When Alteration Finds

Author's Note: Contains strong language and dark themes.

“You should plead guilty,” my lawyer says baldly. 

I blink rapidly, thinking I must have misheard. “What?” 

“You should plead guilty,” she says again, drawing out each word meticulously. Her coffee has gone cold but she takes a long draught of it anyway. I watch with envy. Even after six hours of interrogation the arresting officers still haven’t offered me any refreshment. No water. No donut. Not even motor oil flavored coffee. 

All they’ve given me is a bipedal reptile as a lawyer. “You’re lucky,” the officer with the large mole insisted. “The PRC did away with defense lawyers.” 

“Why would I do that?” I asked, voice cracking from dryness. “They can’t prove I…”

“They don’t need to prove anything,” she replies laconically. “All they have to do is put the two of you in the same room and they’ll know.” 

I feel my temper flare. “How would they know? How would any of you know? You’ve never been in love before.” 

There’s just a hint of amusement in her icy gray eyes. “See?” 

I inhaled deeply, willing my heart to slow. “If I plead guilty,” my head swims at the thought, “that means…”

“It means your sentence will be commuted to fifteen years at the camps. Or at least that’s been my experience. If you plead not guilty, and the courts decide you’re lying, they’ll give you twenty-five.” 

My vision tunnels and I have to bury my head between my legs. 

“So?” the reptile intones. “Fifteen or twenty-five?” 

Her voice sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a well. 

“Why?” I ask.

She pauses. “Why what?”

I raise my head to look at her. I don’t need a mirror to know I look haggard with dark circles under my eyes. We’d only been asleep for an hour when they raided his apartment complex. 

“Why are you doing this to us?”

“Me? I’m not doing anything.” 

“You’re throwing us in a work camp because we fell in love.”

“I’m not doing anything,” she says, draping a leg over her knee. “I’m giving you your best shot.”

“By giving me the least shitty choice between two shitty choices.” 

She shrugged. “I’m a lawyer. That’s what I do.” 

“We didn’t do anything wrong. If you just think. If you’ll just listen. Love is—”

“Selfish.”

“No!” I bang the table with my fist. “No, it isn’t. It’s—it’s…” How do I put it into words? “How is it selfish to want to do whatever it takes to keep someone safe? How is it selfish to put their needs before your own?” 

“Their needs,” she corrects me, “not The Collective’s need.” 

“Who cares about The Collective’s need if we can’t love each other?” 

The reptile doesn’t answer, pinning me with her stare. I’m getting under her skin even though she’s trying not to show it. I’m threatening the Orthodoxy and no one appreciates that. Especially not someone like her. She’s a True Believer. 

“How old are you?” I demand.

She regards me with a cold, calculating stare. She doesn’t want to tell me but she is curious where my line of questioning is going. “Forty,” she says. “Why?”

“So you remember when it started,” I say. “You were there when they wrote The Accords. When the Initiate put everything to a vote.”

“Naturally.” 

“And you voted yes.” 

It isn’t a question as I already know the answer. It’s written all over her snide, supercilious face. She is proud of herself for the part she played in making everyone’s lives worse. I can picture her standing in the city square, cheering with the rest of the college kids as The Initiate announces the illegalization of romantic love.

“How do you sleep at night knowing you took away everything from us?” 

She sets the empty coffee cup on the table and steeples her fingers. “We made a decision based on evidence—”

“Evidence carefully curated by the state to reach a set conclusion.”

“It was based on the evidence that romantic and familial entanglements hamper the ability of The Collective to reach equilibrium.” 

“Or you were a bunch of miserable bastards that wanted everyone to be as unhappy as you. You saw other people in love and you couldn’t take it because you knew you would never have what they did.” 

She angles a perfect brow derisively. “Maybe we were miserable bastards,” she lowers her leg so she can lean forward nearly closing the distance between us, “but at least we didn’t get ourselves locked up in a work camp.” 

The ghost of a smirk is pulling at the corner of her lips. “Guilty,” she says in nearly a whisper, “or not guilty?” 

My fists clench. If it weren’t for the shackles keeping me tied to the table, I would clasp my fingers around her pale throat until her unblemished skin turned purple. Adding murder to my list of charges wouldn’t make much difference. Most people don’t survive their full sentence at the labor camps. 

How long will I last? How long will he? 

My throat tightens. I can’t think about that. I can’t think of him toiling away in some coal mine, his lungs turning black from inhaling the dust. I know I’ll never see him again. I know it isn’t possible. But maybe…

Maybe if I survive, maybe if I take the lighter sentence and he does the same…

“Guilty,” I whisper. 

The smirk comes to life and she swings her briefcase onto the table, unclasping the latches. From the depths she produces a ream of paper and pen and slides it over to me. “Sign this.” 

My eyes trace over the words, banal legalese that makes little sense. I hold the pen, hovering over the blank space that will seal the next fifteen years of my life. Am I making a mistake? Should I try to fool them? Pretend that I don’t love him? I image myself sitting in the witness box. “Do you love this man?” Could I look across the table and say no? 

My pulse quickens just imagining his face. His large brown eyes cutting me straight to my core. 

No. No one would believe me. 

I sign on all three lines. She flips the page and I sign. I don’t bother reading any more. I feel the years of my life slipping away with each stroke of the pen. By the time she swipes the document back, I’ve already become an old woman.

I say nothing as she places the paper back into the briefcase. “Good choice. Probably the first you’ve made in a long time.” 

I feel too depleted to rise to her bait. It’s over. Decided. I will be nearly forty years old before I see freedom again. If I ever do. 

She brushes off her skirt and stands, towering over me. I stare at her as she preens herself. If I ever lay eyes on her again, she’ll be fifty-five. The blond in her hair will be flecked with silver. The supple skin of her painted face will turn wrinkly. 

How will I look? Those that survive the camps (the lucky 5%) age more rapidly. At least that’s what I always hear from drips and drabs of gossip at the factory. 

She starts for the door, then pauses, hand still on the handle. Her blue eyes sparkle with malice as she looks back at me. “Was it worth it?” 

“Go to hell.”

She makes a low noise of amusement, slips out the door, and vanishes out of my life forever. 

—————————————————————————

“Give it a few weeks and you’ll start to hate him.” 

Anna told us new girls this on our first day. She is the oldest prisoner in the female barracks. She says she’s thirty-seven, but she looks nearly sixty. She was sentenced to this camp three years ago after they discovered her living with her “husband” in the attic of an old convenience store. Marriages have been banned for years but they considered themselves man and wife anyway. 

“Dumbest thing I ever did,” she says with a vacant look in her cloudy green eyes. 

After fourteen hours of backbreaking labor, I almost believe her. 

Everyday is one hundred years and barely an hour at the same time. I lay awake at night in pitch blackness, knuckles bleeding as my barrack mates hack and swear and cry. No one talks to each other. We’re too absorbed in our own misery and far too exhausted. 

My stomach rumbles and I’m so hungry I think I could pick the straw from my mattress and eat it like a horse. Instead, I shut my eyes and the face of my reptilian lawyer comes to me unbidden. Her words peck at me like the beak of a carrion bird. Was it worth it? Was it worth it? 

I shudder so violently it rattles my bones. The barracks have little insolation against the formidable cold outside. We aren’t given blankets here, only the clothes on our back for warmth. 

Was it worth it? 

I swallow the dryness in my throat and I focus so hard my head and chest begin to ache. I picture my body nestled against him, his heat leeching off onto me. I feel his breath on the back of my neck. His scent is strong in my nostrils and my insides coil with something more than lust. I feel us both detach from the four poster room as though we are floating in another realm. Another existence in which nothing else matters. 

Was it worth it? 

I tuck my arms around my middle, pretending they are his.