idea, Becca crossed her arms. “More than I’m doing now.”

  “The answer is no. That’s not going to change.” He tugged harder; the nail popped free. He dropped it and started pulling loose splinters from the wood.

  Becca could feel it again, the restless energy surging through her limbs, asking her why she wasn’t doing anything with this new knowledge she had. She forced herself not to get up. “It’s not your job to protect me.” She fidgeted. “Please,” she said, knowing how desperate she sounded. “Let me have this.”

  “What do you expect me to do?” Jake’s voice hovered somewhere between challenge and defeat. “Hand over a resistance group to Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter?”

  She jerked back as if he had slapped her.

  She had called him here, confided in him, let him comfort her… and this was what he thought of her? That she was, what, faking all of it? That if he gave her what she had asked for, she would turn around and give it to her mom?

  “You think I’m spying for Internal.” The same thing she had thought about him at first. It was almost funny.

  “No,” said Jake. “I don’t. I believe every word you’ve told me. But… I can’t take the chance.”

  Becca wished she couldn’t understand. She wished she couldn’t see the distinction. It would make things easier. At least then she could channel some of her energy into raging at Jake.

  But if she were in his position, she wouldn’t want to take the chance either.

  No matter what she said, no matter how much he trusted her, she was still her mother’s daughter.

  She wanted to scream.

  She nodded. Her restrained energy made the motion jumpy and unnatural. “I understand.”

  She didn’t want to admit it, but a tiny part of her was relieved.

  The rest of her wanted to tear the playhouse apart.

  She drummed her fingers against the floor. It didn’t help. Her fingers came away coated in dust and unidentifiable grime. She wrinkled her nose and wiped her hands off on her jeans.

  Jake looked at his watch. “I don’t want to leave you, but I need to get home. I don’t like leaving my dad alone for this long.”

  She let him go without protest. His presence wasn’t comforting anymore. Seeing him there, knowing he could give her a way out of this but wouldn’t, only fed her frustration.

  In the doorway, Jake stopped. “I’m sorry.”

  “I said I understand.”

  He didn’t leave. “Be careful, okay? Maybe you shouldn’t go home. Just in case.”

  “I’ll figure it out.” Please just get out of here.

  With one last reluctant look, he left, and she was alone again.

  Right back where she had started.

  What now? She couldn’t hide in this playhouse forever. But if she went home, there were two possibilities—either she’d go back to the way things were before, to unsuccessfully trying to keep herself from exploding, or she’d end up in an underground cell in 117. And she had no way of knowing which it would be.

  The walls she had cowered against a couple of hours ago now felt like they were closing in on her. She stood convulsively and all but ran the couple of steps out the door.

  And found herself staring at a wide-eyed, white-faced Heather.

  * * *

  “How long have you been here?” Becca asked. But the look on Heather’s face told her everything she needed to know.

  “Long enough.” Heather was looking at her like she was a stranger. A monster.

  A dissident.

  “After your phone call, I couldn’t sleep.” She spoke quietly, but the stillness of the night air amplified her words. “I kept worrying about you. I knew you said it was nothing, but you sounded like something was seriously wrong. And after everything you did for me, I figured I owed it to you to at least find out if you were okay. So I took my aunt’s car and drove down here.” She stopped.

  “And you heard me talking to Jake,” Becca finished.

  “I hid when he came out,” said Heather. “After that, I wanted to come in and talk to you, but… I didn’t know what to say.”

  Becca scrambled for some explanation she could give Heather, something to make her conversation with Jake seem innocuous. She came up with nothing.

  Moonlight glinted off Heather’s Monitor pin, giving the metallic eye a vicious gleam.

  Maybe Becca didn’t need to worry about her mom reporting her after all. Maybe Heather would do it before her mom had a chance.

  And what about Jake?

  This was Becca’s fault. She had called Heather and then asked Jake to come here. She had asked Jake for the contact information. She was responsible for whatever Heather had overheard—and whatever happened to Jake because of it.

  The question was on Becca’s lips, but she couldn’t ask it. Are you going to turn us in?

  “Jake isn’t even working with the dissidents,” she said instead. “You heard him—he doesn’t want to help them.”

  “But he hasn’t reported them. That makes him as guilty as they are.” She paused. “And if I don’t turn you in, I’m as guilty as you are.”

  She was going to do it. She was going to report them.

  The playground looked the same as it had on that night a week ago when she had finally admitted she was a dissident, but the shadows didn’t unsettle her now. Patterns of light and darkness on the ground weren’t threatening. The real threat was standing in front of her—her best friend, ready to make the phone call that would kill her.

  “I kept wondering why you were saying all those things about Internal.” The look on Heather’s face reminded Becca of the way she had looked at her mom after she had found the evidence in that file. “I told myself you were still upset about what happened to my parents, and you weren’t thinking clearly. Or that maybe your mom had told you to test me. I guess I didn’t want to see the truth about you.”

  Becca fought the urge to run. What good would running do, anyway? “I just want to stop what happened to your parents from happening to anybody else. I know you keep telling yourself they deserved to die, but they didn’t.”

  Heather rubbed her pin like it would protect her from Becca’s words. “They were my parents. Not yours. You don’t have any right to talk about what they did or didn’t deserve.”

  Did Heather think Becca deserved to die, too? Becca didn’t want to ask. She was afraid of the answer.

  “I can’t lose you like I lost them.” Heather was almost talking to herself now. She stared at nothing. “I can’t let you turn into what they turned into.”

  “If you report me, Internal will kill me,” said Becca. “Just like them.”

  Heather didn’t say anything.

  All the years they’d spent together, and this was how it would end?

  “After what happened to your parents, I did everything I could to help you,” Becca said into the silence. “Do this for me now. Don’t turn us in.” She heard herself as if from very far away. Heard the futility of her words.

  Heather stood so still Becca wondered for a moment if she had simply shut down.

  “I’m not going to turn you in,” she said finally. She took both Becca’s hands in her own. “I’m going to help you.”

  Becca almost melted with relief.

  “Thank you,” she said, but Heather was still talking.

  “I thought this was about my parents. But it wasn’t, was it? It was him. He did this to you.”

  “Jake?” No. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Heather had said she wouldn’t turn them in.

  Or had she only meant she wouldn’t turn Becca in?

  “It has nothing to do with him.�
�� Becca’s voice sped up as she tried to get the words out before it was too late, before Heather did something irrevocable. “I didn’t even know about him until after. And he’s not dangerous. He’s not interested in fighting the government. All he wants to do is take care of his dad.”

  “He’s a dissident.” Heather spat the word. “But there might still be hope for you.” She gripped Becca’s hands tightly enough to cut off the blood flow. “You helped me. Now it’s my turn to help you.”

  Becca pulled her hands away. “Please.” But she had nothing to follow it up with, no way to convince Heather not to do this.

  Becca had killed him.

  “Do you understand what this will mean? What I’ll be doing?” Heather touched the pin again, then jerked her hand away as if it had burned her. “Not turning you in, after what I heard… that’s dissident activity, Becca. But I owe you too much not to give you this chance.” She paused. “Please,” she said, echoing Becca. “Don’t waste it.”

  She rushed away, toward her aunt’s car parked by the side of the road.

  Becca had nothing to say, no magic words that would change Heather’s mind. “Wait,” she called after her. Useless. Meaningless.

  Heather disappeared into the car and drove away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Her mom’s car wasn’t in the parking lot.

  Maybe she was out looking for Becca. Maybe she had gone to work. Either way, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Becca had to get to Jake’s house as quickly as possible. With the car gone, that meant on foot.

  She started running.

  Calling him would look too suspicious. Surveillance would start monitoring his phone calls as soon as Heather reported him—if they weren’t already listening in because of his history. Becca had to deliver her warning in person.

  Out of the parking lot, onto the street. If anyone stopped her, what explanation could she give for going running in the middle of the night?

  She turned onto the next street, already getting out of breath. Already slowing down. She pushed herself harder, gasping, reminding herself why she had to get there in time. Thinking about Jake.