Never Fade

by Alexandra Bracken

  Smoke drifted up lazily from the smoldering remains of fires, mingling with the sour smell of old water. I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling the last bit of anger and despair at the loss of Liam’s jacket shake off me. At the far left end of the lot were two small gray buildings—one of which Michael and his team were streaming out of, clutching armfuls of bread and chips. They crossed paths with Brett on their way back to the warehouse, slapping his shoulder, trying to turn him back. He simply waved them on and kept walking toward the building they had come from and the one next to it marked with a spray-painted red X over the door. Judging by the locks on the door, no one came out, and no one went in.

  Olivia waited until the hunters ducked back into the warehouse before she turned sharp on her heels and gripped my shoulders.

  “Oh my God,” she was saying, her voice shaking madly. “Not you, too—He’s—”

  “What happened?” I whispered. Chubs was there in an instant, looping one of Olivia’s arms over his shoulder. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Wait, you actually do know each other?” Jude cried. Chubs yanked him forward, pulling him into our huddle.

  “After I left East River…I was, well…” There was no small amount of fury tucked into her words. “I found a car with a few of the others and we got all the way to Tennessee.”

  I nodded, waiting for her to continue.

  “Of course the car gave out. The PSFs were on us the entire time, and we didn’t really have a choice. We split up and ran. I took to the woods and got pulled in by one of the ‘Slip Kid’s’ hunting parties.”

  “But I thought Fancy was the Slip Kid?” Jude wrapped his arms around himself in a vain attempt to stay warm. I elbowed him hard.

  “Fancy?” Olivia asked, startled.

  “He nicknamed Clancy,” I said, blowing out a long sigh.

  The slightest smile curled her lips, only to be replaced by a burst of intense, dark pain. Her hand floated up to her neck and pressed hard at her collarbone, as if she were trying to keep something in by force.

  “You know what happened, right?” I whispered. “You know he was responsible?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t want to believe it at first, but that night, when you guys tried to leave…I could see the way he had manipulated us. Controlled us. Our security system was near perfect, and we always knew Gray would leave Clancy alone rather than risk exposing him. The only way they could have found us was if someone leaked the coordinates or provoked him, and the only one with a way to do that was…was…”

  She slid her hand up the length of her throat, hiding the tremor there.

  Before, at East River, I’d only had a kind of passing acquaintance with Olivia. Most of our interactions were colored by whether or not Clancy or Liam were around; if they weren’t there, we barely acknowledged each other. She had been invested in both, in different ways. Liam was someone who had been easy to work with, who challenged her to think about what they could do for the camps instead of just biding their time deep in the woods. But Clancy—Clancy had been the one she had wanted to protect, impress.

  Like every other kid at that camp, he had been her savior. Her everything.

  “Fancy sort of suits him,” she said finally, stepping out of my grip.

  We made our way carefully over the pallets, walking along the swaying trail of them. “When their hunting party found me, I only went with them willingly because I wanted to get to Clancy,” Olivia muttered. “I wasn’t even thinking it was strange he could set up another camp so fast or that he had gotten away at all. I just wanted to ask him why he did that to us. I think I would have killed him.”

  “A totally reasonable response,” Chubs assured her. “Even more reasonable if you had done it slowly, with much fire and ice picks.”

  Somehow, Olivia didn’t find that funny.

  “Imagine my surprise when they dragged me in front of that hick,” she said. “The very first thing he told me was that the only way I’d get out of his tribe was if they decided to dump my body in the river.”

  I shook my head, trying to dispel the angry buzzing between my ears and focus on the here and now, rather than what I was going to do to the bastard. “What’s his story?”

  “Knox’s?” Olivia glanced around, but we were alone. “I can’t get a straight one. Supposedly, he broke out of PSF custody a few years back and was holed up in different parts of Nashville until the flood. I don’t know how he convinced the first kids here to join up, but I can tell you that most of us didn’t join the tribe by choice.”

  Jude’s thick eyebrows were drawn together. “Why does he hate the other colors so much? What happened?”

  Olivia lifted a shoulder. “Who knows? No one’s willing to risk his anger by asking. We already have to fight for every scrap of food as it is.”

  “I was wondering about that. It seems like he doesn’t even treat the Blues he has here all that well,” I said. “Are they staying because they’re scared?”

  She nodded to the trees at the other end of the parking lot, past the tents. “If you were to try to make a run for it, you’d run into the patrol he set up, and if you run into the patrol, you don’t come back. It’s already hard enough that he takes everything you own and forces you to ‘earn’ it back, but if you don’t work hard enough, or suck up enough, or entertain him, you get sent out here. Or you get traded.”

  “Traded…?”

  Olivia was as close to tears as I had ever seen her. “He… That’s how he gets food. You saw the blockades around the city, right? All the soldiers? He brings in the kids he considers worthless, and he trades them for smokes and food. Only now they’ve been asking for more kids and giving him less and less stuff to balance it out. I’m surprised they haven’t just raided us, but I guess he’s managed to keep this place a secret.”

  I thought she was the one trembling until I looked down at my own hands.

  Olivia bit her lip. “And of course—of course, he takes the kids in the White Tent, the ones no one would know to miss. He knows I can’t do anything about it and that they can’t fight back. The one time I tried, he took two kids out instead of one.”

  “What about that kid—Brett?” I asked. “He stood up for you. Could you…”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Olivia said. “He’s different than Michael, but Michael’s second in command. Brett might bring me things for the kids here every once in a while, but if Michael were to catch him…he’d be the next one gone.”

  The White Tent was exactly that—a large, crooked tent strung together with stained white tarp, set off from the others. The stench of it reached us almost before the sight of it did. Olivia lifted the red bandanna hanging around her neck to cover her mouth. The air was heavy, so thick with the stench of human waste that breathing became almost impossible.

  “You just have to take him and get out while he still has a chance,” Olivia was saying. “As long as your friend is in the warehouse, you won’t be able to get her. But you can take him, at least. I can help you. You might be able to overpower the patrol together.”

  Jude’s hand clenched around my upper arm. “It’s okay,” I told him. “It’s not an option. We won’t leave her behind.”

  He nodded, his face pinched with worry as he glanced back over his shoulder to the warehouse. “Are they going to hurt her?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I’m a lot more worried about what she could do to them.”

  “Olivia?” Chubs called softly. “Are you okay?”

  She had stopped just outside of the tent, her hands bunching up the fabric. She bowed her head forward, resting it against the flap.

  “He’s…I’m sorry, I tried, I’ve tried so hard, but…” Olivia’s voice was anguished. “I’m the only one who will help them. He tried for a while, but…”

  “He,” I repeated, feeling my heart go very still. “Who?”

  Olivia blinked, her confusion marred by the scars on her face. “Aren’t you… You aren’t here for Liam
?”

  I don’t remember pushing past her, but I do remember my hands, as pale as the fabric of the large tent, shoving aside the old bedsheet serving as the door. The stench intensified inside, combined with the sickening scent of mold and foul water. I blinked, forcing my eyes to adjust to the low light. The pallets underfoot creaked and groaned as I stepped inside, one snapping altogether.

  There were so many of them—at least twenty-five kids, in rows on either side of the tent. Some were curled up on their sides, others tangled up in the thin sheets around them.

  And there was Liam, right in the center of them all.

  I lied before.

  To Cate. To the others. To myself. Every day. Every single day.

  Because here was the truth. Here it was, tearing up and out of me, drawing my feet toward the far corner of the tent, rising like a whimper.

  I regretted it.

  Seeing his face now, the way his cracked and bruised hands curled softly around the pale yellow blanket draped over him, I regretted it so much, with such a sharp ache, that I felt myself begin to double over before I had taken a single step toward him.

  For months, his face had lived only on computer screens, his scowl captured forever in digital files. It was locked in my memory—but I knew firsthand how memories warp and fade as time passes. It was so selfish of me, so terrible and sick, but for three long heartbeats, all I could think was, I should have kept him with me.

  I missed him. I missed him, I missed him—oh my God, I missed him so much.

  The tent was still and so quiet around us. I brushed a finger against the edge of his blanket’s pilling fabric. Someone had stripped him down to a gray T-shirt. His bare feet stuck out toward me, pale, tinged the faintest blue. I felt my breath go out of me in a single blow. The last time I had seen him, his face had been mottled with bruises and cuts courtesy of one bad escape attempt from East River.

  But this was the face I remembered, the one I had seen that first day in the minivan. The one that could never hide a single thought. My eyes drifted aimlessly from his broad, clear brow, along the edge of his strong, unshaved jaw. That full bottom lip, chapped and cracked from the cold. His hair matted and darker—too long, even for him.

  The air that filled his chest went out in a terrible, wheezing rattle. I reached out, trying to stop my hand from shaking as it settled against his chest. I wanted to count the space between breaths, reassure myself the shallow movement was still movement. It was only a faint touch, but his eyes blinked open. The sky blue had taken on a glassy quality, fever-bright against his otherwise dirty face. They drifted shut again, and I could have sworn the edges of his lips curled up in a faint smile.

  If a heart could break once, it shouldn’t have been able to happen again. But here I was, and here he was, and it was all so much more terrible than I ever could have imagined.

  “Lee,” I said, pressing my hand against his chest again, harder. I brought my other hand to his cheek. That was what I was afraid of—they weren’t red from the biting cold. He was hot to the touch. “Liam—open your eyes.”

  “There…” he mumbled, shifting under his blankets, “…there you are. Can you… The keys are…I left them, they’re…”

  There you are. I stiffened but didn’t move my hand.

  “Lee,” I said again, “can you hear me? Can you understand what I’m saying?”

  His eyelids fluttered open. “Just need a…”

  The pallet creaked as Chubs knelt beside me. “Hey, buddy,” he said, his breath hitching in his throat as he reached over to place the back of his hand against Liam’s forehead. “This is some mess you’ve walked your idiotic self into.”

  Liam’s eyes drifted over to him. The tension in his face seemed to drip away, replaced by a goofy expression of pure joy. “Chubsicle?”

  “Yeah, yeah, wipe that dumb-ass look off your face,” Chubs said, despite the fact he was wearing an identical look on his own.

  Liam’s brow wrinkled. “What…? But you’re… Your folks?”

  Chubs glanced over at me. “Can you help me sit him up?”

  We each took an arm and tugged his deadweight into an upright position. Liam’s head lolled back, his head falling into that curve between my shoulder and neck.

  My fingers skimmed the lines of his ribs, catching on the bones. He was so thin; I pressed my fingers to the knobs of his spine and tried very, very hard not to cry.

  Chubs pressed his ear up against Liam’s chest. “Take a deep breath and blow it out.”

  Liam’s right hand flopped over, giving his friend’s face a few clumsy, affectionate pats. “…love you, too.”

  “Breathe,” Chubs repeated, “long and deep.”

  It wasn’t long, and it wasn’t deep, but I saw his white breath fan out.

  Sitting back, Chubs straightened his glasses and motioned for me to help ease him back down. I thought I heard him mumble, “Here?” but Chubs nudged me out of the way to pick up his wrist and count off his pulse.

  “How long has he been like this?” Chubs asked.

  It was the first time I found myself able to look away from Liam’s face. Olivia was hovering behind us, her face splotchy from her scars and the freezing cold. Jude was frozen in the doorway, mouth open in a look of total and complete horror.

  “He was caught about a week and a half ago, and he had a really nasty bug he couldn’t shake,” Olivia explained, her voice trembling slightly. “I knew something was wrong right away. I kept asking him questions about you guys, and he just seemed so disoriented. It turned into a fever, and then…this.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Jude asked. “Why is he acting like that?”

  As if to answer for himself, Liam suddenly twisted to the side, his face screwing up with the effort it took to cough. Deep, wet coughs that shook his entire frame and left him gasping for air. I kept one hand on his stomach, reassured by the slow pulse I felt there. God, his face—my eyes returned to it over and over again.

  “I think he has pneumonia,” Chubs said. “I can’t be sure, but it seems the most likely. If I had to guess, most of the kids here have it, too.” He stood on unsteady legs. “What are you treating them with?”

  From the moment we had entered the tent until now, my shock and horror at the sight of Liam had been enough to make me forget even my anger. But the bitter reality was solidifying around me, and I could feel the heat rising in my chest, twisting, and twisting, and twisting until it felt like the next breath I released was tinged with fire.

  Olivia’s words spilled over one another. “Nothing. There’s nothing. I have to beg for food, we’re surrounded by water, we are drowning in water, and I can’t even get a drop of the fresh stuff!”

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “Liv, it’s okay. I know you’re trying.”

  “Do you have anything in the car?” I asked, looking up at Chubs.

  “Nothing strong enough for this,” he said. “We need to get them warm, dry, and hydrated before anything else.”

  Olivia was still shaking her head. “I’ve tried so many times, but he won’t move the sick ones into the warehouse. Most of them aren’t Blues, and they only got this bad because he refused to give them work, and if you don’t work, you don’t get food. You can’t come into the warehouse. I honestly think he’s trying to hide them from the others.”

  Well. He couldn’t hide them from me. He couldn’t hide what he had done to Liam. I felt a pure, unflinching fury grip me. I couldn’t have shaken it, even if I had wanted to. I was on my feet, storming toward the flap, and there was only one thought in my mind, streaming through again and again, driving the anger deeper until I felt like I would explode with it.

  “Where are you going?” Jude asked, stepping in my way. “Ruby?”

  “I’m going to take care of this.” It was a stranger’s voice. Calm, certain.

  “Absolutely not,” Chubs said. “What happens if someone catches you swaying him? What do you think he’ll do to you?”

&nb
sp; “Sway him? Like the way Clancy would have?” Olivia asked. Her eyes went a touch wider at my nod. “Oh. I thought…I wondered why he was so interested in you. Why he fought so hard to keep you from leaving.”

  “Jude,” I said. “Help Chubs. You guys need to figure out if there’s a way to get a fire going in here without burning the place down. You remember how to do that, right?”

  He nodded, his expression still screwed up in misery. “You have to do something. We have to stop him, make him see this isn’t right. Please.”

  “Ruby,” Olivia called. Her voice was clear, each word cut from stone. “Ruin him.”

  My mind was buzzing, waking from a long, unwelcome sleep. It had been a while, hadn’t it? My right fist clenched at my side, as if each finger was imagining how it would feel wrapped around his throat. It would be easy—all I needed to do was get close to him.

  I knew it was what Clancy would have done. He thought it was our right to use our abilities, that we had been given them for a reason. We have to use them, he had said, to keep the others in their place.

  The silky quality of his voice slipped through me, a shudder following like an echo. His dark eyes had been wild when he said that, burning with conviction. I had been terrified of him then. At what he could do…and how easily.

  I had those abilities, too. For whatever reason—whatever science was locked away on Leda Corp’s servers—I had a way to right almost every wrong Knox had brought upon these kids. And Jude, he had turned to me without hesitation, with full faith. Like it was the most natural thing for me to take care of this. I was beginning to see how it was.

  Ruin him. I’d do more than that. I was going to humiliate him, bring him low, leave him an empty shell whose only memory was my face. I would chase him into sleep. I would make him regret the moment he’d decided to keep Liam here and leave him outside to die.

  “Be careful,” Jude whispered, stepping aside to let me pass.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “See if you can find a black coat around here. Check his pockets to make sure he didn’t find the flash drive and take it out, too.”