The Torturer's Daughter

The world jolted; Becca stumbled over nothing. The rows of cars in front of her blurred.

Her mom dug through her bag and pulled out a water bottle. She handed it to Becca. “Drink this.”

Becca unscrewed the cap on her second try. She greedily gulped down half the bottle, then choked as the liquid turned out to be thick and syrupy-sweet. Her stomach growled, caught between nausea and renewed hunger. Hunger won; she drained the bottle as she climbed into the car.

It took her mom two tries to turn the key in the ignition with her shaking fingers. “Tell me they were wrong about you,” she said in a voice on the edge of tears, a voice Becca had never heard from her before. “Tell me you didn’t help that dissident hide.”

Becca stared out the window at Processing 117 as the car began to move. It looked the same as it always had. Everything looked the same.

I almost died in there.

She couldn’t stop shivering. She wrapped her arms around herself, even though she wasn’t cold. Why couldn’t she stop shivering? She was safe now.

“Please.” Her mom weaved out of the parking lot, and jerked the steering wheel to the left seconds before she would have slammed into a parked car. “Tell me you didn’t do it.”

Out of the parking lot. Away from 117. Becca rested her head against the car window and closed her eyes, overcome by a wave of dizziness. She stammered out a denial through her chattering teeth. “I… I d-didn’t do anything. I didn’t even know Internal was… was after him.” Her mom would see through her; her mom always saw through her. Would she turn around and give Becca back to Eli when she realized Becca was guilty after all?

“You called him the morning Enforcement came for him. When they got to his house, he was gone.”

Becca opened her eyes, then quickly closed them again. The world was going by too fast. “I c-called him to hang out. That’s… that’s all.” It didn’t matter what she said. Her mom would figure out the truth, and then she would bring Becca back to that cell…

“So you don’t know where he is.” The car swerved sharply to the side. Becca opened her eyes in time to see them swing back into the right lane, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision.

“N-no.” Jake had been waiting for two days. Did he suspect what had happened to her?

“I knew you couldn’t do something like that.” Her mom tightened her fingers around the steering wheel like she was trying to choke the life out of it. “You’ve said some misguided things lately, but that doesn’t mean you would help a dissident hide from Internal. Even if he is a friend of yours.” She paused. “You’re certain you don’t know where he is?”

“I d-didn’t even know… know he was a dissident. I thought you w-were wrong about him.” She waited for her mom to confront her, to expose her lie.

“I’m sorry for doubting you.” Her mom’s death grip on the steering wheel loosened a tiny bit. “But I had to hear it from you.”

Her mom hadn’t seen through her lie. She was safe.

Alive. Safe. Free.

She still couldn’t stop shivering.

“I did everything I could to get you out of there,” said her mom as they got closer to the apartment. “I’m sorry it took as long as it did.”

Looking more closely at her mom’s face, Becca saw the dark circles under her eyes, and the new wrinkles that made her look as if she had aged ten years overnight. “Are you r-really going to… to b-be investigated?”

“Maybe,” said her mom. “But they won’t find anything. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I got you out of there.”

Why was she worried about her mom’s safety, anyway? Had she forgotten what her mom had done? What she did every day?

But she had saved Becca’s life. And even if she hadn’t, she was still her mom. Becca imagined the Enforcers handcuffing her mom instead of her, pushing her mom ahead of them out the door while Becca stood by helplessly. No matter what she thought of her mom, Becca would have been the one screaming without words, the one searching for any possible way to save her.

“Th-thank you,” said Becca. “For… for saving me. And p-putting yourself in danger to do it.”

Her mom pulled into the parking lot of their building. “There was no other option. I couldn’t leave you there.”

Even if I really did help Jake?

She didn’t ask. She thought she knew the answer, anyway. Somewhere deep down, her mom had to at least suspect what Becca was. What she had done.

And she had saved her anyway.

“Is there any chance they’ll… they’ll arrest me again?” Becca asked.

The car slid into their parking space. “No. They had no meaningful evidence against you. I’ve made that clear to them.” Her mom yanked the key out of the ignition and swung her car door open.

Not that it matters whether they have evidence or not. Becca kept her mouth shut as she fumbled with her seatbelt. She wasn’t quite as dizzy anymore. Whatever her mom had given her had helped.

Her mom kept talking as she climbed out of the car. “All they had was that phone call and what that dissident friend of yours said.”

Becca froze halfway through taking off her seatbelt. “Heather? Heather turned me in?”

“This is how far she’s willing to go to keep suspicion off herself. I did warn you about her. She isn’t someone you want to associate with.”

Heather had turned her in.

It’s a lie. Just another lie.

But Becca didn’t know who was lying—her mother, or Heather.

* * *

For once, Becca’s mom was home when Becca woke up. Becca got ready for school as her mom hovered; she choked down the toast her mom made for her; she assured her that she was okay, of course she was okay. They left the apartment together, Becca’s forced smile growing more and more strained under her mom’s watchful eyes.

Becca stood at the front of the parking lot, where the bus would pick her up. She and Heather used to wait for the bus here together; now, with Heather gone, Becca was the only high-school student in the building who took the bus to school. Her mom passed her in her car, on her way to 117 to do to other dissidents what she had saved Becca from. Becca watched the car until it was out of sight. She waited an extra couple of minutes just to be safe. Then she started out of the parking lot, toward the playground.

She hadn’t been able to sneak away to see Jake yesterday after she got home; her mom had kept too close an eye on her. He and his dad had been waiting for three days now. Did they think she wasn’t coming back? Did they think it was only a matter of time now before Internal came for them?

The food she had left them had probably run out by now. She hadn’t been able to grab anything this morning, but she could come back with food later. Right now the most important thing was to let them know that she was alive, and that she hadn’t forgotten them.

The apartment building receded into the distance behind her. Somebody might have watched her leave, and wondered why she was going to the playground so often all of a sudden and why she was skipping school to do it. She glanced back at the building, squinting to see if she could spot any faces in the windows. She was too far away to tell, but she thought she might have seen one of the curtains move.

When she had warned Jake, she hadn’t thought about anything but keeping him safe from the immediate threat. She should have thought further, should have understood that the threat didn’t end there. Internal was looking for him, and eventually they would find him. She didn’t just need to bring food; she needed to warn him that he had to run. Leave town with his dad as soon as possible. They would still be in danger, but it would give them the best chance of survival.

She would never see him again. But he would be safe from Internal. Safer, at least.

She tried not to think about how alone she would be once he was gone.

She heard something. Footsteps? She spun around, but saw only the parking lot where she was supposed to be waiting for the bus.