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.”