Never Fade

by Alexandra Bracken

  “And my money?” Joe was saying. “I wanna know how I’m getting reimbursed by Gray. He sure as shit didn’t do anything when the river took everything I owned!”

  “Your name goes into the skip-tracer system. They find you. I’m just transport. Hold her there, will you?”

  The fog ripped back from my brain. A foot came down on my wrist, pinning me.

  “No!” I choked out, eyes searching the tent fronts for a sympathetic face, an indecisive one—anyone who wasn’t Rob Meadows.

  They watched. All of them, every single person in that tent city. Their anxiety pawed at the air and stirred in my mind. But their silence—that was deafening.

  Opening my eyes again would make it real, but that was the way he wanted it. His hand fisted in whatever was left of my ponytail, tightening and wrenching my head back to get a better look at me. He smiled.

  “Hiya, Gem,” Rob snarled. “Been a while.”

  I choked on the word no.

  “Here.” Rob absently shoved a tablet toward the man. “Type in your name and social security number—reward is split sixty-forty.”

  “Sixty-f-forty!” Joe sputtered. “That’s—holy God…that figure’s right?”

  “How much?” someone shouted from down the way. “Don’t forget I let you borrow my gun—you owe me for last month’s rations!”

  “Hold her!” Rob barked. “She needs proper restraints!”

  My hands were drawn together and kept there, not by plastic but by the press of metal. I heard the chain rattle and felt him lift my head, sucked in the scent of leather.

  I screamed. It was a ragged, ugly noise that shattered my throat. “No,” I begged, tossing my head, twisting my neck to get away. Rob’s knees dropped onto my chest, and my next breath came out as a sob.

  “Oh yeah, you remember this, don’t you?”

  “No!” I sobbed. “Please—”

  In the end, all of that training came to nothing. I could shift and cry and try to scream, but my ribs felt like they were caving in. The whole world was collapsing, crushing, and dissolving the faces of everyone who stood there watching. Rob snapped on a pair of thick rubber gloves before shoving the muzzle over my mouth and tightening the strap behind my head, and I was a little girl again. I was the monster of the story.

  My breath was hot, steaming. Joe passed the tablet to Rob and took several steps back. He looked at the white-haired woman to his right and said, “God, if I’d known…I wouldn’t have touched the thing at all.”

  Rob bent and tried to haul me out of the mud by the chain that connected the handcuffs to the muzzle. I got no farther than my knees; the rest of my body still hadn’t solidified under me. With an ear-scorching curse and a grunt of disgust, he picked me up and carried me under one arm, letting my feet drag and bounce along the ground. I reared back, trying to knock my head against the knots of muscles in his arm, but he only chuckled.

  “I don’t always get the world,” he said. “But sometimes it treats me right. That look on your face when you saw me—I tell you, that was something else.”

  I twisted as he dragged me up into the back of his old red Jeep.

  “I knew if I watched the skip-tracer network, you’d screw up eventually. I’d get to ask you myself about the real reason you dodged out of the Op—what Cole and Cate have to do with it. I wanted to be the one to pick you up, to drive you straight back to that little camp of yours and watch them drag you in.”

  I screamed into the leather, kicking at the back of the seat.

  “You and me?” he said, pulling a long strip of plastic from the backpack he was wearing to bind my feet. I tried to kick, which earned me another laugh. “We’re gonna have such a fun trip back to West Virginia. I won’t even ask for the reward.”

  The door slammed shut on my face, finally blocking me from the cluster of adults that stood in a single line in front of their homes, watching. The car rocked as he opened the driver’s door and sat down.

  “You wanna know why I killed those kids, bitch?” he called back. “They weren’t fighters. None of you are, but you’re the ones with all the power in the League these days. You get to overrun us, decide the Ops, turn Alban into a worthless pile of cooing shit. But you don’t understand; none of you does. You don’t get what this world has to be if we’re going to survive this. Even these skip tracers, they just don’t understand that you’re worth a lot more to this country dead than alive.”

  Rob was speeding despite the Jeep’s shuddering protests, blasting ZZ goddamn Top as loud as the stereo would go. He shouted back that he was tired of hearing me snivel and sob. What a coincidence. I was pretty damn tired of “La Grange” and the smell of exhaust.

  I tried everything I could think of to get the muzzle off. The strap around the back of my head wouldn’t budge. He’d tightened it to the point of pain and, from the sound of it, had used a smaller plastic cable tie to reinforce it. I grunted, shifting to try to get to my boot.

  Something pulled at my lower back, and there was a feeling like a tear. I bit my lip, ignoring the warm flush of liquid soaking into my jeans.

  Michael. I’d forgotten about him getting the jump on me. No wonder it felt like I’d been dragged under a truck. I’d seen the blade—it had been small, about the size of the one on my Swiss Army knife. I needed to push through the pain—keep riding the adrenaline to keep from passing out again.

  The space was tight and almost too narrow to work, but I could be small when I wanted to be. I slid my fingers past the laces into the tight leather. I curled myself around my knees to better my reach before remembering there was nothing to get—I’d never gotten my Swiss Army knife back. I hadn’t been able to find it in the supplies. I swallowed hard. It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t panic—but I was. I could feel it bubbling up in my chest, and I knew if I let it get out of hand it would suffocate me. You’re okay.

  The song finally—finally—faded out.

  “Preparations for the Unity Summit are ongoing,” came President Gray’s eerily calm voice. “I look forward to sitting with these men, many of whom I greatly respect, and—”

  Rob punched the station off. “It’s funny, isn’t it?” he called back. “That the president all of a sudden is that much more revolutionary than Alban? That he wants something new?”

  Yeah, I wanted to say, hilarious. The guy had the misfortune of heading up an organization that had gone and grown itself another head, one with sharper teeth.

  “It took Alban forever to see what a mistake it was to bring you in, and he still sent you shitheads out to do jobs any of us could have done. He can have his past, but he’s not going to change my future.”

  I looked around, trying to find something potentially sharp enough to saw the plastic zip tie around my wrists.

  “And Conner…she just wanted to babysit you, but we got no time for that. We got no place for you, here or anywhere. The only place for you is in those camps or buried with the rest of them. You hear me?” He was shouting now. “I don’t need an excuse for what I did! I joined to get Gray out, not play house with a guy who’s too damn scared to even go aboveground. He thinks we joined up because of you? He wants to know why we can’t respect you? But he won’t let us use you for the one thing you’re good for?”

  Dying for people like him, I thought, that’s what he means.

  “I did what I had to do, and I’d do it again. I’ll do it to every damn kid in the League until they get their heads straight again, and I’ll start with your team.”

  Anger pulsed through me, warring with disgust.

  Keep it together, I commanded myself. He doesn’t know. I didn’t need to touch him. He could silence me, but Rob had no power over my mind.

  “What would Jude make of the electric fence at your old home, Ruby?” he wondered aloud. “What would the guards do to Vida when they saw just how pretty, just how built she is for a girl her age? And Nico—he’s a pretty easy target, isn’t he?”

  I closed my eyes. I forced myself
to relax, to remember that here, now, and always, I was the predator. This was what Clancy had meant when he had claimed I’d never be able to control my abilities because I was too afraid of what they would make me. I hadn’t been able to do it before—not from lack of wanting or trying, but because I couldn’t let go of needing to control where it would take me.

  I hadn’t needed to touch Mason or Knox to slide into their minds. I hadn’t tried to restrain my abilities out of fear, and, in exchange, they’d given me what I wanted.

  All I wanted now was to get out of this damn car. I wanted to show Rob what a terrible, terrible decision it had been to come after me. To threaten the people I cared about.

  I was coming to find out that once I had been in someone’s mind, the pathway to get back in was slicker, easier than before. All I needed now was to channel the want I felt burning a hole in the center of my chest, and picture Rob’s face, and the invisible hands peacefully unfurled, slithering under the seats that separated us like wisps of smoke. I had him; I dropped into his mind with the grace and steadiness of an anchor through water.

  Before, his memories and thoughts had been slow to bloom, velveteen and expanding with every turn. Now they burst like splatters of black tar, a jumbled mess of faces, numbers, hands, and guns.

  I remembered what those kids looked like—I didn’t have to imagine the details. I just had to push the image of them sitting in the car with him. The girl sitting next to him in the front seat and the boy behind her.

  “What—What the—?”

  I forced the image of her staring at him, exactly as she had the moment before he pulled the trigger. The car swerved to the left, to the right, as Rob swore. I focused on the boy now, bringing him to the front of both of our minds.

  More.

  This wasn’t enough, not for him. Murderer, killer, animal—someone who took sick pleasure in the hunt but got even more out of the actual gutting. I’d seen his face that night, when he killed those kids. A satisfied smirk, tinged with a hunger I hadn’t understood until now. More.

  What would he have done to Jude if I’d let him? Would he have shot him like the others? Slit his throat? Suffocated him with his huge hands until, finally, he’d see that he’d smothered the last spark of his life?

  I made the girl reach for him, and he saw it happen all over again, just like I had. The way her right eye socket had cracked as the bullet tore through it. A spray of blood came up to splatter his face and the windshield, and the hallucination was so strong, so deliciously powerful, that the car swerved and I heard the windshield wipers turn on.

  “Stop it!” he shouted. “Goddammit, stop it!”

  I pictured the girl reaching over, running a hand along his arm, and because his mind told him he felt her, he did. The car jerked wildly to the left again as he tried to get away from her. More.

  He’d killed those kids, but it wasn’t even just that. First, he’d broken them out of their camp. He’d given them the hope of freedom, of seeing their families again one day. He’d taken their dreams and crushed them.

  “I know what you’re doing!” he snarled. “I know it’s you!”

  A thrill of satisfaction sang through me with his first ragged gasp. I sent the boy crawling out of the backseat, over the armrest, wrapping his arms around Rob’s neck. He smeared blood down the front of the man’s shirt, and he nuzzled into it. Rob needed to feel the warm pulse of it, a sticky, burning fluid that would never wash out of the fabric, never mind off his skin. The boy and girl began to sob, wail, thrash—I poured every last ounce of my fury and fear and devastation into it.

  A gunshot from the driver’s seat blew out the passenger side window; Rob tried unloading his entire cartridge into the girl sitting there, but with every shot, I brought her that much closer to him until her hand was on the gun, on his hand, and she was turning both back to his chest.

  I can end it like this, I thought, by his own hand. It would be right. I had the power to punish now. Not the man with the gun, not the trained killer, or the soldiers, or the guards walking the length of the electric fences at Thurmond. Me. The thought was enough to pump electrified blood through my veins; I didn’t feel the pain in my back or my head anymore. I felt light, and high, and floating free. I could end his life with his own hand, a single shot to the heart. The same hand, the same heart, that had shattered so many lives and brought me to this—to this place of pain and excruciating fear. The one that had tied me up like an animal.

  He was the animal. A stupid brute, just like Knox had been. They needed a handler, someone to make decisions for them, to make sure they could never hurt anyone ever again.

  “Stop—stop,” he sobbed, sounding like a kid himself. “Please, God, please—”

  His terror seeped out through his pores, the smell of his sweat sour, panting breath overpowering even the leather. My nose burned with it as I tightened my grip on him, bringing the girl closer again and again until her ghostly, pale hand floated up and stroked the side of his face, tracing childish patterns in the imaginary blood and grime.

  We have to use them to keep the others in their place.

  “You are—you are a monster,” Rob choked out. “All of you are going to ruin us; you’re going to ruin everything, damn you, damn you, damn you!”

  An explosion of noise and movement rocked the back of the car, throwing me against the seat. Then the small explosion came, and then we were spinning—spinning—until we weren’t.

  The force of the crash blew out the back windows and showered me with glass. I heard one last scream from Rob, before the impact and nothing but a grating crunch of metal as the front end of the car plowed into the thicket of trees beside the road.

  I rammed against the back of the seat, my teeth clacking. The blow to my forehead blanked every thought to a blinding white. The images of the boy and girl were ripped out from behind my eyelids. They vanished, Rob’s face disappeared, and it was just me—just me and what I’d done.

  Oh my God. I tried sucking in air through the muzzle, but in the last few minutes it’d tightened, and tightened, and tightened with the shrill screaming inside of my head. I banged my face against the carpet, the first sob working its way out of me like someone had reached in and ripped it out of my throat. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

  Clancy would have been so proud of me. The way I’d used those kids, twisting them, manipulating them, ripping into Rob’s mind until it shattered. Clancy would have looked into my face and seen his own reflection there.

  We have to use them to keep the others in their place.

  My stomach heaved, the bile burning its way into my mouth until I was choking on it. I wanted to be sick, I wanted to get the blackness out of me, I needed air, to get away from Rob, from this, from what he’d made me and what I’d done.

  Monster, monster, monster, monster, monster. I slammed my foot against the trunk door over and over until the plastic began to crack. Where was Rob? Why wasn’t he saying anything?

  There was the screech of brakes and the sound of slamming doors. I only kicked harder, a steady bang, bang, bang like the beat of an old rock ’n’ roll song, like guns firing in the night.

  I was still sobbing when the back door finally burst open. I rolled out, hitting the dirt facedown with a low cry of pain. Even in the open air, the muzzle was suffocating, and it wasn’t coming off; I was never going to get it off—

  “Busy day, girlfriend?”

  Vida stood over me, her shadow flat against the ground near my face.

  I was struggling as hard as I could to get the damn muzzle off, tasting leather and my own salty tears. I knew I was hyperventilating, but I couldn’t bottle up the swelling panic that had finally burst forward when the Jeep crashed. I didn’t want her to see me like this. I didn’t want any of them to see me like this. Please leave, please leave me alone; I can’t be around you, please, please, please just leave me here.…

  “Ruby,” she said, flipping me over. “Okay, okay, Ruby—just let me
take it off—”

  Her knife snapped the plastic zip tie around my wrists, but I felt her fingers fumble as they tried to work the straps on the muzzle. I was screaming at her, begging, Leave me! Leave me! and it came out as nothing more than a low moan.

  “Shit!” She had to use a knife on the leather. It snapped under her careful fingers, one strap, then the next, and then the air was in my mouth, cold and tasting like car exhaust.

  “No,” I cried, “I can’t—You have to—you have to…”

  “Vida!” Jude sounded far away. “Is she okay?”

  My vision bobbed in and out of a foamy sea of gray. The cold was a snake that slithered along my limbs, wrapping tightly around my chest as I tried to catch my breath. There was a scramble of shoes against the loose asphalt on the highway’s shoulder. A new set of hands on me, a new face hovering over mine. “Check on him!” Chubs barked.

  “Oh, gladly,” Vida growled, circling around the back of the Jeep.

  “Can you stand?” Chubs’s face appeared right over mine, his hands pressing against my cheeks. “Are you in pain? Can you speak?”

  I tried to drag myself away from him, coughing up the bitter, burning taste draining down the back of my throat.

  “Ruby, Jesus.” Chubs grabbed my shoulders, holding me in place. His voice cracked. “You’re all right. You are, I promise. We’re here, okay? Take a deep breath. Look at me. Just look at me—you’re all right.”

  I pressed my forehead against the asphalt, trying to get the words out, the warning. My vision flickered black at the edges, but my head felt like someone had split the back of it open. My fingernails dug into the road, like I could dig in deep enough to bury myself there. I was hearing voices, shouting nearby and far, but I was also hearing Clancy, his silky voice whispering in my ear: You’re mine now.

  “Well?” Chubs asked. My eyes drifted up to Vida’s face, which had gone a shade of sickly gray. She swiped the back of her hand over her mouth.