No Return (The Internal Defense Series) (2 page)

Becca’s senses snapped to full alertness as she turned to Meri. “What is it?”

“Several of my subordinates in Surveillance—the ones sympathetic to the cause—regularly monitor your apartment building for suspicious activity,” said Meri. “Enforcers, potential Surveillance agents, anything that could pose a threat. Tonight one of them found something.”

If Internal was outside her apartment, it meant they knew who she was.

If they knew who she was, it was over.

She ordered her heart to slow down. “Enforcers?”

Meri shook her head. “A woman they don’t recognize. Not one of your friends. She’s been standing outside your door for the past hour, behaving erratically.”

“And they told you this over the phone?” Meri, of all people, knew better than that. She worked in Surveillance. She knew how closely phone calls were monitored.

“We used our established codes,” Meri assured her. “She sent me the pictures in a batch of unrelated surveillance photos that supposedly need my urgent attention. It won’t look suspicious.” She held the phone out to Becca.

Becca examined the image on the screen. There was her apartment door, seen from the vantage point of the camera at the end of the hallway. And in front of it, a woman, short and slight. Her choppy blonde hair hung in tangles around her face. The first image showed her slamming both her hands against the door. In the second, she rested her head against it, shoulders slumped. In the third, she sat cross-legged in the hallway, her back to the door, waiting.

Becca squinted at the third picture.

There was something about the woman’s eyes. Something in the way she held herself.

She could almost be…

No. The person she was thinking of was a teenage girl. The woman in the photos had to be around Becca’s age.

But if she aged the girl in her memory up three years… added dye and a haircut to turn long dark hair short and golden…

She squinted closer.

It is. It’s her.

Kara Jameson. The daughter of Becca’s former contact in the old resistance. The girl Becca had rescued from the reeducation center three years ago.

She was alive.

And she had come back.

Becca passed the phone back to Meri. “I have to deal with this,” she said, already halfway to the door.

No one, not even Alia, tried to stop her.

* * *

Kara surged up from the floor as soon as Becca stepped out of the stairwell. “You’re finally here. Good. I need to talk to you.” She gripped Becca’s arm, her touch hard and urgent and
alive.

If Kara was alive, did that mean the other kids from the reeducation center had made it too?

Did it mean that Micah—

She shut down that line of thought before it could take her to places she didn’t want to go. “We can talk inside.” She hustled Kara into the apartment before the cameras could pick up anything more than they already had.

Once the door had closed behind them, Kara let go. “You need to get in touch with the resistance.” She strode the length of the living room—past the dusty bookcase, the coffee table piled high with unopened mail, the TV that hadn’t been turned on in weeks. “Do you have people inside Enforcement? Call them now.” Back and forth, back and forth, her feet already threatening to wear a hole in the carpet. “The transfer is scheduled for dawn tomorrow. We need to leave in six hours max if we’re going to have enough—”

“Slow down.” Becca caught Kara by the arm. “What happened? What’s wrong?” It had to be something serious, to bring Kara back here. In the three years since Becca had rescued Kara and a dozen others from the reeducation center, they hadn’t made contact once. Becca hadn’t wanted to draw Internal’s attention to either the kids or herself by trying to find them. She hadn’t even been sure they had survived.

She motioned to the couch. “Sit. Explain from the beginning.”

Kara didn’t sit. But she took a breath before she started to speak again. “We were breaking into Reeducation 102’s administrative offices. We thought they had—”

“Back up,” Becca interrupted. “What were you doing breaking into a reeducation center?”

Kara took another breath, all but vibrating with restrained energy. “For the past three years,” she said, fractionally slower than before, “We’ve been working to break kids out of reeducation.”

“You and the others who made it out?” That did explain some things. The news had reported three escapes from reeducation centers in as many months, and had blamed them all on Becca’s resistance. Becca had attributed the escapes to luck and the limited security budget of the still-new reeducation program, but a group working from the outside made a lot more sense.

Kara shook her head. “They’re all living normal lives under false identities. It’s just me and Micah now.”

Micah.

The name shot through Becca’s body like lightning.

Micah is alive.

Becca and Micah’s relationship had been a hopeless cause from the start. First she had pushed him away, afraid he would discover her secret life. Then she had used him to get information for the resistance. And then, when he had seen the truth about the reeducation program’s brutality and had chosen to escape with Kara and the others rather than continue to work for Internal, she had lost him to the same cause that had kept them apart for so long.

The two of them had never stood a chance.

But that didn’t mean she didn’t miss him.

She used to think about him in her quiet moments, back when she could still allow herself to indulge those feelings. She still dreamed about him sometimes—when her dreams weren’t filled with the deaths of everyone who depended on her.

“We’ve gotten almost a hundred kids out in total,” Kara was saying. “Nothing like what you did in 117, but it’s still a hundred kids who aren’t being brainwashed and tortured and—” With a shudder, she cut herself off. “Anyway, they’re free now. I managed to get them new identities through someone my dad used to know. Some of them are living with my dad’s contacts. I’ve lost track of the rest, but I tried to teach them all how to take care of themselves.”

Becca wrenched her thoughts back to Kara. Away from the ache in her heart, away from the useless remnants of her old self. “Why were you trying to break into the administrative offices?”

“They knew someone was getting kids out of the centers.” Kara’s voice sped up again. She tapped her fingers in a rapid rhythm against her leg. “After what happened with 117, they thought it was your group. They set a trap—left behind little hints about… about something they thought you’d want to know. We took the bait. It led us to Processing 102, and when we broke in, they were waiting for us.”

Her fingers stopped moving. Her throat worked as she swallowed.

Becca had worked as an evaluator for the past three years. Internal had taught her how to recognize evasion, how to spot hidden motives, how to see through anyone’s defenses. But even without her years of training and practice, she would have sensed Kara’s hesitation.

There was something else. Something Kara didn’t want to say.

“What is it?” Becca prompted.

Kara’s earlier words had raced from her lips almost faster than she could speak. But now her answer came slowly, each word dropping heavily to the ground.

“They have Micah.”

Micah. Captured. In the hands of Internal.

Micah cuffed to a chair in an interrogation room. Micah screaming out a confession. Micah’s body lying limp on the floor in a pool of blood.

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter anymore.

Kara must have seen Becca’s reaction on her face. “But it’s okay,” said Kara, too vehemently. “It’s going to be okay. I have a plan.” She started pacing again. “We can get him out. I heard where they were taking him. He’s close by—they’re keeping him in an auxiliary cell in Enforcement 260 overnight.”

“Enforcement 260? Why not 117?” While every enforcement center included a few holding cells, Enforcers almost always took prisoners straight to a processing center. They only used the auxiliary Enforcement cells under special circumstances.

What was special about Micah’s circumstances?

Kara hesitated. The expression on her face was the same look countless Internal employees had worn in Becca’s evaluation room, trying in vain to hide their dissident sympathies.

Becca’s voice grew sharp. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“It doesn’t matter right now.” Kara turned away to make another circuit of the living room. “What matters is that if we don’t get to him before that transport does, we won’t be able to find him again. Not in time to save him.”

Kara was right. It didn’t matter.

None of it mattered.

Becca knew what she had to do.

The images wouldn’t leave her mind. Micah facedown on the cold concrete floor of a processing cell, bruised and broken. Micah on TV confessing his crimes to the country before his execution.

It doesn’t matter.

“Enforcement,” Kara prompted. “How many people do you have in there? What clearances?”

“I can’t help you.” Each word was a betrayal, a knife shoved deep into Micah’s body. “Sending my people into Enforcement 260 is too much of a risk. Especially with everything that’s going on. I can’t put the resistance in danger to save one person.”

Not even Micah.

Especially not Micah.

He meant something to the old Becca… but he had no value to the resistance. And the old Becca didn’t—couldn’t—exist anymore. The resistance was all that mattered now.

Kara stopped.

“You’re saying you won’t do it.” Kara’s voice wavered with disbelief. “You won’t save him.”

“I can’t save him.” Would Kara understand? Could she understand, if she had never felt the weight of this kind of responsibility?

It doesn’t matter.

“But you two were…” Kara’s voice trailed off.

As if Becca needed the reminder of what her choice meant. “The resistance comes first. I won’t put my people at risk.”

“He used to talk about you all the time. About how he wanted to find you again someday and—”

“Don’t,” Becca snapped. “I gave you my answer. I can’t help you.” She looked away. Softened her voice. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” Kara repeated flatly. “I came here because I don’t have anywhere else to go. There’s no one else. If you don’t help me, he’s
gone
.
Nothing will stop Internal from—” Her voice broke.

Nothing Becca could say would make this easier. So she said nothing.

Kara wasn’t pacing anymore. She held herself rigid, quivering with tension, like a bomb about to explode.

But the explosion didn’t come.

The emotion disappeared from Kara’s face as if it had never existed. Her trembling muscles stilled. When she spoke, her voice was as cold as if she were addressing a stranger.

“I have information you need,” she said. “The hints they gave us to lure us in—they were real. Internal has a new plan for bringing down your resistance. And if you don’t do something to stop them, they’ll succeed.”

Becca blinked at this sudden peace offering delivered in hostile tones. “What is it?”

Kara crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“Help me get Micah out,” she said, “and I’ll tell you everything.”

Even at this time of night, the lights of Enforcement 260’s corridors glared as brightly as if it were the middle of the day. It made sense. The time when dissidents were most likely to be asleep, when it would be easiest to catch them off guard… that was when Enforcement came alive. Any hopes of sneaking into a quietly slumbering building had died at Becca’s first sight of the bright lights and bustling hallways. Now all she could do was hope the borrowed uniforms Jared had scrounged up for them would be enough to keep them invisible.

A trio of Enforcers shoved past, chattering raucously about their last mission. Their helmets distorted their laughter as one punched another in the arm. Becca adjusted her own helmet, sure they could see how loosely the uniform hung on her, sure the helmet would fall off at any moment to reveal her for who she really was. But the group didn’t even spare her a glance.

Beside her, Kara adjusted her own uniform to keep from tripping over the thick bulletproof material that hung past her ankles. The young Enforcer whom Jared had sent with them, the one who had the access they needed—Terrence, that was his name—looked over his shoulder at the group that had just walked by. A shiver ran through him; his steps faltered.

Jared had warned Becca that this was Terrence’s first real mission for the resistance, that he hadn’t done anything before now but pass along information. She had brought him along anyway; she hadn’t had a choice. Without him, they stood no chance of getting into the cells. But that wouldn’t make a difference if his twitchiness got them caught.

To be honest, Becca didn’t have that much experience with this side of things either. Normally she was the one who gave the orders, the one who sent others into danger while she stayed safely behind. The gun tucked into her pants only served as a reminder of that. She had stolen it from a guard at the reeducation center three years ago, when she had rescued Kara; it had stayed tucked in the deepest corner of her closet since then. Until now. Now it bulged at her side like a tumor.

“Focus,” Kara murmured to Terrence before Becca could. Her voice echoed strangely through the helmet. “How close are we to the cells?”

Terrence glanced behind him again. “Um… not… not far.” He gestured to the stairwell at the end of the hallway. “There. That’s where we need to go.”

Becca held her breath as they threaded their way past another group of Enforcers. She didn’t let herself react as Kara stumbled over her pant leg, as Terrence cringed away from the others as if they had already found him out. She counted steps to the stairwell, choking on the helmet’s stale plastic odor. Waiting for the pair of hands that would clamp down on her shoulders, the distorted voice that would order her not to go any further. Thirty steps. Twenty steps. Ten.

No hands. No voice.

She ducked into the stairwell, sweating as if she had run all the way there. The others followed.

Tension almost visibly flowed out of Terrence as he sagged back against the wall. “We made it.”

“Not yet.” They couldn’t stop to rest. Every second they spent in this place was another chance for them to get caught. “Which way?”

Terrence pointed down.

“Let’s go.” Becca waved the others forward as she started walking again.

At the bottom of the stairs stood a metal door, a keycard reader mounted into the wall beside it. Terrence’s hands shook as he slid his keycard into the reader. The light flashed green. Terrence reached for the door handle, then hesitated.

Kara pushed past him and grabbed the handle. She swung the door open, nearly hitting both Terrence and Becca. She poked her head inside and motioned behind her to the two of them. “It’s safe. Let’s go.”

They stepped through, closing the door behind them.

Each time Becca had visited the underground levels of 117, what had struck her the most was the vastness of the place. The hallways of the underground levels seemed to stretch on endlessly, reaching far past the outer walls of the building.

Enforcement 260’s holding cells, by comparison, were entirely unimpressive.

The hallway she now found herself in shared the antiseptic smell of the underground levels and the dim yellow lighting that showed Internal’s reluctance to waste good light bulbs on dissidents, but to either side it ended in a stump. There couldn’t have been more than ten cells down here at most.

Across from the door, a camera stared lifelessly down at them. The light underneath the lens didn’t glow red the way it would have if the camera had been on. Becca breathed a sigh of relief. Jared had said he would try to arrange for all the cameras in the holding area to be shut off. It looked like he had come through for them.

“Cell D. That’s what Jared told me.” Starting with the cell in front of her, Becca moved down the line, looking for the one labeled “D.”

A soft click stopped her.

The click of an opening door.

Kara’s head jerked up at the same time as Becca’s. Beside them, Terrence stood frozen in fear as he watched the door swing open.

An Enforcer clomped into the holding area, yanking someone through the door behind him. The prisoner couldn’t have been more than thirteen. She wore pajamas; her tangled hair stuck out in all directions. Messy tears streamed down her face as she fought against the Enforcer’s grip.

It took Becca a second to put together the girl’s age and the fact that she had been brought here to wait for a transport. The girl was being sent to a reeducation center.

Beside her, Kara stiffened. The realization must have hit her at the same time.

The Enforcer strode up to Terrence, his grip leaving finger-shaped indentations in the struggling girl’s arm. He peered down at the number printed on the chest of Terrence’s uniform. “Terrence? What are you doing down here? I didn’t think you had prisoner duty tonight.”

The distorted tones of the greeting emanating from the Enforcer’s helmet made Becca’s skin crawl. How many times had she heard that sound in her nightmares? She steadied her breathing as she waited for Terrence to answer.

“I… I…” Terrence stammered.

Hold it together,
Becca begged silently.
Please.

The Enforcer looked first at Becca, then Kara, ignoring his prisoner’s whimpers. “I don’t recognize you two. You new? Our boy Terrence here showing you around?”

“We transferred from Enforcement 289 last week,” Kara answered while Becca was still scrambling for a response.

The Enforcer nodded in what Becca thought was approval, although the helmet made it difficult to tell. “Good to have you here. With everything going on, we need all the people we can get.” With his free hand, he clapped Becca on the shoulder. Becca froze. “You two make sure you don’t let anyone push you around, all right? We need more strong women around this place.”

Becca found her voice. “We won’t let anyone keep us from doing our jobs.”

“Good, good.” The Enforcer let go of Becca’s shoulder. “Speaking of that, I won’t keep you. I have business to take care of myself, as you can see.” He jerked the young dissident forward as if in demonstration.

With a nod, Terrence turned away, all but dragging Becca and Kara down the hallway.

Becca’s heartbeat echoed in her ears as she hurried away.
We’re safe. We’re safe. He didn’t suspect anything.

Now all they had to do was find Micah and get out.

She scanned the cell doors, one by one.
A, B, C…
there it was. Silently, not wanting the other Enforcer to hear, she motioned Terrence over.

Terrence’s hands were shaking even worse than before. When he tried to slide the keycard into the reader, it nearly slipped from his fingers. But on the second try he managed it, and the green light winked up at them.

Becca reached for the door.

Micah is in that cell.

She forced herself forward. Forced herself to turn the handle, to step across the threshold.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

A man sat cross-legged in the center of the cell, eyes closed. His hair, a shade lighter than Kara’s, curled around his ears, barely brushing the tops of his shoulders. His clothes hung loosely on his now-lean frame. Three years on the run had left its mark on him. His flesh clung too tightly to his bones; his face looked like it belonged to someone twice his age, with no trace of the carefree innocence he used to wear as easily as a smile.

But it was him.

Micah.

“Here to take me to reeducation already?” asked Micah without opening his eyes. “Did I lose track of time, or did the transport come early?” His voice was different than Becca remembered—slower, richer—but at the same time, exactly the same.

A second later, Becca registered what he had said.

Reeducation?

She tried to speak, but too many words warred inside her.
I’m glad you’re alive,
and
Shut up and follow me before we all get caught,
and
But you’re too old for reeducation.

Kara tugged off her helmet. As she tucked it under her arm, her hair frizzed around her face. “You’re alive,” she said in a voice weak with relief.

Slowly, Micah opened his eyes. He smiled. “I should have known you wouldn’t leave me in their hands for long.”

“I was afraid we wouldn’t get here in time.” She walked to him—slowly at first, then running the last couple of steps. As he stood, she crashed into his chest, wrapping her arms around him as if he belonged to her, straining up on her tiptoes to kiss him fiercely.

He didn’t pull away.

Becca looked from Micah to Kara. Of course. It made sense, didn’t it? Three years of fighting Internal together. Three years of not being able to trust anyone but each other. And although three years ago she had seen Kara as a kid, in reality only two years separated them.

Kara pulled away. She looked from Becca to Micah and back again, the smile melting from her face.

“Is something wrong?” asked Micah.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” Kara wasn’t talking to Micah. “I should have told you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Kara didn’t need to apologize for whatever she and Micah had together. Becca’s relationship with Micah had ended three years ago, and her new responsibilities left her no room for romance. Micah deserved whatever happiness he could find, no matter who he found it with.

That wasn’t the reason for the anger unfurling in Becca’s stomach.

Kara didn’t need to apologize for her relationship with Micah. But for not telling Becca her personal reasons for this rescue mission… for blackmailing Becca into putting the resistance at risk to save her
boyfriend
…

For that, an apology wouldn’t be enough.

But now wasn’t the time.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We need to get out of here before the cameras turn back on.”

Micah’s eyes widened. “Is that… Becca? Is that you?”

“Later.” Becca plucked the keycard from Terrence’s fingers and unlocked the door. The four of them spilled out of the cell together, Terrence looking from side to side as if the other Enforcer could be lurking around a corner, Kara and Micah talking in low voices behind him.

Halfway to the exit, Kara stopped. “Wait.”

Becca swerved aside to avoid slamming into Kara’s back. “What is it?”

“The girl. The one the Enforcer brought in here. You know where they’re going to send her.”

Becca glanced up at the camera. How long could Jared keep it off before someone noticed? “I know. But there’s nothing we can do.”

“She’s in one of these cells.” Kara’s gaze landed on the keycard clutched in Becca’s hand. “We can get her out.”

Becca knew what would happen to the girl in the reeducation center. Her heart clenched as she remembered the fear in the young prisoner’s eyes. “The cameras could come back on any minute now. And she would draw too much attention. It will be hard enough walking out of here with just Micah.”

Some emotion Becca didn’t recognize filled Kara’s eyes, something dark and desperate. “It’s worth the risk.”

“That’s not your decision to make.”
You’ve already done enough to endanger the resistance tonight.
She strode to the door. “We need to get out of here.”

Kara set her jaw. “I’m not leaving her.” She looked up at Micah for support.

But Micah shook his head. “We both have a chance at freedom—a chance we thought we had lost when we walked into their trap. We need to take it.”

Kara dug her nails into her palms. “And what about that girl’s chance at freedom?”

“This may not be her only opportunity. Maybe we’ll find her the next time we break into one of the centers. Maybe she’ll escape on her own. Right now you have to save yourself, and trust that the rest will work out.”

“Screw your trust. I’ve seen how it works out for people like her.” With no other warning, Kara’s hand darted out, wrenching the keycard away from Becca before Becca could react. She started for the closest cell door.

I can’t let her do this.
Becca lunged. The keycard flew out of Kara’s hands; they both dove for it. Kara’s helmet clattered to the ground. It knocked into Becca’s foot, and Becca stumbled. Kara’s hands closed around the card.

But before she could unlock the nearest cell, Micah came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her.

“We can’t,” he said into her ear. “You know we can’t.”

Kara jerked away from his grasp. But when he tried to take the keycard, she let him.

Wordlessly, he held it out to Becca. Becca took it and rushed to the exit before Kara could change her mind. She unlocked the door, then held it open for the others to file through.

“Wait,” Kara said again, and Becca tensed. But Kara only pointed to the handcuffs hanging from Terrence’s belt. “Micah needs to look like a prisoner.”

Only a final glance behind her at the cells showed that she hadn’t forgotten about the girl she was leaving behind.

Once Terrence had fastened the handcuffs around Micah’s wrists, Kara pulled her helmet back on, and the four of them hurried up the stairs and into the hallway.

Two Enforcers loomed in front of them.