What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Six

 

They didn’t tell me about Chastity Reach when I was arrested.

 

Or when they shot my dog.

 

They didn’t tell me about Chastity Reach when they took my parents away down a different corridor; my mother - with a leather hood over her head, buckled tightly around her throat - turning back once, already learning not to reach for me. They didn’t tell me during intake, or the first nights, or the days that blurred together in a way that made time feel like another thing they had confiscated.

 

They waited until the worst of it was over.

 

That was how I knew it mattered. By then, my body had learned the rules. How to sit. How to stand. How to answer without tone. The pain had receded into something dull and instructional. I had stopped expecting explanations. I knew how to ‘play the game’. I knew what made the difference between punishment and approval.

 

So when they moved me to a smaller room - cleaner, quieter - I felt something close to relief. There was a chair. A table. A cup of water already waiting for me.

The woman who came in wore a soft institutional grey instead of black. No insignia. Her hair was neatly arranged, her hands folded as if this were a conversation between equals.

 

“Rebecca,” she said.

 

It startled me that she used my first name.

 

“You’ve been through a great deal,” she said. “But it was necessary. What you experienced here was corrective, not punitive. I want you to understand that.”

 

I nodded because nodding was safe.

 

“Your file indicates strong early resistance,” she continued, consulting nothing. “Which is not uncommon. Especially in cases involving family contamination. But it set the benchmark for what we had to do.”

 

The words slid into place quietly.

 

“Your parents,” she said, gently, “held beliefs that were destabilizing. You were raised in an environment that made alignment difficult. We understand all of this.”

 

I felt something stir at the mention of them - my mother’s hands, my father’s voice - but it rose sluggishly, like a thought that had been sedated.

 

“We don’t blame you for your upbringing,” she said. “In fact, it makes your progress here more impressive.”

 

Progress.

 

She let that word settle.

 

“You’ve been processed through the intake phase,” she went on. “And you’ve demonstrated capacity for learning. For reflection. That’s very good, Rebecca. I want you to know that.”

 

I thought of the questions in class. The way my answers had come faster each time.

 

“There are women who never reach this point,” she said. “They exhaust themselves resisting. Or they break.”

 

She didn’t say what happened to them after.

 

She slid a folder across the table. Thick. Cream-coloured. On the cover, embossed in the same calm font I was beginning to recognize, were the words:

 

CHASTITY REACH

Administrative Region J-3

 

I stared at it.

 

“Chastity Reach,” she said, as if reading my expression. “It’s not a facility. It’s a community.”

 

A pause.

 

“A place of calm restoration.”

 

I waited, saying nothing.

 

“It’s where women go once they are ready to be rebuilt,” she said. “Not disciplined. Not corrected. Aligned.”

 

Aligned. The word felt smoother now. Less abrasive than it once had.

 

“You won’t be confined there,” she continued. “You’ll live among others at your stage of understanding. You’ll receive guidance, education, meaningful work.” She smiled. “You’ll be safe. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To be safe? Isn’t that what all women want?”

 

Safe. I thought of the nights here, of the sounds you learned to ignore. Safety sounded almost indulgent. “What about my parents?” I asked. The question surprised me as much as it seemed to surprise her. It had been sitting somewhere deep, apparently waiting for permission.

 

Her expression softened. “They are receiving appropriate care,” she said. “But their path is separate from yours.”

 

Separate.

 

“You’re young,” she added. “Adaptable. That matters.”

 

She opened the folder and turned it so I could see. There were photographs. Rows of neat buildings on some bleak, windswept Scottish island. Women walking together. Gardens. Clean lines. Open skies. “They’ll teach you how to live without conflict,” she said. “Without the strain of constant self-definition.”

 

I noticed how often she used the word without.

 

“At Chastity Reach, you won’t be asked to decide who you are every day,” she said. “You’ll be shown. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?” The woman smiled at me in a way that was supposed to feel encouraging. I smiled back in a way that might even seem genuine.

 

Shown.

 

“Many women describe it as a relief,” she continued. “They say it’s the first time their thoughts finally felt quiet. No more shouting at the world, or trying to prove a point.”

 

I felt an unexpected ache behind my eyes. “When will I go?” I asked.

 

“Soon,” she said. “Transportation is already arranged.”

 

Already.

 

“You should understand,” she added, “this isn’t a reward. It’s a responsibility.”

 

I straightened up in my chair.

 

“You’ve demonstrated the beginnings of alignment,” she said. “Chastity Reach is where that alignment becomes internal. Where it stops feeling like something imposed.” She closed the folder. “Where it feels like a personal choice.”

 

Choice.

 

The word landed differently than it once had. Smaller. More manageable.

 

“You’ll still remember who you were,” she said, as if answering something I hadn’t said. “We don’t erase women. Heaven forbid! We’re not fascists! We simply refine them.”

 

Refine.

 

She stood up. “Get some rest,” she said. “You’ve earned this next step.”

 

When she left, I stayed seated for a long time. I thought about my mother brushing my hair when I was younger, careful and unhurried. I thought about my father teaching me how to fold a map, insisting it mattered how you did it. They were little things, but they were an important part of me.

 

I must never forget my mother.

 

I must never forget my father.

 

I must never forget Julia.

 

They were alive somewhere. I had to believe that. 

 

-----------------------------------

 

Three Years ago – Ravenscourt Hall for Girls:

 

I remembered one night in the dormitory rooms at Ravenscourt, late in our senior years, after lights out.

 

The overheads had gone dark precisely at ten. That was one of the few rules that was written down. Silence followed in stages — the rustle of sheets, the careful timing of footsteps in the corridor outside, the soft click of the duty officer’s door closing. Only once all of that had settled did the room begin to breathe again.

Julia lay on her back in the narrow bed opposite mine, hands folded behind her head, staring up at the ceiling as if it were a private screen only she could see.

 

“Did you notice,” she murmured, “that Haldane says independent thought the same way other people say rash behaviour?”

 

I froze. Not visibly. I didn’t dare move. But something in my chest tightened, sharp and reflexive, like I’d heard a glass break somewhere far away.

 

“Julia,” I whispered. “You shouldn’t…”

 

She turned her head slightly, just enough to look at me. In the dark, her smile was a pale suggestion. “Oh, relax,” she said. “I’m being very independent.”

 

I stared at the ceiling above my own bed, listening harder than I should have. The dormitory always had a low hum — pipes, vents, the building settling — but some nights it felt too even, too constant. Like a held breath. I kept my voice barely audible. “What if the rumours are true?”

 

“Which ones?” she asked.

 

“That the rooms are monitored,” I said. “That they listen after lights out.”

 

Julia snorted softly, then clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling it into a cough. “If they are,” she said, “they must be very bored.”

 

“That’s not funny.”

 

“I think it is,” she replied. “Imagine someone paid to sit there all night listening to sixteen-year-olds whisper about how terrible the soup is.”

 

I shifted onto my side, careful not to let the bed creak. “They expelled Mara for less.”

 

“Mara tried to organize a petition,” Julia said. “That was optimism. Completely different crime.”

 

I couldn’t help it — a quiet laugh escaped me before I could stop it. My heart jumped immediately, as if laughter itself were incriminating. I pressed my lips together, waiting. Nothing happened. Julia took that as encouragement. She lowered her voice into a near-perfect imitation of the headmistress. “Composure is character,” she intoned solemnly. “Which is why we’ll be confiscating all expressions of joy until further notice.”

 

I buried my face in my pillow to smother the sound, shoulders shaking. It felt reckless just to enjoy it. Even in the dark, even whispering, the act of mocking them felt like stepping outside a marked line. “They’d say this is proof,” I whispered once I could breathe again. “That we’re ungrateful.”

 

“They always say that,” Julia replied. “It’s their favourite word. Ungrateful. As if gratitude were the same thing as obedience.”

 

I hesitated. “Isn’t it?”

 

She rolled onto her side, propping her head up on her elbow so she could see me. The room was dim enough that her face blurred at the edges, but her eyes caught the faint light from the window. “That’s what they want it to be,” she said. “That doesn’t make it true.”

 

I wanted to say something clever in response. Something brave. Instead, I listened again for the hum in the walls. “Promise me you won’t say things like this outside,” I said. “Not where someone could hear.”

 

Julia studied me for a moment, then nodded — not dismissively, but not fully conceding either.

 

“I know when to be quiet,” she said. “I just don’t think quiet should be the same thing as empty.”

 

That was the difference between us, even then. I was careful in a way that aimed to erase me. Julia was careful in a way that preserved something inside her.

She lay back again, hands folded behind her head. “If they are listening,” she added lightly, “I hope they write down the good parts.”

 

I turned onto my back, staring into the dark, my laughter already fading into something like guilt. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

 

She didn’t answer right away. When she did, her voice was softer. “No,” she said. “I just don’t want them to have everything.”

 

We lay there in silence after that, the kind that wasn’t imposed but chosen. I remember thinking how strange it was that even rebellion had to be measured, whispered, rationed. I also remember thinking — though I wouldn’t have admitted it then — that if the rumours were true, if the walls really were listening, then Julia was braver than I was.

 

Because she spoke anyway.

 

And I listened, counting the seconds between breaths, hoping the building would decide we weren’t worth recording.

 

--------------------------------------

 

They told me it was preparation, not reward. That distinction mattered to them.

 

I was taken from my cell early, before the lights fully brightened, and led down a corridor I hadn’t seen before. The air changed as we walked - less metallic, less saturated with fear. Even the floor sounded different beneath our feet.

 

The first room was tiled. White. Warm.

 

“Shower,” the attendant said, pointing. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to.

 

The water startled me when it hit my naked skin - too hot at first, then carefully adjusted until it was only warm. I stood under it longer than instructed, letting it run over my scalp, my shoulders, the places where grime and sweat and old panic had layered themselves into something almost solid. I hadn’t realised how filthy I was until the brown sluice was washed from my body. I let myself breath softly under the jet of warm water. 

 

My hair clung to my face in uneven strands, the brutal cut grown just long enough to look worse. I watched it darken and slick flat against my skull, watched the water carry grey away from my feet and down the drain.

 

I scrubbed with a bar of camomile soap until my skin stung. No one stopped me. When I was done, there was a towel waiting. Thick. Clean. I pressed it to my face and breathed into it, the smell of soap sharp and unfamiliar.

 

The next room had a chair bolted to the floor, and seeing it brought on a brief panic attack until I was told everything was going to be all right.  “No one’s going to hurt you, Rebecca.” But even so, I felt that fear deep in my gut. A woman in pale blue waited by the chair, scissors already in hand. “Sit,” she said, and so I did.

 

She didn’t ask what style I wanted. She didn’t explain the options. She simply began, fingers efficient, practiced. Already shortened locks fell away in a series of precise snips, landing silently on the tile. This cut was different from the first one. That one had been punishment - uneven, tearing, meant to humiliate. This one was careful. Balanced. Designed. The woman worked quickly, shaping my hair into one of the prescribed styles I had seen in the booklets: short, neat, side-parted, no strands past the jawline. Clean around the ears. Orderly. When she finished, she handed me a small mirror, and gazing at my reflection I barely recognized myself.

 

The girl staring back looked composed. Correct. Like someone who belonged in the photographs. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or erased.

 

After that came the medical exam.

 

I was told to lie down on a narrow bed. There were sharp, bright lights. Gloved hands. Questions were delivered without curiosity:

 

Any pain? Any dizziness? Any history of illness?

 

I answered automatically.

 

My feet were placed in stirrups, my thighs were parted, and I was intimately examined. I closed my eyes tightly as something cold and metallic was inserted inside my sex. 

 

“Virgin. Class A-3. Acceptable.”

 

They took blood. Checked my eyes. Pressed cold instruments against my skin. I was given injections - three of them, spaced carefully, administered with brisk reassurance.

 

“What are those for?” I asked.

 

“Preventative,” the nurse said. Against what, she didn’t say. I rubbed my arm afterward, the sting grounding, real.

 

“Slide your left wrist into the sleeve of this machine,” said the woman. “And grip the end bar with your fingers, like you’re making a fist.”

 

The skin there was thin. I’d never thought much about it before, only that it bruised easily, that you could see the faint blue of veins if the light caught it right. It felt exposed now in a way the rest of me didn’t. A machine descended on a jointed arm, compact and deliberate. A narrow lens slid into position above my wrist. I smelled something faintly sharp, antiseptic mixed with ozone.

 

“This will be brief,” she said. “Try not to move.”

 

I didn’t ask what this was. By then, I’d learned better.

 

There was a flash — not bright, but focused — and a brief, precise heat. It wasn’t pain exactly. More like the sensation of being written on. My muscles tensed anyway, instinctive, and the technician clicked her tongue softly.

 

“Still.”

 

I forced myself to relax.

 

When it was done, she dabbed the area with a cool pad and gestured for me to sit up. I turned my wrist slowly, half-expecting blood. There was none. Instead, there was a barcode: clean, black, perfectly aligned. Thin vertical lines etched into my skin as if they had always belonged there, as if my body had been waiting for them. The skin around it was slightly pink, already calming, already accepting.

 

I stared at it longer than I meant to.

 

“That’s your primary identifier,” she said, following my gaze. “Laser-etched. It won’t fade or distort. Reads under low light, artificial light, and most environmental interference.”

 

I swallowed. “It’s… permanent?”

 

She smiled, small and professional. “Yes.” She tapped a tablet and continued, as if permanence were a feature, not a sentence. “Your official registration number is J-3-44719-REBECCA-P,” she said. “That number is now associated with your biometric profile, medical history, residency clearance, and access permissions.”

She paused, then added, “You don’t need to memorize it.”

 

I looked back at my wrist.

 

“I won’t?”

 

“No,” she said. “The system will remember it for you.”

 

She explained how it would work. Doors. Checkpoints. Terminals. How I would simply present my wrist and be recognized. How it would reduce delays, prevent errors, streamline movement across Chastity Reach. How it was safer this way. Cleaner.

 

“You won’t be asked to state your name in most official contexts,” she said. “Identification is immediate.”

 

I flexed my fingers. The skin pulled slightly, the lines remaining perfectly intact.

 

“And if it doesn’t scan?” I asked.

 

She tilted her head, considering. “It will.”

 

That was the end of the discussion.

 

She wrapped my wrist loosely in a clear protective film and instructed me to remove it in six hours. No soaking. No scratching. No tampering. The word tampering landed harder than the others.

 

Before I left, she added, almost kindly, “Try not to think of it as a mark. Think of it as access.”

 

Access.

 

I held my wrist close to my body as I walked out, thumb brushing the edge of the barcode through the film, half-expecting it to feel foreign. It didn’t. It felt like skin. Like it had always been mine.

 

Later — much later — I would understand what Ravenscourt college had prepared me for.

 

Stand still.

Be legible.

Let yourself be recorded.

 

At the time, all I knew was that the system had learned my shape, and that somewhere, in a database I would never see, I had stopped being difficult to recognize.

 

The clothes were waiting when the medical exam and laser etching ended. Not folded on a bench this time, but hanging neatly from a single hook.

 

A dress.

 

It was grey - dull, matte, the kind of colour designed not to invite attention. Long-sleeved. High-necked. The fabric was heavier than I expected, structured, tailored to skim the body without acknowledging it. The hem fell just below my knees. No belt. No seams that suggested choice.

 

Shoes waited beneath it: plain black pumps, low-heeled, sensible. And with them, my new underwear. They were laid out with the same care as everything else: folded, identical, stripped of choice. Cotton, thick and unyielding. The colour was an indistinct beige - neither white nor flesh-toned enough to disappear, just present. Impossible to forget.

 

The undergarments were purely functional. A sleeveless undershift that covered my chest completely, high at the collarbone, long enough to tuck firmly into the waistband. It flattened rather than supported, designed to erase shape instead of accommodate it.

 

The knickers were similarly constructed. Full coverage. High-waisted. No seams where seams might draw attention, no elastic that might pinch or suggest softness. They held everything in place with quiet insistence.

 

Nothing lacy. Nothing thin. Nothing that could be described as flattering.

 

I dressed without looking up, aware of how the fabric immediately altered the way I moved. It was faintly stiff, resistant, encouraging me to stand straighter, move less. My body felt contained, managed, as if even my skin had been brought into alignment. The dress fit perfectly, as if my measurements had already been anticipated. It held me upright, encouraged stillness. When I moved, it moved with me just enough to remind me it was there.

 

The layers worked together. The underwear removed intimacy with my own body; the dress finished the job by presenting something neutral to the world. Whatever I had once been underneath—soft, warm, particular—was now buffered, standardized. I pressed my palms briefly to my stomach, feeling cloth instead of myself.

 

I caught my reflection again as I stepped into the shoes.

 

The woman looking back at me appeared composed. Finished. Almost professional. She didn’t look like someone who had screamed into a concrete floor days earlier. She looked like someone trusted to walk unescorted down a corridor.

 

I smoothed the fabric once, instinctively, then let my hands fall. This wasn’t clothing meant for comfort or expression. It was clothing meant to signal readiness.

 

There was one final thing I was given: a simple tube of lipstick. I held the tube in my hand, recognising it as a simple link to my own life. It now seemed a luxury.

 

“You’ve earned it,” said a woman wearing blue coveralls. “It’s yours to keep. You’re allowed to be pretty. Men like you to be pretty.”

 

Pretty.

 

In the final room, they fed me.

 

A bowl of soup. Bread. Fruit. Water. The food was plain but warm, filling in a way that felt deliberate. My hands shook slightly as I ate. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until the first swallow settled.

 

No one rushed me.

 

When I finished, the attendant collected the bowl and nodded, as if I had passed another small test. “All done,” she said.

 

I was led back to a holding area to wait.

 

My body felt different - lighter, quieter. Cleaned. Reset.

 

I touched my hair once, then stopped myself. This wasn’t care, I reminded myself. This was readiness. Still, as I sat there on a hard wooden bench, clean and fed and newly shaped, I felt something dangerous bloom in my chest.

 

Gratitude.

 

I pressed the thought down and waited for the inevitable transport to Chastity Reach.