Breaking Point

It was all too much: the nodding, the bloodthirsty grins. They were getting swept up in the momentum of a new war.

“Hit them back, and they’ll take it out on everyone else!” I shouted above the noise. “You heard the report, they’ve already extended curfew. We know they’re withholding rations. It’s only going to get worse.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” said Cara. “Shouldn’t you be making dinner or something?”

I glared at her, fuming while the others laughed.

“Our actions send a message,” explained Wallace. He didn’t look particularly patient, as he had on the roof.

“What message? Look, we got seven of you? They’ve got thousands of soldiers to replace each one of them!” My voice grew thin.

“It’s not a message to the FBR. It’s a message to the people.”

I spun toward the door and the low voice I’d recognize anywhere. My gaze swept over Chase quickly. No blood. No bruises. When I found his eyes, that part inside of me that had been clenched in his absence released. You’re back, I said to him in my mind, and as if he could hear me, he gave a barely discernible nod.

“A message to the people,” I repeated, irritated that I was the only one who didn’t seem to understand. Sean had elbowed in through the back row to stand beside us.

“It says there are more of us than of them,” said Wallace. “That we don’t have to take what they give us. That some of us are not afraid.”

“You want all those people, who have nothing, to fight against men with guns? They’ll die.” The people in this room, we were different. We’d signed up for this. But what about my friends from home—Beth? Ryan? My mother? There was a time I would have found the thought of them in a place like this outrageous; now it was just sobering.

“They’re dying now,” Cara pointed out. “If they fight back they won’t have nothing, they’ll have each other. And that, little girl, is the FBR’s biggest fear.”

I resented her tone, but Wallace looked positively proud. I remembered what he’d said on the roof about making your own values, but sacrificing yourself for a cause didn’t make you realize who you were. It just made you dead.

“No one’s doing anything, not yet anyway,” said Wallace, in answer to my earlier question. He breathed in through his nostrils, as if annoyed by his own proclamation.

“Come on,” Billy whined.

“I mean it,” said Wallace as the others settled down. “Much as I want to ride this wave, you know the drill. We hold until Three gives the go-ahead.”

I glanced at Chase, but he was looking to me for the same answers. Subtly, I snagged Sean’s wrist and pulled him down to my height so that Cara and the others couldn’t hear.

“Who’s Three?”

Chase edged closer.

“Three’s not a who, it’s a what,” Sean answered. “It’s the center of the web—the piece that ties the underground together. All known branches, like this one, report their operations to Three, and Three tells them where to go from there.”

“How do they make reports?” Chase asked.

“Through the carriers,” said Sean.

“The carriers work for Three?” It made sense that they would be connected to some branch of the resistance, rather than risking their necks on their own.

Sean shook his head. “It’s all top secret, hush-hush stuff. The way I heard it, the carriers don’t know who works for Three, they just collect messages when they go to the safe house and deliver them back to their local setup. The carriers, they’re more like independent contractors.”

“So Wallace reports to someone.” I’d thought the Wayland Inn acted on its own, independent from the rest of the underground, as Sean had called it. Now that I knew differently, the whole operation seemed a little bit sturdier, like we weren’t a tiny boat floating on the ocean anymore.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Wallace whispered beside me, making me jump. “But yes, believe it or not even I report to someone. As all of you report to someone,” he called out for the rest to hear. “And in case you’ve all forgotten, we’ve still got packages to deliver, people to feed, and a recruit to keep tabs on.”

Cara groaned. “Can we please stop being so serious? We’ve just been upgraded to terrorists! We should be celebrating!”

And just like that it was over.

It shocked me, the elation over the sniper and the assassination attempt on the Chief of Reformation, but more the way everyone returned to business as usual, as if someone had pressed the off button. That they weren’t thinking, as I was, of reinforcing our security, or avoiding the Square or anywhere crowded with soldiers.

They moved on. Maybe that was how they survived this life.

Wallace announced dinner and the others dispersed, leaving the radio room empty but for Chase and me. He leaned against the outer wall, looking distracted, and as I settled beside him I became aware that we hadn’t been alone together for some time. As the new guy, he was often assigned the late shift securing the perimeter. Technically, we shared a room, but that didn’t mean we saw much of each other.

Now that the others were gone, his guard lowered, and he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, the exhaustion from his double shift breaking through. But something else was bothering him, I could tell.

“What is it?” I asked.

His eyes rested for a moment on my collarbone, and I realized the men’s shirt I wore had slouched down to reveal the top of my shoulder. I righted it slowly, and he blinked and glanced away.

“Probably nothing, it’s just…” He shrugged. “When I was fighting at the base in Chicago, there was this medic. An old guy, officer age. They’d send me to see him if I got knocked around too much, and he’d always hold up three fingers and say, ‘How many fingers do you see?’ I told him once it didn’t work if he always held up the same number, and he said, ‘Three’s the only number you need to remember, sergeant.’ I figured he was crazier than me.”

Chase had only once spoken to me about when the officers had made him fight at the base, and even then he’d told the story from another’s perspective. I knew his time in the FBR was something he wanted to forget, especially his stretch at the Chicago base, so I’d never pushed him. I’d always figured if he wanted to tell me, he would.

Now my curiosity was piqued. Could the resistance have infiltrated the MM? If so, we’d have access to FBR plans, strategies, supply shipments…. It seemed too much to hope for.

“What happened to the medic?” I asked.

“I don’t know. They stopped the fights after I”—he stretched his shoulders back, as though his chest had suddenly constricted—“after I agreed to stop writing you. I didn’t have much need for a medic after that.”

He glanced over to me, and for a moment, our gazes locked. It made me remember things I didn’t want to remember. All the letters I’d written that had gone unanswered. The pressure he’d gotten for fraternizing with any girl, much less one with a noncompliant mother. How they’d made him arrest her anyway.

How he’d witnessed her murder.

I believed him, that he couldn’t have saved her. But even though it was useless, sometimes I wondered if he’d really done everything he possibly could—everything I would have done. Thoughts like this led me nowhere, of course, and only made it harder to be close to him. He was both the cause of my pain and the cure.

“So how are you?” He cleared his throat. “Really,” he added.

I felt my skin stretch tight at his words, like all the anger and fear was expanding. It was pressing at my lungs, making it hard to breathe. And he must have felt it, too, because he pushed off the wall and stared a hole through his boots.

“Hungry,” I said. “What do you think it’ll be tonight?”

A beat passed. Then another.

“Pizza,” he said finally, and I breathed out a sigh of relief that he’d changed the subject. “Maybe spaghetti.