The Darkest Legacy

by Alexandra Bracken

  “I thought she’d head back toward the lake for the helicopter extraction,” Priyanka explained, her voice betraying her exhaustion, “but it’s like she became the darkness. She must have gone a different direction. I couldn’t make her stay…I couldn’t make her stay.”

  The words, how she kept repeating them, made Priyanka sound like she was drifting away. I gripped her arm, trying to steady her.

  “Do you want to look for her?” I asked. “The ground’s damp enough that we can probably track her with better light.”

  In truth, I didn’t want to go after the girl who had just tried to hard-boil my brain. But I couldn’t take the thought of her out there, doing what she did to another Psi. It hadn’t just been the way she’d hurt us. It had been the way she’d relished it.

  “No. If we keep chasing her, she’ll run farther and faster,” Priyanka said miserably, rubbing her forehead. “We have to find a way to get her to come to us.”

  When I didn’t answer, Priyanka must have read my thoughts on my face. “Listen…Lana is…She’s different.”

  “I missed that part,” I said wryly.

  She bit her lip. “She’s not herself. That’s not her. I don’t know what they’ve done to her, but that’s not the Lana I knew.”

  “Let me guess, she’s usually a ray of sunshine.” I remembered the nickname Priyanka had used a second too late to stop myself. “Sorry.”

  She lifted a hand, waving it off. When I started back toward the house, she followed.

  “But clearly there’s a connection between her and the kidnappers,” I pressed. “So what’s the story there?”

  Priyanka looked like she might be physically ill. “I…think that the kidnappers might have actually been after me and Roman. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry. I wasn’t sure until I saw Lana here. He…they must be trying to drag us back.”

  I wasn’t sold on her theory. There were still too many pieces to this that didn’t fit together. The warning on the teleprompter, for one. And if the kidnappers were just after Roman and Priyanka, why stage a whole explosion? But a larger question loomed.

  “Who’s ‘they’?” I asked. “The Psion Ring? She mentioned a ‘he’ too. That ‘he’ made her stronger.”

  Her expression was so distant, I wasn’t sure she’d heard me until, at last, she said, “I don’t know. Someone could have…someone could have taken over the Psion Ring. Changed things. They didn’t use to work with non-Psi, but things…they change. We weren’t supposed to leave. Ever. Someone wants us back.”

  Priyanka seemed to be genuinely struggling to pull herself together enough to speak. “When we left, she didn’t come with us. We never should have left her, but it was unavoidable. It was, I swear.”

  “I believe you,” I said, startled by how badly she seemed to need me to understand. Her eyes were haunted.

  “We tried to make contact with her, but we couldn’t reach her. And in the meantime, they’ve done this to her….” Her hand slid up, clenching in her hair.

  “Are you talking about her power?” I asked. “It seemed like she could be some kind of Orange, but how could she do that?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know—they’ve—Lana was a gentle, sparkling person, not—not whatever that was.” Priyanka looked near tears. “Somehow, they’ve trained her to hurt people. I shouldn’t have left her.”

  I couldn’t keep my family together, Roman had said. I couldn’t save my sister in the end.

  In a way, he’d tried to tell me the truth. As much as he’d been able to while still protecting her. At the time, I thought he meant that his sister had died, so I hadn’t pressed him on it, knowing the exact degree of pain that came with blaming yourself for another person’s death.

  “She’s still in there,” Priyanka said. “I know she is. She hasn’t taken off my mother’s necklace—that little gold flower, did you see? I know she seems angry, but there’s still love in her. We can reach her.”

  I hadn’t sensed any of this supposed love, and was covered with enough cuts and bruises to make a strong counterargument. But Priyanka’s feelings for Lana were unequivocal.

  “Why did you want to come here?” I asked.

  “Because we’d heard about Daly—about your friend, Ruby,” Priyanka said. “We’d heard that Lana might have left the Psion Ring, and we were hoping she’d be here, or your friends might have heard something. I was so stupid to think she could have gotten away from them.”

  My thoughts were too tangled to put them into words.

  “You were right to hope they would help,” I said. “They would have, no questions asked. But they’re not here. About two weeks ago, Ruby went missing on a run to pick up another kid.”

  The wind ruffled the trees overhead.

  “Holy shit,” Priyanka breathed out. “Seriously?”

  Her voice was lost to the scream of a helicopter ripping through the air overhead—moving not toward the lake, but away from it. Priyanka and I exchanged a look.

  We took off together, weaving through the forest back to the trail, only to find that Roman was already there. He ran up the dirt path at a steady clip, Sasha clinging to his back, her tear-streaked face pressed against his shoulder.

  “It’s done,” he said quietly, then looked to Priyanka. She shook her head.

  “We should go,” I said. But Roman had turned again to the forest, that hard look of determination back on his face. We didn’t have time to chase after someone who didn’t want to be found, not right now. “Come together, leave together. Right?”

  His eyes found mine, but the prickling heat I felt at the base of my skull had nothing to do with that look, and everything to do with a familiar power signature nearby.

  Drone.

  I was running again, leaving the others to follow as I moved up the path. My feet slowed until, finally, I saw it. The spiderlike device whirred as it floated over the bodies of the soldiers, passing over the scene in slow, intentional passes. It lit the ground beneath it, which only would have been necessary if it was taking photos or video.

  Miguel had destroyed the phone with the original set of photos—but if this device had photos of our attackers, I wanted it. As Mel always said, people want to believe, they just needed a narrative plausible enough to justify it. Mine, at least, had the benefit of being true.

  I heard Priyanka and Roman catch up behind me, but didn’t turn. I began unraveling the silver thread of power in my mind, only to cut it off. It would be too easy to fry it and render it useless. So, instead, I raised the pistol. The drone was about as big as a cat, which was probably not a comparison I should have let my brain make as I tracked its movement and aimed.

  “What are you doing?” Roman whispered.

  The drone hovered low over the porch, scanning for something. I took a deep breath in, adjusted the angle of my arms, then fired.

  The bullet tore through one of its wings. It bobbed, trying to adjust and forcing me to shoot out a second one. The drone crashed into the charred wood of the porch, skidding across it.

  “Careful,” Priyanka warned as I approached it. “The camera’s probably feeding directly to someone.”

  “Good,” I said, gripping the drone and turning it over. Glancing back over my shoulder, I found Roman watching me, his anxious expression fading. Priyanka knelt beside one of the soldiers, searching his pockets and belt, removing his flashlight and sliding something into the pocket of her jeans.

  The drone’s propellers stopped spinning, but there was still a small red light on beside the glossy camera lens.

  I brushed the dirt off it, just so it would have as clear an image as possible.

  “I don’t know who the hell you are,” I said. “But if you come at me or my loved ones again, you better pray to God you actually kill me, because I’m right behind you and I’ve got nothing else to lose.”

  The red light blinked off.

  AT THE END OF THE long, crude tunnel dug beneath Haven was a storm drain that opened into a trash-st
rewn field. We found the others there, sitting together in a tight cluster, the kids leaning against each other’s shoulders and backs, fighting to keep their eyes open.

  Lisa and Miguel had gathered the late arrivals from the tree houses and were tending to cuts and bumps, plying them with water and tight hugs. The first-aid kits open in the wild grass already looked empty.

  Roman climbed out of the sludge-filled pipe first. Ankle-deep in the sopping-wet mess, he took Sasha’s arm and steadied her as she took the big step down. Priyanka used his shoulder for balance as she followed the girl toward where Jacob and some of the others were sorting through a pile of soot-stained belongings. Someone must have gone back into the house to gather up a few things to take with them.

  Finally, Roman turned back toward me, raising his hands as if to help me down the way he had Sasha. Instead, he hesitated, ghosting a touch over my forearm before I took his hand and stepped down. Roman stared at his own hand the whole time, as if he had to focus all his attention on this simple task.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him.

  Roman startled, glancing up at me through his mussed dark hair. “I’m not hurt.”

  “I meant about Lana,” I said. “Priyanka explained to me a little of what happened. I wish you had just been honest with me.”

  “I should have,” he said. “I’m sorry, Suzume.”

  “Zu,” I corrected.

  He met my eyes again. “Zu. I know it doesn’t matter, and I don’t expect forgiveness, but I wanted to tell you the truth a thousand times.”

  “But you also wanted to protect your sister,” I said. From me.

  “She’s been surrounded by danger from all sides since the day her powers manifested. There’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do to protect her. To reach her,” Roman said. Then he added, somewhat ruefully, “Lying to someone who was supposed to stay a stranger didn’t feel like that big of a sacrifice at the time.”

  “Funny,” I said. “I was trying to keep you a stranger, too.” If there was one thing I was always going to understand, it was doing whatever it took to protect the people you loved. “I set up you and Priyanka to be captured when we got to Haven. Can we call it even?”

  His face went slack as my words sank in and he replayed that moment in his mind. To my surprise, he laughed softly, pressing his hand to his head and tilting it back. My eyes fixed on the strong line of his jaw, where there was a small scar just below his right cheek. “Priyanka was right. I’m an idiot. You, on the other hand, are amazing.”

  It was spoken as a simple, direct statement of fact. It made me want to believe him, to let that warmth permeate my whole self until it became reality. But all I needed to do was look around me to find the truth. “Yes, amazing at ruining lives.”

  The humor left his expression. “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it?” I said. “I shouldn’t have turned on the phone. I’m not stupid. I really do know better, but I did it anyway, and I brought hell down on these kids. I destroyed the one place they felt safe.”

  I’d almost single-handedly killed this dream. The thought of facing Ruby and Liam now left my chest too tight to breathe.

  “You did what any of us would have,” he said. “For all we know, they could have been tracking it even when it was off.”

  “They would have caught up to us before we ever made it out of Nebraska,” I pointed out.

  He gave me a stern look. “You’re interrupting my attempt to make you feel better.”

  “You know what would make me feel a lot better?” I told him. “Another rousing rendition of ‘Cheer Up, Eileen.’”

  “Well, all right.” Roman sucked in a deep breath.

  I held up my hands, stopping him. “Kidding.”

  Roman’s face turned more sober the longer he watched me. “I meant what I said before. If you hadn’t gotten the noise turned off, none of us would have made it out of there. Everyone pulls a bad card. What matters is how you ultimately play it. You didn’t run. You stayed and fought.”

  “So did you.”

  Roman ducked his head slightly, absorbing the gratitude in my words. “You had it handled.”

  Behind him, Priyanka broke away from Jacob and the older teens and strode toward one of the clusters of kids. She swung the powered-down drone out in front of her.

  “Hello, tiny Psilings!” she said, forcing brightness into her voice. “I’m your new friend Priyanka, and I’m going to show you how to disassemble a drone and steal its useful parts!”

  Roman turned, watching as she knelt beside them. “She’s not hurt, either.”

  I knew what he meant. “They were together?”

  He nodded, his composure slipping just enough for bone-deep exhaustion to slip into his voice. “We’ve all been close since we were kids, but the two of them became something more. They were serious for about two years. From the time we were sixteen until just before we left her.”

  “And when was that?”

  “About six months ago.”

  What felt recent to me was probably a lifetime to them.

  “Zu! Are you all right?” Lisa called, waving me over. Several of the kids nearby watched Roman and me with big eyes. I had to look away from their ashen faces.

  “One second!” I shouted back, then looked to him. “I have to tell you something. Ruby has been missing for about two weeks, and Liam’s in the wind. If you want to go after Lana, then this is where we’re going to have to split up. I need to find them.”

  Roman looked deeply troubled by that information.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I don’t think we should split up,” he said. “Hear me out—I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your friend went missing just before someone tried to kidnap you.”

  “I had the same thought, but Priya believes the kidnappers were after you,” I said. “That it might be the Psion Ring.”

  He gave his head a sharp shake. “No, Lana is working with someone else and she’s trying to…force us into the fold, the way she was. Somehow, all of this is connected.”

  “You think someone forced her to do this?” I asked, trying to subdue my disbelief. But even as I doubted that, Priyanka’s insistence that something was different about her kept rising back up in my mind.

  “I think she’s been…programmed. What’s the word?”

  “Brainwashed,” I supplied. “You really think so? I’ve seen Reds who have gone through conditioning, and they can barely function beyond taking orders.”

  The thought made me look back across the field, searching for, and finding, Owen’s small form sitting away from the others.

  “You don’t know her,” Roman insisted. “Lana changed. Someone has planted a seed of rage in her. They’ve done something to her. There’s no other explanation for why she’s like this.”

  Lana did seem troubled, but not in the way the Reds who had undergone Project Jamboree were. That reconditioning had been like a disease of the mind, one that stomped out their spark of life. But Roman, obviously, would know how Lana had changed better than I would.

  “If we found your friend Ruby together, could…could she help Lana?” he asked, the words shaking slightly, as if with barely restrained hope. “Get through to her?”

  “Ruby’s problem is that she can’t not help, so yes, I think she would try,” I said, wondering at how that little bit of heaviness eased away from me at the word together. “I agree with you that, somehow, all of this—the kidnapping, the frame job, the attack—is connected. Ruby’s a piece of it I don’t understand. You see things more clearly than I do.”

  “That’s not true,” he said, almost abashed. This was a thing with him, I realized. He’d always swat down my attempts to compliment him, but when it came to praising me or Priyanka, he refused to let us do the same. “You knew right away Priyanka and I were lying.”

  “No offense, but neither of you actually are good liars,” I said. “And anyway, someone once reminded me that there are benefits to stay
ing together.”

  “Two more sets of eyes to keep watch,” he confirmed.

  “Two more sets of hands to find food,” I finished.

  I could do this alone. I knew that, and I could see in his faint trace of a smile that he did, too. When he looked at me, he didn’t see a little girl who needed to be carried and protected. He didn’t see someone who needed to be saved.

  I could find Ruby—and catch up to Liam in the process—and I could figure out who was behind all of this by myself. I just didn’t want to if I didn’t have to.

  A sharp snap of static bit both of us as I brushed past his shoulder. Roman let out another surprised, breathless laugh.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Comes with the territory, as you know.”

  “Yes,” he said, that small smile fading.

  I accepted his offered arm for balance as we navigated through the mud and released it just as quickly. I was too conscious of everything. The warmth of his skin, the tight band of muscle over his bones, the bump of my hip against his as I straightened. I started toward Lisa, only to be caught again by his soft voice.

  “I don’t want to be your stranger.”

  I glanced back. “Then don’t be.”

  Watercolors couldn’t have begun to capture the sky in that moment, just as it prepared to brighten for dawn. The cruelest truth about life is that it just goes on—the sun rises, gravity keeps your feet on the ground, flowers open their faces to greet the sky. Your world could be dissolving with grief or pain or anger, but the sky would still give you the most breathtaking sunrise of violet warming to shell pink.

  Miguel and Lisa sent me twin looks of relief as I came toward them. Jacob stepped back, allowing me to join their circle.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my throat aching. “I should never have come back here.”

  “Don’t say that,” Lisa said. “Ruby and Liam would have wanted you to come. You were exhausted and under incredible stress. One of us should have thought to check the phone.”

  “But the house…” I closed my eyes, and all I could see were Ruby and Liam standing at the edge of the collapsed porch, their dream reduced to ash and cinders.