“That’s—”
Liam held out an arm, stopping her. The woman didn’t shrink back, though, and her ivory skin didn’t lose its tinge of pink.
“You’re right,” he said. “I did go behind your back and find out how to contact Amplify. I met with Alice and her team, but only after I found Olivia and Brett, who I told not to come in until I was sure being here would guarantee a lower chance of getting killed than trying to survive alone in the wild. I downloaded files onto a flash drive to prove my story to Amplify; I never sent them. And you know why I did all of those things? Because no matter what you said in Los Angeles, this hasn’t been anything that resembles a democracy, let alone a fresh start. You’ve ignored everyone’s ideas in favor of your own and you haven’t once listened to what I’ve tried to say, even though you know nothing about our lives and what we’ve been through. You like the fight, but some of us don’t.”
“Not your best argument,” Cole said, gesturing to the team, “considering today worked out pretty damn well.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Alice insisted. “We never would have asked him to risk sending the files digitally. He only brought us printouts, and only a few to prove his affiliation with the League. Or whatever the hell it is you’re calling yourselves now.”
Liam blew out a harsh breath. “We can use the footage Alice captured today, deliver a media package to their contacts to run—a package that carries an actual message. That proves something, even if it’s just that people have nothing to fear from us kids. You don’t get it. It doesn’t matter if we get all the kids out of the camps and blast through every damn fence and wall between us and them. If we don’t change people’s minds about us, then where the hell are those kids going to go?”
Cole crossed his arms over his chest and said simply, “Bye, Liam.”
I had started to turn, intending on following Cole to the tunnel, anger making my head throb, erasing every last trace of light inside my heart, when a voice piped up. “If he has to go, then so do I.”
It was the Green girl I’d seen a few nights ago, the one who had painted the crescent moon on Liam’s helmet. That moment, when I’d questioned who “she” was, finally made sense. The symbol was how Alice identified him during their meetings.
“For any particular reason…?” Cole prompted.
“I covered for him.” She tossed her dark hair back over her shoulder. “I knew he was going to meet Alice and I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Me too,” said Lucy, wringing her hands red. “I lied about supplies he never brought in, and I don’t really want to fight, I’m sorry.”
“Ditto,” Kylie said. “Not sorry, though.”
“And me,” piped up Anna, one of the Greens who’d made it out of Los Angeles. “I’m the one that showed him how to access and download the files.”
Beside me, Zach scratched his head and looked up at the ceiling. “I might have showed him how he could, if he needed to, establish a contact procedure with someone.”
“I’m the one who asked Senator Cruz how she contacted someone in Amplify,” said another one of the Greens. “So I guess I’m out, too?”
“Me too, since—”
Cole held up a hand, interrupting Sarah. “Okay—Christ, I get it, Spartacus. You all made your point.”
He glanced over at me. I lifted a shoulder, letting him decide this one. I didn’t trust my judgment in that moment, and, truthfully, if they were all interested in sabotaging our hit on Thurmond, I wouldn’t have been sorry to see them go off and live somewhere safe and away, especially if Harry delivered on his promise of trained soldiers.
“You get one shot,” he told them. “Prove to me this works the way you want it to, and we’ll adapt our plan, but—” His voice turned sharp as the kids behind us began to chatter excitedly. I stepped closer to him, wanting to use Cole as a shield from the now-obvious truth that most, if not all of them, had known what Liam was planning, and none of them had been inclined to let me in on it.
They probably think it serves you right, a voice whispered in my head, for keeping them in the dark about getting rid of the agents.
But the difference was, that had only been done to protect them. Cole was absolutely right—Liam interrupting a carefully choreographed Op and introducing an unknown variable could have ended badly for all of us, including the kids we were trying to rescue. A fresh wave of anger steamed through me.
“But,” he continued, “you all stay here and you cannot, for any reason, leave the Ranch without getting permission. That includes you, Carrots.”
Alice colored at the nickname, absently reaching up to smooth back her red hair.
He took a step closer to her, lowering his voice. I knew that look, the way his blue eyes hooded, how the otherwise friendly smile betrayed nothing of the contempt he felt. Only his low, rough voice. “If you reveal our location to anyone at Amplify, I’ll know.”
Alice leaned toward Cole, her arms crossed over her chest. One brow went up in challenge. “No, you won’t. But I’m not in the business of getting kids killed. Unlike you.”
“Hey,” I warned. And clearly Liam must have mentioned something about me, because she finally backed off.
“All right, everyone good? Everyone cool?” Cole nodded, motioning for the others to start nodding, too. “Great. Let’s get the supplies off the bus and everything organized. Someone needs to tell me about the PSFs’ faces when they saw you.”
The tension broke at that, Gav busting out laughing as he relayed a story about how one of the PSFs may or may not have pissed himself when he realized what he was up against. Zu tried to catch my hand as I walked past her, but, in all honesty, I just wanted to be alone—I didn’t care if it hurt her feelings, I didn’t care that she was worried about me, and I didn’t want to pretend that I was fine with this outcome. Losing focus was wasting time. It meant more dead kids I wouldn’t be able to save.
I wanted to check in with Nico about any news of Cate and whether or not Vida and Chubs had checked in. Then I wanted to finalize the details for how I’d be taken back into Thurmond.
I burned off what extra energy I had by taking the tunnel between the Ranch and the garage at a run. The frustration drained out of me with each strike of my boots against the cement. I was through the kitchen, passing by bowls of pasta and pretzels the Oasis kids had picked up on their way, if I had to guess, to eat in the big room, when I finally heard him calling my name.
I didn’t slow down, didn’t let any part of me soften the armor of anger I wore. Liam ran to catch up to me. “Ruby! I want to talk to you!”
“Believe me,” I told him, “you don’t.”
I continued down the hall until he grabbed my arm and spun me around. I stared up into his face, looking past the strain, the shadow of scruff along his jaw and cheeks, to the intensity of his eyes, and for a single instant my body confused the need to kill him with the need to kiss him.
I yanked myself away and pushed the door open to the stairwell.
“Are you mad because I didn’t tell you, or because you know I’m right?” he demanded. “Because as far as I can tell, it’s both.”
“I think Cole gave you a pretty decent outline of the many reasons to be pissed at you,” I said, turning as I reached the first landing. He was right at my heels, trying to back me into the same dark corner I’d stolen a kiss from him in. And somehow, that only made me angrier, like he was doing it on purpose.
“I’m right, Ruby,” he said, taking my wrist again.
“Touch me one more time,” I warned him, “and you’ll regret it.”
He released his hold on me and backed off. “Please, listen to me—”
“No!” I said. “I don’t even want to look at you right now!”
Liam’s smile turned mocking. “Because I dared to disagree with Cole, who could never be wrong, not about anything.”
I whirled back on him, shoving at his chest with both hands. “Because you came within an inch of being b
lasted away at the wrong end of Zach’s gun! Because you could have died and I wouldn’t have been able to stop it! Because you didn’t think and everything we’ve been working toward could have fallen a—!”
His eyes flashed, blue flames, as he pulled me to him.
He kissed me.
He kissed me the way I’d kissed him in the forest at the edge of the East River camp. In the darkness, the smell of damp earth and dust and leather wrapped around us. Hard—desperate—his hands fisted in my hair, mine in his jacket.
He kissed me, and I let him, because I knew it was the last time.
I pushed him away, feeling something in my chest tear wide open as the cold air filled the space between us. Liam braced himself against the wall, trying to catch his breath. I fought the stupidest urge to sit down on the stairs and cry.
He took a shaking breath. “Anna said…she said that Nico’s been working secretly on some kind of virus. She thinks it’s for the Thurmond hit. It’s the kind that someone will have to go in and install before any kind of attack can happen.” His voice sounded hollow. “Would you happen to know anything about that?”
I looked away.
“Jesus, Ruby,” he said quietly.
He was giving me the chance to come clean about the Thurmond hit, but nothing, least of all him, was going to prevent me from doing this. I didn’t need his approval.
“They will kill you,” he said, anger seeping into the words. “You know this. They know what you are and what you can do. Are you going to sway the whole camp? Get them under your control the way Clancy did at East River? They aren’t going to let you leave that camp alive, and you don’t even care, do you?”
He scrubbed at his face, letting out a sound of pure aggravation. “Do I even have to ask who put this idea in your head? He’s not one of us, Ruby! He’s not, and you still side with him, you tell him the things you used to tell me. Tell me what happened, tell me how to make this right between us again. I don’t understand how we broke down. I don’t understand why he has this hold on you!”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.” I felt a cold drop of ice spread down my spine at my own words, no matter how true they were.
“You used to want to,” he said. “Do you want to know why I didn’t tell you about Alice and Amplify? I came close a hundred times. I almost told you that night we were in the garage, but I stopped myself because lately…lately it doesn’t matter what I say. You and Cole think it’s wrong, stupid, or naïve. Dammit, I am sick to death of that word. I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind either. I can keep us fed, I can fix every damn fixture that’s falling off, I can make sure all of the cars run, I can find us the one real shot we have doing some lasting good in a world that’s already too violent, but it’s not enough. I don’t even register, do I? Not to him. Not to you, not anymore.”
I said nothing. Felt nothing. Was nothing.
“I’m trying to think of what comes after—how we’ll move on with our lives when this is all over. It’s what we talked about before. I don’t want any of these kids to live their lives stained with pain and regret and blood. I don’t want that for you, either. We can do good work—we can make the whole damn world see that we’re good kids in a shitty situation. Please—Ruby, please. Cole is going to walk you right over a cliff, and he’s going to be holding your hand the entire time.”
I held his gaze a moment longer, letting the words expand, filling the parts of me that were crumbling. Think of the girls, I thought, Cabin 27. Sam. All of those thousands of kids who’d been left behind as I got out. Ashley’s face, the dead eyes staring up at me, the accusation I’d read in them. Where were you? Why didn’t you come sooner?
“If I’ve hurt you half as bad as you’re hurting me,” he said, his voice ragged, “then, God, just kill me. I can’t stand this. Say something. Say something!”
I could sacrifice this, the thing I wanted most, for them, and the trade would never balance out, not fully. I owed them more than my love. I owed each of those girls my life. They needed to know what I’d felt today as we pulled out of Oasis. We would find the cure, if it was the last thing I did on this earth, and it would be waiting for them when they got out. They would know true freedom—not because they’d be able to shed their terrible abilities, the thing that marked them as freak. Because they’d be able to make every choice that had been denied to them for years. They could go anywhere. Be with the people they loved.
In the end, it didn’t matter what happened to me—I understood what Nico had meant now, when he talked about making amends. I couldn’t go back and change the things that had happened to them, but I could sure as hell put them in charge of their own futures. It would be worth it. Losing this…it would feel worth it. One day.
But now, it only hurt. It felt like tearing myself into pieces. The end came with silence, and I knew Liam felt it, even if he was too stubborn to admit it to himself. There was nothing left to say. I turned and started back up the stairs.
“I’ll be around,” he called after me, “when you decide you want to find me.”
Swallowing the painful lump in my throat, I kept my back to him and said, “Don’t bother waiting.”
I was at the top of the stairs, pushing the door open, when he said, “Maybe I won’t.”
The door swung shut behind me, clicking quietly back into place. I let my body seize up, the pain tearing through me as I went into the nearest bunk room and collapsed down onto one of the beds. I clenched my fists, released them, clenched and released, trying to work out the unbearable tightness, to set some kind of rhythm for my breathing instead of the horrible, rough gasping. Laughing voices drifted down the hall from the big room, at odds with the screaming inside of my head.
I don’t know how it happened, only that my vision blurred. By the time it finally cleared, I was standing inside Alban’s office with no memory of getting there. When I turned, there were two figures standing in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder, wearing mirrored expressions of concern. They seemed to communicate a whole conversation in a single look.
“So…” Vida began. “What did we miss?”
“WHEN DID YOU GET IN?” THE QUESTION BOUNCED OFF THE WALLS OF THE TUNNEL AS VIDA, CHUBS, AND A NEWLY ARRIVED COLE AND I ALL WALKED TOWARD THE BAR. “Why didn’t you let us know you were so close? You do actually have Lillian, right?”
“Oh, we have her,” Chubs said, his gaze drifting over to Vida. “And an explanation for not calling.”
She let out a huff, crossing her arms over her chest. “It was an accident!”
“Yes, well”—he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose delicately—“the burner phone we had accidentally fell out of the car, and someone accidentally backed over it. Because someone was in a rush after she accidentally alerted some skip tracers we were nearby when she accidentally used her abilities to move a light pole out of the road after she had accidentally backed into it.”
“Someone better shut their mouth before I accidentally slam my fist into their teeth.” She punched his shoulder, and it was almost…playful.
“Shut his mouth, fist into his teeth.”
“Really? A grammar lesson?”
As we climbed the ladder, I let Cole explain what had happened during the Oasis hit. I felt too newly bruised to articulate what I needed to say, and, worse, the heaviness in my skull made me feel like I was trapped underwater. I couldn’t look Chubs in the eye, no matter what he did to slyly get my attention. Liam would tell him the whole story and he would side with his friend and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t with anything that didn’t directly relate to Lillian Gray or Thurmond.
Vida led the four of us out of the bar’s back room and into the main one. Everything had been boarded up, the useful things like plates and glasses brought down into the Ranch. The shadows were so pervasive, I almost missed the small form cowering in the far back corner booth.
She wore jeans that were clearly too big for her and a button-down shirt that must have belon
ged to a man. All of her blond hair was tucked up into a Braves baseball cap. She took in her surroundings with a lethal stillness, alert and assessing. The hardness in her eyes, her stance—they were all in her son, too. The sight was enough to halt my steps, turn my blood to ice. I’d always thought that Clancy physically resembled his father, but the details, the tapping of her finger against her crossed arms…She didn’t say a word, but I heard her voice all the same, the echo of what I’d picked up in her son’s mind. Clancy, my sweet Clancy…
I sucked in a sharp breath.
“They weren’t keeping her inside of Kansas HQ,” Vida said. “She was in one of the smaller perimeter buildings. We only knew how to find her because we picked up on radio transmissions between the agents talking about the arrangements to trade her for the agents Gray’s men picked up—they kept the agents alive specifically to get her back. So you were wrong, asswipe,” she informed Cole, “and this better be damn well worth it, because I could have had Cate back and not Looney Tunes over there.”
Cole nodded and stepped forward, approaching the woman with all the care and cautiousness afforded to a spooked animal. “Hi, Dr. Gray. You’re safe here.”
She either didn’t understand, or she didn’t care—throwing his hand off her, she turned to bolt toward the door. The way she pounded her fists against the worn wood made my own hands ache. “Pale…ah…out…car…more…now—now—one, two, three, four, five—”
The words barely sounded like words—they were emphasized and accented strangely, the way someone would talk around a full mouth, or if their tongue was clamped between teeth.
I turned back toward Vida, who only gave a tired sigh. “For someone who can’t talk or understand for shit, she is a major pain in the ass.”
“She’s talking, though—” I was interrupted by her guttural cry as Cole lifted her up and tried to pin her arms to her side.
“She doesn’t understand anything—we tried writing, speaking slowly, different languages,” Chubs said, rubbing his chin. “If there’s anything left inside of her head, she can’t get it out.”
In the Afterlight (Bonus Content) Page 29
