I feel it, the way my body seizes in the silence, and I try, I really do, but I can’t control it.
I throw up all over him.
Rosabelle
Chapter 22
I turn my hands over, staring at my wrinkled fingers. I’ve been sitting under the hot water for so long my skin has begun to itch and still I can’t bring myself to get out. This is luxury: the thundering white noise, the steam beading along my limbs, the peaceful quiet.
The peaceful quiet.
I’d forgotten what it was like to be alone. I’d forgotten what it was like to experience privacy. I keep forgetting that the people here aren’t connected to the Nexus. That it’s not standard to surveil people everywhere, all the time.
I close my eyes, let the water pelt my face.
My hospital room was swarmed not long after my humiliation, nurses storming inside, barking hazmat protocol at James. They carted him away from me even as he protested. No doubt they’ll be checking him for trace amounts of poison or explosives, sending my vomit to a lab just to be sure I didn’t do it on purpose.
The thought nearly prompts a bleak smile. The rebels aren’t stupid, though they appear to have overestimated me in this case. In the aftermath they handled me as I expected them to, shuffling me into the shower in quick, rough motions, stripping off my hospital gown with cold efficiency.
It’s time to pull myself together.
Clara is not dead.
Clara is not dead.
I know this with absolute certainty; they wouldn’t have killed her when they could use her to manipulate me. The problem is that I keep losing control of my imagination. I keep allowing my thoughts to wander, to wonder how they might be torturing her. But losing my head means making mistakes, which is no doubt the surest way to guarantee her death.
I will compartmentalize.
I will hermetically seal Clara into my heart. I will accept the paradox that in order to save her life I must ignore her suffering. Clara, I will manage.
It’s James I don’t know how to control.
I don’t understand what’s wrong with him. I’m tired of trying to make sense of him. He confuses me at every turn, rewarding me with patience and kindness when he should be assigning me a prison cell and a violent inquisition. I’m not practiced in this kind of subtle warfare. He’s manipulating me with sophisticated mental disruptions, and the consequences are disturbing. I’m beginning to make positive associations with his name, with the sight of his face. When I think of him, I don’t feel fear at all.
It’s making me angry.
I realize I’ve clenched my fists only when they begin to hurt. I look down at my hands, exhaling as I release them. I’m breathing too hard. Emotions are building inside me unbidden; my quietest thoughts are beginning to unspool.I feel it growing, this desperate desire to finally occupy more than a small corner of my own mind. For years I choked myself into silence, and spirals of thought are now unraveling from around my throat, the danger of forbidden words and feelings rising up inside me like a scream—
I’ve always hated The Reestablishment.
I stiffen even as I think it, bracing for the familiar stutter of my heart, the compression of my chest. I press my hands to the hard floors, searching, instinctively, for something. Paranoia swells and retreats within me, fed by fear, starved by logic. They would not risk watching me here, I tell myself. Never before has The Reestablishment successfully delivered a mercenary from the Ark into the nucleus of The New Republic; they would not risk my exposure during this unprecedented mission. My gaze pings around the simple, industrial shower, searching through steam for the familiar strobe of blue light. I remind myself that I’m far from home; that I am alone.
My heart does not slow down.
I remind myself that I hate the rebels, too—and this more acceptable direction of my thoughts calms me.
I take a deep, steadying breath, tasting water.
The truth is, I hate everyone equally.
The founders of The New Republic are responsible for thousands of deaths and indescribable violence, yet they’re always quick to condemn The Reestablishment, claiming moral superiority. They promise fantasies of unsustainable freedoms to a populace even while exposing them to the ills of famine,anarchy, ignorance, conflict, and bloodshed—and a climate beyond repair. They challenge the breakthroughs of science and modern technology. They insist that self-governed chaos is preferable to regulated world order.
The Reestablishment is an iron-fisted, immoral authoritarian enterprise, but The New Republic is worse than naive, and for this reason alone they will never prevail.
It still astonishes me that my father pledged his allegiance to a revolution doomed to fail, and in so doing, sentenced the rest of his family to a fate worse than death. I always wanted revenge against the rebels responsible for the destruction of my life and the upheaval of the world—even as I found the actions of my own regime to be worse than despicable. I aligned myself with what I believed to be the lesser of two evils, trusting that no government could be trusted.
And yet—
