Heather nodded. “And I think you should do it.”
Becca blinked.
“It’s worth it,” Heather assured her. “I finally feel like I’m doing something useful. Something important. And with everything that’s going on, we need all the help we can get.”
It took a couple of seconds for Heather’s meaning to sink in. “You want me to join the Monitors.”
Heather looked perplexed. “Isn’t that what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“No.” Becca started pacing again. Touch the door, pass Heather, touch the bed. Pass Heather again. She forced herself to stop, to restrain her restless energy. “I wanted to talk to you about your parents.”
Heather’s face darkened. “They’re gone. They got what they deserved. What is there to talk about?”
“I remember what you said last time we talked.” Becca drummed her fingers on her desk. “You told me you’re only doing all this because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to deal with what happened to them. But you’re helping the people who killed them. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Heather frowned. “What are you talking about? I never said anything like that.”
Denying everything just like Becca’s dad. What stories did Heather tell herself to help her forget why she had really joined the Monitors? Did she try to make herself believe she had always hated her parents? Did she tell herself that what happened to them was for the best because it made her understand what was really important?
Becca kept going. She couldn’t give up now. “Do you really think this is what they would want?” Her voice grew louder and higher until the last word turned into a hysterical shout. She clamped her lips shut. She didn’t want to yell at Heather. She just had to do something. It was hard enough to watch the executions go on exactly like they had before she knew the truth, to see people disappear and know that her new understanding did nothing to help them. She couldn’t keep watching Heather slip away too.
“Why does it matter what they would want?” While Becca struggled to keep from pacing, Heather held herself like a statue. Every muscle was tensed, as if she thought she might have to bolt at any second.
Becca was fighting a battle she couldn’t win. The old Heather was gone. It was too late to save her from what she had become.
But it was the only battle she could fight.
She took a deep breath. Calmed her voice. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to try and do something to fight the people who killed them, instead of turning into one of them?”
Like what? There was nothing Heather could do. Nothing Becca could do.
“Becca… you’re scaring me.” Heather started to take a step toward her, then stopped. “That dissident stuff you were saying last week was bad enough. I figured I must have misunderstood or something. I mean, I know you. You’re not a dissident. But now… what are you saying? Fighting Internal? Fighting the government? What’s happening to you?”
Becca saw her own helpless frustration reflected in Heather’s eyes.
“Please tell me you’re not saying what it sounds like you’re saying.” Heather looked down at her Monitor pin. “I don’t want to have to turn you in.”
If Becca dropped this, if she let Heather slip away, she would be giving up not just her best friend, but her only chance of saving somebody from Internal.
If she kept going, Heather might turn her in.
No. Heather wouldn’t turn her in. Heather was her best friend.
Heather was a Monitor now.
“I didn’t mean it.” Becca looked down at the floor. “I don’t even know what I was saying.”
She could almost feel a disturbance in the air as her last chance to save Heather, her last chance to save anyone, slipped away.
Becca stared at the TV, only half-seeing it. She didn’t even know what she was watching. She should go to bed, she knew; it was probably after midnight by now. But last night she’d had another nightmare about Anna, and she could still feel the dream lurking in her subconscious, ready to torment her again tonight. If she managed to sleep. She knew the restlessness would return as soon as she got into bed, and she’d toss and turn and end up pacing her room at three in the morning.
The apartment door opened.
Becca should have gone to bed when she’d had the chance. That would have made eight straight days of not having to look at or talk to her mom.
“I’m glad to see you,” her mom mumbled as she sank down onto the couch. “It’s been, what, a week?”
“Something like that.” Becca tried to focus on the TV. An Enforcer raced down a city street in pursuit of… Becca didn’t know. Something important.
“It’s good to see a friendly face. It feels like it’s been a hundred years since I’ve seen someone who doesn’t want to kill me.”
Becca kept her face blank. She didn’t think she could manage friendly. “I was just going to bed.”
“If it’s because of me, you don’t need to worry about it. I don’t care how late you stay up. If it were a problem, your grades wouldn’t be so high.” She sank deeper into the couch. “Sleep does sound tempting, though.”
“Maybe we should both go to bed.” Now the Enforcer was handing a struggling dissident over to a woman who looked kind of like Heather. Becca flicked off the TV.
Her mom let out a groan and closed her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe what this week has been like. I swear every impossible dissident was arrested on the same day, and they all got assigned to me.”
“It’s late,” Becca said, standing up. “And I have a test tomorrow.”
Her mom used to rant about work to her all the time. How had she never thought before about what it meant? How had she never imagined who the dissidents her mom complained about were, and what her mom was doing to them?
Back then, they had just been dissidents. That was the difference. Only dissidents; barely even human.
Back then, Becca hadn’t been one of them.
“Just when I was finally getting somewhere with one of them—which took the better part of four days while I fell behind on everything else—Public Relations swooped in and snatched him up for execution.” She let out her breath in frustration. “He had connections we’ve been waiting a year to find, but did that matter to them? No, all that mattered was that they needed someone young to balance out the age range in their latest batch of executions.”
Becca wondered how suspicious it would look if she ran to her room and locked the door.
“I would gladly have given them the man who came in with him. That one would say he was innocent if he had been arrested with dissident pamphlets in one hand and a bomb in the other. But no, he’s too old, and now the directors want me to get enough useful information out of him to make up for losing the other one.”
What if she threw the remote at the TV and smashed it? How suspicious would that look?
“Then there’s the whole teacher thing.” She massaged her temples as she spoke. “One good thing about you going through my files—at least I can talk to you about these things now.”
What if she threw the remote at her mom’s head?
“Every teacher who says something suspicious in class—and the sheer number of dissident teachers we’ve found is enough to make me want to pull you out of school—now has to be used for this project. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were something local, but we have to coordinate with processing centers across the country. We got a great confession from one of the teachers—all he needed was a little prompting and he came up with the entire thing himself—but it contradicted something Processing 103 had used, so we couldn’t use any of it.”