answers. She needed her mom to hold her and stroke her hair and tell her everything would be all right.
She knew she should pull her hand away. Her mom had blood on her hands—what had she been doing at work all weekend that had kept her too busy to come home? How many dissidents had died? Instead, Becca clutched her mom’s hand as she fought the urge to scream about all the things her mom had done. As she fought the urge to break down in tears and admit how afraid she was.
“You need to remember who you are,” her mom continued. “That person who said those things the other night about how the country would be better off if the dissidents took over… that isn’t you.”
“And what about you?” The words left Becca’s mouth before she could stop them. “I didn’t think you could make people confess to things they hadn’t done because you thought they’d be more
Her mom gripped her hand harder. “We’ve talked about this. You said you understood. You know why I do what I do.”
“But how do you do it? How can you spend your days doing… whatever you do down there…” She shied away from the visions her mind supplied, tried to push away the thought of Anna lying dead on the concrete floor. “…and then come home and talk to me like it doesn’t mean anything?”
Her mom frowned and tilted her head. “Did you hear something?”
“Don’t change the subject. I want to know. How do you do it?” Suddenly this answer—how her mom could do what she did and still be the person Becca had always known—seemed like the most important thing in the world. But Becca didn’t know which she wanted to hear—that both people could coexist in the same body, or that the mother she had grown up with had been an illusion.
Her mom put her finger to her lips.
Were those footsteps?
A door slammed, too loud to be anywhere but inside the apartment.
Becca knew what it meant to hear footsteps that weren’t supposed to be there, to hear your door open when nobody else had the key. Everybody knew what that meant.
But her mom had said she wouldn’t turn her in. Heather had said she wouldn’t turn her in. And it was two in the afternoon. Enforcement took you away in the middle of the night; everyone knew that. It had to be something else. It had to be.
The footsteps were getting closer.
Her mom didn’t say anything. She didn’t move. But Becca saw her own fear reflected on her face.
The bedroom door opened.
They walked inside. The Enforcers she had seen out in the parking lot a moment ago. She had the answer to her question now. They weren’t on their way home. They were here for a dissident. They were here for her.
She couldn’t move.
She couldn’t breathe.
She didn’t understand the things her mom was screaming. It all blended together into a nonsensical jumble. But she could feel her mom’s grip on her hand getting tighter and tighter, until the Enforcers pulled them apart.
Chapter Fifteen
“I’m Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter,” she repeated again and again as the Enforcers shoved her through the same side door she had walked through with her mom just two days ago. She tried to keep her voice from shaking, tried to keep her cuffed hands from shaking, tried to keep her legs from collapsing underneath her. “You can’t do this.”
She had never seen her mom lose control like that before. Even in her arguments with Becca’s dad, Becca had never heard her yell. But when Enforcement had come, she had screamed as they had handcuffed Becca and propelled her, too stunned to fight, out the door. First threats that Becca, in her numb state, couldn’t understand; then, as the door had closed behind them, a wordless scream that made goosebumps rise all over Becca’s body.
The Enforcers hadn’t stopped then, and they didn’t now.
Still, Becca hung on to the hope that they didn’t know. That they thought her mom was just one of many anonymous Internal employees. Once they found out otherwise, they would have to let her go. Hadn’t her name gotten her in to see Heather on that horrible night?
The door closed, shutting out her last glimpse of the afternoon sun.
She might never see the sun again.
They maneuvered her into the elevator like a piece of luggage. Inside the elevator, they stood to either side of her, not moving, not speaking.
“I’m Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter,” she repeated through her tears. “She works here.” The elevator opened onto the maze of hallways underneath 117. The light seemed dimmer now, and the echoes of their footsteps twice as loud. Each of the Enforcers held one of her arms, to keep her from running—where would she go?—and to hurry her along. She stumbled as she tried to keep up; her uneven steps broke the pattern of the echoes.
“She made 117 the best processing center in the country.” She hated when other people talked about her mom like this; now she wove the words around her like armor. “She turned this nothing town into someplace the whole country knows about. You wouldn’t have jobs if it weren’t for her.”
Her desperate words rang through the halls. Still, the Enforcers acted like they hadn’t heard. They kept going, down one hallway and then another, taking Becca further from the real world with every step.
She didn’t know how long they walked before stopping in front of one of the doors. A mix of tears and salty mucus dripped down her face; with her hands cuffed behind her, she couldn’t wipe it away. “She’s going to come for me,” she said as they opened the door. She sounded like Heather had when she had called that night. She could hardly understand herself.
One of the agents shoved her against the wall; the other removed her handcuffs with rough efficiency. Before she could think of taking advantage of her hands’ freedom, the one who had taken off the handcuffs pushed her through the door and closed it behind her. The click of the door as it locked had a horrible finality to it.
“She’s going to come for me,” she repeated to no one.
The cell looked just like the room where Anna had died, except for the metal cot against the far wall. Everything was gray—the walls, the floors, the bed’s threadbare sheets. In the corner of the ceiling, a camera watched her. Its tiny red light was the only spot of color in the room. She took a step forward, and although it might have been her imagination, she thought she saw the camera swivel to follow her.
She couldn’t stop shaking.
With one hand against the wall, she stumbled to the bed. The metal frame squealed underneath her as she sat down on the rock-hard mattress.
How many dissidents had sat on this bed before her? How long had they stayed in this cell before they died?
How long did Becca have before…
A faded bloodstain on the floor caught her eye. It seemed to grow as she looked at it.
She brought her eyes to the ceiling instead—to the camera that, even though she had moved, was still pointed directly at her. “I’m Raleigh Dalcourt’s daughter,” she told the camera, praying that someone on the other end would hear. “You have to get me out of here.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as the last of her strength drained out of her. “Please get me out of here.”
Nobody came.
Her shaking got worse.
Even now that she was here, now that it had really happened, it didn’t feel possible. She kept waiting to wake up, to come back to reality.
She didn’t wake up.
And still nobody came.
