Infraction

by Annie Oldham

  Once we've all given up our clothes, the agent leads us down the tiled hall to the next door. The tiles are cold on my feet, and I cross my arms over my chest and side-step to try to stay warm. I wonder if there's heating in this building because it feels just about as chilly as it does outside.

  We pause before the door. The agent rests her fingers on the handle and turns to us. “Your hair will be shaved in here.” She smirks, and I wish I could wipe that look right off her face. “Don't worry. This is just a one-time procedure to ensure no pests are transmitted to the others here. After this, you're free to grow your hair.” She says it like she's doing us a favor.

  I run a hand through my hair. It was about chin-length when I first came to the Burn. Now it's an inch or so above my shoulders. Jessa would have loved to see my hair this long; she always urged me to grow it out. Now I think of the way she looked that night a few months ago when she came to me on the Burn—her hair shaved as Gaea's price for helping me.

  The agent turns the handle and motions the first woman forward. She looks back at the rest of us and then steps through the door. I can't see inside, but I hear the buzz of clippers and the soft hush of voices. Then another door creaks open, and the agent jerks her hand to wave another of us forward.

  Finally the agent motions for me, and I step into the room. There is a small table set to the side. A pair of scissors and a comb rest there. A broom and dustbin wait next to a metal grate just like the one Worker 143 manned. That's where everything goes in this place—it all gets burned. The woman waiting looms over me, clippers in hand. She barely looks at me. The only part of me she sees is my hair.

  I step forward and before I've even stopped, the clippers are up and scraping across my head. I watch the raven hair flutter to the floor, landing on my bare toes, landing next to me, stark against the white tiles. When the clippers finally rest, the woman speaks. Her voice is a hoarse rasp.

  “Sweep it up and dump it.” She nods to the metal grate. They take our clothes, take our hair, and then they make us burn it.

  Numbly, I step forward and grab the broom and sweep all the hair into the dustbin. I cross to the chute and send my hair down. The smell of burning hair twists my stomach.

  The far door creaks open and I step through. Another person waits for me. I think it's a woman, but she's almost nondescript in a plastic apron, gloves, and a surgical mask. She holds a thick hose with both hands. She tips her head toward the shower stall in front of her.

  It's a three-foot square tiled area with metal walls extending all the way from floor to ceiling. Only the side facing the woman is open. There's a drain in the middle and a shower head straight down from the ceiling.

  “I'm going to get you wet first,” is all the woman says to me before she blasts me with cold water. I clench my fingers and arms together, and I shiver all over. I swear I'll get hypothermia if it doesn't end soon.

  Then the water stops, and her monotone voice resumes. “The soap will come out of the shower head. There's a brush right there on that ledge. Scrub off until I say you're done. You'll want to close your eyes.”

  I find the brush and rub it across my palm. The bristles are coarse and unforgiving. Then the woman presses a button next to her, and yellow soap comes out of the shower head. I close my eyes. As soon as it hits my head, I cringe. My skin feels like it's on fire. I start scrubbing, hoping the faster I do this, the faster she'll press the button and use that awful cold water to get the soap off of me. I feel like I'm scrubbing off layers of skin, and I'm clenching my fingers so the thread won't slip from them and be washed away. Maybe the soap will dissolve me and I'll slip down the drain, and I can't help but wonder if that would be a better fate than what awaits me here.

  Then the soap stops, the water hits me, and I gasp. My skin stings the way a cut stings when first dipped in water, but instead of a small paper cut, the water bites into my flesh all over. I look down, and my skin is bright pink, like the sunburn I got before I left the colony. I suspect these people won't offer me aloe to soothe the pain. But the thread is still between my fingers, and I think of Jack—of the way he held me as we waited for the soldiers to leave, the way he watched me every night as I fell asleep, the way he'd find little ways to touch me but would never tell me how he really felt—and I grit my teeth.

  The roar of water fades to a trickle down the drain, and I don't know how many times the woman tells me to move on before I finally register that she's speaking to me. I look up and the door is open. I shiver and step through.

  I enter a medical exam room. I stop on the rug by the threshold—thankful for the relief from cold tile—and wait. No one is here. There are two doors across from me, but neither are marked. One of them swings open, and a man in his twenties steps through. He wears a white lab coat and carries a digital notepad. He smiles at me. He's the first one here who's acknowledged me in any way as a person. I can't help smiling back.

  “There's a towel there by the door.” He nods to a hook on the wall that holds an immaculate white towel, warm from a dryer. I clutch it to me, wrapping it around myself, hoping the shivers will be lost in its fluffiness.

  “I'm Doctor Benedict.” He extends a hand, but I stare at him. He wants me to touch him? Shake his hand? Like we're business partners or equals?

  I raise an eyebrow and step backward. He lowers his hand.

  “I understand the mistrust. And I'm sorry about it. Please sit down.” He motions to the table lined with paper. It crinkles as I sit on it.

  “I just need to listen to your heart and lungs.” He unwraps the stethoscope from his neck and presses it to my chest and back. He taps a few words on his notepad.

  I crack my knuckles. His calm, kind demeanor sets me on edge. I'd be a lot more at ease if he were frosty like the other agents I've seen.

  He smiles. “Nervous?”

  I shake my head. I'm terrified, but even if I could tell him that, I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

  His smile broadens to reveal blindingly white teeth. He even has a dimple on his left cheek. Is he serious? They send a doctor with a dimple? I glance around me, waiting for the sky to fall.

  “We're not all bad. The agents have their own idea how refugees should be handled. We don't see eye-to-eye on that one.”

  Refugees? He thinks we're fleeing to the government because they'll offer us protection or better care than what's out there? How naïve can Dr. Benedict be?

  “You're very quiet. Why haven't you said anything yet? Most everyone else is either crying or ranting or yelling by now.”

  I roll my eyes. Of course he'd want me to open up to him, tell him my secrets so he can report back to his government. Wouldn't he feel like he hit the mother lode if he knew what secrets I could tell him about the colonies?

  I open my mouth.

  He frowns. “Oh. Oh, I'm so sorry.” He bends over his table, tapping the screen.

  I snap my jaw shut.

  “You don't have to be embarrassed. I don't want you to feel ashamed of any deformity.”

  Is that what he thinks the problem is? Now I do glare, my equivalent of ranting.

  “What's your name?”

  I study him, study his fingers hovering over the notepad screen. I grab his hand. He tenses a moment and pulls back, but I look at him insistently and he relaxes.

  Aren't you going to give me a number?

  He smiles sadly. “No, I want to call you by your name.”

  I watch him carefully, searching his eyes. They're black, almost as black as my hair—or what used to be my hair. I self-consciously run my palm over the stubble on my head. I can't read anything in his eyes. Jack's eyes are hazel, but deep in their colors and emotion. Dr. Benedict's are reflective, bouncing my face back at me. I don't want to trust him, but he's the first kind person I've come across here. Should that make me trust him even less?

  Terra.

  “I like that.”

  I drop his hand.

  “Now I just need to see your arm and
get your tracker number.”

  I go rigid, all of me freezing to the exam table. He must see the panic in my eyes because his lips turn down and several creases appear between his brows. He tugs on his ear absently.

  “This is standard procedure, Terra. We just need to record who comes through here, give trackers to those who have chosen to, um, remove them. Or make sure there aren't any phony trackers.”

  My fingers curl around the edge of the table, and I can't release them. I can't even blink.

  “It'll just take a moment.”

  He doesn't understand my paralysis. How could he? Those who have cut out their trackers are pretty common, especially among the nomads. But those who never had one?

  Dr. Benedict steps forward slowly, as one might approach a frightened animal. He lifts a hand, his palm up. He looks submissive even. I watch as his fingers inch toward mine. They brush the skin, and his hand is warm. He gently pries my fingers from the table, and then gradually runs his fingertips up to my wrist and turns my arm over. His eyebrows raise.

  “You've never had a tracker?”

  I feel the color drain from my face, and I shake my head.

  “Were you born in a city, Terra?”

  I shake my head again and pull the towel closer around me, wanting to hide from him and the other questions that will surely follow, but he surprises me.

  “I think that's everything we need for this exam.” He writes down a few more notes. “But you're not quite done here. You'll need to go through that door.” He nods to the right. “They'll inject a tracker.”

  I'm to be branded. I'll never escape them now.

  Chapter Four

  Dr. Benedict offers a hand to help me down, but I ignore him and slip off the table. The tiles chill my toes, and I walk stiffly through the door. A nurse and an agent are waiting for me.

  “No tracker?” the agent asks. She's middle-aged and heavy.

  I shake my head.

  She smiles, showing the tips of white teeth that look unnaturally sharp. She looks like a bulldog. “You all think you're so clever cutting them out. It's ridiculous, actually. The trackers are our most accurate way of ensuring everyone gets the supplies they need, of measuring our population so we know how many we can sustain. And yet some of you insist on cutting them out. Hold out your arm.”

  My hand trembles as I raise my right arm.

  The agent sucks in a breath between clenched teeth. “You didn't cut yours out, did you?”

  I shake my head.

  “I don't know how you avoided it in the past, but you're getting a tracker now. You won't be interrogated today—we have too many workers to process—but there will be more questions later on, I can promise you that.” She sniffs at me, and her bulldog smile returns. “And you won't like it.”

  The agent motions to a metal chair and I sit. The nurse sets a small silver tray on the table next to me. A syringe with a thick needle rolls side-to-side. Inside I see the small cylinder. It has a blue light on one end. The nurse pulls on latex gloves and then rips open the foil package of an alcohol swab.

  “Try to relax.” Her eyes look like they could be kind, but there's too much hardness around the edges. “It'll hurt more if your muscles are tense.”

  I do my best to let my arm unclench, to ease my fingers open. I'm really not even worried about the pain; I'm worried about being marked, of always being afraid of the scanners in the woods—if I even see the woods again.

  The nurse swipes the cold swab against my forearm. “You'll feel a little pinch.”

  I close my eyes. Jack's face floats before mine. I see his smile, and then I see the straight, neat scar on his forearm. Is he in a similar room right now, sitting in a metal chair with a nurse standing over him, ready to implant the device—it's only half-an-inch long, seemingly harmless—that will let the government follow him for the rest of his life? I never understood just how frightened people were of trackers, until now.

  The needle pierces my skin, and I wince as the tracker slips through, embedding itself in my arm. I open my eyes and look down. A small drop of blood wells up, and the nurse slaps a square of cotton and a strip of tape over it. The tail-end of the tracker peeks out, forming a lump under my skin. Then the agent is practically on top of me, swinging a scanner over my arm. The tracker glows blue for a moment.

  “Good. It's active. You're now recorded in the government archives. Worker 7456. If you show us that you can be a trustworthy citizen, you will be released.” She's talking to me as if she's so bored she'd rather be picking the lint between her toes. “Once released, you'll be assigned to a sanctioned city and be approved for rations.” I almost laugh at the way she makes it sound like a privilege. “Go through that door. You'll receive your clothing and your cell assignment.”

  I can't feel my toes or fingers as I stand and walk through the door. I don't think it's a side effect of the tracker injection. The agent's voice is so cold I should probably be numb all over. There's a window through the wall next to me, and I look back into the domain of Worker 143.

  Worker 143 looks me over quickly and then turns to a wall of cubbies filled with neon yellow and gray clothes. She hands me two long-sleeved yellow t-shirts, two pairs of gray pants, two pairs of socks, and one pair of canvas shoes. She tries to smile at me, but her lips can't curve that direction, and the expression is lost before it even began.

  I shuffle down the hall and wrap the towel tighter around me. A buzz sounds and a huge metal grate slides open. A soldier nods once to me, and I follow him—I think it's a him, it's hard to tell what's really beneath the mask—past rows of doors with a small window in each of them. He stops abruptly before one of them. He swipes a keycard on the keypad next to the door, and the lock slides back and the door swings open.

  “In there,” he says.

  I clutch my few clothes closer and enter the room, and the door closes silently behind me. Garish light shines from a single bulb, and one square of daylight glows on the floor from a window three feet above my head. There's a bunk against one wall, a sink, a toilet, and one girl with lank blond hair. She cowers on the bottom bunk, her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, her head down against her chest. She doesn't dare look at me. I can't tell how old she is—she could be my age—but she's all sharp knees and elbows, I can't help thinking she's just a kid.

  I walk to the opposite end of the bunk, put the clothes down, and pull on socks, pants, shirt, and shoes. I didn't realize just how cold I was until I got in here and there's no one to watch me, no one to hide my weakness from. My cellmate hardly counts. I've been here for two minutes now, and I don't think she's even blinked.

  I put the extra clothes on the top bunk. I rub my hands on my pants, chaffing them against the rough fabric, trying to get some warmth back into me. I've been so cold ever since I saw Jack marched into that other building. I tip up on my toes and rock back to my heels. I don't know what's coming next, and my cellmate is the only one who can tell me. But I'm not going to terrify her by grabbing her hand just to start up a conversation. She looks like every day of her life is a terror.

  I cross to the sink and turn on the faucet. A thread of water gurgles out, and it takes several seconds to fill my cupped palm. I gulp the water. I haven't eaten anything since the bread and who-knows-how-old water yesterday. It takes me a long time to gather enough water to finally slake my thirst. When I finish, the girl is watching me.

  Her blue eyes are rimmed with dark circles, and I can't stop the image that crashes through my brain: a girl in an alley, clutching a box of medical supplies as it's ripped from her hands by someone bigger and stronger than she is. It's not the same girl; it can't be. This one is too slight, not quite as tall, but the similarities are striking. I feel a rush of pity so overwhelming it almost knocks me over. I can't speak to her, so I smile. She flinches.

  I want to step closer, but if she's scared of a smile, she won't last through me approaching her. I slump down against the wall opposite the bed and just sit
there, waiting for some kind of acknowledgement or invitation. She just stares at me like she's seen a ghost.

  I don't know how long we would have sat there like that, but a crackle from one of the corners of the ceiling startles me. There's a small intercom box there, and a tinny voice fills the room.

  “Work hours. Report to your assigned location.” Then the lock of the door slides back.

  The girl unfolds herself and walks out the door without giving me a second glance. I follow her. She winds down the hallways, through doors, and a trickle of other women join us. She finally leads me through a door with a window fogged over with steam. Inside, huge vats bubble. Everyone wears hair nets and rubber gloves.

  The girl disappears through the steam, and I follow where I think she's gone, occasionally catching a glimpse of her hair. She stops at a desk, and I almost run into her. She holds out her arm, and an agent scans her tracker. She's given a hair net and gloves. As I thrust my arm forward toward the agent, I watch the girl disappear between the vats. As the steam clears closer to the ceiling, I make out a narrow catwalk lining the perimeter. Two soldiers pace around it.

  The agent's scanner beeps loudly. I look down.

  “Ah, you're new.” The agent's voice is so full of venom I almost step back. “And your tracker is new, I see.”

  I nod and reach for some gloves and a hair net. The agent swipes my hand away.

  “You haven't had orientation yet. You have no idea what the cannery even is.” She turns her head to the side, and her eyes fixate on another woman. “Worker 5932, over here.”

  A tall woman with red hair steps beside me.

  “Worker 5932, please instruct our newest worker about the cannery.” The agent picks up the gloves and hair net between her thumb and forefinger like they're contaminated. She drops them in my outstretched hands. “She'll receive her assignment in the cannery tomorrow—provided she can actually do the work.”

  Worker 5932 puts a hand on my elbow and steers me away. “Just ignore them. Most of them are like that, but I don't think they can actually do anything to you. Not legally. Well, nothing life-threatening, anyway. We might essentially be slaves here, but the government needs the work we do, and it wouldn't look good if there was no work being done.”