Page 1 of The Sin

The worst lie is the one peppered with just enough truths to blind.

The Fertility Plague stripped us of the ability to conceive. Then it stripped our freedom.

I’ve lived my life inside the walled town of Capra. Walls meant to keep us in. Walls meant to keep out the nothingness of the dead world out there. Now the cracks are showing and I’ve looked, and I won’t stop looking until I’ve seen it all.

Knowing the truth is the easy part.

Knowing what to do with that truth is a whole other matter.

As a citizen of Capra, I was always destined to graduate, marry a suitable young man and embrace my duty to society.

As a member of the Sisterhood, that marriage was always destined to further the rebellion.

But rebellion is a dangerous game when you don’t know the rules.

1

Two glasses of water.

One meal.

Four white-washed walls.

No windows.

One seamless door with a tray slot.

One blinking red light in the corner. Definitely a camera.

One table.

Two hardback chairs.

Three bathroom breaks.

Seven hours.

I’d slept away some of those hours. Woken with a crick in my neck, slumped over in the chair with my cheek plastered to the table, eyelashes damp with the tears that had escaped my subconscious like little thieves in the night.

I wasn’t in rehab.

Yet.

This wasn’t the Center for Reform and Rehabilitation.

I was still at the Guard station by the wall checkpoint. After I’d been discovered and hauled off the back of Roman’s truck, the guards had marched me straight into this cell and I hadn’t been moved.

Discovered.That wasn’t the right word. I hadn’t been discovered. I’d been turned in by Roman. Betrayed by the man I’d trusted with my life.

The scene played over and over inside my head like a haunted movie clip with a will of its own.

Roman cutting the engine at the Guard checkpoint just inside the wall.He hadn’t done that on the way out, he’d just let the engine idle for a couple of seconds before driving on.

Silence.The guard hadn’t asked him to stop. Hadn’t demanded he step out of the vehicle. That’s not how it had happened.

“Who’s the officer on duty?”

“Sergeant Mackintosh.”

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