The Torturer's Daughter

she had become something worse.

She turned the thought around in her head, let it drive out all the others, until it tipped the balance and allowed her to walk down the hall alone, leaving Heather behind.

* * *

Becca tossed her backpack onto the living room floor. She was about to head to her bedroom when she heard a soft thump from the kitchen. She stopped moving, held her suddenly-quivering body in place with one foot raised mid-step. As she listened, it happened again. The sound of a drawer closing, then footsteps. Someone was here. Internal.

They hadn’t see her yet, but they must have heard the door open and close. Could she make it out of the apartment before they caught up with her? But even if she did, they would come after her, and she couldn’t outrun—

Her mom stepped out of the kitchen.

Becca let her foot drop to the floor, let the air hiss out of her lungs. “It’s you.”

“I came home early. I wanted to make sure you were all right.” Her mom frowned as she scrutinized Becca. “What happened?”

“Nothing. I thought you were Internal.” Becca’s legs threatened to give out as her adrenaline abruptly receded. She rested her back against the door, trying to look casual, like it was no big deal. “How did you manage to leave work so early? It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

“Someone else can handle my dissidents today. Or they can sit in their cells a little longer. Being here for you is more important.”

Becca wished her mom had stayed at work until after midnight again instead. Having her around wasn’t going to help anything. Not when every time Becca looked at her she thought about Jake’s mom and Heather’s parents and Anna and everything her job meant. Not when every second that went by was another opportunity for her mom to discover that Becca wasn’t innocent after all.

Except that seeing her mom in front of her, knowing she was here, did make it a little easier for Becca to breathe. Why did her mom’s presence still comfort her, even now that Becca knew what she was?

Every time she talked to her mom lately, she ended up seeing double. The torturer. Her mother. One and the same, and yet how could they be?

“You never got a chance to answer my question,” said Becca.

“What question?” Her mom stepped closer. Becca didn’t know whether she wanted to back up against the door as far as she could or rush into her mom’s arms and tell her all about her miserable day.

“How you… do what you do.”

Her mom was silent for a moment. Was she remembering the same thing as Becca? Becca asking the question, then the sound of footsteps, and then…

Her mom spoke, chasing the memory from Becca’s mind. “I do what I do because I have to.”

Becca shook her head. “That’s not true. You didn’t have to get a job in Processing. You didn’t have to get a job with Internal at all. You chose this—and every morning you choose to stay there for another day. So how do you do it? How do you keep going back?” She couldn’t find the right words to ask what she really wanted to know—how her mom could go back there every day and still be the mother Becca had grown up with.

“A lot of people don’t stay,” said her mom. “They last a few months, or a year, and then they transfer someplace else. Surveillance, maybe, or Investigation… sometimes they leave Internal altogether.” She paused. “I admit I’ve had moments when the idea seemed very tempting. Processing is… not an easy place to work. But what would happen if everybody walked away? Without Processing, there would be no point to Surveillance or Investigation or any of the rest. So I stand by what I said—I do it because I have to.”

“That’s why you stay,” said Becca. “But how do you do it? You’re not…” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence, didn’t know how to put her thoughts into words.

“I choose to,” her mom answered. “It’s that simple.”

“You could say that about anything. You could say that if you quit tomorrow to become a clown.” Her mom’s answer was too easy, and explained too little. It didn’t give Becca what she was looking for.

Her mom’s face darkened. “Do you think I take this choice that lightly? Do you think it matters that little to me? If that were the case, I would have left Processing a long time ago.” She wrapped her arms around her chest. “I lost your father because I wouldn’t leave Processing. And I’ve given up more than my marriage. People know how important Processing is, and they’re always quick to tell me how much they admire what I’ve done for 117 and for Internal… but they never want to get too close. Have you ever wondered why you’re the closest friend I have?” She drew in a shaky breath. “And every day when I look at the dissidents in those cells, I have to remind myself all over again what they are, so that I can do what needs to be done.”

In all their conversations, over all these years, her mom had never hinted at any of this.

“But I stay. I stay because I will not be someone who abandons my principles as soon as they become inconvenient. I will not be someone who says that certain things have to be done… as long as somebody else does them.” Her mom crossed the remaining distance to Becca and took Becca’s face in her hands. “This is the most important thing I can teach you. Living by your principles will always be the harder path. But you have to do it anyway. You have to do what’s right no matter how hard it gets, or one day you’ll find out you’ve become somebody you can’t live with.”

A chill spread through Becca’s body. A horrible recognition that drove all her thoughts about her mom’s job out of her mind.

Jake, waiting in the playground. Abandoned.

Could she live with herself if she left him there?

Her mom let her hands fall to her sides. “I know how hard it is. It’s easier to hate the people who killed your best friend’s parents than to understand why their deaths were necessary. It’s easier to believe a friend’s lies than to accept that he’s using you. But you know what’s right. And you have to keep reminding yourself of that.”

She did know what was right.

And leaving Jake at the playground wasn’t it.

Her mom was waiting for a response.

“I’ve been trying.” Becca didn’t have to fake sincerity. “But… it’s hard.”

“I know it is,” her mom said gently. “But it’s the only way you’re going to get through this.”

* * *

Becca tiptoed out of her bedroom. She winced as the floor creaked under her feet. Her mom’s door stood slightly open; through it Becca saw her mom’s arm hanging off the bed, heard the slow rhythmic sound of her breathing.

Her mom mumbled something incoherent. Becca stopped, waiting to hear her name or a question about what she was doing up so late. Instead the mattress squeaked as her mom’s breathing settled back into its regular pattern.

Becca crept past her door, through the hallway, into the living room. She slipped her shoes on and picked up her backpack. Once she had swung the backpack onto her back, she opened the door inch by inch, cringing at every squeal of the hinges. She stood in the doorway, listening for any hint that the noise might have woken her mom.

If her mom woke up, she couldn’t leave.

Nothing. Her mom was still asleep.

She told herself she was relieved.

She stepped out of the apartment and closed the door as carefully as she had opened it.

Down the hall. Down the stairs. Trying not to think of who might hear her footsteps and open their doors to see who was wandering around in the middle of the night. Just paranoia. Nobody could hear her from inside their apartments, and if they could, they wouldn’t think anything of it. Around here, people came and went at all hours; Becca’s mom wasn’t the only one who sometimes didn’t stumble home from work until six in the morning.

Becca walked outside into the cool night air. The last time she had been out this late, she had been hiding in the playhouse, the way Jake was now.

At least, if he was still there.

He had to still be there.

The thought of Jake forced her forward, away from the building, into the parking lot.