Chapter 8 : The Listener
The handshake at shift change told me everything Guardian Morrison knew about the east sector patrol routes.
I stood at the checkpoint transition point, waiting for Morrison to finish his log entries, and when he extended his hand in the perfunctory greeting Guardians exchanged at shift changes, I took it. Two seconds of contact. A flash of information—patrol timing, blind spots, the location of a surveillance gap near the old library, which Commanders lived in which houses on his regular route.
Morrison pulled his hand back and walked toward the barracks without a second glance. I watched him go and catalogued what I'd learned.
The power works on Guardians. It works on anyone I touch, as long as they're not actively resisting contact.
The Econowife at checkpoint seven confirmed the theory.
She'd stumbled on the uneven pavement near my post, and I'd caught her arm to steady her—a natural gesture, nothing suspicious. The flash came immediately: her household's ration schedule, her husband's work assignment at the textile factory, the name of her daughter who'd been taken to become a Wife in training, the address of a Martha who sold black-market medicine.
I released her arm. She thanked me with the nervous gratitude of someone unused to kindness from Guardians.
"Under His eye," I said.
"Under His eye."
She walked on. I added the black-market Martha's address to my mental map and felt the headache beginning to build.
The testing continued across two days of patrol and escort shifts. Six deliberate contacts. Four produced information flashes of varying intensity. Two produced nothing.
The Guardian at the armory—the one who always seemed to be watching everyone else, the one whose posture suggested hostility and suspicion—gave me nothing when I brushed past him reaching for a weapon log. His mind was closed, or his resistance was strong enough to block the pull.
A Martha at the Putnam household flinched away from my steadying hand before I could make contact. The flash never came. Her fear, her trauma, whatever made her avoid touch—it acted as a shield.
Consent matters. The realization crystallized over the second day. Not informed consent, but willingness. If someone doesn't want to be touched, the power doesn't work. If they're neutral or positive about the contact, I can pull from them.
The ethical implications sat heavy in my stomach.
The Guardian I'd shaken hands with—Morrison—would never willingly share his patrol routes with someone who might use them against Gilead. The information I'd taken could be used to help Handmaids escape, to smuggle contraband, to build resistance networks. It could also be traced back to Morrison if anyone ever figured out how I'd gotten it.
I'd stolen from him. Stolen something that could get him killed.
The Econowife at the checkpoint gave me her daughter's location without knowing she'd done it. If I use that information and something goes wrong, the Eyes will look at who knew. They'll find her.
I stood at the barracks window and watched the Boston skyline—Gilead's Boston, the old buildings repurposed for theocracy—and drew a line.
I will not pull from anyone who would be endangered by the extraction.
The line was already compromised. Morrison's patrol routes were in my head. The Econowife's black-market contact was filed away with everything else. I'd crossed the boundary before I'd drawn it, and no amount of moral framework would change that.
But going forward, I could be more careful. I could target people whose knowledge wouldn't loop back to them. I could limit my pulls to information that couldn't be traced.
Or I could stop pulling entirely.
The thought lasted half a second. In Gilead, information was survival. The network I was building—the contacts, the maps, the understanding of how this system worked—required intelligence that only Knowledge Share could provide. Walking away from the power meant walking away from any chance of doing something meaningful with my position.
Use it carefully. Use it ethically. Accept that "ethical" in this context means "less harmful," not "harmless."
The Econowife's scarf fluttered in the wind near checkpoint seven. She'd dropped it again, or maybe it had blown from her basket. I retrieved it before anyone else could, and when I handed it back, she squeezed my hand in thanks.
Two seconds of contact. Involuntary.
The flash came before I could pull away.
—Thomas, his name was Thomas, he laughed like a summer afternoon, he sang that song about the mountains when he thought no one was listening, and they took him to the Colonies for reading to our daughter, and I burned every book in the house after but they still came for him—
I released her hand. She smiled—a sad, grateful smile that didn't know what she'd just given me—and walked through my checkpoint with her scarf clutched against her chest.
I stood at my post and carried a dead man's favorite song in my head.
Thomas. He laughed like a summer afternoon.
The power didn't distinguish between tactical intelligence and private grief. It took whatever it found—schedules and secrets and the intimate details of lives I had no right to know. Every extraction was a theft, and some of those thefts were worse than others.
I returned to the barracks at 1800 and lay on my bunk, headache pulsing behind my eyes, a widow's memories pressing against the inside of my skull.
How much of other people's lives will I carry before the weight becomes unbearable?
No answer. Just the taste of someone else's grief, lingering like whiskey I hadn't drunk and songs I hadn't heard and laughter I'd never witness.
Tomorrow's assignment board showed Putnam household security. The meeting I'd been waiting for—Waterford and Putnam, two Commanders whose political alliance I remembered from the show.
I closed my eyes and let the dead man's song fade into the dark.
Use the power carefully. Accept the cost. Don't forget the names of the people I take from.
Thomas. Ellen. The Handmaid in Henderson's pantry whose name I never learned.
Remember them.
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