Jenna Black - Resistance

“I imagine it’s harder on someone your age,” Athena said, giving her a motherly smile of sympathy. “But it gets better. You have my word on it.”

Nadia tried to return the smile, but she suspected the expression looked more sickly than anything. Their lunches arrived, saving Nadia from having to respond. The bacon cheeseburger looked and smelled delicious, but there was an odd combination of hunger and nausea in her stomach that gave her pause.

How long did she have before Gerri acted? Was she already too late? How could she sit here and indulge in a hamburger when her sister’s life was in danger?

“What’s wrong, dear?” Athena asked, her fork poised above an elegant salad. “You’ve gone quite pale.”

Nadia tried to pull herself together. Tormenting herself with her fears wasn’t going to help anything. She had to do something more productive than that, had to channel her energy into figuring out a way to salvage the situation. She didn’t have time for her usual caution, nor did she have time to sit and contemplate Athena’s potential motives.

She needed help; she needed it now; and Athena was the only person she could imagine might give it to her. Swallowing her misgivings—and ignoring her food—Nadia clasped her hands together in her lap, leaned over the table, and spoke in a voice low enough she could be sure no one overheard.

“I have a desperate need to contact someone on the outside,” she confided. “And I mean desperate as in life or death.”

Athena nodded and frowned sympathetically, but Nadia could tell at once that she was having the typical adult response to a teenager saying something was life or death. The same response Nadia’s own parents had had, that had kept them from letting her talk to Gerri before she was carted away.

“I swear I’m not exaggerating,” Nadia said. Her voice rose, and she forced herself to lower it once more. She didn’t know what might happen to her if her words were overheard, especially by a member of the retreat staff, but she didn’t want to find out.

“Look,” she continued, “my sister has reason to believe I have blackmail evidence on the Chairman.” The spark of renewed interest in Athena’s eyes suggested Nadia had chosen the right course to pursue. “It’s not what she thinks it is, but I’m afraid she’s going to try to use it to force the Chairman to reinstate the agreement between our families.”

Athena leaned forward conspiratorially. “What is it you really have?” Her eyes were alight with the thought of sticking it to the man she called Rat Bastard.

“I can’t tell you,” Nadia said, because while she was throwing caution to the wind, she didn’t dare let herself go too far. “I can tell you that I recorded him saying something incriminating, but I have to leave it at that. The problem is, the Chairman knows I have the recordings and knows I have them hidden. Right now, there’s no way he can find them. But my sister can, and I’m terrified that she’ll lead him right to them. I have to find a way to contact her and warn her away.”

The skepticism was back in Athena’s eyes. Nadia realized how outlandish her story sounded. Hell, for all Athena knew, Nadia had been shut up in the Sanctuary because she was a pathological liar.

“I have to get to a phone,” Nadia concluded. “I thought maybe someone who’s been here as long as you have might have some idea how I could do it. I don’t care if I get caught or get in trouble, as long as I have a chance to make that call first.”

Nadia swallowed hard, fighting back a rising tide of panic as her fears resurfaced one by one, tightening her chest and making a trickle of sweat run down her back. She was calling attention to herself, and one of the uniformed servers was heading toward the table. Her untouched burger was getting cold, and Athena had done nothing more than rearrange her salad on her plate as she listened to Nadia talk. Their eyes met across the table.

Athena shoved a forkful of salad into her mouth. Then she reached over to pat Nadia’s hand, looking relaxed, if a little bit sad. Nadia’s stomach was doing flips, but she took her cue from Athena and forced herself to take a bite out of her burger.

“Is everything okay over here?” the server asked. Her name tag identified her as “Susan,” and she had the overly bright smile that Nadia was beginning to think was a prerequisite for retreat staff.

Nadia’s mouth was so dry she could hardly chew, and the lukewarm burger felt like a lump of clay. Fortunately, Athena answered for both of them.

“We’re fine,” she said. “We were talking about Ellie, and it made us both a little sad. But life goes on for the rest of us, so we’ll talk about something else from now on.”

Susan gave them both sad eyes, then patted Nadia’s shoulder. “If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to let us know. And we do have grief counseling available, if you—”

Nadia managed to swallow the lump of burger and shook her head. “Thank you, but like Athena said, we’re fine. I was very young when I last saw Mrs. Hayes. I’m sad about what happened, but I don’t need a grief counselor or anything.”

Susan nodded and patted her shoulder again. Nadia had to fight her desire to pull away. “All right, honey. But if you change your mind…”

Nadia nodded solemnly. “I will definitely let someone know.”

She let out a sigh of relief when Susan wandered away.

“They mean well,” Athena said with a roll of her eyes.

“Uh-huh.” Sometimes, meaning well just wasn’t enough. Knowing her stomach was going to protest, she took another bite of her burger, figuring if she ate, it was less likely there’d be another well-meaning intervention.

“Getting to a phone will be quite a challenge,” Athena said, looking at her salad with great intensity as she speared a cherry tomato. “The staff are forbidden to bring phones with them to work here, so you’d have to get to one of the land lines in the business offices.”

At Tranquility, sneaking into one of the offices would have been hard, but not impossible. But here, where there were key cards and curfews and security cameras …

“It can be done,” Athena said. “Not without getting caught, though.”

“What happens if I get caught?”

“They deactivate your key card for a while so you can’t get out of the residence hall. No library, no gym, no movies, no classes. Nothing. And they’ll deliver food to your room, because you can’t get to the dining hall. Depending who’s on duty at the time, they might also confiscate any books or paper you have in your room. It’s death by boredom, and it’s no fun.”

“Sounds like the voice of experience.”

Athena grinned, but neither confirmed nor denied Nadia’s guess.

“So if I’m willing to pay the price, how would I go about sneaking into one of those offices to use the phone?”

Athena grinned again. “Well, if you happen to be lucky enough to know someone who knows the master override code for all the card readers…”

Waitingwas pure hell. Nadia knew that every second she delayed was one more second for Gerri to get her hands on the recordings. But regardless of how urgently Nadia wanted to warn her sister, there was no way she was getting to a phone at the Sanctuary during the day. In fact, Athena had suggested she wait until 3:00 A.M. to have the least likelihood that anyone would be up and about to stop her. So she struggled her way through the day, trying not to act as if she wanted to crawl out of her skin.

She retired to her room shortly after dinner, which she could barely manage to choke down thanks to her nerves. And that was when the true waiting game began.