Kora ordered food, had it delivered to her room. A tray of pancakes, eggs, french toast, coffee and orange juice arrived.
The waiter closed the door as he left.
There was a small coffee table beside the couch in this room. The bed was mounted on the wall, far above her head.
It had been a few hours since she'd eaten at the bar.
As she started in on the pancakes, she couldn't help thinking about the Resistance. Her mind's eye kept picturing Felicity. The famed leader. How does one rise to that level of badass? Kora wasn't sure. She tried to think of ways the Resistance could take on the Authority and really hurt it; but she couldn't think of any. How could you hurt a government that had a million soldiers? She couldn't get past that amount of soldiers. According to the census reports printed in the newspapers, given to them by the government, the Authority ruled over about fifty million people. Fifty million was enough to beat the one million, but the one million were trained and had weapons. The fifty million were disarmed and untrained. And not all of them would be able to fight or even want to fight. Many of them were children or elderly. Many of them were weak and starving. Many of them were content to live under the despotic government and had no desire to foment an insurrection.
Kora didn't know more than anyone else about the Resistance. She didn't know where they were located, how many people they were, how exactly they functioned, how they were funded. She didn't know Felicity's story. No one did. Felicity had to have made great strides against the Authority, because the Authority didn't publish her crimes. It would be too embarrassing for them to publish her crimes, because they'd been successfully committed against them.
Instead, they charged her with the vague terms "insurrection," and "treason."
Kora was making quick work of the food.
She took a few big sips of the orange juice.
Her strength was coming back fast. It was incredible timing—the Resistance plucking her out of prison.
Kora couldn't figure it. She considered herself to be a good smuggler, but maybe not good enough to warrant attention from the Resistance. Perhaps they were desperate. Perhaps they weren't as well resourced as Kora figured they were.
The setting suns flamed through the side window of the cabin, casting sharp light across her face now. She scooted out of the rays. She finished the food on her plate, then sat back, getting lost in thought. How could one successfully take on and hurt the Authority?
Kora was a problem solver.
She loved looking at problems and trying to solve them.
Perhaps it's why she loved smuggling. It was an outlet. She had to figure out how to get things past people, how to navigate Authority checkpoints, how to flee quietly, sneak around. In this way, she got to live outside the rules, in freedom most would never experience.
The Authority was everyone's problem.
For Kora, the answer was to skirt around the problem, navigate it. She had never considered eradicating or destroying it. The Resistance had been trying for a decade now with Felicity at the helm of the movement.
Kora knew that she knew that she knew that things were the way they were. Sometimes, you couldn't change things. Kora's life was what it was—a torrent of terrible. She lived from tragedy to tragedy, and none of it had been her choice. This life was beyond the grasp of humans. Kora knew, from experience, that there was no such thing as control in this life. Things happened to you. You either accepted those things and moved past them or you let yourself be destroyed by them.
That's all there was.
And the Authority was one of those things. Being born under the rule of the Authority meant a life of subjection to their rules and laws. To overreach. To general hopelessness.
Kora accepted it. Despite what she'd said to Scarlet, she did pay her taxes. She had tried not to, but the Finance Committee caught her and garnished her wages. They kept surprisingly good track of the people's money.
Kora didn't accept that she needed to live a life of hopelessness, however. She believed that the Authority, like any other problem she'd faced, could be manipulated. She could use it to her gain if she worked hard enough.
As for the Resistance, they had no hope.
It was a different equation altogether.
One that made no sense to Kora.
*****
The first night sleeping on the train was comfortable. Kora had opened the window a crack before she went to bed. She lay under the thick covers with the fresh, cool air filling the room.
She slept better than she had in months.
She woke up twenty minutes before five in the morning. It took her a few minutes to fall back asleep. She did. And slept straight through sunset and onward to ten o'clock in the morning.