Nate gave him a sharp glance. “Won’t they be traced back to this cell?”
The man shook his head. “It will look like a flaw in the metal. When they trace that, it will look like a flaw in the actual ore.”
My mind raced. If tractors broke down, most people couldn’t plant or harvest crops. No crops meant nothing to take to the collective. This one link of the chain breaking would cause the System problems everywhere. My mind reeled when I thought about the enormous implications of this. The Resistance was much bigger and more widespread than I’d thought. But it also showed how huge the United was that we were up against.
I squared my shoulders, refusing to think about it. If I really let myself understand what we were doing, I’d try to sit out the rest of the war. Probably.
“We better get back,” I said. “We’re taking off at sundown.”
34
CASSIE
“VERY GOOD, CASSIE.”
I tried not to glance at Tim, standing behind Ms. Strepp, because he was making an “Oh, my God she said something nice” face, and I would crack up if I looked at him. But yes, it was stunning to hear. In fact, it was pretty much the most unbelievable thing I’d ever heard out of her mouth.
“So this is the kind of thing you’re looking for?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes. This is a tiny piece of a huge puzzle, but it is a piece. Look at the date: 2034. The note says the deportations have started.”
“What deportations is she talking about?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” she said. “But do you appreciate the value of being able to ask that? To even know about the deportations?”
“Yeah?” I said. It came out sounding like a question.
“And this map,” she went on. “This shows one of the first divisions of the United into the sections. How did this happen? Who was Murtaugh? Were these some of the first resisters? What happened?”
I’d never seen her look so excited. Her eyes shone and her hands trembled, holding the map. Then she seemed to remember herself, and in a second the same old Ms. Strepp was standing there: cold, forbidding, unyielding.
“We need the rest of the puzzle. Speed it up.”
Late that night I lay in my bunk, listening to the breathing of the soldiers left behind, not looking at Becca’s empty bunk next to mine or the dozens of other empty bunks of soldiers not condemned to office work.
Someone came and lay down in Becca’s bunk—it was Tim. He pressed his face into her pillow and breathed. “Still smells like her,” he said.
“How can you tell? Most of us take maybe one shower a week,” I said.
“I can tell.” He got under her covers. “I can’t believe we have to go back to that goddamn attic tomorrow.”
“I know,” I groaned. “And it’s kind of creepy, finding out about this stuff. Like, a hundred or two hundred years ago, everything was totally different. Ms. Strepp thinks people were forced to change, forced to go into cells. So was there a war? Were there resisters even then?”
“Well, if there were,” he said, looking up at the empty bunk above him, “we know one thing: The resisters lost.”
35
AFTER OUR ONE BREAKTHROUGH, TIM and I spent the day being slightly more motivated. But whoever had collected this stuff had simply gathered everything they could find without stopping to think if it was a crucial clue to the past or, like, a piece of useless crap.
He held up a shirt that said ATLANTA BRAVES. “I’ve seen this word before,” he said, pointing to “Atlanta.” He went to the map that we’d tacked on the wall and started searching.
I’d made an executive decision of what to do with useless items we’d gone through: The trash bags were piling up. Printed pieces of paper called “coupons” showed that food had been super, super expensive but they also had a lot of things I’d never heard of, like SpaghettiOs and “sports drink.”
“Found it!” he said. “It’s a cell, here!” He pointed to an area in section F. “A cell called At-lan-ta,” he clarified, sounding out the word. “Maybe they were famous for their extra-brave people.”
“Cool,” I said. “What do you make of this?” I threw another T-shirt at him and saved him the trouble of sounding the words out. “It says ‘Grateful Dead.’”
He frowned. “That’s a weird name for a cell. I’ll see if I can find it.”