“I talked to the directors.” Becca felt the heat of her mom’s breath against her hair as she spoke. “It took me two days, but I got them to agree. She’s free to go.” She let go of Becca with one arm to pull something out of her bag. “The forms are right here.”
Two days? Had Becca really been here that long? How long had she waited in that cell?
“You need to think about this, Raleigh. What will happen to you if you let a dissident go free? It could mean the end of your career, or worse. You’d probably be investigated.”
Her mom’s voice turned glacial; even though it wasn’t directed at her, Becca shivered. “What are you accusing me of?”
“I know you’re not a dissident,” he said hastily. “I understand. You just want to keep your daughter safe. But you have to think about how it will look.”
Her mom’s voice didn’t warm up. “My daughter is not a dissident.”
“There’s evidence against her,” Eli persisted.
Her mom’s arms tightened around her. “I’ve seen your evidence. I think it’s ridiculous, and the directors agree.”
Eli made a disapproving noise. “If you’re sure you want to do this, and you’ve convinced the directors to go along with it, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. But you still have a chance to change your mind. If you think it through—”
Her mom cut him off. “I’m not leaving this room without her.” Her tone made the way Jake had threatened Laine sound like the mewling of a kitten by comparison.
Eli sighed. “Like I said, I can’t stop you.”
Her mom released her slowly, like she had to pry her own arms away. Eli fiddled with Becca’s handcuffs until they slid off her wrists. She rubbed her wrists and swayed on her feet. The world wobbled around her.
Her mom put an arm around her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”
Leaving 117 felt like being reborn.
As her mom guided her out the door and across the parking lot, the sun shone down on her as brightly as it had yesterday—no, two days ago—when the Enforcers had brought her here. She could almost believe that no time had gone by at all, that her time on the underground levels had been nothing more than a bad dream.
The world jolted; Becca stumbled over nothing. The rows of cars in front of her blurred.
Her mom dug through her bag and pulled out a water bottle. She handed it to Becca. “Drink this.”
Becca unscrewed the cap on her second try. She greedily gulped down half the bottle, then choked as the liquid turned out to be thick and syrupy-sweet. Her stomach growled, caught between nausea and renewed hunger. Hunger won; she drained the bottle as she climbed into the car.
It took her mom two tries to turn the key in the ignition with her shaking fingers. “Tell me they were wrong about you,” she said in a voice on the edge of tears, a voice Becca had never heard from her before. “Tell me you didn’t help that dissident hide.”
Becca stared out the window at Processing 117 as the car began to move. It looked the same as it always had. Everything looked the same.
I almost died in there.
She couldn’t stop shivering. She wrapped her arms around herself, even though she wasn’t cold. Why couldn’t she stop shivering? She was safe now.
“Please.” Her mom weaved out of the parking lot, and jerked the steering wheel to the left seconds before she would have slammed into a parked car. “Tell me you didn’t do it.”
Out of the parking lot. Away from 117. Becca rested her head against the car window and closed her eyes, overcome by a wave of dizziness. She stammered out a denial through her chattering teeth. “I… I d-didn’t do anything. I didn’t even know Internal was… was after him.” Her mom would see through her; her mom always saw through her. Would she turn around and give Becca back to Eli when she realized Becca was guilty after all?
“You called him the morning Enforcement came for him. When they got to his house, he was gone.”
Becca opened her eyes, then quickly closed them again. The world was going by too fast. “I c-called him to hang out. That’s… that’s all.” It didn’t matter what she said. Her mom would figure out the truth, and then she would bring Becca back to that cell…
“So you don’t know where he is.” The car swerved sharply to the side. Becca opened her eyes in time to see them swing back into the right lane, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision.
“N-no.” Jake had been waiting for two days. Did he suspect what had happened to her?
“I knew you couldn’t do something like that.” Her mom tightened her fingers around the steering wheel like she was trying to choke the life out of it. “You’ve said some misguided things lately, but that doesn’t mean you would help a dissident hide from Internal. Even if he is a friend of yours.” She paused. “You’re certain you don’t know where he is?”
“I d-didn’t even know… know he was a dissident. I thought you w-were wrong about him.” She waited for her mom to confront her, to expose her lie.
“I’m sorry for doubting you.” Her mom’s death grip on the steering wheel loosened a tiny bit. “But I had to hear it from you.”
Her mom hadn’t seen through her lie. She was safe.
Alive. Safe. Free.
She still couldn’t stop shivering.
“I did everything I could to get you out of there,” said her mom as they got closer to the apartment. “I’m sorry it took as long as it did.”
Looking more closely at her mom’s face, Becca saw the dark circles under her eyes, and the new wrinkles that made her look as if she had aged ten years overnight. “Are you r-really going to… to b-be investigated?”
“Maybe,” said her mom. “But they won’t find anything. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I got you out of there.”
Why was she worried about her mom’s safety, anyway? Had she forgotten what her mom had done? What she did every day?
But she had saved Becca’s life. And even if she hadn’t, she was still her mom. Becca imagined the Enforcers handcuffing her mom instead of her, pushing her mom ahead of them out the door while Becca stood by helplessly. No matter what she thought of her mom, Becca would have been the one screaming without words, the one searching for any possible way to save her.
“Th-thank you,” said Becca. “For… for saving me. And p-putting yourself in danger to do it.”
Her mom pulled into the parking lot of their building. “There was no other option. I couldn’t leave you there.”
Even if I really did help Jake?
She didn’t ask. She thought she knew the answer, anyway. Somewhere deep down, her mom had to at least suspect what Becca was. What she had done.
And she had saved her anyway.
“Is there any chance they’ll… they’ll arrest me again?” Becca asked.
The car slid into their parking space. “No. They had no meaningful evidence against you. I’ve made that clear to them.” Her mom yanked the key out of the ignition and swung her car door open.
Not that it matters whether they have evidence or not. Becca kept her mouth shut as she fumbled with her seatbelt. She wasn’t quite as dizzy anymore. Whatever her mom had given her had helped.
Her mom kept talking as she climbed out of the car. “All they had was that phone call and what that dissident friend of yours said.”
Becca froze halfway through taking off her seatbelt. “Heather? Heather turned me in?”
“This is how far she’s willing to go to keep suspicion off herself. I did warn you about her. She isn’t someone you want to associate with.”
Heather had turned her in.
It’s a lie. Just another lie.
But Becca didn’t know who was lying—her mother, or Heather.