Infraction (6 page)

“
Try to relax.” Her eyes look like
they could be kind, but there's too much hardness around the edges.
“It'll hurt more if your muscles are tense.”

I do my best to let my arm unclench, to ease my
fingers open. I'm really not even worried about the pain; I'm
worried about being marked, of always being afraid of the scanners
in the woods—if I even see the woods again.

The nurse swipes the cold swab against my forearm.
“You'll feel a little pinch.”

I close my eyes. Jack's face floats before mine. I
see his smile, and then I see the straight, neat scar on his
forearm. Is he in a similar room right now, sitting in a metal
chair with a nurse standing over him, ready to implant the
device—it's only half-an-inch long, seemingly harmless—that will
let the government follow him for the rest of his life? I never
understood just how frightened people were of trackers, until
now.

The needle pierces my skin, and I wince as the
tracker slips through, embedding itself in my arm. I open my eyes
and look down. A small drop of blood wells up, and the nurse slaps
a square of cotton and a strip of tape over it. The tail-end of the
tracker peeks out, forming a lump under my skin. Then the agent is
practically on top of me, swinging a scanner over my arm. The
tracker glows blue for a moment.

“
Good. It's active. You're now
recorded in the government archives. Worker 7456. If you show us
that you can be a trustworthy citizen, you will be released.” She's
talking to me as if she's so bored she'd rather be picking the lint
between her toes. “Once released, you'll be assigned to a
sanctioned city and be approved for rations.” I almost laugh at the
way she makes it sound like a privilege. “Go through that door.
You'll receive your clothing and your cell assignment.”

I can't feel my toes or fingers as I stand and walk
through the door. I don't think it's a side effect of the tracker
injection. The agent's voice is so cold I should probably be numb
all over. There's a window through the wall next to me, and I look
back into the domain of Worker 143.

Worker 143 looks me over quickly and then turns to a
wall of cubbies filled with neon yellow and gray clothes. She hands
me two long-sleeved yellow t-shirts, two pairs of gray pants, two
pairs of socks, and one pair of canvas shoes. She tries to smile at
me, but her lips can't curve that direction, and the expression is
lost before it even began.

I shuffle down the hall and wrap the towel tighter
around me. A buzz sounds and a huge metal grate slides open. A
soldier nods once to me, and I follow him—I think it's a him, it's
hard to tell what's really beneath the mask—past rows of doors with
a small window in each of them. He stops abruptly before one of
them. He swipes a keycard on the keypad next to the door, and the
lock slides back and the door swings open.

“In there,” he says.

I clutch my few clothes closer and enter the room,
and the door closes silently behind me. Garish light shines from a
single bulb, and one square of daylight glows on the floor from a
window three feet above my head. There's a bunk against one wall, a
sink, a toilet, and one girl with lank blond hair. She cowers on
the bottom bunk, her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, her
head down against her chest. She doesn't dare look at me. I can't
tell how old she is—she could be my age—but she's all sharp knees
and elbows, I can't help thinking she's just a kid.

I walk to the opposite end of the bunk, put the
clothes down, and pull on socks, pants, shirt, and shoes. I didn't
realize just how cold I was until I got in here and there's no one
to watch me, no one to hide my weakness from. My cellmate hardly
counts. I've been here for two minutes now, and I don't think she's
even blinked.

I put the extra clothes on the top bunk. I rub my
hands on my pants, chaffing them against the rough fabric, trying
to get some warmth back into me. I've been so cold ever since I saw
Jack marched into that other building. I tip up on my toes and rock
back to my heels. I don't know what's coming next, and my cellmate
is the only one who can tell me. But I'm not going to terrify her
by grabbing her hand just to start up a conversation. She looks
like every day of her life is a terror.

I cross to the sink and turn on the faucet. A thread
of water gurgles out, and it takes several seconds to fill my
cupped palm. I gulp the water. I haven't eaten anything since the
bread and who-knows-how-old water yesterday. It takes me a long
time to gather enough water to finally slake my thirst. When I
finish, the girl is watching me.

Her blue eyes are rimmed with dark circles, and I
can't stop the image that crashes through my brain: a girl in an
alley, clutching a box of medical supplies as it's ripped from her
hands by someone bigger and stronger than she is. It's not the same
girl; it can't be. This one is too slight, not quite as tall, but
the similarities are striking. I feel a rush of pity so
overwhelming it almost knocks me over. I can't speak to her, so I
smile. She flinches.

I want to step closer, but if she's scared of a
smile, she won't last through me approaching her. I slump down
against the wall opposite the bed and just sit there, waiting for
some kind of acknowledgement or invitation. She just stares at me
like she's seen a ghost.

I don't know how long we would have sat there like
that, but a crackle from one of the corners of the ceiling startles
me. There's a small intercom box there, and a tinny voice fills the
room.

“Work hours. Report to your assigned location.” Then
the lock of the door slides back.

The girl unfolds herself and walks out the door
without giving me a second glance. I follow her. She winds down the
hallways, through doors, and a trickle of other women join us. She
finally leads me through a door with a window fogged over with
steam. Inside, huge vats bubble. Everyone wears hair nets and
rubber gloves.

The girl disappears through the steam, and I follow
where I think she's gone, occasionally catching a glimpse of her
hair. She stops at a desk, and I almost run into her. She holds out
her arm, and an agent scans her tracker. She's given a hair net and
gloves. As I thrust my arm forward toward the agent, I watch the
girl disappear between the vats. As the steam clears closer to the
ceiling, I make out a narrow catwalk lining the perimeter. Two
soldiers pace around it.

The agent's scanner beeps loudly. I look down.

“Ah, you're new.” The agent's voice is so full of
venom I almost step back. “And your tracker is new, I see.”

I nod and reach for some gloves and a hair net. The
agent swipes my hand away.

“You haven't had orientation yet. You have no idea
what the cannery even is.” She turns her head to the side, and her
eyes fixate on another woman. “Worker 5932, over here.”

A tall woman with red hair steps beside me.

“Worker 5932, please instruct our newest worker about
the cannery.” The agent picks up the gloves and hair net between
her thumb and forefinger like they're contaminated. She drops them
in my outstretched hands. “She'll receive her assignment in the
cannery tomorrow—provided she can actually do the work.”

Worker 5932 puts a hand on my elbow and steers me
away. “Just ignore them. Most of them are like that, but I don't
think they can actually do anything to you. Not legally. Well,
nothing life-threatening, anyway. We might essentially be slaves
here, but the government needs the work we do, and it wouldn't look
good if there was no work being done.”

We stand next to a huge pyramid of boxes.

“My name's Madge. What's yours?”

I motion to my mouth and then reach for her hand. Her
eyes soften.

Terra.

“
Well, Terra, this is the cannery
obviously. We process all the food that comes from farming camps in
the northwest. We really only work in the cannery during the late
summer and fall because of the harvest. Don't worry, though, those
agents give us plenty of other jobs during the rest of the year. If
you ever wondered where the food for supply drops comes from, look
no further. Though they'll never tell their 'loyal citizens' how
much slave labor goes into it.”

Up until that point, I thought Madge had managed to
maintain some semblance of happiness in this place. The bitterness,
however, cuts so deeply on the last sentence, that she now has my
full attention. She smiles at me, but her eyes are flinty. She
looks around her quickly.

“
Don't worry. With all the pots
boiling and people talking and the general noise of it all, they'll
never hear us.” Concern crosses her face. “Though you should still
be careful. Always be careful.” Madge puts a hand to her sweaty
forehead. A hair net keeps her curly red hair from her face, and
crow's feet stamp around her eyes. I like her; she's
honest.

I nod earnestly to her, hoping she can trust me. I
wonder if all the inmates here trust each other because we all have
a common enemy, or if there are so many walls built up that trust
is hard to come by.

I want to get to work, show her I'll help. I point
to a box of ears of corn. I know corn—I tended the corn field in
the colony. Surely I can do this.

“
The corn? You can start there if
you want. All you do is shuck it and then put it on that conveyer
belt. That'll take it to the strippers.” Madge laughs. “Not the
technical name, but whatever. That's what I call them. They cut off
the kernels.”

I smile bewilderedly. I have no idea why calling
them “strippers” is funny, and Madge doesn't look like the joke
needs to be explained. It must be a difference between Burn culture
and colony culture.

I grab an ear of corn from the box and pull open the
husk. From a wisp of steam, my cellmate appears next to me, grabs
an ear of corn, and uses her long, slender fingers to shuck it
faster than I'll ever be able to. I wrestle with the long fibers
and the silky threads and put the ear on the belt. She's already
thrown five ears on by the time my first joins hers. Then we repeat
it. Over and over again. After several hours, I'm able to shuck two
ears to her five, and my fingers are sore. But she never looks at
me. Her long hair, the color of the corn silk, falls between us. I
wish I could speak to her. It would be less intrusive than grabbing
her hand and writing words there. She's like a frightened cat:
she'll come close if you ignore her, but one wrong step and she's
gone.

Madge stops my hand before I can grab another ear of
corn. She gently pries my fingers open, rubbing them where they're
curled into fists that know nothing but corn shucking. She looks at
me like she's not sure if I'm trying to win points with the agents
or am just a hard worker. It wounds me that she'd think I'd try to
get in with the agents.

“
Give it a rest. They won't keep you
on shucking long, anyway. I'll show you what else we do down
here.”

She nods to my cellmate. To my surprise, my cellmate
nods back. Then Madge leads me into the thick of the steam where
several workers stand over huge pots. Madge guides me to one in the
corner. Her face tells me she has a secret.

“
That pot right there?” She nods her
head toward it. We're about twenty feet away, and wisps of steam
swirl into the worker's face. The sweat pouring into my eyes makes
my vision blurry and I squint at the worker's wrinkled face. She
reminds me of Nell. Madge leans closer. “Blackberry
jam.”

I remember the skeleton blackberry brambles Jack and
I slept under only a few nights ago. How we shivered in our
sleeping bags. How frightened we were of the nomads. How he held my
hand and we both fell asleep that way. Now I would give anything
for that night again—fear and all. But I'm not sure what Madge's
secrecy is about. I'm growing impatient with the games it seems
everyone is playing with me. I wipe my sweaty face with my
sleeve.

So?

“
Have you ever gotten jam in your
food rations? Ever even
seen
jam in
a food drop?”

I shake my head. I'm assuming that's the right
answer. I'm feeling light-headed from hunger, and the idea of
sweet, sticky jam makes it even worse. In the several abandoned
food drops Jack and I found in the wilderness, jam wasn't among the
remains. But what is she getting at?

“
Exactly. This jam isn't for anyone
but the government.” Her eyes flash, betraying that same fire she's
so carefully veiled. “And do you see the obscene amount of sugar
that Lily's—” a soldier walks right over our heads, and Madge
glares at him “—I mean Worker 657 is getting ready to dump
in?”

I look from the soldier to Lily. She
holds a brown paper sack labeled
50 lbs. Pure Cane
Sugar
under one arm, and she struggles under
the weight. I'm ready to walk the few feet that separates us and
help her. I wonder why Madge hasn't done so already. But as soon as
my foot so much as twitches, Madge puts an arm out to stop me, and
her eyes freeze me to my spot.

“
Have you ever gotten anything more
than a few sugar packets in a drop? I used to save them up for my
kids' birthdays.” The anger in her eyes is suddenly replaced by
such sadness that I want to cry for her. What happened to
her?

Lily pulls a string at the top and the bag gapes
open and sugar gushes into the jam pot, some spilling onto the
floor.

Suddenly, there are soldiers everywhere.They jostle
Madge and I out of the way as they surround Lily, and one rips the
bag away from her. She raises gnarled hands dyed purple from the
berries.

“
I didn't mean to!”

The soldiers don't move until an agent parts them
with her hands. “What's going on here?”