Or traitor, I think, and wonder for a moment what sort of punishment Reverend Carl and his pack of Pure Men might have set aside for subversives. In a world where women are sent to the Siberia of North Dakota for crimes as petty as fornication, where Jackie serves a life sentence in a concentration camp for homosexuals, surely there must be some fresh horror for women who steal state secrets.

They’ll take me away; that’s certain. I’ll never see my kids again, or Patrick, or Lorenzo.

I try to imagine a life, somewhere on what cons used to call the inside, where I spend every new day watching the mental photographs of everyone fade and silver with time until nothing but the faintest outline is left. Or maybe I won’t have to do that. Maybe my last image will be of the inside of a hood as a noose slips around my neck, or the gel-smeared cap of an electric chair is strapped firmly onto my shaved head, or a needle slides into my vein.

No, it wouldn’t be a needle. That would be too kind.

The clock inside chimes twelve, counting out my heartbeats. There’s no need to count them; I can feel each beat in my ears like a kettledrum.

But I’ve gone this far, so why not a bit further?

I lock the mailbox after taking out its contents, only the single envelope, and go back into the house. Despite the still, warm air inside, a chill runs up and down my arms, raising the flesh into a braille of goose bumps.

We don’t have it as bad as Winston Smith, having to crouch into a blind corner of his one-room flat while Big Brother watches through a screen on the wall, but we do have cameras. There’s one at the front door, one at the back, and one over the garage, aimed at the driveway. I watched them being installed a year ago, on the day Sonia and I were fitted with the wrist counters. No one could possibly monitor every household all the time—there isn’t enough manpower for constant surveillance; nevertheless, I’m careful to keep the manila envelope flat against my body as I turn from the mailbox and slide back through the front door. Then I walk from living room to dining room and toward the half bath at the side of the kitchen. It seems a private enough place.

Inside, I sit on the floor, my back to the wall, and pry up the prongs on the metal clasp.

The cover sheet is there, the same memo I read last evening. Under it are three separate sets of documents, each paper-clipped to a colored cover page, one white, one gold, and one red. I flip the white cover first, revealing an outline of my team’s goals:

Develop, test, and mass-produce anti-Wernicke serum