Infraction (20 page)

Maybe colonists
are
dense.

A hoarse whisper cuts through my thoughts. “What's
your name?”

The person in the cell next to me. The voice sounds
vaguely familiar, but I can't place it. Even if I could, I can't
say anything. I wish that I could so she wouldn't feel so alone
down here either. Instead I knock twice on the door and hope she
gets some kind of message from it.

She's silent for a long time, and I wonder if she's
decided to ignore me. Then she says, “Can't talk?”

I knock again.

“
You're not the first.”

I lean my head against the door.

“
I've been down here a week and a
half.”

So long? The only thing I can think
of is
why?
but I can't ask her
that.

“
Stupid accidents. It'll get you
thrown down here every time.” Her voice creaks over the last word,
and I wonder when the last time was that she spoke to someone. She
coughs. “Not the first time. I stole food from the commissary after
I had been at this camp for about a week. You know, the agent's
dining hall. I just wasn't used to being quite so
hungry.”

I think of Kai working there tonight, making a
dinner for the agents and soldiers that's a hundred times more
extravagant than what we get in the mess hall.

“
I took a whole roasted chicken.
They knew it was me because the bird was so juicy it dripped all
the way down the hall and into the supply closet I jimmied. I
managed to eat half of it, though, before they found me. It was the
best chicken I've ever had. I was in for three weeks that
time.”

I wonder if three weeks of being here in the stink
and the darkness was worth half a chicken.

“
I shouldn't have done it for the
chicken. No few bites of food are
that
good. But I'd do it all over again just to have that sense of
power over them. Knowing that for a few minutes, I was in control.”
She sighs and sounds almost content.

Her voice nags at me. I've heard it before, maybe
once. I wish I could see her face. If she was older or younger than
I am; tall or short; dark or fair. I imagine she looks a lot like
Jessa, and the thought makes me sad. I wish I knew what Jessa was
doing. I wish I knew if she was happy, if she was still with Brant,
if she was planting new crops in Pod #3, if she let her hair grow
out. I run my hand over my own scalp. The hair has grown longer
since I came here. It's maybe a quarter inch long now and doesn't
feel quite so prickly.

Why am I even here? Because I didn't know how to use
a sewing machine, and the agents couldn't stand to teach me? That's
not right. It would be more worth their time to let Jane teach me
instead of letting my work hours waste away down here in the dank.
There's something they need from me, something they want. There are
so many things I could tell them. They'll never hear them from
me.

I curl my hands into fists. They'll
never hear them from me. I repeat it to myself again and again.
When I was in the settlement, the only thoughts that I could repeat
over and over to myself were thoughts about blood and death. I
don't know if it's a good thing I've moved past that, but I have.
Now the only thoughts I have are how to get away from
them
, how to get others away, how to keep
us all safe. I'm not doing much good down here.

My neighbor's words ring deep into
my heart.
Knowing that for a few minutes, I was in
control.
That's what this escape is about.
Taking the power from the government for just a few hours as we
race away from the camp, knowing that they'll have no more power
over us.

I will get one more vial of serum, I will find the
keycard, and I will get us safely out.

I must have fallen asleep—I'm amazed I did, with the
smell and the cold and the hard floor—because I wake to the sound
of boots.

“
Get away from the door,” a soldier
says through the slot.

I scoot far back. I hear the keycard slide through
the reader and the lock slide back with a click.

“
Get up and follow me.”

Has it really been twenty-four hours? I guess that's
the good thing about solitary confinement: the sleep, even though
every bone in my body aches from the hard floor. I didn't realize I
was so unbearably tired.

I hunch after him, limping as the blood returns to
my right leg. He must be smiling behind his mask at how pathetic I
look. Let him smile. It's only five more days, and then for a brief
moment, I'll be in control. I need to tell myself this because for
the past twenty-four hours I've been completely at their mercy:
having to use the bucket, sitting with that smell, hearing my
stomach snarl at me so loudly there could have been an animal in
the room with me. Even now my stomach growls, and I wrap my arms
around my waist, trying to contain it.

As we pass my neighbor's cell, the gleam of two eyes
peers at me through the slot in the door. I nod my head to her—just
barely—so she knows that at least I know she's there and that I
care.

We climb up the stairs that lead away from the wet
and the smell and into the cold light of the corridors. The soldier
leads me toward the medical area. Maybe it's standard procedure to
have Dr. Benedict examine everyone who comes out of solitary,
but I doubt it.

We go in, and the door to the exam room is closed.
The guard motions me to a chair, and I sit. He waits with me for
Dr. Benedict to come out. When he does, I'm shocked to see
Jane behind him.

“
Oh hello, Terra. I'll be with you
in a moment.”

I'm even more shocked when he steps
away from Jane and I really see her. Her hair hangs down over both
sides of her face, but it doesn't hide the hideous purple bruises
or the way her left eye is swollen shut. When the guard turns to
leave with her, she gives me an unmistakable smile. What is with
her? She's been beaten to a pulp and she looks
happy
about it. It's the only communication she offers
me, though, as she follows the guard.

“
Sad, isn't it?” Dr. Benedict
says, coming from his office. “She's your cellmate, right? Got into
a fight with another worker.”

That doesn't sound like Jane. I watch her until the
door closes.

“
If you'll just come in here for a
moment.” Dr. Benedict gestures to the exam room.

I sit on the table. I look at him in his clean white
lab coat, his perfectly combed hair, smelling that faint smell of
pine instead of the stink that must hang over me like a cloud, and
I suddenly feel disgusting. I put my hands over my face, not
wanting
anyone
to see me right now. My hands smell even
worse, and I've been sleeping in it for twenty-four hours. How must
I smell to him? I can't stop the tears.

“It's okay, Terra. Solitary is horrible. I'm sorry
they put you there, really I am. If I had any power over those
kinds of decisions I would change things. It's no way to punish
anyone.”

He reaches for me, but I just sob. I slept, but it
wasn't good restful sleep, and now my brain feels both fuzzy and
too sharp at the same time, and I'm so hungry I could eat the beef
stroganoff and call it a feast.

He touches my arm, and I shiver under his touch. The
first touch I've had since talking to Jack in the yard. He's not
Jack, but he's more companionship than I've had for too long. I try
to calm down. When the tears stop and I'm nothing but sniffles,
Dr. Benedict smiles at me, but his eyebrows are turned down
like he's upset.

“I'm sorry, Terra, but I have to give you another
injection.”

He bends over me—too close, he's always too close—and
reaches for another needle. I try to tell him I don't want another
injection, but he doesn't listen. Before he would tell me how sorry
he was, but he had to do it anyway. He would never just ignore me.
What happened that changed things? I think back, racking my brain
for what could have set him off, changing the way he treats me.
Then I realize. I saw Jack during yard time, and he had reached out
to caress my face. I had touched his fingers through the chain
link. It was all I could do. Did Dr. Benedict see that? Surely
he doesn't watch me that closely, and that couldn't have been
enough to change the way Dr. Benedict sees me.

I stare at his black eyes, but he's not looking at
me. His shoulders slump as he fills another syringe with serum. He
looks defeated and small. Could he really be broken-hearted? I want
to laugh, to think it isn't possible. We've never really had a
decent conversation, never spent more than ten minutes together at
a time, and it's always been under the scrutinizing eyes of the
watcher or agents or soldiers. Never a moment alone. Surely he
can't have developed feelings for me.

Before he can stick that syringe into my skin and
force the serum into me that will—what? What will it do this time?
More hallucinations, nightmares, paranoia?—I grab his arm and don't
let him go until he drags his eyes slowly to mine, and those
reflective black pools don't give anything away. I open his
hand.

What's wrong?

He shrugs it off. “Nothing. Can we proceed?”

It's not nothing.

He smiles sadly, only one corner of his mouth
lifting, the dimple half-formed in his cheek. “Fine, if you want to
talk. Have you ever thought you had something, and then it was
taken away?”

I sit back. Yes, I have. The only place that felt
like home—the settlement—and I left it.

It broke my heart.

“
Then you know what's
wrong.”

I'm sorry.

He shakes his head, and his eyes glisten. His black
irises show nothing but my own face, but there are tears in his
eyes. I'm awash in guilt. I shouldn't be—it's absurd—but I am.
Maybe I'm not thinking clearly between the hunger and being
unearthed from solitary.

Can I do anything?

He turns from me and wipes his eyes. “I hoped that
you might have been able to, but not anymore. Don't worry about
it.”

He puts the bottle of serum back in the fridge and
then takes two steps toward me. I grab his free hand.

Please. No more.

He bites his bottom lip. “I have to, Terra. I'm
under orders because you're from the wild and you won't tell us
where you've been. It's for your own protection and the protection
of everyone else here. I'm sorry.”

It's a lie. From what I've figured out, it's all
been a lie, but how much does Dr. Benedict know? He seems so
good and so kind; I have a hard time believing he'd willingly give
me nightmares. I can't stand another nightmare, another day not
trusting anyone around me. If he gives me this shot, would even
Jack look like a monster? I can't stand not being in control of my
own mind.

I have to tell him where I'm from. If I want it to
stop, if I want to have control of my own brain back, he has to
know, and I can trust him. He's been the only one to treat me
kindly, the only one to comfort me. He can stop these injections if
he knows where I'm from. At least then maybe these lies about the
serum can end.

Not from the wilderness.

“
What do you mean? That's what you
told the agent. It's where they found you.”

Not from there.

“
But you can't be from a city. You
would've had a tracker. Where else is there?”

I look at him long and hard. His eyebrows raise in
confusion, like he's trying hard to understand me. I sigh and look
at my hand holding his. My finger trembles as I write the
words.

I'm a colonist.

“
You're a colonist?”

I nod.

“
Thank you, Terra.” His tone has
suddenly changed. It's short, clipped, and completely professional.
It's the voice he uses with everyone but me. “That's all I wanted
to know.”

I look up, bewildered at the change in our meeting.
He nods to the watcher, and the agent who interrogated me marches
into the exam room, followed by two soldiers.

No.

“
If you'll come with me, Worker
7456.”

Dr. Benedict watches me, and the hood he's kept
drawn over his eyes suddenly vanishes, and I see him as he is:
clinical and calculating. None of the kindness is there. He smiles
once, showing the tips of white teeth, and then presses a few
buttons on his tablet.

I want to scream at him; I want to
punch him. He was kind to me this entire time just to get me to
admit I'm a colonist? My heart wrenches around inside me, bitten
and cut by the betrayal. I
trusted
him. I talked to him like he was a friend. I should have known
better. I did know better—Jack knew better too and tried to warn
me—but I needed a friend. I needed to know that all of the people
here weren't bad. I'm so mad I could spit.

I follow the agent. Her heels rap sharply on the
linoleum. I stare at nothing but where her heels strike the floor.
The world feels like it's shutting in around me, like nothing
exists but the sound of shoes on the floor. Everything else is dark
and empty, and the sounds are hollow and soft and far away.

Those shoes lead me to a door and a
small room with a table and bright lights. I sit in the chair, the
chair where I get asked the questions. My mind is foggy, and I can
barely look up to see the agent folding her arms over her chest and
leaning against the back of her chair. I pull my eyes up to her
face. She looks satisfied. She looks like she's
won
. I can't look at that face
anymore.

“
So you're the colonist.”