Becca’s breathing grew louder in her ears. Her hands twitched with the effort of keeping them still. She had to move. She had to do something.
“And Public Relations keeps changing what they want. First they wanted to emphasize the heroism of the students who reported the dissident teachers. Then they decided it would be better to place more emphasis on the students who had already been corrupted, and show the damage that had been done, so Enforcement focused their attention on high-school-age dissidents. Now Public Relations isn’t sure whether they want to go in that direction after all, so we’re left with these extra dissidents and nothing to use them for—but we can’t execute them, in case the geniuses in Public Relations change their minds again.”
“Stop it! I don’t want to hear about this!” Becca hadn’t meant to start yelling. She hadn’t even meant to open her mouth.
Her mom, about to say something else, stopped with her mouth half-open.
“I don’t want to know what you’re doing in that place. I don’t want to think about it.” Shut up, she told herself. Shut up, shut up, shut up. But she kept going, as though her mouth had disconnected itself from her brain. “I want you to be who you used to be, not some… torturer.” The word fell heavily from her lips. Her dad had used it, in one of the last fights before he had moved out.
“Becca—” her mom started.
The image of Jake clutching the chains of the swing, bruises around his neck, flashed in front of her eyes. Her mom had done that to him, by doing much worse to the rest of his family. “I don’t care what those people said!” she screamed, while the rational part of her brain looked on in horror. “I don’t care what they did! If they’re working against the government, let them! Maybe if they took over, people wouldn’t disappear for no reason!”
In the silence, Becca’s heartbeat echoed so loudly that she couldn’t imagine how her mom didn’t hear it.
Her mom stared at her with wide wounded eyes, betrayed eyes, as though Becca had stabbed her in the gut.
There would be no talking her way out of it this time. It was too late for that.
Maybe too late for anything.
How long now before she ended up in 117?
Between protecting Becca from Internal and protecting society from another dissident, which would her mom choose?
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…”