No Return (The Internal Defense Series) (11 page)

“Get back out here, Becca,” her mom called from the living room. “This instant.”

A dull ache began to pulse behind Becca’s eyes. “This isn’t a good time. If you want to sign up for one of the support groups, you can pick up the forms on the fourth floor.”

“I think I’ve been, um, blacking out?” The woman hesitated. “I heard maybe you could help.”

The phone nearly slipped from Becca’s fingers.

Blackouts. The emergency code. The one that meant Internal at the door or the resistance in collapse. The one that meant, “Drop whatever you’re doing and come deal with this
right now
.
”

In three years, none of them had ever used that code. Not once.

And a stranger had just given it to her.

Only six people, including Becca, knew the codes. How had this woman learned them? For that matter, how had she gotten Becca’s number?

She’s Surveillance. It’s a trap.
But she dismissed the idea. If Internal knew enough to use that phrase, they knew enough that they didn’t need to bother calling—they could skip straight to the arrests and save themselves the effort.

The woman cleared her throat again. “Becca? Are you there?”

Becca kept her voice calm. “You don’t have anything to worry about. I’ve dealt with this kind of thing before. But a problem this serious shouldn’t wait until the next support group meeting. Why don’t I stop by your apartment tonight, and we’ll talk?”

The woman murmured something, too low for Becca to hear. Another voice answered. After a moment, the woman returned. “Can we meet at the park instead?”

At this time of night?
A late-night meeting in the park practically screamed “dissident activity.” And with the town on high alert, they would be lucky if the place wasn’t crawling with Enforcers. But the woman on the phone—or whoever was there with her—wouldn’t have suggested it if there were a better option available.

“I’ll be there soon,” Becca promised. “How will I recognize—”

But the woman had hung up.

Becca put her phone away and walked back out to the living room. She barely registered her mom’s anger. She had more important things to worry about now.

“I have to go,” she said, already headed for the door.

Her mom stepped in front of her. “You’re not going anywhere. If you walk out that door, the directors will hear from me first thing tomorrow morning.”

Something inside Becca snapped.

Her people could be dying out there. And her mom was keeping her from them because she hadn’t talked about her
feelings
enough. Because she couldn’t be the same person she had been back in high school.

“If you go to the directors about me,” said Becca, “the first thing I’ll do is tell them all the changes I’ve noticed in you over the past three years. I’m a trained evaluator—they’ll listen to what I have to say. Do you think they’ll want an erratic interrogator working on the underground levels?”

Her mom drew back like Becca had slapped her. She stood silently, mouth slightly open, as if waiting for Becca to take back her threat.

Becca said nothing.

Her mom sagged, suddenly showing every bit of her age. “Becca, please. I only want to help you. You know that.”

“I have to go,” Becca repeated.

This time, when she tried to leave, her mom didn’t stop her.

Even this late at night, the park showed more life than Becca had expected. Under the amber glow of the lights that lined the walking track, a handful of late-night exercisers kept up a brisk pace, sending puffs of white into the air with each breath. On a nearby bench, a teenage couple stole kisses, while another bench held a woman bundled in a heavy coat with a hat pulled down around her ears, scribbling in a notebook. Two Enforcers leaned against the playground equipment, talking in voices too low for Becca to hear.

One of these people had called her.

She stood for a moment, waiting, but no one approached her. No one so much as glanced in her direction.

She couldn’t exactly approach everyone here and ask if they had set up a secret meeting. She started around the track, keeping a wary eye on the Enforcers as she walked. But they seemed more interested in their conversation than in potential dissident activity.

She turned her attention from the Enforcers to the exercisers. Two were men, which counted them out. The third had graying hair and a face like a battleship—a possibility, but a distant one. The couple on the bench looked too wrapped up in each other to care about the wind freezing their noses off, let alone the resistance. And the woman with the notebook was…

Becca squinted. Her steps faltered as she tried to get a better view, then stopped altogether.

The woman with the notebook was Meri.

Becca walked to the bench, gait unhurried and even, nothing that would attract the attention of the Enforcers. Meri looked up as she sat. Relief flashed across the other woman’s face, but she didn’t smile. She clutched the notebook to her chest as if it contained the secret to eternal life.

“You set up the meeting,” said Becca.

Meri nodded. “I had Amelia make the call.”

“Why didn’t you do it yourself?” A chill that had nothing to do with the weather began to creep through Becca’s limbs. She could only think of one reason Meri would have needed somebody else to call for her.

Meri’s silence only confirmed her fear.

“They’re watching you. They suspect you.” The cold wrapped itself around Becca’s bones. “Are you sure?”

Meri made a strangled sound, something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I’m sure.”

Something in Meri’s face, in her voice, made Becca speak faster, before Meri could say more. “It’s all right. We’ll deal with this. You’ll lie low for a while, stop coming to meetings—”

But Meri was shaking her head.

“We’ll deal with this,” Becca repeated. Her hands clenched around the fabric of her gloves.

“They were waiting for me at my apartment tonight.” The moon illuminated Meri’s face as she spoke. How had Becca not noticed how pale she looked? “One of my Surveillance informants spotted them in time, or I wouldn’t have had a chance.”

Becca had half-expected the words. But they still slammed into her like a fist.

She tried to say something. Tried to breathe. She couldn’t.

This isn’t real.
She’d had this nightmare a thousand times before. Enforcers coming for Meri, for Peter, for Jared… She fought the absurd urge to yank off her glove and pinch the skin of her arm.
It isn’t real.

But she knew better.

Internal had found out about Meri.

And there was only one way it could have happened.

She forced a whisper from her empty lungs. “Ryann.”

Meri nodded, too calm. “Most likely.” Her fingers, pale in the moonlight, gripped the notebook tighter.

She could still hear Meri’s voice, as clearly as if they had never left her living room.
Are you sure this is our best option?

And her own reply, mocking her.
Yes. I’m sure.

She had handed Meri over to Ryann.

She had handed Meri over to Internal.

“But she hasn’t gotten what she needs yet. She can’t have met more than a couple of your people. It doesn’t make sense.” As if that would change what had happened. “Why now? Why didn’t she at least wait?”

“The only thing I can think of is that she didn’t care about gaining access to my network.” Meri’s lips tightened around her words the way her hands had tightened around the notebook a moment ago. “What she wanted was someone like me. Someone with proven access to a large number of resistance members. Someone who would—” Her voice caught. She swallowed. “Who would give them everything they needed under interrogation.”

Becca’s mind shrank back from the image of Meri in an interrogation room.
No. It won’t happen.
“We’ll help you run. We’ve done it before. First thing in the morning, we’ll get your new identity set up. You’ll stay in one of the safehouses for a few days, until we decide on the best place for you to go.” Her chest loosened slightly as she laid out the plan.
It’s okay. It’s okay. I can still protect you.

“But it’s not a guarantee. They’d look for me. There’s a good chance they’d find me.” Meri ran her fingers along the notebook’s cover. “You know what will happen once I’m arrested.”

Meri’s confession would lead Internal straight to Becca and the rest of the core members. And then…
It doesn’t matter. It won’t happen.
“Kara will help you. She survived on the run for three years.”

Meri shook her head. “Any risk to my network is too much. And it’s not just my network at stake. It’s everyone.”

“We’ll make this work. We don’t have a choice.” Becca offered Meri her hand. “Let’s go. We need to get you to the safehouse before the Enforcers over there wonder what we’re doing.”

Meri didn’t take her hand. “You’re wrong,” she said. “We do.”

“We do what?” Something in Meri’s voice sent unease skittering up Becca’s spine. She shook off the feeling. “Come on, we have to go.”

“We have a choice. I have a choice.” Meri pressed the notebook into Becca’s outstretched hand. “I can make sure I’m never arrested. Never interrogated.”

“What do you…” But she didn’t have to finish the sentence. She knew. Hearing the eerie calm in Meri’s voice, seeing the quiet determination in her eyes, she knew. “No.
No.
You’re not—” She stopped. Took a breath.
Be what she needs.
“You don’t need to do this. I can protect you.”

Meri closed Becca’s fingers around the notebook. “This has all the details of my network,” she said. “Names. Contact methods. Meeting places.”

So calm. Too calm.

Becca shoved the notebook back into Meri’s lap. “I can protect you,” she repeated. Too loud. Too sharp. She lowered her voice. “I’ll make sure Internal never finds you.”

“How?” Meri’s question was quiet, but firm.

Becca didn’t have an answer.

I don’t know. I don’t know how to—

But she couldn’t finish that thought. She couldn’t, or she would lose Meri. Lose her to the trap Becca had dragged her into. Her fault, all of this was her fault…

It doesn’t matter. I’ll protect her. I’ll be who she needs me to be.

An echo of Meri’s voice answered her.
How?

Meri placed the notebook on the bench between them, as gently as if it were made of glass. “Your responsibility is to them. Not to me. We make whatever sacrifices we need to make to preserve the resistance. Isn’t that what you’ve told us all this time?”

Even as Meri said it, Becca could hear it, a hundred different memories of her own voice. The same message spoken a hundred different ways.

Protect the resistance. Whatever it takes.

But she hadn’t meant this. She hadn’t meant letting her own incompetence take one of her people from her. She hadn’t meant letting Meri—

She opened her mouth to protest. Closed it again.

Whatever it takes.

She picked up the notebook with numb hands.

Her voice barely stirred the air. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Meri. “I’m sure.” There was no hesitance in her voice, no regret. Only that same unnerving serenity.

“I’m sorry.” For this one moment, Becca allowed her voice to soften. “I’m sorry about Ryann. About everything.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” said Meri. “You made the choice you thought was best for the resistance. Now it’s my turn to do the same.”

“I told you I would protect you.”

“You told me you would give me a way to fight for what I believed in. And you kept your promise. What we’ve accomplished together is worth any sacrifice. Even this.” Her lips curved with the hint of a smile. “So don’t apologize, because I don’t regret a second of it.”

Becca didn’t trust herself to answer.

“If we stay here much longer, the Enforcers will start asking questions.” Meri closed her eyes for a moment, visibly gathering strength. When she opened them, she took a long breath before rising to her feet. “It’s time for me to go.”

Don’t,
Becca wanted to protest, even now, even knowing what was necessary.
Don’t do this. I can still protect you.

She looked down at the notebook in her hands.

Be who she needs you to be.

“I’ll take care of them,” she promised. “I’ll do everything I can.”

“I know you will.” Meri gave her a solemn nod. “Goodbye, Becca,” she said softly. “Good luck.”

Becca returned the nod. Tears clogged her throat until she couldn’t have spoken even if she had known what to say, even if she had possessed the magic words that could fix this.

Meri turned and began to walk away.

For a moment, Becca allowed herself to feel it all. The grief, the guilt, the helpless fury.
I did this
and
I can’t let this happen
and
I don’t know what to do
.
She balled her hands up, bending the notebook under her grip, as she bit back a scream. A single sob ripped through her.

That’s enough.

She stopped.

Her hands relaxed. Her mind cleared. Her eyes, after she blinked away the few tears that had escaped, were dry.

She would think what the resistance needed her to think. She would feel what they needed her to feel. Only this, and nothing else.

I will be who they need me to be.

I won’t fail again.

The chill that had begun to creep through her with Meri’s first words settled into her body. Freezing her. Freezing everything that didn’t belong.

She watched, still and cold, as Meri disappeared from view.

* * *

The light had already begun to fade as Becca walked through the woods the next evening. Ahead of her, the dim glow of multiple flashlights lit the clearing where they had buried Terrence less than three weeks ago. Figures moved among the bare trees, silhouettes in shadow, too far away for Becca to make out their faces.

As she drew closer, with dead branches cracking under her feet, the figures began to resolve. Kara first, waiting at the edge of the clearing, where Becca had told her they would meet. A few feet away, four people Becca had never seen before stood in a circle. They all had the sturdy physiques of Enforcers—Jared must have sent them to guard the prisoner.

In the center of the circle sat a single figure, head bowed, hands bound behind her back. Someone had tossed a blanket carelessly over her lap, but her body still shook with cold.

Ryann.

Kara nodded to Becca as she approached. “Where are the others?” she asked as soon as Becca was close enough to hear.

“They’re not coming,” Becca answered. “I told Jared that Ryann was working for Internal, and that Meri is—” Her throat closed. She tried again. “I told him she was responsible for what happened to Meri. That’s what I’ll tell the others at our next meeting. But they can’t learn the whole story. If they find out what I did, the resistance will fall apart.”

If Kara disapproved of Becca’s dishonesty, she didn’t show it. She only nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “For trusting me with this.”

I don’t trust you.
Trust, like grief, was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Not after Ryann had shown her what trust could do. “I don’t have a choice. I need someone there with me. Someone who will make sure I don’t start falling for her lies again. Can you do that for me?”

“Whatever you need.” Kara gave the words the weight of a promise.

“Then let’s get started,” said Becca, already striding across the clearing.

She stopped in front of Ryann, with Kara a couple of steps behind. The guards turned to her, waiting for orders.

“Give us some space,” she told them.

With nods of acknowledgement, the guards stepped back, until they ringed the edges of the clearing. Close enough that they could intervene if something went wrong, but far enough away to give the three some semblance of privacy.

Ryann didn’t raise her head.

“Look at me,” Becca ordered.

Ryann shuddered, but she didn’t look up.

This time, Becca laced the words with a sharper edge. “
Look
at me.”

Slowly, Ryann lifted her head. A curtain of hair—tangled from a night spent in the woods—fell back from her face, revealing wide eyes and quivering lips.

As Becca locked eyes with Ryann, the girl jerked back, then shrank in on herself, shaking harder. Becca wondered what she had seen there.

“My name is Becca Dalcourt.” Her voice held a note of cold cruelty she hadn’t known she could possess. “I lead the resistance.”

Ryann drew in a sharp breath, and Becca knew she had gotten the message.

Now that Ryann knew the truth about Becca, she would never leave this place alive.

“One of my best resistance assets is dead because of you.” She hadn’t actually said it out loud before now.
Don’t think about it.
“We very nearly lost a lot more than that.”

“I h-had to do it,” Ryann whispered. She broke their gaze to stare down at her lap. “I had to.”

“Look at me,” Becca snapped.

Trembling, Ryann did.

“Don’t try to feed me any more stories. I don’t care.” Each word like a dagger. “All I care about is that you’re going to help me save the ones you didn’t kill.” She took a step closer, only dimly aware of Kara’s growing tension behind her. “Tell me about the program.”

“I should have guessed who you were. You s-sound like her.” Ryann’s shivers distorted her voice. “They showed us interrogations, in the reeducation center. To show us what… what happened to people like us.”

Behind Becca, Kara made a small noise.

Ryann didn’t look at Kara. She kept her gaze fixed on Becca’s face, on her hands. “You sound like her,” she repeated. “Raleigh Dalcourt.”

A wave of nausea rolled through Becca as Ryann’s words hit her. She took in her own speech, her posture, the purpose that had brought her here, seeing it all from the outside for the first time.

She looked like any interrogator in 117.

She looked like her mother.

Ryann trembled harder. Waiting. Becca swallowed back bile.

I am not my—
The denial sprang to her lips.

She pressed her teeth together to hold it back.

Yes, she was here for information. But she was not her mother, and there were lines she would not cross.

She was not her mother.

But Ryann didn’t need to know that.

She took another step closer, until only a hand’s width separated her from Ryann. “Don’t change the subject.” She used her mother’s voice deliberately this time. “Tell me about the program.”

Ryann quivered. “I don’t know much. None of us do. They only told us what they had to. They didn’t trust us—they were afraid we’d go back over to your side.”

“So tell me what you do know.”

“It’s Reeducation. They’re running it. We all come from the centers.” She spilled the words at Becca’s feet, babbling almost too fast for Becca to understand. Desperate to get the words out before Becca… did whatever Ryann thought she was going to do. “They kept me there for weeks. Maybe months. They… I didn’t want to help them at first. They had to…” The flow of words stopped as Ryann shook harder. “They had to m-make me understand.”

Another small sound from Kara, quickly suppressed.

Becca closed her eyes against the images that Ryann’s words evoked. It didn’t help.
Ryann beaten, tortured, bleeding. Ryann screaming. Begging for someone to save her, for the resistance to rescue—

She forced the thought from her mind. Replaced it with the memory of Meri pressing the notebook into her hands, Meri walking away from her for the last time.

“I don’t care about that.” Harsh. Cold. Her mother’s voice; the resistance leader’s voice. “What was your mission?”

It took Ryann a moment to collect herself. “They w-wanted us to get as high up in the resistance as possible. Make contact with the people running the networks, the ones who know all the names. They gave us information. Things we could pass on to our contacts to m-make the resistance see us as valuable.”

“Has Internal been feeding us false information through you?” How much information had Ryann passed on to the resistance since her return from reeducation? How much damage could she have done?

Ryann shook her head frantically; her hair flew in all directions. “It was all real. At least that’s what they told me. They said it had to be real or you might figure it out.”

“How well have the others infiltrated the resistance?”
How much time do we have?

“I d-don’t know. I don’t know. Internal told me it wouldn’t be much longer.”

Becca didn’t allow herself to react. “How many of you are there?”

“Six at least. M-maybe more. But I only ever knew Marcus.”

Marcus. The other spy, the one Ryann had told them about. “Then he’s really one of you? Not someone you framed to make us trust you?”

Ryann’s head bobbed up and down in a yes. “It’s like the information. It h-had to be real.”

Then Ryann had given up a fellow spy. A friend. Had he known beforehand what she was going to do? Had she seen his face behind her eyes when she had gone to bed that night?

Whatever it takes,
she heard herself say. And,
I’m considering you for a special assignment.

She, of all people, understood.

But she didn’t want to understand. Ryann didn’t deserve her sympathy. She moved on. “How much have you told Internal?”

“I told them what I had been doing for the resistance. Stealing information from my parents’ files. I gave them Liam. And… and Sophie.” She flinched and looked away as she spoke her friend’s name. “Internal didn’t care about either of them. They weren’t… Internal said they weren’t important enough.”

“And Meri.”

Ryann shrank back at whatever she heard in Becca’s voice. “Y-yes. Yes. I told them about Meri.”

“What else do you know about the program?”

Tears pooled in Ryann’s eyes. “That’s it. That’s all they told me.”

Nothing useful. Nothing Becca didn’t already know.

Nothing that could help her save the resistance.

She took another step forward, until her toes brushed the edges of Ryann’s blanket. “What else?” she repeated.

“Nothing. There’s nothing else.” Ryann pulled her legs in closer to her body. “Wait. My contact inside Internal. He… his name is Gerald. We never met in person—we passed messages through my Citizenship teacher instead. I can g-give you her name if you want.” Ryann’s voice sped up again. “That’s it, I swear. That’s everything.”

She sounded like every dissident in every interrogation Becca had ever transcribed.

And Becca sounded like every interrogator.

I’m not my mother. I’m not. She just has to believe I am.
She fought to control her nausea as she closed the distance between them again. “What else?”

Ryann tried to push herself back, away from Becca, but her feet grew tangled in the blanket. She toppled sideways onto the forest floor. She writhed, trying vainly to push herself up with her bound hands.

Becca did nothing.

After a moment, Ryann gave up. She lay in the leaves and half-melted snow, sobbing, shaking with cold and fear.

“Are we done?” Kara asked in a strained voice, too low for Ryann to hear.

Becca didn’t have to be a trained interrogator to know Ryann wasn’t going to tell them anything else.
Yes,
she almost said.
We’re done.

But she had to know one more thing.

She waited until Ryann looked up at her again. Then she asked her final question. “Why?”

For a moment, confusion overtook Ryann’s fear. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Why did you do it?”

“You s-said you didn’t care.”

Becca leaned down over Ryann, just enough to be intimidating. “Just answer the question.”

“I t-told you, remember? I already told you.” Ryann pulled her legs in closer to her chest. “I had to do it.”

“That’s not good enough.” Becca clamped down on a surge of anger. “You could have helped us stop them. We would have kept you safe.”

“I had to do it,” Ryann repeated, almost in a whisper.

“You didn’t. We would have helped you. We would have given you a place to hide, a new identity—”

“I had to stop you!”

The clearing went still. The echoes of Ryann’s shriek spread through the trees, then faded away to nothing.

When Ryann spoke again, her voice had returned to its normal volume. But some of the fear had bled away, replaced by something Becca couldn’t identify. Pride, maybe. Resolve. “They showed me what the resistance was,” she said. “They showed me what I was really fighting for. And then they told me I could help end it.”

Becca knew what the reeducation centers did. She had seen it firsthand in Jake. But it had been easier to believe that Ryann was just afraid. Easier than believing that one of her people, someone as strong as the old Ryann must have been, had been turned. Lost.

Broken.

“They lied to you.” She studied Ryann’s eyes, searching for some reaction—some sign of doubt, of inner conflict. Some loose thread left behind when Internal had ripped her mind apart and stitched it back together all wrong. She only saw the same fear as before—and underneath it, a certain set to Ryann’s jaw, a steady conviction that reminded her too much of what she had seen in Meri last night. What she saw in the mirror every day.

Ryann’s voice, calmer now, echoed with that same conviction. “They showed me the truth.”

Behind her, leaves began to rustle as Kara started pacing, then fell silent as she stopped herself.

“They brainwashed you,” said Becca. “They tortured you. Did you listen to yourself a minute ago when you talked about what it was like? You were terrified. How can you be on their side after that?”

“Don’t,” Kara murmured. “I’ve seen this before. You won’t get anywhere like that.”

“They did what they had to do.” Almost all the fear had left Ryann’s voice now. “Everything they did—” She shuddered. Caught her breath. “Everything they did, they did to save me. I didn’t understand when my dad brought me to the center. But I do now.”

It took a second for Ryann’s final words to register. “Your dad brought you there? He turned you in?”

Meri,
she reminded herself.
Meri is dead because of her.
Sympathy had no place here.

“He did what he had to do,” said Ryann. “And so did I.”

Becca had nothing to say. Nothing that wasn’t
I’m sorry
or
I should have protected you.
Nothing that would help the resistance.

“I didn’t want to spy for them. I begged them not to send me. To choose somebody else.” Ryann blinked back the last of her tears. “I didn’t want to tell them about Sophie. I didn’t want to betray anyone. But I had to stop you. Whatever it took.”

Whatever it takes.

“And I know what has to happen next.” Ryann took a shaky breath. “I know you have to kill me.”

“I—” She stopped, fighting the impulse to deny it.

Ryann seemed less afraid now that she had spoken her fate aloud. She watched Becca, waiting for a response.

“Yes.” Becca forced herself to look Ryann in the eye as she answered. Ryann deserved that much from her. “I have to kill you. I have to protect the resistance.”

“Whatever it takes, right?” Ryann tried to smile. Her lips wobbled until she looked like she might cry instead. “It’s okay. I understand.”

“Whatever it takes,” Becca agreed. The weight of the gun in her coat pocket, the gun she had brought here knowing how this conversation would end, seemed to double.

She knelt down next to Ryann. She wrapped one arm around the girl’s back, and took hold of her shoulder with the other hand. Ignoring the way Ryann’s muscles tensed under her touch, she lifted as gently as she could, returning the girl to a sitting position. She disentangled Ryann’s legs from the blanket and smoothed it around her lap.