“He’s just one person, I know, but he’s our person,” he said, like he’d read my thoughts. “And, the truth is, I think we need to be focused on Zu. We have to try to get the full story out of her about what happened to that guy she was traveling with. I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as waiting until she’s ready to talk about it.”
I nodded, leaning back against the wall, watching her as she sat between Hina and Lucy. Her eyes were focused on the floor, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her legs tucked under her.
“It wasn’t a mistake to bring them here, was it?” I asked. “The young ones? I won’t let them fight, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is going to hurt them in ways I can’t see yet.”
“We can’t protect them from this, not if we’re determined to give them a choice. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? Giving them and the next wave of kids a shot at a better life than what we had. To come out of hiding.”
Yes—that was it exactly. The freedom that came hand-in-hand with being able to make choices about our lives once our abilities were gone. The freedom to live where we wanted to, with whomever we wanted to, and to not be scared of every passing shadow. For kids not to grow up with the fear that one day they might not wake from their sleep, or that they’d blink out like a light bulb in the middle of an otherwise normal day.
I knew, just as Cole did, that the only way we were going to come out of the other side of this successfully was through force. A real fight. But the cost…I looked around again, taking in the sight of their animated faces, and tried to absorb their faint chatter and laughter to ease the grip of fear around my ribs. I couldn’t have both, could I? I couldn’t get my battle without acknowledging that there was a damn decent chance that not all of these kids would live to benefit from winning.
“I want it so bad, Ruby. I want to go home, see my parents, and walk around my neighborhood in broad daylight. I want to go to school, so even if they hold my abilities over me, they can’t deny me things because I’m not educated. That’s enough for me. I know it’s not going to be easy, and I know I’m going to be lucky to make it through alive, but it’s worth it, if I can just have that.” Chubs was quiet for a moment before saying, quietly, “Everything will be worth it, and we’re going to be around to see it.”
“That’s not very Team Reality of you.”
His smile matched mine. “Screw Team Reality—I’m leaving to join Team Sanity.”
An hour later, Liam and the others appeared at the entrance to the tunnel, each dragging in a large cardboard box or plastic tub. Their voices carried down the long pathway, bubbling over with excitement. Clearly they didn’t know what was waiting for them at the other end.
Liam appeared first, his face and hands covered in a fine layer of dust, his hair hopelessly mussed by the growling windstorm outside. The sight of him, tousled and laughing and looking so happy, made me forget why I’d been so angry in the first place.
It didn’t have the same effect on his brother.
Cole was on his feet, bracing his shoulder against the wall to the right of the entrance. He hadn’t said a word, but his breathing had grown harsher over the last hour. Even with his arms crossed over his chest, he couldn’t hide the way his fingers on his right hand were convulsing every few minutes. It was one spark away from explosion, I saw that clear enough.
And still, I wasn’t fast enough jumping up to my feet.
Liam had a half second of joy to see me sitting there, and then Cole had him. His arm shot out, gripping him by the front of his shirt and whirling him around to slam him up against the wall. The box in Liam’s hands crashed to the ground, sending the cans and bags inside skidding in every direction. A bright red box of Lucky Charms cereal slid right over to me, stopping just short of my feet.
“Jesus Christ—” Liam choked out, but Cole was already hauling him away, into Alban’s old office. I caught the door before it was kicked shut in my face. Liam was practically thrown into the large, scuffed desk.
“What the hell is your problem?” Liam gasped, still winded. Cole had a few inches on his brother, but Liam’s anger seemed to stretch his spine and even out the difference. They never looked more alike than they did right then, seconds away from ripping each other’s heads off.
“My ‘problem’? Try finding out a kid’s gone out to get himself and two other kids killed! Are you really that stupid?” Cole rounded on him, cutting a furious hand through the air. “I hope it was worth it. I hope you got to feel good about pretending to be a hero again, because you just jeopardized the whole operation! Someone could have followed you back to us—someone could be monitoring the building right now!”
Liam’s temper finally broke over him. He shoved Cole back against the empty bookshelf behind him and pinned him there with an arm barred across his chest. “Play the hero? You mean what you’ve been doing this whole damn time? Walking around, barking out orders like you have any right to lead these kids. Like you know how they feel or what they’ve been through?”
Cole let out a derisive laugh and for a moment, I really thought he’d tell his brother his secret, if only to throw it all back in Liam’s face. Get the shocked and horrified reaction he’d been afraid of for so long.
“I got it done,” spat Liam. “We weren’t followed, no one ever saw us. I’ve done this a hundred times, in a hell of a lot worse places, and each time I got it done—which I would have told you if you’d treated me like I was capable of doing something besides sitting around with my thumb up my ass, waiting for someone to take care of me!”
He was right. Of anyone here, he had the most experience doing this kind of hit. The security team at East River had kept everyone fed and stocked with medicine and clothes simply by preying on truck shipments along a nearby highway.
“Why are you acting like you actually care?” Liam pressed, his voice edged with frustration. “You ignore my existence for years, going around thinking—”
“You have no idea what I’m thinking,” Cole snarled, finally throwing him off. “You want to know? Really? I’ll tell you—it was how am I going to tell Mom another one of her kids is dead?”
The words seemed to suck every last trace of air out of the room. The color in Liam’s face drained, and his clenched jaw went utterly slack.
“You made me tell her, remember that? You couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t even leave Claire’s room. I had to go downstairs and stop her, because she was already making her sandwich and getting her lunch bag ready for school.”
I pressed a hand over my mouth; the image was too painful for me to even bring to mind. Liam stumbled back, blindly bumping into the desk. His hand caught the edge of it, and it was enough to keep him upright. I saw his face, stricken, only for a moment. It disappeared again behind his hands. “Sorry—God, I’m sorry, I didn’t think—I just wanted to do something—”
After seeing so many varying shades of his anger, I was surprised to see that Cole could turn his voice and face so frighteningly cold. “The only reason you’re here is because I don’t know where the hell Mom and Harry have holed up, and I can’t ship you straight to them—what?”
Liam had always been an easy read; every thought that passed through his mind at some point or another registered on his face. It had been so easy, even for a damaged girl terrified out of her mind, to trust that what he said, he meant—that when he offered something to you, it was only with the purest intention of wanting to give it to you, no catches, no takebacks, no favors. I used to wonder how painful it would be to have a heart that felt things so deeply, even the most secret of things could never fully be contained.
I just wished like hell he hadn’t looked up at the mention of their parents. Because the moment Cole saw his face, he knew. And so did I.
Liam didn’t tell Cole, I thought, unable to understand it. Liam and Cole had both known their mother and stepfather had assumed fake names, Della and Jim Goodkind, when they went into hiding and left their home in No
rth Carolina, but searching online and through phone books had brought up dead end after dead end. Cole should have been the first person he told after Zu told us how she’d met their mother. Liam should have stood up from the table and gone to find his brother immediately—
“You know!” This time Cole did hit him, the icy demeanor shattering as he landed a blow on Liam’s chin. “You lied to my goddamn face! Where are they?”
“Cut it out!” I shouted. “Stop it, both of you!”
Liam lurched toward him. I saw his arm pull back, the glint in Cole’s eyes, and shot forward. I slid between them just as Liam threw his punch, barely blocking it before it collided with Cole’s stomach. There was a single instant he seemed to strain against it, still struggling to land the hit—and then he came back to himself, to the moment. I saw it happen; the anguish and resentment released with a sharp inhalation and a horrified look. I had to grab a fistful of his shirt to prevent his immediate instinct toward a panicked escape. The other hand was thrown out toward Cole, to warn him off moving.
“Oh my God,” Liam said hoarsely, “why did you—that was so stupid—”
I unclenched my fingers, sliding my hand around to his back as I stepped in close to his side. He was still breathing hard, fighting to keep his emotions from boiling over again. I should have realized how quickly shame would work its way through him. He wasn’t a fighter, not by nature. Dammit—the thought of hurting anyone he cared about would do far more damage to him than Cole’s fist ever could have.
“Liam should be quartermaster,” I said.
Cole crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s—”
“A great idea,” I said. “You’re welcome. He does know where your parents are, and will happily fill you in on the details now.”
“As a trade?” Cole shook his head, giving his brother a dubious look. “Do you even know what a quartermaster is?”
“Of course I do,” Liam said between gritted teeth. “I know you try to forget, but I was part of the League for a few months.”
“It’s not a trade,” I said. “It’s because he’ll do the best job out of anyone here. It’s a role that needs to be filled, and fast. It’s because you’re brothers and you love each other, and should respect each other’s capabilities and focus your energy on the actual fight in front of us, not each other. Am I wrong?”
“Gem, it has never been more obvious than now that you’re an only child. The joys of siblinghood have never played well with logic.”
It was a huge job to track our supplies and bear the responsibility for figuring out how to bring new ones in; I would have stopped to second-guess the decision if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes that he could manage it.
“Cole,” I said softly, making Liam tense all over again. “He’s already been doing it.”
“It’s not a matter of whether or not he can do it, but if he deserves it,” Cole fired back. “He disobeyed a direct order not to leave the premises and he acted without permission.”
“Oh, right, I forgot, you elected yourself leader,” Liam said, and the ugliness in his voice made me actually cringe. “So glad we got a vote on that. What, were you afraid someone would question why you had any qualifications for the job? What you knew about us and our lives? Or was that another decision the two of you made and kept from the rest of us, hoping we’d all just nod and trail behind you like little mice?”
I stepped away from him, stung more by his tone than his words. Cole had the opposite response—he came closer, stepping right up into his brother’s face. To his credit, Liam didn’t flinch. Not until Cole said, “My qualifications? Try not getting a hundred and five kids killed with a naively planned and poorly executed escape attempt from a camp that wasn’t even that bad in the first place.”
“Out of line,” I warned Cole, feeling my own temper flare now. “The fact that you consider any camp to be ‘not even that bad’ shows you have no idea what you’re talking about. The two of you—”
“You want to punish me,” Liam cut me off, pushing me back from where I’d stepped between them. A wash of furious red worked its way up his neck to his face. Both he and his voice were shaking. “Fine. Name it. If you want to throw your weight around, just do it. I’m done with you wasting my time.”
I sent a sharp look of warning to Cole, but he was already saying, “Clean the bathrooms. With bleach.”
I’d seen Cole wear a smirk countless times at this point, but I’d never seen it on Liam’s face. That baiting, haughty look. “It’s already done.”
“Clear out the backup in the sewage system.”
“Already done.”
“Laundry. A month. By yourself.”
“You let them steal all of the sheets and towels,” Liam said, “in case you managed to forget.”
Cole released a loud breath through his nostrils, his eyes narrowing. Something clearly clicked, because his mouth tensed into a tight-lipped smile. “Then you can clean out and organize the garage.”
I whirled back toward him, confused. “The what?”
He didn’t say anything else, just strode to the door and held it open. I caught Liam watching my reaction out of the corner of my eye as he went first, but the only thing I saw as we followed Cole downstairs was his back. He kept two steps ahead of me the entire time and didn’t once turn to make sure I was still there. The unnerved feeling I had expanded into confusion as we moved through the kitchen; I could see my pale face reflected in the stainless steel surfaces as we passed by the sinks, stove, oven, and finally the pantry, until we hit the wall of metal shelves used to store pots, pans, and baking sheets.
The muscles in Cole’s arms flexed as he dragged the shelves away from the wall. The metal protested against the linoleum they’d used to tile the floor, but once the shelves were set aside, I had a clear view of what it had been hiding.
“Really?” I said, exasperated. “Another hidden door?”
Liam finally looked at me, brows lifting. “There are others?”
“It’s not hidden,” Cole said, stepping into the dark hall. He felt along the wall until the lights flickered on, revealing yet another damp, concrete tunnel. “We stopped using the space and just…left it alone. I’m thinking this will be our emergency exit. It’ll be important to make sure the kids know where it is.”
“What was it used for before?” I asked, more to fill the silence than anything. I was walking between them, eyes tracking Cole’s powerful, purposeful strides forward, the way his wide shoulders moved beneath his shirt. My mind was on Liam, though, the way frustration seemed to pour off him, clouding the air around us. He trailed behind me now, and I felt his eyes working over me as clearly as if he’d reached out and tugged my braid. Our shuffling steps and breathing echoed around us, and somehow were amplified by an unpleasant feeling that the two of them were one scathing word away from slamming each other up against the wall and beating one another senseless.
“We used it to run Op simulations, which is one reason it needs to be cleared out—any strike against a camp has to be worked through and choreographed,” Cole explained. “Then it became a kind of storage unit for all the crap we acquired over the years.”
“Fantastic,” Liam muttered. “I don’t suppose there’s anything actually useful in there?”
Cole shrugged. “Guess you’re going to find out, baby brother.”
In response, Liam only grunted.
I reached back, slowing my steps, suddenly unable to escape the thought that it was me he was angriest at—that Liam would feel like I hadn’t stood up for him enough upstairs, that not telling him about Cole’s and my plan had hurt him more deeply than I’d expected. I reached back for his hand, wanting the security of his touch, to comfort him, apologize, to just…be, and be with him next to me. I hadn’t even looked to see that he was okay; he was mentally banged up now, but I hadn’t checked for bruises, bumps, cuts.
And…nothing. My hand hung in the cold air. Nothing. God, he was mad, furious maybe. A pa
inful knot formed in my chest and I pulled my hand back, drawing it closer to my side in a last-ditch effort to protect myself from the raw feeling of rejection.
Liam caught my fingers, but instead of weaving his through mine, he pressed a kiss there and crossed the last two steps between us so we could walk next to each other. He looped an arm over my shoulder and didn’t pull away when I stepped in closer to his side. I ran my hand along his back, up and down, up and down, until I felt the tight muscles there ease. When he looked down at me, his expression had softened enough that I felt the sudden urge to stand on my toes and press a soft, quick kiss to his jaw. So I did. He ducked his head, trying to hide his little, pleased smile. It was the first time I felt myself relax since he came strolling back in through the tunnel.
We’re okay, I thought. This is okay.
In total, it was about a five-minute walk from one door to the other. Stairs waited for us at the other end, and I realized with a start that we were heading back aboveground. The door waiting at the top of the stairs looked to have been hammered out of solid metal, and though the door hadn’t been locked, Cole still had to drive his shoulder into it in order to get it unstuck from its frame. He stumbled in with the force of his momentum.
The smirk on Liam’s face fell away the moment we stepped inside.
It was clear we were standing in one of the nearby warehouses—one of the many identical long, white buildings that seemed a dime a dozen in this part of Lodi. It looked to be roughly the same dimensions as the Ranch, but one level, and decidedly less livable—concrete, metal rafters. Windows lined the top of the wall, coated in dust and darkened by blackout sheets. The lights hanging from the rafters sputtered to life, illuminating the towering mounds of junk piled up around us.
There were no walls or offices, let alone heat or insulation from what I could tell; it was simply an unfinished garage. There were a few actual cars inside—their stripped-down bodies, really, and all of them propped up on lifts. Liam walked toward the nearest one, crouching down to inspect the engine and innards on the floor beneath it. All of the tires and hubcaps seemed to be lining the loading-dock door, which had been secured several times over by metal chains and locks. For the most part, though, it was a bizarre assortment of things: broken bed frames, sleeping bags, bags of screws and nails. I moved to open one of the nearby garbage bags, half afraid of what I’d find inside, but it was only crumpled old clothes they’d probably ripped off from a donation drop-off.
In the Afterlight (Bonus Content) Page 14
