Away (7 page)

“And it will lead on!” Indigo thundered. “
If
it is the will of the camp,
if
it is the will of my son.” Michael began to speak, but Indigo shook his head and silenced him. “Times change, Michael. We must change too. For now, back to the matter at hand.”

The rest of the council meeting was given to details: who would teach the children in Nandy's place, what would happen if any one of the rescue party was killed. Rachel listened dully until they got to that part, at which point she began to realize they were actually going to go someplace where one of them
might be killed
. She was both afraid and a little awestruck.

These people cared enough about her father to risk their lives for him. Rachel watched them talking, and remembered how she and her mother and Ms. Moore had talked in Ms. Moore's parlor back home on The Property, when they were planning how to help Pathik get the medicine he needed to save his father. The risk had been the same; Rachel understood that now in a way she hadn't then. Her mother and Ms. Moore, and Jonathan too, had risked their lives to help these people.

Rachel feared that the risk wasn't over for them either. She wondered where her mother was now. Was she making something for Ms. Moore in the kitchen of the main house? Was she on her way to Bensen for the weekly supply run? Had EOs swarmed The Property, tipped off by her old friend Peter? Was her mother in some cold, gray holding cell right now? Without warning, two tears slipped down Rachel's cheek. She swiped at her face and looked around, but nobody had noticed. She snuck a look at Pathik, but he was engrossed in the talk of preparations for the trek.

Rachel tried to listen, but she suddenly felt so tired. She just wanted to go lie down, but she wanted to lie down on her own little cot, in the bedroom of the guesthouse on The Property. She wanted to hear her mother making homey noises in the kitchen as she drifted off to sleep. She wanted everything to be like it was before, when her father was a dead hero, and her mother was a better-safe-than-sorry, overprotective nuisance, and the Others were just a fun, scary fascination she read about in net books.

CHAPTER 6

E
LIZABETH PULLED THE greenhouse door closed and headed for the main house. She heard the low hum of the Enforcement vehicle before she saw it. By the time she reached the yard of the main house, the Enforcement Officers were already standing on the driveway. There were two, in the gray uniforms that for so many had come to symbolize terror. They weren't the same two who had come the night Rachel Crossed.

“Ms. Moore?” One of them blocked Elizabeth's path to the porch.

“Yes?” She didn't try to hide her irritation.

“Ms. Elizabeth Moore?” The second EO consulted his digitab, comparing her to some unseen data.

“Yes.” Elizabeth sharpened the edge in her voice, hoping it would distract the EO from the beating of her heart—it felt like he must be able to see her chest move from where he stood.

“Do you provide Gainful Employment for a Vivian Quillen?”

“I do. Why?”

“We need to see her.”

“She's . . .” Elizabeth tried to think of a viable lie, but the front door of the main house opened behind her before she could.

“Is there a problem, officers?” Vivian walked down the porch steps past the first EO and stood next to Elizabeth.

“Are you Vivian Quillen?” The EO with the digitab stroked the screen, then tapped it, and consulted the resulting display.

“I am.” Vivian didn't look at Elizabeth.

The other EO stepped forward and took hold of Vivian's wrist. “We need you to come with us.”

“For what reason, officer?” Elizabeth stepped closer to Vivian.

“It doesn't concern you.” He took a pair of plasticuffs out and put them on her. Elizabeth started to say something, but the look on his face stopped her. He turned back to Vivian.

“We're taking you to the station in Bensen.” He pushed her toward the Enforcement vehicle.

“I'll go with her, officers. Let me just get our coats and—”

The EO with the digitab stepped in front of Elizabeth. “You're staying here. Depending on how things go, she might be released tonight. If she's being detained, she can contact you from the station.”

“It's fine, Elizabeth.” Vivian smiled, but her face was ashen. “I'm sure there's some mix-up, that's all.” She held Elizabeth's gaze, trying to convey something.

Elizabeth watched, helpless, as the EOs put Vivian in the back of their vehicle. Then they got in the front, faces grim, and drove away.

 

 

VIVIAN KEPT HER head down during the drive to Bensen. The EOs said nothing to her, and she said nothing to them. She just stared at the grate separating the back of the vehicle from the front. It was grimy from years of hands, and there was a dark brown stain on the lower right corner that looked suspiciously like blood. Vivian wondered how long it had been there. She tried not to imagine who had been sitting where she was now, bleeding.

The interrogation room at the Bensen station was empty except for two chairs and a small table. It was cold. They let Vivian sit in it alone for over an hour. When the door to the room finally opened, she had managed to remember most of the meditative techniques she had learned during her training as a collaborator, and she felt almost tranquil. She watched the man who had entered sit down across from her. She watched as he placed a slim case on the table. She studied his face the way she might have examined a dead rattlesnake, curious, but not alarmed.

The man didn't say anything for what seemed like a long time. He just looked back at her, silent. Vivian resisted the urge to speak; she knew his silence was designed to make her babble. She focused on his chin, a sharp chin, lasered to a hairless smoothness. He had a mole there, just left of center, in the shape of a heart. It was an interesting choice, to keep that mole. Nobody did anymore. Any sort of imperfection was easily erased at a laser clinic.

The man sighed, an exaggerated, overburdened sigh. Vivian kept her eyes on his mole. His hand appeared in her line of sight, fingers snapping briskly.

“Enough,” he said.

She looked up, into his eyes. They looked empty.

“Do you know a Peter Hill?”

“Don't you have to read me a statement of my rights?”

The man slumped on one arm, holding his chin. “You are being interrogated on a matter of national security,” he droned. “You have the right to humdy hum deed um dee hum. And also, lah de la dee lalala.” He let the nonsense sounds rise and fall in pitch, like a little tune. Then he smiled brightly at her. “Happy now?” He looked maniacal at that moment, mad with power no human should have over another.

Vivian wasn't surprised at his actions. He was what she and her fellow collaborators had always been warned about.

Would she be returned to The Property? Or perhaps incarcerated in some holding center? Or would she never again see anything outside of the room she sat in now? She wondered where Rachel was at that very moment. She wondered if she was warm, and dry, and fed.

The man placed his hands on the case he had brought in, sliding them along its edges like some cheap jeweler at the annual fair in Bensen, about to reveal a very large, very fake gem inside. He pressed some hidden catch and a soft click sounded. The man raised the lid of the case, obscuring Vivian's view of the contents. His smile remained undiminished. Holding her gaze, he shifted the case so that it was sideways, allowing her to see inside.

The case was lined in deep blue velvet. There were four fitted compartments, a large one for a power-pack/handle, and three smaller ones for attachments. The handle was covered with what looked to Vivian like real black leather. It must have been fake, but it was a high quality fake. The attachments were steel, highly polished so that they gleamed. Vivian saw that two were cutters and the third was a cauterizer. They stopped the bleeding so you lived longer.

The man took a digitab from his pocket—the smallest one Vivian had ever seen. He tapped the screen a few times, read whatever he saw there.

“So.” He didn't look up. “The facts: Peter Hill, collaborator. Jolie Hill, his wife, female child, presumably his daughter, both Identified not long ago in Bensen. Where”—he raised his eyebrows—“you happen to live.”

Vivian didn't correct him. He knew she didn't live in town. He was just trying to get her started. She remembered her training again—once you
started
talking, it was easier to
keep
talking. Best to remain mute until you were compelled to speak. Vivian tried not to think about what that long-ago trainer had meant when he said “compelled.”

“Mother and daughter confined. Or at least, that was the last report.”

Meaning that Jolie and her daughter could be dead. Vivian kept her face neutral.

“Your own husband was Called to Serve years ago, correct? He helped out in that last big skirmish with Samarik, was killed in action, correct?”

Vivian nodded. She hoped her face hadn't changed, hadn't revealed the pain she still felt, like her heart was being tugged from her chest—Daniel, dead. Killed in action, certainly, but not the kind of action this man cited. Vivian knew the Call to Serve had been a sham, just as Daniel had known. But he had to go; he had no choice.

“Peter Hill was a friend of your late husband's.” It wasn't a question. “And of yours. And now he's disappeared.” The man tilted his head at Vivian. “Did you know that?”

Vivian shook her head.

“Yes. His house is quite deserted. So strange that he would just . . . disappear, so soon after he visited you at your employer's home.” The man reached into the case and plucked a tiny piece of lint from the velvet lining.

“That night, the night Peter visited you, that was the very same night your daughter ran away, wasn't it?”

Vivian nodded, and tried not to look at the case.

“So upsetting, I'm sure.” The man waited. He reached into the case again, and stroked one of the cutter attachments. He leaned forward to look at it, picked it up to examine a smudge. He rubbed his thumb over the smudge until it was gone.

Vivian kept seeing flashes of a memory, so long ago now. A young woman, a collaborator, being carried into the safe house by two men, one of them Daniel. They'd found her dumped by the side of the road. She was still making some noise, but not much. There was so little blood, but everywhere—her arms, her legs, her face, her abdomen where it showed through her ripped clothing—there were cauterized wounds; angry red lines or wider, circular areas, burned closed with a laser. Vivian started to go for the medical student they counted among their ranks, but Daniel shook his head. He went to the chest they kept in a cupboard, a chest none of the trainees liked to think about. Daniel took it out and removed a tiny paper envelope from it, one of several. He was careful to touch only the corner. He carried the envelope to the girl, who was lying on a cot, being tended to by three other trainees.

“Tessa.” Daniel spoke the girl's name. She was in the same upper-level philosophy course he and Vivian were taking that semester at college. She opened her eyes and saw what he held. Her whimpering stopped. Slowly, she reached out toward him, her hand shaking.

“No, Daniel.” One of the other trainees reached for Tessa's hand, but she slapped him away. She crooked her fingers at Daniel. He stepped closer and helped her grasp the paper envelope, steadying her hand.

“Can you wait a bit?” Daniel stroked her hair back from her forehead. Tessa shook her head frantically.

“Do you want us to stay?”

Tessa hesitated, then nodded. Daniel nodded too.

“We'll be right here with you, Tessa. Right here.”

Tessa fumbled with the envelope. Her hands were shaking too hard to open it. One of the trainees moved to help, but Daniel stopped him.

“You can't touch the wafer—it's transdermal.”

“She can't do it by herself.”

“Tessa,” Daniel said. He waited until her eyes were focused on him. “You can just eat the whole thing—the envelope is just rice paper. It will dissolve along with the wafer.”

Tessa was taking very deep breaths now, practically gasping. She reached toward Daniel with the hand holding the tiny packet. He knelt next to her and took her wrist. He asked the question with his eyes. Tessa nodded, and Daniel helped guide her hand toward her mouth. She was shaking so hard she almost dropped it, but finally it rested on her tongue. She closed her mouth and smiled weakly at them all. Within moments she was gone.

“So you've had no news from her.” The man's voice interrupted Vivian's reverie.