“Why don’t you do the honours?” she says.
I look in my hand. It’s a crumbling piece of blue charcoal, pulled from our wood fires, the remains of the reacher trees we burn to keep warm. It smears dusty blue across my hand, across my skin.
I look at it for a moment longer.
“Tick tock,” says Mistress Coyle.
I swallow. Then I raise the charcoal and make three quick slashes against the white wall of the house.
A, looking back at me, by my hand.
I find myself breathing heavily.
When I look round, Mistress Coyle’s already off down the ditches of the drive. I hurry after her, keeping my head low.
Twenty-eight minutes later, just as we reach our cart, deep in the woods, we hear the Boom.
“Congratulations, soldier,” Mistress Coyle says, as we set off back to camp. “You have just fired the first shot of the final battle.”
[TODD]
The woman is strapped against a metal frame, her arms out behind her and up, each tied at the wrist to a bar of the frame.
It looks like she’s diving into a lake.
Except for the watery blood on her face.
“She’s gonna get it now,” Davy says.
But his voice is oddly quiet.
“One more time, my female friend,” Mr. Hammar says, walking behind her. “Who set the bomb?”
The first bomb since the prison break went off last night, taking out a well and pump on a farm.
It’s begun.
“I don’t know,” says the woman, her voice strangled and coughing. “I haven’t even left Haven since–”
“Haven’t left where?” Mr. Hammar says. He grabs a handle on the frame and tips the whole thing forward, plunging the woman face first into a tub of water, holding her there as she thrashes against her bindings.
I look down at my feet.
“Raise your head, please, Todd,” the Mayor says, standing behind us. “How else will you learn?”
I raise my head.
We’re on the other side of a two-way mirror, in a small room looking in on the Arena of the Ask, which is just a room with high concrete walls and similar mirrored rooms off of each side. Davy and I sit next to each other on a short bench.
Watching.
Mr. Hammar pulls up the frame. The woman rises outta the water, gasping for air, straining against where her arms are tied.
“Where do you live?” Mr. Hammar’s got his smile on, that nasty thing that hardly ever leaves his face.
“New Prentisstown,” the woman gasps. “New Prentisstown.”
“Correct,” says Mr. Hammar, then watches as the woman coughs so hard she throws up down her front. He takes a towel from a side table and gently wipes the woman’s face, cleaning as much of the vomit off her as he can.
The woman’s still gasping but her eyes don’t leave Mr. Hammar as he cleans her.
She looks even more frightened than before.
“Why’s he doing that?” Davy says.
“Doing what?” the Mayor says.
Davy shrugs. “Being, I don’t know, kind.”
I don’t say nothing. I keep my Noise clear of the Mayor putting bandages on me.
All those months ago.
I hear the Mayor shift his stance, rustling himself to cover up my Noise so Davy don’t hear it. “We’re not inhuman, David. We don’t do this for our own joy.”
I look out at Mr. Hammar, look at his smile.
“Yes, Todd,” the Mayor says, “Captain Hammar does show a certain glee that is perhaps unseemly, but you have to admit, he does get results.”
“Are you recovered?” Mr. Hammar asks the woman. We can hear his voice over a microphone system, pumped into the room. It separates it oddly from his mouth, making it seem like we’re watching a vid rather than a real thing.
“I’m sorry to have to keep Asking you,” Mr. Hammar says. “This can end as quick as you want.”
“Please,” says the woman in a whisper. “Please, I don’t know anything.”
And she starts to weep.
“Christ,” Davy says, under his breath.
“The enemy will try many tricks to win our sympathy,” says the Mayor.
Davy turns to him. “So this is a trick?”
“Almost certainly.”
I keep watching the woman. It don’t look like a trick.
I am the Circle and the Circle is me, I think.
“Just so,” says the Mayor.
“Yer in control here,” says Mr. Hammar, starting round the woman again. Her head turns to try and follow him but there ain’t much movement from where she’s strapped to the frame. He hovers just outside of her vision. To keep her off balance, I’m guessing.
Cuz of course Mr. Hammar ain’t got no Noise.
Me and Davy do, tho.
“Only muffled sounds, Todd,” the Mayor says, reading my asking. “Do you see the metal rods coming out of the frame by the sides of her head?”
He points. Davy and I see them.
“They play a whining buzz into her ears at all times,” the Mayor says. “Muffles any Noise she might hear from the observation rooms. Keeps her focused on the Officer of the Ask.”
“Wouldn’t want ’em hearing what we already know,” Davy says.
“Yes,” the Mayor says, sounding a little surprised. “Yes, that’s it exactly, David.”
Davy smiles and his Noise glows a bit.
“We saw the A written in blue on the side of the farmhouse,” Mr. Hammar says, still hovering behind the woman. “The bomb was the same as all the others planted by your organizayshun–”
“It’s not my organization!” says the woman but Mr. Hammar continues like she didn’t even speak.
“And we know you’ve worked in that field for the past month.”
“So have other women!” she yells, sounding more and more desperate. “Milla Price, Cassia MacRae, Martha Sutpen–”
“So they were in on it, too?”
“No! No, just that–”
“Cuz Mrs Price and Mrs Sutpen have already been Asked.”
The woman stops, her face suddenly even more frightened.
Davy chuckles next to me. “Got you,” he whispers.
But I can hear a weird sense of relief in him.
I wonder if the Mayor hears it, too.
“What did–” the woman says, stopping and then having to go on. “What did they say?”
“They said you tried to get ’em to help,” Mr. Hammar says calmly. “Said you tried to enlist ’em as terrorists and when they refused, you said you’d carry on alone.”