Her desperate words rang through the halls. Still, the Enforcers acted like they hadn’t heard. They kept going, down one hallway and then another, taking Becca further from the real world with every step.
She didn’t know how long they walked before stopping in front of one of the doors. A mix of tears and salty mucus dripped down her face; with her hands cuffed behind her, she couldn’t wipe it away. “She’s going to come for me,” she said as they opened the door. She sounded like Heather had when she had called that night. She could hardly understand herself.
One of the agents shoved her against the wall; the other removed her handcuffs with rough efficiency. Before she could think of taking advantage of her hands’ freedom, the one who had taken off the handcuffs pushed her through the door and closed it behind her. The click of the door as it locked had a horrible finality to it.
“She’s going to come for me,” she repeated to no one.
The cell looked just like the room where Anna had died, except for the metal cot against the far wall. Everything was gray—the walls, the floors, the bed’s threadbare sheets. In the corner of the ceiling, a camera watched her. Its tiny red light was the only spot of color in the room. She took a step forward, and although it might have been her imagination, she thought she saw the camera swivel to follow her.
She couldn’t stop shaking.
With one hand against the wall, she stumbled to the bed. The metal frame squealed underneath her as she sat down on the rock-hard mattress.
How many dissidents had sat on this bed before her? How long had they stayed in this cell before they died?
How long did Becca have before…
No. She’s going to come for me.
A faded bloodstain on the floor caught her eye. It seemed to grow as she looked at it.
She brought her eyes to the ceiling instead—to the camera that, even though she had moved, was still pointed directly at her. “I’m Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter,” she told the camera, praying that someone on the other end would hear. “You have to get me out of here.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as the last of her strength drained out of her. “Please get me out of here.”
Nobody came.
Her shaking got worse.
Even now that she was here, now that it had really happened, it didn’t feel possible. She kept waiting to wake up, to come back to reality.
She didn’t wake up.
And still nobody came.
She paced back and forth and heard the camera hum as it swiveled to follow her; she sat on the bed and watched the stain on the floor grow. She slept a little, and drifted in and out of nightmares indistinguishable from her reality. When she woke up, it took her a moment to realize this wasn’t just another dream.
Her stomach was growling. She felt weak with thirst. She waited for food and water—they had to give her something eventually, they couldn’t just let her die in here—but it didn’t come.
Nobody came.
She had run out of tears. Her eyes felt like they had been rubbed with sandpaper. Her throat burned with thirst; her tongue kept sticking to the roof of her mouth. Every part of her body ached—whether from sleeping on the hard mattress or from the constant trembling, she didn’t know.
She lay down again. Maybe this time, if she managed to fall asleep, she wouldn’t dream. Maybe for a while she could turn her mind off and forget where she was.
Becca drifted from one half-dream to another. The lights blazed through her eyelids into her brain. She got up, paced the room, lay down again, sat and stared at nothing, until she wasn’t sure whether she was awake or asleep.
Her mother came. She called Becca a dissident, and Becca couldn’t speak. She took a gun from her belt and aimed it at Becca, and Becca couldn’t move. Her eyes were cold as she pulled the trigger. Becca woke wiping away tears that weren’t there. She had no water left for tears.
Her stomach was twisted in on itself, trying to devour itself. She felt shriveled. Empty. Her tongue was swollen in her parched mouth.
The door opened.
Becca jerked up from the bed as a man ducked through the doorway. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. He hadn’t disappeared. And he seemed brighter than the vision of her mom. More solid.
She recognized him. He was the one she and her mom had talked to the other day.
The one who had killed Anna.
She fought back her initial fear and revulsion. She had seen the way he had looked at her mom, how eager he had been to help her. If her mom couldn’t come herself, maybe she had sent him to get her out.
She got to her feet, then steadied herself against the wall as her legs threatened to give out under her. “Did my mom send you?” The words scratched against her throat like tiny nails.
A flicker of emotion crossed his face, too fast for her to read. “I need you to come with me.”
Her mom had to have sent him. He just couldn’t say it here, because… because of the camera. Or because her mom wanted to keep her scared for a little while longer, to teach her a lesson.
His face was expressionless.
His height no longer made him look awkward; he loomed over her as he took a step closer. He held out a pair of handcuffs. “You’ll have to be secured.”
Maybe her mom had arranged this whole thing. Maybe she thought watching Anna die wasn’t enough to keep Becca from turning into a dissident. Her screams as the Enforcers had led Becca out the door… all part of the act.
Wordlessly, Eli pulled Becca’s arms behind her back and fastened the handcuffs around her wrists. She let him. It would only be for a few minutes, only until he brought her to her mom.
He took hold of her arm the way the Enforcers had.
“I’m sorry it has to happen this way,” he said softly as he led her out the door.
Becca expected another room like her cell, like the room where Eli had shot Anna. Or maybe something bigger, with a single chair in the center and torture implements laid out in neat rows along a metal table.
She didn’t expect anything like what she saw when he opened the door and motioned her inside.
Unlike everything else she had seen on the underground levels, this room didn’t have even a hint of gray. The walls, though still noticeably rough concrete, had been painted a warm tan. The carpet was the soothing blue of the ocean, the color of Becca’s bedroom walls at home. A wooden desk, big enough that Becca wasn’t sure how it could have made it through the door, took up most of the space in the small room, and a chair made from the same dark wood sat to either side.
A camera, identical to the one in her cell, watched her from the corner.
Becca stepped into the room. Eli unlocked the handcuffs and gestured to the chair nearest her. “Sit down.”
She almost fell crossing the short distance to the chair. Eli made his way around the desk and folded himself into the chair opposite her.
There was a glass of water on the desk, next to a small stack of papers. Once Becca spotted it, she couldn’t see anything else. She imagined reaching across the desk and grabbing it, feeling the cold on her tongue as she poured the liquid down her throat. Her hand twitched.
Eli pushed the glass across the desk. “Have as much as you want.”
Her hand felt weak and trembly as she closed her fingers around the glass. She gingerly brought it to her lips, afraid she would drop it. She took a small sip first, then gulped faster until the glass was empty. The coolness of the water spread from her stomach out through the rest of her body. Not enough. But she felt a little better.
She glanced at the closed door. Any minute now, and her mom would walk in, ready to take her home. Any minute now…