3

The door pushed open for the man to enter, then closed behind him by an unseen hand.

He was of medium height, slim build, dressed in a charcoal suit and pale blue tie. Narrow face with almond shaped brown eyes. Thin moustache. Dark hair combed neatly to the left. On the wrong side of middle age. A black briefcase in one hand.

Not a warden.

Not a guard.

His gaze travelled over every inch of the small room before it settled on me. A sober smile stretched thin over his protruding front teeth.

I straightened from my slouch, an ingrown reflex to his male authority. Almost instantly, I resented the response he'd elicited in me. But I didn't slump into my chair again.

This was my world and I knew how to navigate it. I couldn't afford to be hot-headed and reckless here if I wanted to survive.

My head was fuzzy and I needed to stay sharp. I'd napped on and off, but it was impossible to get any proper rest with the bright glare of white fluorescence and my body contorted into this hard chair.

His smile slid off into a greeting. "Mrs. West? Morning." He spoke in a soft, no-nonsense manner. "My name is Mr. Stenner and I'm your representative."

"Representative?" I blinked the grit from my eyes while he pulled out the chair opposite me and sat. "What exactly does that mean?"

"Nothing to worry about, I assure you." He extracted a notepad and pen from his briefcase before setting it on the floor. "You and I are just going to have a chat about what happened."

He folded his hands on top of the notepad, and his gaze returned to me. "Once we're done here, I'll present your case to the panel with recommendations on how we proceed from here."

"Then you're not really my representative, are you?" I heard the bitterness on my tongue and tried my best to scale it back to the dutiful, score-perfect St. Ives girl that my entire life had been modelled on. "You're representing Capra."

He sat still as a statue, watching me for the longest moment. "You are a citizen of Capra, a valued member of our society. Representing Capra and representing you is one and the same thing."

Twisted logic.

But like I said, this was my world and I knew how it worked.

Mr. Stenner was oblivious to the irony of his statement. He assumed I was quite literally incapable of not wanting what was best for Capra and our society, even if it were to the detriment of my own wellbeing. Even though my presence in this cell, the reason I needed his representation, screamed the exact opposite.

There was a time I'd been more inclined to think his way—the way of men.

Not anymore.

These are the things I did still believe: Our society was important to the future, any future. Without the science and the IVF treatments, without careful rationing of frozen eggs, the human race would slowly age into non-existence. The marriages and strict gender roles were a desperate last resort but maybe a necessary evil. If we couldn't reverse the hand of God or evolution or whatever the hell had caused this plague, the supply of ovarian eggs would eventually run dry and then what?

These are the things I'd endured but never believed: Women were second class citizens who could not exist in their own right. We were bound to the authority and subjected to the absolute will of our fathers, our husbands, our guardians. Any form of hobby or social cause outside the home was severely restricted. We had no say in how our lives were lived. We had no voice to speak and no justice that would hear.

There had to be a way to balance our world, reform the sins of our past without reducing women to little more than slaves.

There was a way.

The Sisterhood.

Mr. Stenner cleared his throat to get my attention. Once he had it, he glanced around the room again. "Are you being treated well?"

You've got eyes! What does it look like? I shrugged and swallowed that snarky attitude. "As well as can be expected."

He cocked his head, considered me with a thoughtful look. "Not as well as you'd like, but you don't expect better. Why is that?"

Trick question. I took my time over the answer. If I denied any wrongdoing, I'd be deemed unrepentant and sent to rehab. If I admitted too much, I'd be deemed a danger to our society and sent to rehab.

Who was I kidding?

I was going to rehab regardless. All I could do now was limit the damage. Hope for a probation sentence. Full incarceration would be the end of me. I wouldn't come out the same…if I came out at all.

"I was foolish," I said. "Impulsive and selfish. I didn't think of the repercussions before I acted."

I trusted the wrong person. I should have run when I had the chance, crossed that bridge, risked whatever life was up for grabs on the other side. Anything was better than rehab.

Roman had never wanted a wife and he'd never wanted me. On top of that, I'd shown myself to be a problem, a thorn in his ambitions. Getting myself caught in compromising positions with Daniel, breaking curfew, sneaking outside the walls, and those were just the infractions he knew about.

Hindsight was a precious, useless thing.

He was a warden, but he sought power within the town walls and so he had to play by some of the rules. He couldn't discard me, couldn't just get rid of me, and now he didn't need to—full incarceration would do it for him. When I came out—if I came out—I would be a shell of my former self and empty shells didn't cause trouble.

Maybe turning me in hadn't been an easy decision for him.

Maybe he'd thought long and hard over it on the ride back from Sector Five.

Maybe one day he'd look back on his choices and regret being such a cowardly bastard.

And maybe one day the earth beneath my feet would un-shatter and I'd once again feel like I could walk without bleeding pain.

But I wasn't counting on it.

"Okay," Mr. Stenner sighed. He picked up the pen. Opened the notepad. Looked me square in the eye. "Let's start at the beginning. Why did you stow away on your husband's truck in the first place?"

I'd had plenty of time to prepare this story. "My husband, Roman West, works all hours of the day and night. He has an important job, I know, but it seemed like he was gone a lot."

Mr. Stenner scribbled as I spoke, and glanced up at my pause.

"I guess I just found it odd and I wanted to be sure he really worked all those hours." A jealous wife was not considered a desirable trait in Capra, but adultery was a downright sin. "That he wasn't, you know, looking for comfort elsewhere."

He stilled, the pen poised. "You don't think it's wrong to question your husband's movements and motivations?"

"I wasn't questioning Roman," I said, backpedaling furiously. "I questioned myself and whether I was doing all I could to be the wife he deserved. If I were lacking in any way, I wanted to know so I could set it right."

He scribbled some more, detailing every horrid flaw of character I'd given him. Jealous. Pathetic. Desperate.

"So, you hid on your husband's truck to see where he went and what he did." No judgement in his monotonous tone, but it was all there, thickly layered in his words. "What did you find?"

Sector Five.

Outerlanders.

Lies.

I couldn't give him any of that.

Roman had driven that point home hard. Lie, lie and lie some more.

Remember. You were locked inside this box. You never left the truck. You never saw outside this garage. You have no idea you were outside Capra.

Of course, then he'd turned me over to the Guard, but I was still inclined to trust that advice.

If anyone suspected how much I'd been exposed to, I'd never be allowed to walk the streets inside town again. I might not even get the option of rehab. The knowledge I had could honestly be considered treasonous.

That wasn't just bad for me. A treasonous wife wasn't exactly a good look for a warden, especially a warden as ambitious as Roman West. That's how I knew Roman would be following his own advice. He'd handed me in, but he wouldn't contradict our story.

I gave Mr. Stenner another character flaw for his notes. Bumbling idiot. Roman's version, actually, when his warden friend, Branson, had found us in the parking garage.

"I climbed into the lockbox on the truck without realizing that once the latch dropped, I'd be trapped inside. I couldn't get out and eventually, when the truck stopped, I thumped on the lid for someone to help."

"Who came to your aid?"

"My husband."

"And then?"

"Excuse me?"

"Your husband opened the lockbox for you," he said, as if he already knew, as if he already had all his facts. "Where were you? What did you see?"

"We were in a parking garage," I said. "I'm not sure where, but I assume it was Warden Head Quarters?"

He looked at me, tapping the page with the pen nub. "And yet, when the guards discovered you in that lockbox, you were right here at the wall. You didn't find that odd?"

"I wasn't discovered," I muttered. "My husband turned me in."

His eyes narrowed on me. "That makes you angry?"

I lowered my gaze so he wouldn't see me burn. Seriously, he even had to ask?

"Not angry," I said slowly, meekly, taking careful measure of my temper. "I just want to get the facts straight. I was trapped in darkness. I didn't have a clue where we'd been or where we were going. I'm not trying to be dismissive of your questions, I simply don't know how to answer. Maybe Roman brought me here because this Guard station was the first place he thought of? Maybe he knows someone here?"

I lifted my gaze to give him an innocent look. "Perhaps you should ask my husband, he would know."

He looked at me so long, so intensely, I felt like a bug about to be squashed. Then he transferred that intensity to the page before him, scribbled away for at least five minutes after I'd finished speaking.

I clasped my fingers in my lap, tried not to squirm or fidget. What was he writing? Lies. Lies. Lies. He'd recommend full incarceration. If I were lucky. How did they execute traitors anyway? Beheading? Firing squad? Injection?

I'd never seen an execution.

There'd been acts of treason over the years, one in particular that I could recall. An average looking man in his early twenties, nothing remarkable about him at all. I assume there'd been a trial—no details had been shared. We'd only seen the verdict aired on the public screening in the town square.

Guilty on two counts of high treason against the Eastern Coalition.

I'd been about seven years old at the time, excluded from the rumors and gossip that must have spread like wildfire and I'd never really given it much thought…until now, until it could be my face on that public screen.

My stomach knotted, pushing bile up my throat. Shut up. Shut up. The thoughts in my head didn't listen. I was going to be sick. I swallowed down the sour taste and it hit the bottom of my stomach with a backlash of bitter anger.

Finally, Mr. Stenner paused to look at me again. "Is there anything else you'd like to add?"

There was plenty I could add. I knew secrets, secrets that would bring Roman down with me.

But I couldn't do it.

The thought of betraying him chipped at my veins, leaking lifeblood and whatever bits of me that hadn't already spilled out when Roman had cracked my heart down the middle. If I did this, out of revenge and cruelty and hate, there'd really be nothing of me left behind.

"I am sorry," I finally said, because that's what this man wanted to hear, wasn't it? "I am truly sorry for all the trouble I've caused."