Infraction (13 page)

Jane's hand eases away from mine as she falls deeper
into sleep, and I finally close my eyes. I won't put all the pieces
of the puzzle together tonight. Tomorrow, though. I'll be out in
the yard. I'll send the message to Gaea. For the first time, I feel
like there's not just hope for me, but hope for the hollow people
here. The colony couldn't hold me, but I'm willing to bet it has
enough kindness in it to fill these people back up again.

I've picked up Madge's habit—as soon as I sit down,
I look for the soldiers. One is by the cafeteria door; the other is
by the food line. A quick glance tells me the agents are watching a
hushed conversation a few tables away. I slide my canned peaches
onto Kai's tray. She gives me her limp bacon in return.

Jane sits closer to us now, and she looks at me and
almost smiles.

Madge nudges me. “Don't know what you did, but she's
never been so down-right friendly.”

I grin. Small victories.

I don't tell Madge about my plans
yet. It's such a big announcement. Do I just lean over and
write
I'm a colonist
on her hand?
Follow it up with
I'm going to break us out and take you
there
? I wonder when we can discuss it without
all these watchful eyes. I'll need Madge's help; I'll need Jane's
help. They've both been here far longer than I have, and they can
tell me if my suspicions are right about how heavily guarded the
camp is. This is not a conversation for the mess hall, with the
roaming soldiers and the hovering agents. But soon. It has to be
soon. Kai tells me she's now thirty-three weeks pregnant and she
says she has seven more weeks to go.

Time is running out.

Maybe in the yard today. There's no way they can
monitor us closely enough to hear our traitorous words.

The mess hall doors fly open, and silence hangs over
us. Two soldiers flank three new inmates. My fork falls onto my
tray with a clatter that echoes in the hushed room. I ignore the
eyes that fly to mine—eyes accusing me of breaking the silence and
drawing attention to us—and I can't look away. I can't look
anywhere else but at
her
.

Mary stands between the soldiers.

Her black hair has been buzzed, and her eyes flash
defiance as she takes us all in. Then her gaze settles on mine—it's
the only place for her to focus with all the other inmates staring
at their trays—and her eyebrows shoot up, and the defiance softens
into something I can't place. Almost sympathy or sorrow.

Then my eyes water because I know what it means. The
conversation I heard at the reclamation site yesterday was about
my
settlement. How many others are here now?

The soldiers step away, leaving the three inmates
looking like lost puppies. Mary shakes loose of them and threads
her way between the tables toward me. Conversation resumes, and
Mary is forgotten—just another prisoner in our midst. Nothing to
bat an eye at. Though Madge hasn't forgotten, and she watches Mary
stride toward me. Madge's eyes are too sharp, and I know she's
wondering what it means.

Mary doesn't sit with me quite yet. She sidesteps the
table and attempts to go through the food line, but the agent with
the scanner just frowns at her. Eating will have to wait until
dinner. Then Mary returns to me, clasping her hands together on the
table and staring at nothing but her freshly sanitized fingernails.
Her skin is still red from detox, and she has a length of gauze
wrapped around the inside of her elbow. She's had a blood draw; I
only hope she hasn't had an injection. Then I notice the tracker
lump right next to the twisted scar from the one that was cut out.
I remember her nightmares from Seattle, the way her “family”
terrified her into submission and cut out her tracker. I wonder if
she thought of them every second during her visit with
Dr. Benedict.

I inch my tray toward her, offering my fork, but she
shakes her head.

She finally looks at me. “How did you get here,
Terra?”

I almost gasp with what I see in her eyes. They're
filled with such churning emotions. She looks vulnerable for the
first time that I've known her. I reach for her hand.

Rounded up. Looking for nomads.

She laughs, and the sound is humorless. “Probably a
big change from what you're used to?”

She's referring to the colony, and a few months ago
I might have thought the comment was meant to sting. But her eyes
betray her.

Yes.

“
Jack?”

They found us both.

She nods. “I was at the settlement. They found
us.”

I drop her hand. Please no.
Everyone?

Mary closes her eyes and a tear slides out. She
shakes her head. “Not everyone. Red and Nell got out. Sam, I think.
A few others.”

Dave?

Her eyes harden, erasing all the soft edges. “He's
here too. They took us at the same time, loading us into that awful
truck.”

She looks down at her fingers again. I notice a
thin, pale line around the fourth finger of her left hand. She rubs
it absently as she looks out the window. I tentatively place a hand
on hers—she who both ruined my life and set me free at the same
time—and she gives me a rare smile. But her smile is so twisted
with anger and sorrow that I blink and look down.

“
We were married last
month.”

I see that pale line on her finger for what it
is.

“
Behind the settlement, underneath
those two huge trees. It's not legal or binding in any technical
sense, of course—Red officiated—but we're still married. We still
have that commitment to each other. I still would do anything—” She
can't finish the sentence before the tears well up in earnest, and
though she fights them, they fall out and splash the table. She
rubs the shiny streak off her cheek with the heel of her hand.
“They took my ring when they took us. It wasn't even valuable. Just
a nail Dave managed to make into a circle.”

I sit back. They would take her wedding ring? It
infuriates me, sending heat coursing through my veins as though all
my blood has drained away and nothing but anger pumps through my
heart.

Mary notices and nods. “The union wasn't legal,
wasn't sanctioned by the government, wasn't documented. So they
took the only token I had of it.” Her jaw clenches, the small
muscle along the firm line of it pulsing. “Though that's the only
reminder they can take.”

My hand burrows in my pocket until I find the bit of
red thread from the rug in the cabin. The thread I clung to like it
was my lifeline to the outside world. I take it out of my pocket
and show Mary.

“
What's that?”

Before she can ask another question, I grab her left
hand and tie a bow around her ring finger, carefully turning the
loops to face her palm, so all that is visible is the finest
scarlet line on her finger, almost like a paper cut.

For you and Dave.

Her eyes shine when she looks at me, and I can't
believe I ever feared or pitied her. She's too strong for pity and
too kind to fear.

“
Thank you,” she whispers. She
touches the thread with her other hand. That thread was my sanity
the first night when I thought the screams would overwhelm me. But
she's lost Dave, and he was her lifeline in so many ways. She needs
it more than I do.

She lets the moment pass, and her facade settles
into place and all her vulnerability is gone. “So what do we do
here?”

Madge has been watching our exchange with careful
eyes, taking it all in. There's no way she could know that Dave was
a peace offering I gave up so I could remain on the Burn. No way
she could know the love I have for these people we spoke of. But
she's taken enough in to know there's a history between Mary and
me.

“
We work,” Madge says, chewing on
her bacon. “And work until the agents say stop. You're in for a
treat.”

Mary's eyes sharpen with the same anger as Madge's,
and I know these women are cut from the same cloth. They'll
understand each other perfectly. I'll just be sure to stay out of
their way when they're on the warpath.

“
What are you in for? Nomad like
Terra?” Mary asks.

I never have asked Madge that. With the rage
simmering just under the surface, I wasn't sure I was ready to face
it, but I'm curious too.

Madge smiles grimly. “We were hiding from agents. We
left Portland—our sanctioned city—and ran north. Funny how agents
don't see that as innocently as changing residences. They see it as
escaping. We found an old, abandoned town and stayed there a few
nights. The agents found us there.”

Madge stops and pokes the rest of her bacon. Her lip
quivers. I've never seen sorrow from her. I'm not going to like the
rest of the story, and I want to tell her to stop. She can keep it
as her own if she wants to, but she rushes on like a dam bursting:
once it starts, it won't be contained.

“
My Danny—my husband—threw himself
over the kids when the agents came. He tried to keep the soldiers
off them, didn't want them to be touched or harmed or to see any of
what we knew would happen. But the soldiers dragged him off of
them. One of them smashed his head with his stick, and he dropped
to the ground. My girl screamed, and I tried to shush her, tried to
tell her it would be okay. It was the worst lie I've ever told her.
I could tell by Danny's stillness that it would never be okay
again. I held the three of them for twenty seconds before the
agents ripped them from me. 'We'll relocate them to nice homes,'
they said. 'They'll be taken care of.' I didn't believe a word of
it. What kids are taken care of without their mother? Then they
loaded me into a truck and brought me here. I haven't seen my
children since.”

I have no words. Neither does Mary. We exchange
glances, and I know in that moment, when I choose to tell her about
my crazy plan to smuggle people to the colony, she'll help me.

The intercom sounds again. “Yard time. You have
thirty minutes.”

Trays scrape over tables as everyone scrambles to
their feet. They rush their trays—some of them filled with
half-eaten food—to the windows where they're cleaned. There's a
buzz in the air. It's inaudible, of course; they wouldn't want the
soldiers or agents to think they were happy about something, heaven
forbid. But I can feel the energy tingle along my arms and tickle
in my ears. For the first time since I've been here, they're
excited. I follow along with them, and I'm almost bouncing on the
balls of my feet when the double doors open at the end of the hall
and gray light streams in.

Clouds make a patchwork in the sky. The sunshine
from yesterday evening tries to hang on, shining between clouds,
but still the magic of being outside works its way into all of us,
even if I do rock back and forth on the balls of my feet and blow
air in an attempt to warm my hands. This is the only thing these
women have to look forward to. I plan to enjoy it.

I look over to the fence that separates the yard
down the middle and see that the men are already there. Our overlap
comes in the first five minutes of yard time, so I work my way
through a tangle of women who do nothing but stand with their eyes
closed and their faces tipped to the sky. As I approach the fence,
my heart soars to see Jack already there, his fingers entwined in
the links, waiting for me.

Waiting for
me
.

This doesn't unnerve me the way it would have a week
ago. It's a relief to see him here, and I'm ashamed to admit I
worried that he wouldn't wait. Ashamed to admit a few weeks ago I'm
not sure I'd have waited for him. What's wrong with me? Of course
I'd wait for him. We were partners, companions, together in the
wilderness. Of course I'd wait. But what has changed? Why am I
seeing him differently?

“
Mind if I come with?” Mary asks,
suddenly right by my side. I shake my head. No, I don't mind. Mary
should be here for this, where this all begins.

Jack's eyes bounce back the pale light, and the
hazel looks almost gray. His cheeks are round with his smile, and
he has a bruise over his left eye and a cut on his jaw. He's
surprised to see Mary, which worries me. Shouldn't he have seen
Dave by now? But I didn't see Mary until about fifteen minutes ago.
Maybe Dave hadn't made it to the mess hall yet before yard
time.

I grab his hand, but he pulls away from me. My hand
is barren without his.

“
I don't think we should
touch.”

I raise my eyebrows.
Why?
I mouth.

He just nods his head toward a soldier patrolling
the perimeter. “They're watching. I noticed that two days ago when
we were all out here for the announcement. They're always watching.
I don't know if it's to discourage relationships between men and
women or what their reason might be, but they watch. We shouldn't
do anything too close.”

I nod and step back. I gesture to my own left eye,
and his fingers gingerly touch his face. He winces.

“
Just a little disagreement between
inmates.”

The nomads who were after us; it has to be.

Jack nods. “Yes, it was them. They seemed to think
that beating me now would be some kind of justice for escaping them
in the woods. The soldiers took care of it though. I don't think
they'll bother me again. I never thought I'd be grateful to anyone
running this place, but now I am.”

Now that I know he's fine, I need to tell him who I
am. I need to start the ball rolling toward this insane plan of
mine. It's essential I tell him now. It's not the way I wanted to
do it. I would rather have done it in the cabin, under the
blackberry brambles, in the gas station, anywhere that I could have
studied him longer, taken the time the truth deserves, been able to
at least put a hand on his.