No Return (The Internal Defense Series) (5 page)

The last time Becca had visited Vivian at work, the receptionist had led her down two flights of stairs into the musty darkness of the filing room. Now she found herself walking down a bright hallway two stories up, stopping at an office door with Vivian’s name carved into a freshly-polished copper plaque.

Becca swung the door open and stepped into empty space. Nothing but sunlight from the oversized window filled the cavernous room—that and a plain metal desk shoved into a corner as if it were embarrassed to be there.

Vivian sat behind the desk, her brows creased in a frown as she typed. She didn’t look up.

Becca cleared her throat.

Vivian jumped. She raised her eyes; her face broke into a smile. “Becca! Hey! It’s been ages since you’ve come to visit. What’s going on?”

Becca forced an answering smile to her lips. “I wanted to celebrate your new job. I figured you were too busy to go out to lunch, but I brought you something.” She held up the small bag she had brought and set it down on the desk. She pulled out two giant chocolate cupcakes, dripping with frosting, and placed one in front of Vivian with a flourish. “Congratulations.”

Vivian’s smile grew strained. “Thanks. I appreciate it.” She didn’t move to pick up the cupcake.

Becca had said something wrong, done something wrong, but she didn’t know what. “If you have a few minutes, we could…” Becca scanned the room for a second chair, but found only bare carpet and blank walls.

“Actually, I should get back to work.” Vivian took a bite of the cupcake—more for show than anything else, it looked like. “But thanks for coming by.”

Becca couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not without doing what she had come here to do. And what had happened? What had she done to offend Vivian, to switch her enthusiasm off like a light? She studied Vivian—not as a friend, but as an evaluator, letting her training come to the forefront of her mind. She took in the way Vivian held herself, the lines of her face, the cadence of her words.

And she saw what she had missed.

Vivian wasn’t offended.

She was terrified.

“So I guess I’ll see you at Lucky’s next week.” Vivian’s mouth spasmed into a brief smile as she turned back to her computer.

Becca didn’t move. “Something is wrong. What is it?”

“Nothing. It’s the new job, that’s all. There’s a lot of work to do.” Vivian didn’t look at her.

If this were an evaluation, her job would be done. She would make her report—
Evasive. High levels of fear.
No dissident tendencies present
—and move on to the next appointment. But that didn’t help her here.

She didn’t need to know Vivian was hiding something. She didn’t need to know Vivian was afraid.

She needed Vivian to let her stay.

“Remember when my mom was arrested?” she asked.

Vivian nodded, face tense, gaze flicking between Becca and her computer screen. “What does that—”

“I tried to shut you out. You wouldn’t let me. And now I won’t let you.” She crossed her arms. “Something is wrong,” she repeated. “What is it?”

Playing the concerned friend so she could get what she needed. She ignored the flicker of guilt. The resistance came first.

“It’s nothing like that,” said Vivian. “Nothing serious. It’s just…” She stopped.

“I know what you think of the support groups,” said Becca. “But—”

“Waste of time,” Vivian interrupted. “A bunch of people sitting around talking about their
feelings
when they could be doing something useful.”

“But I’m good at listening,” Becca continued as if Vivian hadn’t interrupted. “I have practice. And whatever the problem is, I won’t hold it against you.”

Another twinge of guilt.

If she had said all this to Vivian a couple of years ago, she would have meant every word.

Vivian hesitated.

Then she nodded once, sharply. “Close the door.”

It felt like it took Becca twice as many steps to cross Vivian’s office as it did to cross her own. She pushed the door closed; the slam echoed through the empty space.

“I don’t have a chair for you.” Vivian scowled, as though the lack of furniture were Becca’s fault.

“It doesn’t matter.” Becca lowered herself to the carpet and motioned for Vivian to join her. After a moment, Vivian did.

“It’s stupid.” Vivian spoke to the floor. “I’m being stupid. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay.”

“Is it about—” Becca glanced up at the camera. She couldn’t say Micah’s name. Not here. “I meant what I said last night. It’s okay.”

“You can’t really think I could do this job as well as anyone else here,” Vivian blurted.

Was that all that was bothering Vivian? Simple insecurity? “You’re smart enough for it,” Becca assured her. “You were wasted in filing. They should have given you a better position years ago.”

“Yeah, but… not something like this. Everyone I’m working with is twice my age. We had a meeting this morning, and…” She shook her head. “They all have experience. They have ideas. All I could do was sit there and try to look like I knew what I was doing.”

“Internal wouldn’t have chosen you if they didn’t think you could do it,” said Becca. “This is too important.”

“I’ve been thinking about what Ramon said. It makes sense. They think it’ll make them look good if someone like me ends up bringing down that dissident group. But here’s what he didn’t say—what happens if the plan fails? What’s the story then?”

Becca didn’t have an answer.

“You want to know what I think?” Vivian looked at the camera. She lowered her voice. “I don’t think they’re trying to make themselves look good at all. I think they’re trying to protect themselves if something goes wrong. Think about it—if the idea fails, they can blame it on me. They can say I’m too young. That I’m inexperienced. That I don’t know what I’m doing. They could even—” She cut herself off, breath shallow, face pale.

When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. “They could call it dissident activity. They could say I was working against the plan from the beginning. That way, if it failed, it wouldn’t be their fault.”

Becca opened her mouth to protest—then closed it again.

It made a horrible amount of sense.

Vivian probably didn’t even know how much sense it made. She didn’t know how often Internal executed innocent people because it suited the needs of Public Relations. If the program failed, Public Relations would want a scapegoat. And Internal was nothing if not pragmatic—if it came down to a choice between framing someone who had worked in Investigation for twenty years and had already proven their value, or sacrificing someone like Vivian instead…

When she thought about it that way, it was obvious. Internal had set Vivian up. If the spies didn’t bring down the resistance—

Becca went still as the implications hit her.

If she succeeded, if she saved the resistance, Vivian didn’t stand a chance.

And Becca had convinced her to take the job.

Her stomach curdled. She pasted a reassuring smile onto her face. “Internal wouldn’t do that.”

Vivian kept her voice low. “I’m not so sure. I mean, you know I don’t question Internal—it’s not like I’m a dissident—but it makes more sense than any other explanation I could come up with.”

“I think you’re worrying too much. But even if you’re right, all that means is that you can’t give them the chance. Catch the dissidents for them. Make the plan work.”

Empty words.

Vivian would fail. She would fail, because Becca couldn’t let her win.

Vivian stared down at the carpet. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Of course you can.”

You won’t.

“You’ll prove them wrong. You’ll do what no one else could do.”

I’m going to stop you.

“You won’t be their scapegoat. You’ll be their hero.”

You’re going to die.

Vivian nodded. She squared her shoulders, a new light of resolve entering her eyes. “I’ll do it.” Her voice steadied. “I’ll make this program work. Whether they expect me to or not.”

Becca reached up to the desk and grabbed Vivian’s cupcake. When Vivian took it, she raised her own in a toast. “To Vivian, hero of Investigation 212.”

Vivian touched her cupcake to Becca’s. “To the end of the dissidents.”

Becca took a giant frosting-laden bite. It tasted bitter in her mouth.

She waited until she swallowed before she spoke. “Can you get us something to drink?”

“Sure. I’ll be right back.” Vivian set her cupcake down on her desk and disappeared from the room.

Becca sprang up from the floor.

She glanced at the door. Vivian had closed it behind her. Good.

She sat down in Vivian’s chair and got to work.

It took her less than a minute to get into Vivian’s files. Investigation used practically the same file system as Processing—and since Vivian was already logged in, Becca didn’t even need to worry about the password.

All the information about the spy program was right here in front of her.

She had no way to tell which files had the information she needed. And she couldn’t copy them—if she tried, it would send up a red flag with Surveillance, and when she got home, Enforcement would be waiting for her. Jameson had given her that lecture at their very first meeting, when she had told him with giddy enthusiasm that she could bring the resistance copies of all her mom’s files. Her cheeks still burned at the memory.

No way to copy the files—and a couple of minutes at most until Vivian came back.

She would just have to hope she guessed right.

She clicked on a file at random.

A cheerful little box popped up asking her for a password.

No. She had come this far. She wouldn’t let this stop her. Not now.

She closed the box and tried the next file.

The box reappeared.

She tried the next one. The same thing happened.

And the next. Same thing.

None of them would let her in.

She scanned the desk for any clues to the password, even though she knew she wouldn’t find anything—no Internal division would allow a lapse in security like that. She opened every desk drawer. One held only a couple of pens; the rest were empty.

So close. She was
so close.

She slammed her hand down on the desk in frustration.

“Are you okay?”

Becca jerked up. Vivian stood in the doorway, a bottle of water in each hand.

Becca closed the files before Vivian could see what she had been doing. “I’m fine. I went to check something online, and I saw that the resistance set off another bomb last night. They killed five people.” She had seen it on the news this morning—Internal’s latest victory in their propaganda war. A couple of months ago Internal had started blaming them for random attacks downtown—attacks that no doubt originated from inside Internal itself. Innocent people, sacrificed to make good citizens a little more afraid.
To make them aware of the magnitude of the threat,
her mother would have said.

“It’ll be over soon.” Vivian’s voice came out too loud, too confident. Like she was trying to convince herself. “I’m going to stop them.”

“You’ll stop them,” Becca agreed.

Scenes flashed through her mind. Enforcers dragging her people away—Meri, Peter, all the informants whose names she didn’t know. Locking them away on the underground levels. Taking them into a little room, one by one, and shooting them in the head. A hundred shots. A hundred lives.

Vivian, moments from execution, tearfully explaining how she had sabotaged Investigation’s plan from the start, her confession televised for everyone in the country to see.

It would be one or the other.

One life for a hundred.

An easy decision.

Her sight cleared. Now all she could see was Vivian—the real Vivian this time.

Easy.

She couldn’t get into the files. It didn’t matter. She would find another way.

I don’t have a choice.

* * *

“Pink,” Heather decreed. She picked the bottle up off Becca’s coffee table and waved it in the air. “Red will make people think of blood, and that’s the last thing you need. You already look too much like your mother.” She made a come-here motion. “Come on, give me your hand.”

Becca eyed the nail polish. “It’s very…” She took another look at Heather’s face. She knew that look. Heather wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

She gave an inward sigh. “It’s perfect.” She held out her hand, and made a mental note to scrub off the polish before the next resistance meeting.

Becca had forgotten this from high school—the way Heather would move Becca’s hand around like it belonged to a doll, spacing each finger out perfectly on the cloth she had spread over the table. The way she would cluck disapprovingly if Becca jerked back at the sudden cold of the brush landing on her first nail. Back in high school, Becca would already have started complaining—
What’s the point of this, anyway? Who’s going to care what color my nails are?
Now she held her hand as still as possible and let Heather work.

These nights with Heather—they happened about once a week these days, maybe a little less—weren’t for her. Not anymore. At the beginning, they had been—back when Heather had finally begun to heal from her parents’ deaths, back when they had first started to rebuild their old friendship. Back when Becca had finally started remembering how to live instead of waiting for Internal to kill her. For the first time since high school, they had been Becca-and-Heather again—sensible Becca and passionate Heather, talking and arguing and laughing late into the night as if their friendship had never ended. And with each of Heather’s infectious smiles and every high-school memory shared, Becca had come back to life a little more.

Becca hadn’t stopped caring about Heather when she had chosen to become the leader the resistance needed. But things were different now. She didn’t have the luxury of the kind of friendship they used to have, but she still had a responsibility to Heather, a responsibility she had taken on when the rest of Heather’s friends had abandoned her for having dissident parents. And she wouldn’t forget about that just because she had other responsibilities now.

So she still spent time with Heather—and unlike pizza at Lucky’s, it had nothing to do with her cover. Instead, it was about giving Heather an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on; it was about watching out for her to make sure she was okay. It was about being the friend that Heather needed.

If that meant putting up with pink nails every once in a while, so be it.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Heather. She glanced up at Becca before quickly looking back down. “I need to do more.”

Becca adjusted her hand, earning her a frown from Heather. “More what?”

Heather puckered her lips in concentration as she filled in a spot near the tip of Becca’s thumb. “You remember that bombing at the shoe store last month?”

Becca nodded.

“Someone who worked there had a father who was arrested for distributing pamphlets last year.” The movements of the brush started getting jerkier. “My department was supposed to be investigating, but as soon as they found out about her family, the others called in the arrest to Enforcement and went home. I tried to get them to at least look for evidence, but nobody cared. Her dad was a dissident, so she must be a dissident too, right?” The brush flew sideways across Becca’s finger, spreading polish in a jagged line. “Sorry.” Heather blotted at the mistake with a corner of the towel.

“But you’re staying safe, right?” For the past three years, Heather had been waging a doomed battle inside Investigation against prejudice toward dissidents’ children. Never mind that Heather’s parents had been dissidents themselves. Never mind that if someone decided they wanted her to shut up, all they had to do was point to the record of her parents’ executions and Heather would be locked up in 117 without a word of protest.

Heather had never understood risk very well.

It wasn’t that Becca didn’t support Heather’s cause. Of course she did. But…

But after everything they had been through, losing Heather would be like losing one of her people. After everything they had been through, Heather
was
one of her people, as much as anyone from the resistance.

And Becca couldn’t let her people die.

“I’m fine, don’t worry. I’m being careful.” With the hand holding the brush, Heather waved away Becca’s concerns, scattering drops of polish across Becca’s piles of mail in the process. “That’s the problem. I’m being careful, and it’s not working, and people are dying.”

“You’re already doing too much. If you say the wrong thing to the wrong person—”

“If I had Vivian’s position, they’d have a reason to listen to me.” Another quick glance up at Becca. “You heard Ramon the other day. They want to make her a hero. People are going to listen to her. They’re going to want to be on her good side.” She paused; the brush went still. “I could help the people I needed to help.”

“If she succeeds,” Becca pointed out. “If she doesn’t—” She cut herself off. It was hard enough thinking about what would happen to Vivian—
no,
it’s an easy choice, it’s easy
—without imagining Heather in Vivian’s place.

Heather gave another gesture of dismissal. “I wouldn’t have to bring down the resistance. I’d just have to look good trying. Maybe Vivian doesn’t know how it’s done, but I do. You don’t get to be popular in high school without knowing how to play the game.” She looked up again. This time she held Becca’s gaze. Something swam behind her eyes, some emotion Becca couldn’t read. “Look, I know what you’re going to say, but… but I can’t stand by and watch these people die anymore. I can’t watch you—” She swallowed. Her grip tensed around the nail brush; Becca heard the sound of cracking plastic. “I can’t.”

“Sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sometimes you have to watch people die.” Becca pulled her hand away. The pink-slicked nails looked like they belonged to somebody else. “Sometimes all you can do is save yourself.”

Bodies slumped against a concrete wall, a neat bullet wound at the base of every skull…

The dissidents from that transport were dead by now—either that or wishing they were.

But Becca had kept her people safe.

“It wouldn’t take much to convince the right people that Vivian wasn’t up to the job. And that I’d do better as the hero of their story than she ever could.” Heather’s eyes held a message Becca didn’t understand. “I wouldn’t have to bring down the resistance,” she repeated. “And I’d have access to
everything
.
”

Did Heather mean… did she mean she wanted to…

Another look at Heather told Becca she had heard correctly.

Heather. Working against Internal.

Heather. Putting herself in danger.

No. No.
No.

Becca finally found her voice. “You’re talking about helping the resistance.” Heather didn’t even believe in what Becca was doing. She knew about Becca’s resistance involvement—she was the only person outside of the resistance who did—but she had made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with Becca’s rebellion. And now she was talking about risking her life for—

No.

Heather shook her head violently. “Not the resistance. I’m talking about helping
you.
You and everyone I’ve been trying to save for the past three years.”

Becca took a deep breath. She tried to clear the emotion from her voice, from her thoughts. “Vivian will be in enough danger if—when—she fails. If you take her place, and Internal finds out you’re actively feeding information to the resistance, you’ll die. You’ll die. Do you understand that?”
Heather in a cell on the underground levels. Heather in an interrogation room.
Another deep breath. Another.

“I’m not stupid, Becca.” Heather slammed the pieces of the brush down onto the table. “I get it. But I heard the way Vivian was talking about this plan. She thinks it’s going to work. If no one stops this, you’ll be the one to die. You’ll die like—” She stopped, mouth open, as if the words had lodged themselves in her windpipe.

When she spoke again, Becca could barely hear her. “You’ll die like my parents did.”

“Internal’s plan won’t work,” said Becca. “I’ll find a way to stop it.”

“You don’t know that.”

Becca lowered her voice. “You’d be turning on Vivian. Betraying one of your best friends. Think about that.”

“I know, okay? I know.” Heather’s voice wobbled. “But Vivian would find a new job. This is your
life
.
”

“And this is yours.” Becca reached her unpainted hand across the table toward Heather.
Listen to me. Please.
“You don’t understand the danger. You’ve never understood. You think you can complain about the treatment of dissidents’ children all you want, feed me all the information you want, without—”

“I understand just fine.” Heather placed her hand over Becca’s. “But some things are more important than staying safe. I’ve lost enough people already. I won’t let it happen again.”

Heather slumped against a concrete wall…

“You’re not going to die for me!” Becca jerked her hand back. It hit the open bottle of nail polish; a pink river poured out onto the table, pooling around the stacks of envelopes before dribbling onto the carpet.

Too late, she brought her voice back under control. When she spoke again, the words could have been her mother’s. Calm. Cold. Resolute. “I forbid you to help me. Do you understand?”

Heather stood.

“Fine. If you want to die that badly, fine.” Heather’s face was white. Her hands were shaking. Not with fear, Becca realized. With anger. “But don’t expect me to stick around and watch.”

I don’t want to die. I just want to protect you.
“Heather—”

Heather flung the cloth, which had somehow escaped the spill, at Becca. “Clean up your own mess. You’ve made it clear how you feel about my help.” She stalked to the door.

I have a responsibility. Don’t you understand?
“Heather, wait.”

The slam of the door was Heather’s only response.