The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe) (2 page)

“You mean a lie. Like telling me you were an administrator was a lie. Connor the clerk, who hated the way enforcers pushed Illegals around and was so sympathetic to our cause. What was the point of all that pretending, anyway?”

“What do you think, Ashala?”

“I don’t know,
Connor
!”

Except I did know. He’d been gathering information about the Tribe, trying to find a way to detain us.
To detain me.
Which, in the end, was exactly what he had done.

The frustrating thing was, I’d known for the past week that he wasn’t what he seemed. Seven days ago, Daniel, who had been spying on the center from the grasslands, had spotted Connor walking out of the gates dressed in enforcer black instead of administrator beige. But before I’d had the chance to do something about that information, a piece of spectacularly bad luck put me and an enforcer troop in the same place at the same time. It had been sheer, terrible coincidence that they made an unscheduled supply run into the bustling farming town of Cambergull on the exact same morning I was there to attend a clandestine meeting. They hadn’t even been searching for me, and I might have bluffed my way past them, too, if the troop hadn’t included the one enforcer who could identify me on sight.

“I guess you’ll be getting a big promotion out of this,” I said bitterly.

“I expect I will, yes.”

“You’re awfully smug for someone who caught me by accident.”

“And you are not very grateful.”

I was so astonished, it took me a second to be able to speak.
“Grateful?”

“I probably saved your life in Cambergull. Or weren’t you conscious enough to remember?”

“No,” I lied. “All I remember is a bunch of enforcers standing around uselessly while I bled to death.” Which
was
what the rest of them had done. Every one of them had frozen in horror when they’d realized that their valuable prisoner was badly hurt. Not Connor, though. He’d taken charge, putting pressure on the wound, sending someone running for a doctor, and finally rushing me to Wentworth once it was clear ordinary medicine wasn’t going to be enough.
If he’s waiting to be thanked, he’ll be waiting a very long time
. It seemed the last and cruelest betrayal, that he would fight so hard to save me for interrogation instead of allowing me to slip quietly into the safety of oblivion.

“If you had any decency in you,” I said tiredly, “you’d have let me die.”

His face was completely devoid of expression. “That would have defeated the purpose of capturing you.”

Because dead people couldn’t be subjected to the machine.

For a perilous instant, I was on the verge of saying,
Don’t you care at all?
I could feel the words rising up, fighting to be spoken, and before they could escape me, I changed them into something else. “You’ve
never
asked the Question?”

“The what?”

“You know, Connor. The Question. The one that Friends of Detainees keep writing in red paint across the front of Bureau of Citizenship offices.” The posing of a simple ten-word question was one of the strategies of the growing reform movement, a loose alliance of groups and individuals who were pushing to have the Citizenship Accords dismantled altogether. Enunciating every word distinctly, I put the Question to Connor: “‘Does a person with an ability belong to the Balance?’”

He shrugged dismissively. “I have never asked that.”

“You genuinely believe we’re outside the natural order? That you can treat us however you like without causing disharmony, because we’re simply not part of the Balance in the first place?”

He nodded, and I knew I should leave it alone. But it still seemed unreal to me that he could be this person, that there was no trace left of the Connor I’d thought I’d known. “I guess that explains how you sleep at night,” I snarled. “Because I honestly don’t know how you could live with yourself otherwise.”

“I will do what I must in order to preserve my world.”

“I’m just one Illegal trying to live free! You
really
think that capturing me, putting a collar around my neck, and interrogating me is necessary to save your world?”

“Yes.”

There was an unmistakable ring of conviction in his voice. He truly thought I was some kind of unnatural thing, and it hurt, more than I’d expected it to. Focusing on the floor, I tried to breathe past the sudden pain around my heart. Then Connor spoke again. “You’re not ‘just one Illegal.’”

“What?”

“You are the Tribe, Ashala.” I frowned, and he continued. “You were the leader, the glue that held them together. Now that you’re gone, it won’t be long before they start squabbling with one another and leave the safety of the Firstwood. We think it shouldn’t be more than six months until they’re detained. The enforcers here are taking bets on it.”

I inhaled sharply, furious, and not only because of what he’d said. The consuming rage I’d felt at discovering his betrayal rose up, and I wanted to make him feel some of the pain he’d caused me.
If I had a sword, or a knife, or a big heavy piece of wood . . .
But I didn’t. All I had to strike him with were words. “The Tribe is bigger than me. They’ll go on, and grow stronger with every Illegal who joins them. Until the day they march on your centers, enforcer.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat, Ashala?”

I bared my teeth at him. “There will come a day when a thousand Illegals descend on your detention centers. Boomers will breach the walls. Skychangers will send lightning to strike you all down from above, and Rumblers will open the earth to swallow you up from below. There will be nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, and no way to stop them from freeing every single Illegal in this center. And when that day comes, Justin Connor, think of me.”

He stopped dead and swiveled around. I hoped I’d finally gotten to him, that he was annoyed, infuriated even. Only whatever emotion was illuminating his features wasn’t anger. I wasn’t sure I could even have described it, except to say it was powerful and deeply felt, transforming him from a distant marble angel to a flesh-and-blood human being. He was so impossibly gorgeous that I almost instinctively reached out to touch his face, seeking confirmation that such living perfection could be real. Then, to my astonishment, he pressed his fist to his heart in an enforcer’s salute, a silent gesture of respect.

I staggered backward.
He’s mocking me
. I waited for him to laugh or make some sarcastic comment, but he just stood there, arm across his chest, body slightly bent toward me, blue eyes intent upon mine.
What is this? Some kind of weird enforcer acknowledgment of a worthy opponent or something?
It didn’t feel like that, though. It felt like he was offering me his allegiance, which was nonsensical. He was an enforcer, a Citizen, and I was a detainee, an Illegal. He was the betrayer, and I the betrayed. Except for the space of a few unsettling seconds, something seemed to pass between us that ignored everything we were and formed our relationship anew. Until he resumed his stride down the hallway and the moment was lost.

Troubled, I fell in beside him.
What was that?
I couldn’t afford to be so shaken, not in this place where all I could rely on was myself. I stole a glance at him under my lashes and found that he was once again an unreachable statue.
What did you think, Ashala?
I asked myself jeeringly.
That he was going to tell you it was all part of some elaborate plan and he didn’t betray you?
Somewhere deep inside, a small, defiant part of me answered
yes
. Right on top of that, I heard a familiar voice saying, “Trust your heart, Ash.”

Georgie?
Wide-eyed, I scanned the hallway. But she wasn’t here, and I realized that the voice had been in my head.
I’ve been captured, I’ve almost been killed, and now I’m losing my mind?
It was crazy to hear voices in your head, and crazier still to be comforted by what they told you. I choked back a hysterical giggle and stifled the hope that, despite everything, had flared to life within me.
You are tired,
I told myself,
and injured
. My mind was playing tricks, and all my heart would do was betray me. Again.

Connor stopped suddenly, and I stumbled to an awkward halt, realizing, to my dismay, that we were standing in front of a door. It was white, like every other door in this place, but I knew what was behind it.

We had reached the machine.

But I found no machine waiting for me. Just a man dressed in administrator robes, sitting behind a large white desk with an empty chair in front of it. Then I noticed another door, on the far side of the room. Behind that door, I had no doubt, was the machine.

Connor waved me toward the administrator then stepped away and took up a position against the wall at my back. As I moved forward, I sensed his watchful gaze upon me, obviously ready to intervene if I took it into my head to make some futile escape attempt. I ignored him, focusing instead on the elderly man behind the desk. He had a nice face — brown eyes that twinkled out from behind wire-rimmed glasses, a long inquisitive nose, and a mouth that seemed to curve up at the corners, as if he smiled a lot. I felt ever so slightly reassured — until I reached the chair and he said, “Hello, Ashala. My name is Neville Rose. You can call me Neville, if you like.”

I sat down heavily.
It’s him.
I should have realized. Not that I’d ever met the man before, but I’d heard the stories that had circulated about Neville Rose during the six years he’d run Detention Center 1, tales that he and a doctor named Miriam Grey had secretly experimented on Illegals and developed some kind of interrogation machine. I’d known, too, that he’d been put in charge of this place, the government’s brand-new detention center for Illegal orphans. So it made perfect sense that he’d be waiting here to ask me questions. I just hadn’t expected him to seem so . . . sweet. Grandfatherly. Harmless.

He wasn’t harmless. Not at all.

I swallowed nervously. Neville continued speaking, in that same pleasant tone. “I’m the Chief Administrator here at Detention Center 3, and I would like it if the two of us could be friends. I almost feel like I know you already.” He reached down, opened one of the drawers of the desk, and pulled out a thin file. There wasn’t a name on it, just a number, but I knew this had to be
my
file, my very own entry in the detailed records the government kept on all Illegals and runaways.

It hadn’t taken them long to figure out who I was, or, rather, who I’d been before I ran. Then again, I guessed Connor had been feeding them information about me for weeks now. I comforted myself that I knew a little about Neville, too, and he wouldn’t even realize it. I’d never told Connor that some of the Tribe made runs into the towns and Gull City, picking up gossip where they could. It was surprising how much could be learned by hanging around a Friends of Detainees rally.

Neville tapped the cover with one long finger and said cheerfully, “According to this, Ashala Jane Ambrose, you’re sixteen years old and were born in Gull City. Although you call yourself Ashala Wolf now, don’t you? Why Wolf, may I ask?”

He peered at me over the top of his glasses. I stared back, wondering if he truly expected to lure me into handing over information about myself with the friendly grandpa routine.

Finally, he spoke again. “All right, Ashala. If you don’t want to talk about your name, let me ask you something else. How do you think you ended up here?”

What is that, some kind of trick question?
“I was captured in Cambergull, and this is the closest detention center. Where else would they bring me?”

“That’s not quite what I meant. It’s your choices that brought you here, Ashala. You see that, don’t you?”

“No,” I said flatly. “I don’t.”

“Let me put it this way. You could have entered this place like any other detainee and lived peacefully among others of your kind. Instead, you’ve come here as a lawbreaker, no longer entitled to the same privileges as the others.” He shook his head at me. “You were twelve when you ran away from Gull City. Old enough to know you were required to undergo a Citizenship Assessment after you reached the age of fourteen. And that you should have asked for an assessment earlier if you suspected you had an ability. You did suspect, didn’t you?”

Oh, yes.
Ever since I was eight, when I’d had an intense, vivid dream that I was flying over the city and I’d woken up on the roof. After a couple more incidents like that, it hadn’t taken a genius to figure out I had some kind of power that occasionally let me do the things I was dreaming about. “Yeah, I suspected. That’s why I ran away.”

“So you
chose
to ignore the Citizenship Accords. What’s more, by living in the Firstwood, you were encouraging others to do the same, and it wasn’t even adults you were influencing. It was innocent children.”

I opened my mouth to tell him that the kids I knew could think for themselves better than most adults could, but then decided against it. I didn’t want to confirm there were no adults in the Tribe, although there weren’t. Most Illegals ran away before they were assessed at age fourteen, and anyone who didn’t was either put in detention or given an Exempt tattoo. Or even a Citizenship tattoo, if they were able to fool an assessor. It wasn’t like the whole system was completely foolproof — I knew that some adult Illegals must escape detention or get tired of living as an Exempt, because I’d heard that there were other groups of Illegals hiding out in the countryside that had people of all ages in them. But no adult had ever yet tried to join the Tribe.