Infraction (19 page)

That's why we have to escape.

His eyes open wide. “Because if they force us to
trust them, no one will want to fight ever again.”

I motion Mary to tell him about Madge's plan.

Jack's eyes stay wide, and his head drops when she's
done. “It's so dangerous,” is all he can say.

I have three vials. How many more?

“
I don't know. They only give us a
small dose, so there's quite a few doses in each vial. Maybe one or
two more, but I wouldn't risk taking more than that, or they'll
start wondering where it's disappearing to.”

All the soldiers in the yard make their way over to
the huge gate and stand at attention while it creaks open. A truck
rumbles back into the loading bay against the building. We watch as
the truck's doors open to the center part of the building. It's
shielded by fence and barbed wire, but I can see the boxes' labels:
shrimp, oranges, chocolate. I know they're not for us, but that
doesn't stop my mouth from watering any less.

Jack rips his gaze away and focuses on me again. “It
will take longer to kick in because it's being ingested instead of
injected directly into the blood stream. Maybe an hour or two. What
time does the staff eat?”

Mary glances over to where Madge stands with Kai,
Jane, and a few other inmates. She waves Madge over. Madge pretends
to huff about it, but I know it's just a show for the soldiers.

“
When's dinner for the agents and
soldiers?”

“
Kai says around seven-thirty. They
eat when we're done.”

“
Then they should start feeling it
around nine-thirty, maybe sooner, maybe later. But they all have to
take it around the same time so no one sees the others start
hallucinating and realize what's going on.”

Madge nods and blows warm air on her fingers. “From
what Kai says, just about everyone is in there. Some come in closer
to seven, and then the majority at seven-thirty.”

Jack frowns. “I think it's close enough. There's not
much choice, is there?”

“
How's it coming with the keycard?”
Madge asks.

It's not in the cabinets or top drawer of his
desk.

“
Not in the bottom two drawers
either,” Mary says.

Madge frowns. “I don't know how much more access
we'll get.”

It'll work
. I'm sure of it.
Dr. Benedict will want to see me several more times before the
day of our escape, and Kai has a prenatal exam somewhere in those
seven days as well.
I'll see him before then.

Jack can see the words I'm writing, and concern
lines his face. He's about to speak when I put my hand on his.

I'll be fine.

“
I don't think you can trust him,
Terra.”

I don't.
That's not entirely
true: I want to trust him. I know I shouldn't, but there's this
insane part of me that wants someone here to not be all bad,
someone who cares just a little. I guess it's the need to know that
they're not all monsters, that somewhere there's some hope for the
citizens of New America. It may be the tiniest fraction of
hope—he's only a doctor after all, and he makes it sound like no
one listens to him—but I need that right now. I think we all
do.

So instead of spilling this to Jack,
I write,
I'll be careful
.

He puts his fingers in my hair and gently pulls me
to him so that our foreheads touch through the chain link. His
hands are cold but his face is warm, and even though he's been
through detox and living in a cell and working, I swear I can still
smell the woods on him, and he smells so familiar, so like home,
that I could stay this way forever. I want to do nothing but
breathe him in and feel his skin against mine. How did I ever wish
that he wouldn't touch me?

Jack doesn't let go until the intercom tells us the
men's yard time is over. When he pulls back, I see him differently.
I see the trust I need to earn back, but there's also loneliness in
his eyes. I recognize the ache from my second injection, but it's
real this time, not some bizarre imitation of sadness with empty
tears. I realize how much I've wanted Jack next to me, needed his
words, the richness of his voice, the gentleness of his hands. How
did I miss this? How did this sudden longing sneak up on me so
quickly?

My fingers are laced in his. When he pulls away, our
fingers are the last to part. He turns and joins the men filing
back into the building. We walk from the fence before the soldiers
sweeping the fence line can harass us.

Mary shakes her head and smiles to herself as we
walk back to our group.

What?

“
I had no idea how you and Jack felt
about each other.”

What do you mean?
I've
suspected he's loved me for a while. That shouldn't be a
shocker.

Mary rolls her eyes. “Oh, come on.
Are all colonists so
dense
? Well, I
won't be the one to tell you if you haven't figured it out
yet.”

We spend the rest of yard time talking about where
the keycard might be. Kai, Mary, and I come up with a strategy for
searching Dr. Benedict's office. I hate conspiring against him
this way. He's been genuinely kind to me, and I feel like I'm
betraying him somehow. I have to turn my back on that thought.
Getting all of us out is more important than worrying about hurting
his feelings. I feel like I'm eight years old again when Gram
lectured me about including everyone after I told another girl she
couldn't play with me and Jessa. Dad tried to butt in with
something about 'equity for all,' but Gram silenced him with a
look. Even as a kid, I couldn't stand the rhetoric he spouted, and
Gram—more than anyone else back then—knew it.

Still, I can't help the guilt that curls around my
stomach. Ignore it, I tell myself. It'll just get you in
trouble.

The piles in reclamation have dwindled, and they
move us into the sewing room. Sewing room is pretty much a
euphemism in this case. There are rows and rows of brown sewing
machines. They look nothing like the sleek, silver machines used
the colony. These sit on tiny tables. The room has a low ceiling
and a row of small windows along the top. Even though the weather
is chilly and I could see my breath in the yard, this room manages
to be hot.

“
We're above the kitchen,” Jane
whispers out the corner of her mouth when I wipe the beads of sweat
from my forehead. I see the heavy pipes that run from holes in the
floor up into the ceiling where they vent out the roof. “Don't
touch the pipes.”

No. I can already imagine the blisters that would
form.

We file in and each sit at a table. I stare at my
machine. It's a brown rectangle with a few knobs and a needle above
a small hole in the bottom. Two large spools of thread—one gray,
one yellow—sit on spindles next to me. I have no idea what to do
here. A few workers walk up and down the aisles, distributing
armfuls of clothes.

Help
, I mouth to Jane. She
keeps the hopeless look in her features, but I see something
different in her eyes.

“
Mend them. Look for holes or split
seams.”

I pick up a yellow shirt. The seam
along one of the arms has come apart.
How?

But Jane doesn't see me because her deft fingers
have already found the flaw in a pair of pants, put the pants under
the needle, and fly it through the machine. I study her for a few
minutes until there's a rough shove on my shoulder.

“
Get to work,” says the soldier
behind me.

A girl in the desk next to me says, “She doesn't
know how,” without even looking up from her machine. I suck in a
breath at her boldness.

The soldier grabs her arm. “Don't speak unless
asked.”

She doesn't say anything more, just hunches down and
resumes feeding clothes through the machine, dropping the finished
ones in a basket.

“
This is not a sewing class, worker.
Figure it out. Now.”

I nod, so glad the serum from yesterday has worn off
and won't make me do something stupid like try to bash his face in.
I purse my lips in concentration and try to mimic Jane's movements,
but her fingers fly so fast over fabric, thread, and knobs that I
have no hope of keeping up. It doesn't help that the soldier looks
over my shoulder, waiting for me to mess up.

Finally I manage to thread the machine and put the
split seam underneath the needle. I watch Jane press her foot on
the pedal and the fabric flies through.

Well, here goes.

I push down way too hard, and the shirt pulls from
my slippery fingers and zips under the needle, bunching in huge
puckers and completely sewn down the seam and then across the
back.

“
You have to wear these clothes, you
know.” I swear the soldier—and the soldiers here have no sense of
humor whatsoever—laughs at me. He quickly snaps to attention when
the sharp click of an agent's heels bear down on us.

“
What's going on here?” the agent
snaps.

“
This worker doesn't know how to use
the machine.”

“
And why is this
amusing?”

I don't know how she knows he's smiling, but
something about his posture changes, like the smile is wiped clean
from him.

She looks at the mess of yellow fabric on the table
in front of me. “Twenty-four hours solitary confinement. Maybe that
will teach you to be more thoughtful in your work.”

Jane looks up from the pants she's sewing.

The agent turns on her. “And if you don't mind your
own work, you'll be there too.”

Jane's head snaps down and she runs the pants
through her machine. They fall into the basket with a thump, and it
sounds like my heart beating against my ribs.

“
Get up. Now.” The agent turns and
stomps away, and the soldier rips me to my feet.

He marches me out of the heat of the sewing room and
down the corridor. The cool air would be a welcome relief if it
weren't for where we are headed. I can't keep the broken-down
posture about me now. I'm frightened and I really don't care if the
soldier sees it. I've been bottling myself up for so many days
here—I've lost track of them—and I'm not sure I can keep anything
hidden for much longer.

The soldier leads me to a stairwell, and we go down
three flights to the basement. It's cold, and I can taste the damp
in the air. Bulbs hang from the ceiling every few yards, and the
light they cast is full of shadows. It's not as hospitable, but the
oppressive dark reminds me of the colony more than any other place
I've been here.

Our footsteps echo down the hall,
and every few feet metal doors hunker into the concrete walls. I
hear moaning or scraping or
something
from one of them. I guess solitary confinement isn't really
solitary; I'll have neighbors.

The soldier leads me to a door, swipes his keycard,
and swings the door open. I instantly gag at the smell that slams
up against me, and when I hesitate at the threshold, the soldier
pushes me into the room and slams the door. The smell of human
excrement forces my back up against the door. There's a small slit
in the door that opens into the hallway, and the dim light shines
into my eyes. The soldier retreats back the way we came, but I
don't care about any of that. All I care about is the wisp of fresh
air—well, as fresh as anything is down here—that wafts into my
face.

The scraping in the cell next to mine gets louder,
and then I hear the hushed sounds of controlled sobbing. The small
hiccups in breath, the sniffles, the sighs. I want to curl up in a
ball, but do I dare sit down? I take a deep breath of the dank hall
air and then look around. The small sliver of light barely traces
outlines on the cell.

There's a bucket in one corner—I don't have to
wonder what it's for—and a drain in the middle. That's it. The
floor doesn't look too bad, but I can't really see it very well.
I'm not going to stand for twenty-four hours, so I slide down onto
the floor, trying to keep my nose as close to the opening in the
door as I can. As gross as it is, though, I'm starting to get used
to the smell. I wonder if they'll feed me while I'm here. I doubt
I'd have much appetite for it even if they offer.

I think the only good thing about being down here is
I didn't see a single watcher in the halls. I study the seam where
the walls meet the ceiling and don't see the tell-tale gleam of a
watcher lens in here either. Maybe I'll go through this without
someone spying on me.

I can hope.

I wrap my arms around my legs. The cold of the floor
seeps through my pants, and I wonder how long I'll be able to sit
here before my legs go numb. Maybe I will stand for more of the
twenty-four hours than I thought. I wonder who's in the cell next
to mine, and what she did to be put here. I feel so cut off,
though, because I can't ask her a single question. I've never felt
more alone.

I don't know how much time goes by as my mind
drifts. I see Dr. Benedict softly touching my face, but I
can't read his eyes. They hide everything from me, and there's
something in them I'm supposed to be seeing, but I just can't break
through. Then Jack appears behind him, and I can't help the smile
that races across my cheeks.

I remember what Mary said in the yard about how I
feel about him. I can't deny the pull to him, like swimming for the
surface when my lungs are about to burst and he's my breath. But
what does it mean? I remember the way Brant and Jessa used to look
at each other, the way they were lost from the rest of the world. I
don't feel that, though. I feel that when I'm with him, instead of
being the only two people on Earth, the rest of the world comes
into sharper focus, and I can see things more clearly. It doesn't
make any sense.