“That’s right,” I said, feeling a weight in my chest. “We have nothing! No school, no vocation, no Ma, Pa… and you know the Provost is going to send us for a mood-adjust. I can’t go through that. I’d rather die!” I thought about Nate, how there was no chance for us to be together, and felt even bleaker.
“They would love for us to choose that option,” Becca said. “They’d get the SAS van here in five minutes. We can’t give them that satisfaction.”
“Then what? We have the so-called hearing in the morning!”
Becca flopped down next to me on Ma and Pa’s bed. She gave me a tired smile and then yawned. “Relax,” she said. “If it comes to that, we’ll knock the guards out in the car, kick them out, steal the car, and then bust out of here. We’ll hit the boundary road and keep going till we run out of gas or find another cell.”
“Huh,” I said. That sounded pretty easy, actually. “Will you try to find Tim?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Depends on how much of a shit storm we have following us.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling a little better. My eyes were heavy and I let myself slide into an exhausted sleep. After all, I was going to knock out guards and steal a car tomorrow. I had to rest up.
108
WHEN ROUGH HANDS GRABBED ME out of a deep sleep, I thought I was just having flashbacks. Nightmares. It took a minute to react, since I expected to wake up. But then a black hood was pulled over my head and I heard Becca cry out.
“Cassie!” she screamed, then her voice was muffled.
“Becca!” I shouted back, but a heavy hand clamped over my mouth.
We hadn’t gone through weeks of intensive combat training for nothing, and immediately I kicked out, connected with something hard. Someone let out a breath, and then I felt a sharp, cold pinch in my thigh. Within seconds I had collapsed to the floor, as limp as an empty flour sack. I was vaguely aware of hands picking me up, but then everything was black.
Gradually I came awake, slowly realizing that I was lying down in a truck or van, my hands cuffed behind me.
“Becca?” I said hoarsely.
“Mmm,” came the answer, as if she were struggling to wake up.
The road was long and full of potholes. Apparently the driver was paid extra to hit every one. Each time he did, we bounced on the hard floor, landing painfully. Gradually I eased myself up into a sitting position. My ankles were bound together, but I managed to work my hands beneath me and then in front of me. It was much better. With my hands in front I was able to feel around for Becca.
“Get your hands in front,” I told her. “Then you can untie my hood.”
“’K,” she said, and coughed.
After getting our hoods off, we worked on the ropes around our ankles. Our wrists were cuffed with metal rings, and though we scraped our hands raw, we couldn’t get out of them.
We were being taken back to prison. Where, we didn’t know. We might have to fight. We might be tortured and tested until we fell over with exhaustion. We might be executed. One of us might have to watch the other one die.
“Well,” I said, panting with the effort of trying to untie my ankles, “at least we don’t have to go to the goddamn hearing this morning.”
Becca looked at me, surprised to hear me swear, and a slow smile lit her face. Then she was laughing, and I was laughing. Because what else could we do, facing death after everything we’d been through?
And when we finally got to our destination and the van doors were opened to forbidding darkness, that’s what Strepp saw: Becca and I without our hoods, our ankles free, laughing.
109
BECCA
I WASN’T SURPRISED TO SEE Strepp waiting for us. I was, however, pretty damned pleased to see the shiner Cassie had given her. When she saw Cassie and me laughing, a weird expression crossed her face, and then she said, “Out!” and banged on the van door with a billy club.
When I stumbled out, I didn’t recognize a goddamn thing. This was a new prison in some new, unknown place. We were somewhere that we’d never be able to find our way back home from. Not that we had much home to go back to.
When the van drove off, we stood there looking around uncertainly.
This prison was smaller. I’d never seen buildings that looked like this, like they were made of orange clay.
Ms. Strepp scrutinized the two of us. “Guards!” she yelled, and a new set of guards marched out, holding guns. They were your basic nondescript goons, except…
There was one…
I stared at her, my mouth open wide enough to catch flies.
For just a second she met my gaze, then looked away.
It was Robin. Robin Wellfleet, my first friend in jail.
I’d seen her die. She had died.
But now she was here.
“Robin!” I couldn’t help exclaiming. I moved toward her, my arms open for a hug. I had to feel her, make sure she wasn’t a ghost or a hallucination.
“Get back in line!” Strepp shouted, and another guard rapped me in the small of my back. I turned around to snarl at him, and when I turned back, Robin was gone.
Strepp ordered, “Quiet!” Then she told the guards, “Take them inside!”
We were marched into a building. I felt Cassie looking at me with questions. She’d never known Robin. But I was flipping out. I’d seen her die.
Inside the building it was plain old prisonlike. This one, however, was in better shape than the crazy house—newer and cleaner.
Armed guards prodded us down hallways until we reached a processing station, where we were searched. Various people were in the halls, some in prisoner jumpsuits, some dressed like guards, some just in regular clothes. I caught sight of a slight, younger-looking kid who was loading books from a cardboard box onto a shelf.
It was Little Bit.
Little Bit, who was dead because I’d beaten her in a fight. I wanted to shriek her name, but knew I’d end up with a knot on my head if I did. Again Cassie looked at me, and again I shrugged, my head spinning.
We were given jumpsuits, this time a nauseating puke-green, and hustled into a long hallway.
Strepp strode up. “You two. Come with me,” she barked.
Here we go, I thought, and felt my stomach twist into a knot.
110
CASSIE
IT WAS UNUSUAL FOR US to see Strepp together. So maybe we were about to head to the ring to fight. This prison had a ring, right?
I reached out and touched Becca’s hand. As outwardly calm as I’d been since we’d been recaptured, as much as I felt better prepared to face whatever was coming, I still hated the idea of having to fight my sister. We’d have to make it a good show. Have to really hurt each other. Just the thought made me feel like crying.
But we weren’t led to the ring—at least, not yet. We were taken down another hall and stopped while a guard opened a door.
“Come in,” Ms. Strepp said, and the guard shut the door behind us.
“What now?” Becca said belligerently. “A test? A fight?” She’d been thinking along the same lines I was.
“Sit down,” Ms. Strepp said, gesturing to the two chairs in front of her desk. After giving each other a quizzical glance, Becca and I sat.
Ms. Strepp clasped her hands on her desk, not saying anything, as if thinking through what heinous exercise to make us undergo. Finally she looked at us, as if she had decided.
“Do you know the meaning of the word cell?” she asked, taking me by surprise.
When Becca didn’t say anything, I answered, “It’s a community. Like a town.”
Ms. Strepp shook her head. “No. That’s called a community, or a town. You came from a cell. Do you know why?” Not waiting for an answer this time, she went on, “The word cell used to mean hidden, or covered. Then it meant a small place for sleeping, like for hermits, or monks in a monastery. Its most recent meaning is as a jail cell.”
A jail cell?
“Not all that long ago, bad citizens were
put into jails, and the little rooms were called cells,” said Ms. Strepp. “Now everyone you know lives in cells. What do you think that means?”
I had no idea, no clue as to what she was getting at, and I shook my head.
Ms. Strepp nodded and clicked a remote at a TV screen on the wall. It flickered to life. “I’ll show you.”
The image on the screen cleared. It was a picture of a white sand beach being gently lapped by clear turquoise water. I’d never seen anything like it, and I leaned forward slightly, my eyes wide. The image pulled back to reveal couchlike chairs sitting right on the sand. My eyebrows raised as it showed a woman with deep-tan skin, wearing a red bikini, lying on one of the chairs. She reached a hand out and someone, a man in a suit, put a fancy drink in it. The drink was three colors—red, orange, yellow—and had fruit in it. It looked amazing.
“This is a place called Florida,” said Ms. Strepp. “It’s in one of the Forbidden Zones.”
“I’ve never heard of a Forbidden Zone,” Becca said.
“Most people haven’t,” said Ms. Strepp. “But in the United, there are at least fifteen Forbidden Zones.”
“Forbidden how?” Becca asked.
“Forbidden to cellfolk,” Ms. Strepp said. “Forbidden to you. And me. And anyone you know.”
111
BECCA
WAS THIS THE SAME STREPP who had tortured us, made us fight, tested us constantly? What was she doing? This had to be a trap somehow.
“Is this a test?” I asked flatly.
“All of life is a test,” said Ms. Strepp, sounding like herself at last. “But look.”
The image on the TV screen changed. It had been taken from an airplane. It flew over a cell, an ag cell like ours. I saw the houses, the fields, the cows, the boundary fence. The plane kept flying and went over dark-green trees that lasted a long time. It flew over another fence, much taller and thicker than a boundary fence, made of brick.
Next to me, Cassie gasped.
This was a cell of some kind, but like nothing I’d ever imagined.
“Those are not government buildings,” Ms. Strepp said. “Those are houses.”
The houses were enormous, the size of the hospital or our school. They had balconies and beautiful gardens filled with flowers and trees and bushes.
“What is that place?” Cassie asked.
“It’s called Virginia. Another of the Forbidden Zones. Keep watching.”
Now the images on the screen switched back and forth: a close-up of one of those gorgeous houses, its walls made of pale-red bricks. The next shot was of a big pit of red clay, then a cell factory where the clay was being made into bricks. Filthy, sweating men and women shoveled the clay into huge molds that got pressed by a machine.
The image changed again and we peered through an open window at a table. It had a lace tablecloth and beautiful plates and glasses. On the table was a loaf of bread. Abruptly, the next image was another cell factory. Huge machines were churning wet dough. Women wearing white coats and caps hauled the machines to and fro, dumping the dough onto conveyer belts.
“I don’t understand what any of this is,” I said. They looked real. But none of it made sense.
Ms. Strepp didn’t reply, but clicked her remote again. Now the images flew by on the screen: a close-up of a rosebush, then a shot of gardeners toiling in the sun, growing rosebushes by the thousands. A view of a beautiful wooden desk, a shiny wooden floor, a stack of wood by an amazing marble fireplace—followed by a timber cell, where men using enormous saws were felling trees, and cranes loaded the trees onto long trucks.
Finally we saw some people who looked like they had never worked outside a day in their life. They were eating steak and corn on the cob. The next shot was of…
“That’s B-97-4275,” I breathed. “Oh, my God.”
The screen showed farms I knew, reaping machines like the one Pa had used, trucks full of corn and wheat and pumpkins driving out through the boundary gates.
I stared at Ms. Strepp.
“You think this is a prison?” Her voice was oddly gentle. “The prison is your home cell. That’s the prison you can’t leave. That’s the prison where people are held in slavery, making goods and products for these other people to enjoy.”
“What people?” I burst out.
“The United,” said Ms. Strepp.
112
“WHAT?” CASSIE CRIED.
“The rich. The powerful. Those at the top of the United,” said Ms. Strepp.
“I don’t understand,” I said again. I felt so confused, and wished she would make me do push-ups or something I could wrap my head around.
“The people who run everything and control every facet of our existence,” Ms. Strepp said. “They tell farms when to produce more corn or fewer tomatoes. They tell manufacturers to make more cars or different cars or trucks. They tell bakers to make white bread or rye bread or rolls.”
“Why?” I asked.
“For their enjoyment,” Ms. Strepp said. “The few in charge of the United keep the rest of us in slavery, so that they can enjoy life.”
I glanced at Cassie. Her brow was furrowed and I could almost see her trying to decipher those words.
“They don’t live in cells?” Cassie said.
“No. They live in Forbidden Zones,” Ms. Strepp answered. “But they’re allowed to go to any Forbidden Zone they want, anytime they want, without permission. Some of them have houses in three or four or more different places.”
“What do they make?” Cassie asked. “What do they produce?”
“Nothing.” Ms. Strepp’s face looked hard and condemning. “They produce nothing. Even their music and art are made by people they control.”
“Well, what do they do?” I still felt lost.
“They relax,” said Ms. Strepp, and the way she said it made relaxing sound like it was about as worthwhile as incubating the plague.
“Why are you telling us this?” I asked.
“Because we—the Outsiders—are tired of being slaves. We’re tired of being controlled. We want to play the game by our rules.”
Wait—back up. Was Strepp saying she was an Outsider?
113
CASSIE
BECCA AND I BOTH SAT there looking like largemouth bass as Ms. Strepp went on with her mind-blowing revelations.
“Once I was a girl in a cell, just like you,” she said. “And just like you, one day I was kidnapped and taken to prison and put on death row.”
What?
“That prison was where my life really began.”
My eyes were bugging out of my head, and I didn’t dare look at Becca.
“In prison, I learned right from wrong. You know what death row is like. Facing death forces you to leave extraneous emotions behind. It focuses your thoughts, your energies, unlike any other situation.”
No shit, I thought.
“In prison I learned to survive, much as you have done. I learned how to live free, as much as anyone can. Not free outside. Free inside, inside of myself. They had caged my body, but they couldn’t cage my mind, or my soul.”
Was this the same Strepp who had made me do push-ups until I fell on a bed of nails? I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. The images from the TV were ricocheting around in my mind—the white sand, the huge houses, the fancy drink.
“You are two of the Outsiders. Pleased to meet you. I’m Helen Strepp, one of the heads of the Outsiders.” She gave a smile that was so unexpected that it was almost scary.
“We—the Outsiders—are like a hydra,” she said. “We have many heads. If one of us is cut off, others are ready to step into our place. Our mission is too important to risk a break in the chain of command. You see, we—the Outsiders—are preparing for the future. Life as we know it is about to change radically, and not for the better. We as a people will face great hardships, and almost certainly a terrible war.” She let out another breath, as if even knowing this was a heavy burden.
“I’m sure you’ve wondered why you were taken. Basically, we try to take anyone who has shown curiosity or a willingness to break the rules. Cassie, you were put into a terrible situation—both parents gone, a farm to keep up. But you made perfect grades and never missed a day of school. You were holding it together in the face of great adversity, and that’s the kind of people we need.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d always thought of myself as really ordinary.
“Becca, we were planning to take Cassie first and you later,” Ms. Strepp said. “We were thrown by you using the truck.”
I turned and gave Becca the stink eye.
“But in you we found someone with a rebellious spirit. Someone willing to take risks. Someone who wasn’t totally under the United’s thumb.”
This was the first time that those qualities had been seen as positive, I thought.
“You two have shown great—exceptional—potential. You escaped—the first prisoners out of thousands to do so. My job is to find the very best and to train them. This has been going on for almost twenty years. We take just a few kids from each cell. The cells don’t communicate with each other, which works to our advantage. I was taken. Now I have taken you. You, in your turn, will someday take other kids.”
“What?” Becca exclaimed.
“Yes,” Ms. Strepp said. “Everything we’ve done, everything you’ve gone through has been calculated to make you stronger, tougher, smarter, and more likely to survive. Your training will continue here. You will learn how to use weapons, efficient ways to kill or disable someone, how to break into buildings, how to hack computer systems. Skills you’ll need to take down the United.”
I needed time to think all this through. I remembered telling Becca that they had trained us to be heroes. Now it sounded like they would train us to be assassins. Maybe in this case, those were the same thing.
Suddenly Ms. Strepp jumped up and slammed her hands on her desk.