When She Woke (24 page)

Mindful of Paul’s warning, Hannah wove Kayla into the story, emphasizing her generosity and loyalty. Susan and Anthony made no comment, but Hannah could feel their impatience. When she told them of her decision to go to Austin with Kayla, Susan interrupted. “But you’ve only known her for what, six weeks?”

“That’s right,” Hannah said. “But believe me, six weeks in that place is like six years anywhere else.”

“Did you know she shot her stepfather?”

“Yes, she told me the first day we met, and I don’t blame her. He was molesting her little sister.”

“So she says.”

“She wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.”

“People lie about all kinds of things,” Susan said. “The fact is, there’s no way to confirm her story.”

“I don’t need to. I believe her, and so should you.”

Susan looked sidelong at Simone.

“What you do not know is that she killed him,” Simone said. “He died of sepsis two days ago. Kayla is wanted for murder now. If we had not picked her up last night, the police soon would have.”

The news shocked Hannah to silence. How would Kayla feel when she found out? Remorseful? Pleased? Hannah wondered how she herself would feel, knowing she’d killed someone, even someone evil, and then crashed into hard truth: she already had, and her victim had been innocent.

“What will they do if they catch her?” she asked.

“Resentence her, most likely,” Anthony said. “They don’t usually send first offenders to prison, especially women. Though they could, if she gets a tough prosecutor.”

“You can’t let that happen,” Hannah protested. “Kayla can’t go to one of those places, she wouldn’t survive.” Conditions in the state and federal prisons were notoriously brutal. There were no live broadcasts from the prisons, no cameras allowed at all.

Susan took back the baton, her tone sympathetic, reasonable. “We understand you’ve become attached to her, Hannah, but you must see what a liability she’d be. If you were caught with her, they could charge you with being an accessory after the fact.”

“And then what, I’d be chromed?” she said sarcastically.

“The point is,” Susan said, with an edge of irritation, “the road you’re about to take is long and dangerous, and Kayla would just increase your chances of being caught.”

Not to mention yours. There’d be one more person who’s seen your faces, one more person who could expose you.
“Tell me about this road,” Hannah said, thinking of the Henleys and their path. “Where does it lead?”

“East and north.”

“And what’s at the end of it?”

“Redemption,” said Anthony. “A new life.”

“Right, I’ve heard that one before.”
R-O-A-D: R
AGGED
, O
UTCAST
, A
LONE AND
D
ESPERATE
.

“I’ll put it another way,” said Susan. “Reversal.”

Hannah went very still, searching their faces for signs of disingenuousness and finding none. “Of the chroming?”

“Yes.”

“But how? It has to be done by a genetic team at a federal Chrome center.”

“Not necessarily.”

“But they’re the only ones with access to the genetic codes and the viral lockouts. If somebody gets it wrong, I’m dead.”

With an impatient wave of one plump hand, Susan said, “We can’t go into specifics now. All you need to know is, there’s a place where the procedure can be reversed safely, and we can help you get there.”

“How far north?” Hannah looked at Simone. “Canada?”

The other woman’s expression didn’t change, but the charged quality of the silence in the room told Hannah she’d guessed right. It made sense. Canada had severed relations with the United States after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of melachroming. Hannah had only been six at the time, but she could still remember her parents’ indignation, and the snide references to “backstabber bacon” she’d heard at church. Diplomatic ties had been reestablished out of necessity during the Great Scourge, but relations between the two countries had been strained ever since. Québec in particular was known to be a hotbed of opposition to chroming.

“Well, wherever it is,” Hannah said, “I’m not going without Kayla.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Susan said. “You have to understand, we have a very specific mission, and we don’t go beyond it.”

“And yet you monitor the Fist,” Hannah pointed out.

“Because they often target women who’ve had abortions. We can’t save everyone, Hannah.”

“Not everyone deserves to be saved,” Simone said.

“You sound exactly like Cole,” Hannah said, not hiding her contempt.

“What do you mean?”

“Two days ago he told me, ‘Some things don’t deserve to be forgiven.’ Maybe you and the Fist should team up, pool your resources.”

Simone’s nostrils flared. “You dare to speak to me like this? If it was not for us—”

“Our resources are limited,” interrupted Anthony, shooting a quelling look at Simone. She sat back, though she continued to glare at Hannah. “We use them for one thing and one thing only: to defend women’s reproductive rights. We are feminists, not revolutionaries.”

Feminists.
The word made Hannah bristle with distaste. In her world, they were viewed as unnatural women who sought to overturn the order laid down by God, sabotage the family, emasculate men and, along with gays, atheists, abortionists, Satanists, pornographers and secular humanists, pervert the American way of life. Many people Hannah knew blamed feminists and their fellow deviants for calling down the wrath of God, in the form of the 9/11 attacks, the LA bombing and natural catastrophes like the Great Scourge and the Hayward quake. Hannah had always found it hard to believe that God would destroy millions of lives out of vindictiveness, despite what the Old Testament said. Still, she’d never questioned much of what she’d been taught, and certainly not the precept that women were meant to submit to the loving guidance of men.

She considered Simone, who looked like the stereotype of a feminist, and Susan, who did not, and then the two men. “We are feminists,” Anthony had said, without a trace of embarrassment. Did it not feel unnatural to him and Paul to name themselves that, and even more so, to follow Susan and Simone’s lead? Why would these men, or any man, willingly surrender their authority to a woman?

Paul’s chair scraped loudly against the floor. His somber eyes met Hannah’s, reminding her of Kayla somewhere in the house, scared and vulnerable.

“You say you’re feminists,” Hannah said, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “I don’t know what that means exactly, but it seems to me it ought to include helping women who protect young girls from being raped.”

“She’s right, and you know it,” Paul said. He was addressing Simone, not Susan and Anthony, and from his tone Hannah guessed this was an old argument between them. “It’s not enough to just fight for choice, or even for women’s rights. If we want a truly fair society, we have to go beyond that.”

“And how do we do this, eh?” Simone said. “How can we know who is innocent and who is not, who deserved to be chromed and who did not? We have only their word, the word of convicted criminals.”

“No one deserves that.” Paul pointed to Hannah’s face. “It’s fucking barbaric.”

Simone shrugged. “I agree. But this is not our concern.”

“So,” Paul said, “you’re willing to risk your life fighting for a woman’s right to privacy and control over her own body, but you think it’s perfectly fine for the government to do
that
to people?”

“Most of them are scum,” Simone said. “Rapists, drug traffickers, pimps.”

Simone was exactly like Bridget, Hannah thought, with a burst of antipathy. She wondered whether Simone too had painful secrets underlying her stridency and then decided she didn’t care. Hannah’s life wasn’t exactly a fairy tale either, but it hadn’t turned her into a caustic bitch.

“Sure, some of them are,” Paul conceded, “but how many are just screwed by a system that’s stacked against them from the day they’re born? It’s no coincidence that seventy-five percent of Chromes come from the lower classes.”

“And eighty-five percent of Chromes are men!” Simone said. “Maybe if you would stop raping and shooting your guns and—”

Susan’s hand struck the table hard, making Hannah and the others jump. “Enough, both of you! This isn’t the time.”

Simone gave Susan a curt nod. “You are right.”

In the ensuing silence, Hannah considered Paul, disconcerted by what he’d said. Melachroming had been the law of the land since she was four years old, and while the sight of a Chrome sleeping on the street or standing in line at the soup kitchen had often stirred her pity, she’d always accepted its necessity and the justice of it. How else, after the Second Great Depression, to relieve the financially crippled federal and state governments of the prohibitive cost of housing millions of prisoners? And why should precious tax dollars be wasted on criminals when honest citizens were going hungry, schools were failing, roads and bridges were crumbling and Los Angeles was still a heap of radioactive rubble? Besides, the old criminal justice system had been a patent and abject failure. The prisons were disintegrating and filled to bursting, the vast majority of their inmates living in conditions so horrific as to be unconstitutional. Rape, murder, disease and abuse of prisoners by guards were endemic. Meanwhile, recidivism increased with every passing year. Melachroming all but the most violent and incorrigible convicts was not only more cost effective than imprisoning them, it was also more of a deterrent against crime and a more humane means of punishment. So Hannah had been taught by her parents and teachers, and so she’d always believed. Even when they’d injected her, there hadn’t been a shred of doubt in her mind that she deserved her punishment. But now, she found herself questioning the system’s fairness. Would she have been chromed if she’d had the money to hire a seasoned attorney instead of being represented by a public defender two years out of law school with sixty other cases to juggle? Would Kayla have been convicted if she’d been white?

“There’s something else you should know,” Susan said, interrupting Hannah’s thoughts. “If you decide to take the road, there’s no turning back. You’ll never be able to return here or have contact with anyone from your previous life, not your family, not anyone. You’ll disappear, and eventually, they’ll assume you’re dead. And if we find out you’ve been in contact with them, you will be. We won’t allow you to jeopardize our mission.”

The beloved faces of her parents, Becca and Aidan, sick with worry for her, then grief, then finally, acceptance, passed in succession through Hannah’s mind. Aidan, unlike her family, wouldn’t be able to mourn her loss openly, but there was no shortage of other causes to which he could attribute his sorrow:
Such a tragedy, all those families left homeless by the wildfires, all those civilians massacred by the insurgents, all those children dying of malaria in Britain.
He’d always felt the suffering of others so keenly; no one who knew him would suspect a thing. Hannah thought back to the last time she was with him. He’d just returned from a grueling cross-country “Nights of Abounding” tour to raise money for the water war refugees in North Africa. His face had been drawn and his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep, with dark smudges beneath them. When she chided him for pushing himself too hard, he waved off her concern, describing in horrifying detail the camps he’d seen in western Egypt, Libya, Algeria: the bloated stomachs of the children, the desiccated bodies of the dead, the mothers too dehydrated to produce milk or tears. They hadn’t made love that night. Hannah had spooned behind him, stroking his arm until he fell asleep, thinking of the life within her and knowing she must extinguish it, not just for his sake, but also for the sake of all those unknown children and mothers whose survival depended on his work. She crept out of the room before he woke. Before she could change her mind.

How, she thought now, could she bear never to hold him in her arms again?
A new life.
Never to sit across a table from her parents again?
Redemption.
Never again to touch her forehead to Becca’s?
Reversal.
Her skin would be normal, but she would be alone.

But no more alone than she was now. The truth was, she’d lost them already, all except her father, and if she spent sixteen years as a Red she’d lose him too, because she’d no longer bear any resemblance to the daughter he loved.

“Well?” asked Susan.

“I will take the road,” Hannah said, “provided you offer it to Kayla too.”

“Even if we allow her to go with you,” Susan said, “she may decide the price is too high.”

“And if she does?”

“We’ll release her, of course.” Susan’s voice was even, her eyes wide and shining with sincerity. Anthony dipped his head in confirmation. But Hannah had seen, in the instant before they’d answered, how both of their gazes had flickered to Simone, and the almost imperceptible nod she’d given in answer.

“Of course,” Hannah said, wondering how Simone did the killings, and where she disposed of the bodies.

S
USAN ANNOUNCED THEY
were breaking for the night so everyone could get some sleep. “We’ll talk again tomorrow after we’ve spoken to Kayla,” she said.

“I’d like to be there when you do,” Hannah said.

“I think it’s best if we speak to her alone. She needs to decide this for herself.”

“Fine, I won’t say a word. But I want to hear her decision from her own lips.”

Susan glanced at Simone, looked back at Hannah. Said, “Fine.”

Simone escorted her to her room in angry silence. At the door, Hannah said, “Kayla looked out for me when I had nobody else. I owe her, do you understand?”

“And now, you owe us,” Simone said. “You owe
me.”

Simone was right, and Hannah acknowledged it with a weary nod. Thinking,
You, and practically every other person I know. And damned if I know how to begin to pay any of you back.

Enervated from the questioning, she fell asleep almost instantly, waking some hours later to the sound of Simone’s knock and brusque announcement that they were meeting in twenty minutes.