Infraction (16 page)

As promised, in two days Madge talks
to us. I'm sitting at our usual table, pushing around slimy eggs
and limp hash browns on my tray, watching the way the yolk swirls
out in abstract patterns. Jane doesn't speak. She hasn't spoken
since reclamation after Madge left with her promise to help. I
haven't pushed her. She's been nervous and fidgety, her hands and
fingers constantly in motion, and as many times as I just wanted to
tell her
Relax! For my sanity, calm down!
I didn't say anything. She's on edge about the
escape. When it comes down to it, I'm on edge too. Madge was just
so angry at me, and I haven't forgotten the scathing look she gave
me when I branded myself a colonist.

She sat with us the past two days but didn't say a
word. I glanced around, hoping the agents monitoring us would just
chalk it up to drama—we are a huge group of women here—and not that
something out of the ordinary was going on.

But nothing.

So between Madge's silence, the agents not doing
anything, and Jane with her fluttering hands, I bit my nails down
to the quick. Only nine more days and then we leave. There are too
many variables. I'm freaking myself out.

Then Madge sits down, shoves a bite of egg into her
mouth, wipes the yolk that dribbles out, and says, “I'll only say
this once.”

I sit up and listen, and Jane drops the napkin she's
been shredding into tiny strips.

“
I won't tell you here. I'll just
tell you it'll take a few days, it will be risky, but there's a
certain . . . poetic justice to it.” She says it
with relish as a wry smile crosses her lips. The anger against me
might simmer under the surface, but the anger against me has no
comparison to how she feels about the agents and soldiers here.
She's totally on board with the whole thing.

“
When will you tell us?” Jane
whispers. It comes out as a croak since she hasn't been speaking.
She clears her throat.

“
Reclamation.”

Thank you
, I mouth, and Madge
nods curtly.

“
What're you talking about?” Kai
asks. I slide her my tin of pears and take her hand.

Something important. I'll tell you later.

She senses our mood and nods gravely. Then she digs
into the pears.

Reclamation comes quickly. Usually I dread the
build-up to work hours, but today it can't come fast enough. Madge
beats us there, is given her clipboard, and starts her rounds. Jane
and I hover in the doorway, trying to watch Madge while pretending
to look over the piles. Our toasters disappeared yesterday. There's
a pile of back packs and I nod to them.

“
There could be lots of things in
there we have to talk to Madge about,” Jane agrees.

We sit cross-legged next to the pile. I choose the
pack closest to me and watch for Madge as I unzip it. She's an
aisle over, talking to some women working on unstringing blinds.
She'll be here soon. I look into the pack.

Two text books, a notebook, a few
pencils, and a note that says,
Have a good day at school,
honey!

My stomach is urging me to lose my breakfast.

“
These were all from the school at
that site,” Jane whispers, holding a piece of blue paper covered in
old, yellowed cotton balls. That small square of blue sky and
clouds pricks something in her, and her eyes fill with
tears.

“
I had a little brother. He was
eight. I have no idea where he is now. These poor kids. Do you
think they were sent to a sanctioned city?”

I put a hand on her arm. She's asking if I think
they made it, if I think—even though they're long gone now—they
escaped what every country did to every other country out
there.

Not everyone died. We're here.

Her face is grim. “That's why we're going to the
colony. Because you're here. It's like the last safe place on
Earth.”

My churning stomach does another flip. Is it the
last safe place on Earth? Possibly. But how much am I willing to
pay to get us there?

Madge flicks her pencil on her clipboard, and the
sound startles me and I drop the backpack.

“
What's in them?”

Jane brushes a tear from her cheek and composes
herself. Eyes down, head down. She shouldn't have enough fight left
to be able to cry over this injustice.

“
School supplies.”

“
Salvageable?”

I nod.

“
Good. Here's what we'll do with
them.”

I lean forward. This is going to be Madge's
plan.

“
There are a few details to be
sorted out.” She gestures to the packs, her voice casual and even.
Her eyes flick once, and she spots the soldier across the room and
the agent by the door. They're too far to hear anything. “We'll
give all the soldiers and agents serum the day of the escape.
Hopefully the 'contaminated' kind, which shouldn't be too much of a
problem. I think it's all contaminated.”

I start back. She had said it was risky, but I think
they'd notice if we injected them all. Madge waves it away.

“
They're just school supplies, not a
big deal. We can spike their dinner. It will take longer to kick
in, which is perfect. When they're all incapacitated, we'll use the
keycard we've swiped and get out.”

She had said there were a few details to be sorted
out. She wasn't kidding. But she was right about poetic justice.
They'll finally see what we've been suffering for their stupid
tests.

“
How do we get the serum and the
keycard?” Jane says. I nod.

“
That's up to you. But this plan can
work, Terra, if you're willing to take some risks.”

I think back to a night months ago, when I was
willing to leave my family behind, willing to face the darkness of
the trench, and willing to give up speaking forever.

Madge reluctantly lets me take her
hand.
That's how I got to land.

“
Then make sure it gets done. We
need all the serum in place by the night before, so eight days. Ask
your doctor friend how long it takes to work when it's
eaten.”

The keycard?

“
I think you can figure it
out.”

Madge walks away to the next pile. A soldier patrols
the aisles, his mask trained on us. I guess the conversation took a
little too long for his taste. Jane and I sort the books, pencils,
notebooks, and packs into separate piles. He stops a few feet away
from us, his fingers tense around his gun.

He doesn't say anything, but I can feel his eyes as
we sort. I expect him to shout or deride us or something, but he
just stands there. I can't read him with that black mask in the
way, and I remember all-too-well the way the soldiers looked like
scorpions only a few days ago when I was drugged out of my mind. I
shudder—not from the memory—but because of how accurate that
hallucination was.

I bend my head down a little more, hunch my
shoulders a little more. It feels so wrong pretending to be so
weak, but I need to lay low. We all do. If Madge can hide
everything from them, well then so can I. Jane has perfected the
weak thing to a tee, and I take my cues from her.

Finally the soldier speaks, and his voice is softer
than I expected. “Worker 7456, come with me to interrogation.”

I pull my shoulders back and look him square in the
eye. My act drops in an instant. I'm being reckless. If I'm to keep
this up, I can't let them faze me. The soldier waits to make sure I
follow him. I shrug once to Jane, drop the pack I'm holding, and go
out the door with him. I try to reassemble my face into something
like helpless, but it's so hard to do. During my days with the
settlement, I was free. I could be myself. No, that's not quite
true. I was still hiding, really. I couldn't tell them what I was.
I remember those hot, summer days with Dave. I remember the way he
smiled at me, the way his blue eyes shined. The way I saw him
starting to love me, the way I tried to return it but couldn't
quite manage to. I wasn't sure why then, but I know now. I know how
corrosive just one lie can be. A harmless lie really: I'm from
Arizona, not from an ocean colony. But it poisoned things, poisoned
relationships. The way I'm now almost friends with Mary shows me
that. Now she knows the truth about me; now she can trust me. I
just regret not telling Jack sooner.

In a way, I'm more free here than I was in the
settlement. I've come clean with a lot more people, and it's
liberating to be seen as I am. But the gloom settles on me again
because I can't let the agents or soldiers know. That was the price
of my escape to the Burn: the promise that I wouldn't speak of the
colonies to anyone, and I know the soldiers and agents are the most
dangerous people I could tell. In their hands, what might that
knowledge do? Would it start a war? It could, I guess, if enough
people were angry about it. I could see the government doing
exactly that. They're so desperate for their citizens to be loyal,
to engender some kind of trust that I could see them going after
the colonies if for no other reason than to pretend they were
seeking vengeance against the colonists for deserting everyone. It
would definitely make quite a few citizens happy, I think. Then the
government would study the colonists to see what makes us tick.

The soldier opens the too-familiar door of the
interrogation room, and my agent waits there with her arms folded.
Her eyes are hooded, and she looks like a cobra ready to strike.
I'm surprised she doesn't hiss at me. She's getting frustrated with
me. Good.

She gives a quick nod to the soldier, and he closes
the door. There's something different about this meeting, and I
can't quite place it. Then I realize: except for the two of us, the
room is empty. No Dr. Benedict, no nurse, no soldiers. And
suddenly, I'm very afraid.

“
Sit.”

She didn't even have to say it. I would have sat
down under the weight of her gaze alone. I'm fighting between
acting weak and throwing my head back defiantly, but I breathe
deeply and try to remember. A little over a week. Then we
fight.

“
I'm getting tired of this, Worker
7456. Tired.”

I look at the glossy buttons on her white shirt. Two
show above where her jacket meets. The crooks of her elbows make
three wrinkles in the fabric on her right arm, four on the left. I
study these details as hard as I can to keep from jumping up,
fighting back, and ruining everything.

“
Did you hear me?”

The buttons. Looks at the buttons. I nod.

“
I know there's something you're
keeping from us, and it's only a matter of time before we rip it
from you. Keep that in mind. You can willingly give it, or we can
rip it from you. Which do you think would be more
pleasant?”

I close my eyes. I doubt they'd rip it like a
bandage. Their ripping would be more like slowly tearing.

The buttons. Focus. One gleams pink in the
fluorescent light.

The agent makes an ugly sound in the back of her
throat. “You inmates are all the same. You disgust me.”

My eye twitches; her buttons can't hold me now. I
meet her gaze with such malevolence, I kind of expect her to burn
to ash on the spot. A smile creeps across her lips.

“
Yes, there's more in there than
you'd like us to know. You're unusual that way.”

She stands up and stalks around the table. The sharp
click of her heels reminds me of beetles, but she's a thousand
times more deadly. She sits down on the edge of the table and leans
over me.

“
I think for you, ripping will be
better.”

Then she reaches back a hand and slaps me as hard as
she can across the face.

“
I'm done here.”

I don't even have time to shake the stars out of my
vision before the soldier pulls me to my feet.

“
Take her to Dr. Benedict. I
believe he has another injection for her.”

The soldier drags me out of the room before I
realize what she's said. I force myself to clear my head, to ignore
the blazing pain in my cheek. Dr. Benedict. The serum. I have
to start now, don't I? That will be the only way to smuggle enough
of it out. I loll my head to one side. It's a little too dramatic,
but the soldier doesn't seem to notice. After all, he has no idea
what really went on in there, and with the way my cheek and mouth
sting, I'm sure I have a huge red mark—maybe even a welt—on my
face.

We stop outside the medical area, and the soldier
props me up against the wall before swiping his keycard. He grabs
me again, and as the door opens, Dr. Benedict looks up from
his desk. I keep my eyes down, but through my lashes, I see his
brows furrow.

“
What happened?” He stands up from
his desk where he's been pouring over some files.

“
Interrogation,” the soldier
says.

“
I knew she'd take it too far. She
never knows when enough is enough.”

“
Not my call, doc.”

“
Of course it's not. You're as much
of a pawn as the inmates are.”

The soldier tenses next to me, but something passes
between them, some look from Dr. Benedict's black eyes that I
can't read. The soldier softens.

“
I'll take it from here,
soldier.”

“
Yes, sir.”

Dr. Benedict reaches for me with both arms as
the soldier lets me go, and I let myself fall into them. I feel
like crying right now. I won't, of course. That's a little too much
weakness, and I won't let them see it. But I need the comfort of a
friend, and Dr. Benedict's the only thing remotely close to
one right now. He strokes a hand over my hair.