In the Afterlight (Bonus Content)

by Alexandra Bracken

  “I didn’t—I don’t know if this is okay—this was the only number I could remember, I know it’s not secure, not really—”

  “You did exactly the right thing,” Senator Cruz said, her voice soothing. “Where are you calling from?”

  “A pay phone.”

  Vida stepped up beside me, eyes sliding my way. I couldn’t speak. An unnatural numbness settled at the center of my chest. I could say a single word.

  “I couldn’t get him out—we got inside, we were taking pictures, one of them saw us and we couldn’t get away—they shot him. He fell down and I couldn’t get him out, I tried to carry him, but they saw us and they opened fire—I didn’t want to leave, I had to—have you heard anything about it on the news? Would Harry be able to find out where they’re keeping him? There was so much blood—”

  He didn’t know.

  I looked at Chubs. He looked like he had glanced up and seen a speeding car coming straight for him. I took the phone from the senator, switching it off speakerphone.

  “He…Liam,” I choked out, “he didn’t make it. They sent us proof.”

  Until that moment, I think shock and panic for news about Liam had shut off the part of myself that would have let me think through specifics of what had happened. If Cole had been alive when they brought the Red in. If he knew what was going on, if he had been afraid, if he felt the pain. But something shattered in me at delivering the news; the flimsy door keeping the pain out bowed in and then exploded into a shower of splinters that cut through every part of me. I couldn’t breathe. I had to press my hand against my mouth to keep from sobbing. My friend—Cole—how could this—why did it have to be like this? After everything, why did it have to end like this? We were going to do something—for the first time, he had a real future—

  Chubs stepped forward, reaching for the phone, but I tore away from him, twisting out of his reach. I felt wild with anger and pain, like someone had thrown acid on my skin. I had to keep this connection to Liam. I had to stay with him. This would destroy him—the agony of knowing that was as sharp as the loss itself. I couldn’t lose Liam, too.

  “What do you mean, proof? What did they do to him?” Any coherency was gone. Liam broke down with each word until he was sobbing. “I couldn’t get him out.…”

  “No,” I said, voice hoarse, “of course you couldn’t. There was no way and he wouldn’t have wanted you to try if it meant they got you, too. Liam, it doesn’t—it doesn’t feel this way now, but you did the right thing.”

  The sound of him crying finally did me in, too. My grip on the phone relaxed as my hand lost feeling, allowing Chubs to finally pry the phone away from me.

  “Buddy. Buddy, I know, I’m so sorry. Can you make it back here? Do you need us to come get you?” He smoothed his hand back over his hair, squeezing his eyes shut. “Okay. I want you to tell me everything, but you have to do it in person. You have to let us take care of you. Slow down, it’s okay—”

  Chubs cast a helpless look my way. I held out my hand for the phone.

  “I’m not coming back, I can’t—it’s—”

  I interrupted him. “Liam, listen to me, I’m going to come get you, but you have to tell me where you are. Are you hurt?”

  “Ruby—” He sucked in a harsh breath. I could imagine him then, exactly as he must have been. Still in his Op blacks, his left forearm braced against the pay phone’s aluminum shell, his face flushed and wild. It broke my heart all over again.

  I gripped the phone so tightly I heard its cheap plastic shell creak. Spinning so I was facing the corner and not the gallery of faces looking at me, I dropped to a crouch in the far corner of the room. “It’s going to be okay—”

  “It’s not okay!” he shouted. “Stop saying that! It’s not! I’m not coming back. I have to tell Harry and—and Mom, oh, God, Mom—”

  “Please let me come get you,” I begged.

  “I can’t come back to there, to you guys.…” The feeling of nausea that had been growing, twisting my stomach, rose like a cresting wave. His voice seemed to click in and out. “The line is cutting off, I don’t have any more money.…”

  “Liam? Can you hear me?” Panic hit me like a swarm of wasps in my head.

  “—I knew this would happen.…dammit…you…sorry…Ruby…sorry…”

  I don’t know when or how she’d managed to slip by so many people, or if she’d made herself so small and silent she’d been here the entire time without me noticing. Zu—she took the cell phone away, I tried to get it back, but she had it to her ear, and she was saying, over and over again, in a voice as sweet as little bells, “Don’t leave, please don’t leave, come back, please…”

  I heard the dial tone. I heard that sound, saw the phone slide out of her fingers, and I knew it was over. Chubs reached for her and she clung to him, burying her face against his shoulder. “Come on, let’s get some water. Some air. Some…thing.”

  “I want to go out and find him,” I said.

  “I’ll go with her,” Vida added quickly. “Nico can trace the call.”

  “You can’t,” Chubs told me gently. “You have a responsibility here.”

  So? I wanted to shout. I felt like tearing at my hair, my shirt—but I couldn’t, I couldn’t do any of those goddamn things because Cole had wrested that stupid promise out of me. Take care of things, Boss. Take care of things. Cate and Harry wouldn’t be here for another two days. I needed to…I had to tell everyone.

  He trusted you with this. He thought you could do it. You have to do this.

  I had to. If Cole wasn’t here, if Liam wasn’t coming back, then I was in charge, and I had to tell the others. I had to stay here and keep it together.

  “Give me a minute,” I said. I only needed one. I walked briskly toward Cate’s old quarters and shut the door behind me. I found the edge of the small bed in the darkness, the same one Liam and I had slept in the night before, and sat down hard. My hands reached along the coarse sheets until they found the soft fabric of the hooded sweater he’d left behind. I buried my face in the fabric, dragging in the scent of him, until finally I released it all in a silent, throat-burning scream.

  Why did you have to go in? How am I supposed to do this? Why hadn’t I pushed back harder, knowing where the information had come from?

  And there was no answer, just the terrible silence, just the darkness pressing in.

  Clancy.

  He’d known this would happen—had banked on it. He’d shown Cole the camp, planted the images of it in his mind knowing that Cole was the kind of person who wouldn’t be able to let it go, seeing others like him treated so damn badly. He would obsess over it, stop thinking about the odds of an actual rescue. After all, how many times had he beaten the odds?

  He never had a chance.

  The words blistered over my mind. I swayed with the force of the hot, singeing rush that ran from my temples to the base of my neck. My vision flashed, splitting the door in front of me into two, then four. I saw, rather than felt, my hand rise up and reach for the handle. The closer I got, the further back I seemed to be; someone dragged me back and back and back…

  It was the last thing I remembered before the blurring dark turned to a gray static, washing over me, hooks and needles running through my veins.

  When I surfaced again, there was a cold gun in my hand, and it was pointed at Lillian Gray’s head.

  “—DOING? STOP IT, STOP—”

  “—Ruby, wake up!”

  “You can’t do this—stop—Ruby—STOP!”

  I was floating underwater, deep enough where there was nothing but sweet, cool darkness. I didn’t need to move, I couldn’t speak—there was a gentle current, and it was taking me where I needed to go. It was urging me forward and I went willingly, giving myself over to the feeling. This was better than the pain.

  “—look at me! Look at me! Ruby!”

  The voices were distorted by the waves, stretched into a long, continuous drone. The words filled the spaces betwee
n heartbeats, the steady ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum in my ears. I didn’t want them to find me here.

  Gem. Hey, Gem.

  I turned, looking for the source of the words, forcing my stiff muscles to move.

  Take care of things, Boss.

  There was no one there. The black currents around me were swirling harder against my freezing skin. There was nothing there.

  Gem. Ruby.

  The air burned where it was trapped in my lungs. Where are you?

  Roo, are you okay?

  I thrashed against the water, stretching my arms up and up again to drag myself to the surface. Up—there was a light, a pinprick of it, growing larger, waiting—

  Come on, darlin’, come on…

  I pulled, dragged, clawed my way up—

  “She’s going to—”

  “—do something! Stop her!”

  “Ruby!”

  I slammed back into my own mind. The thick, murky water drained around me as reality took shape. The static, dry smell of the computer lab. The glow of monitors reflecting against the nearby white wall. Nico’s face, bloodless, hands up in front of him. My eyes shifted from the cold, heavy gun in my hand to the pale-haired woman on the floor, her arms up over her head protectively.

  I jerked, looking at Nico again as the gun came down a fraction of an inch. My arm was on fire, aching like it had held the weight for hours. Comprehension dawned in his eyes, and I saw his stance relax, only to tense again as he shouted, “Vi, no!”

  One minute I was vertical, the next I was on the ground, pain consuming every confused, disoriented thought. I’d been laid out flat by a hit between the shoulder blades, and what breath I had left flew out of my lungs as Vida kept me pinned to the ground.

  “Wait!” Zu said. “Ruby…?”

  “What…” My mouth felt like it was full of sand.

  “Ruby?” Chubs’s face floated above me. “Vi, get off her—”

  “She was going to shoot her—I thought she—she was going to shoot—”

  “What is going on?” Senator Cruz cried, somewhere above us.

  “I don’t…” I started to say, the pain splitting my head in two. I felt turned around and upside down, flipped inside out. “How did I get here?”

  “You don’t remember?” Dr. Gray asked, sounding the calmest of anyone in the room. “You left and came back in—you shoved me to the ground. You didn’t say a word.”

  “What?” My nails scraped against the tile. “No! I wouldn’t—I don’t—”

  “You weren’t yourself,” Chubs said, gripping my shoulders. “You didn’t respond to anything we said—”

  “I’m sorry, shit, I’m so sorry,” Vida said. “I didn’t know what to do—every time we got close, you looked like you were going to shoot!”

  “Nico?” I said, pressing a hand against my eyes to stop the flow of tears. There was no way to hold them in; the pain was clouding my brain, overriding my body’s response. “Nico?”

  “He just ran out—” Senator Cruz said. “He looked at the monitor and just took off—what is happening?”

  Him. It was him. And through the pain, through lingering confusion clinging to my mind, I finally understood what was happening.

  I clutched at Chubs’s arm. “You have to—listen to me, okay?”

  “Okay, Ruby, okay,” he said, “just take a breath.”

  “No, listen. Go…you and Vida go get the others. The kids. Go get them and take them, Senator Cruz, and…and Dr. Gray out through the garage. Go into one of the nearby buildings. Don’t let anyone leave. Understand?”

  “Yes, but what are you—”

  “Take what food and water you can carry, but wait in the building until you get the all clear.”

  The gaps in my memory, began to color themselves in. If I closed my eyes, I could see myself in the middle of a conversation I didn’t remember having. Sitting down in the computer room with all the lights off. The tips of my fingers remembered each keystroke, tingled with the thought. Sleepwalking. The messages that were sent. The communications that were sent. He can move people around. Like they’re toys. Clancy’s last warning.

  My thoughts spiraled, spinning together until they formed a whole, gut-wrenching realization.

  He’s planned an out.

  They’re coming.

  Someone is coming to get him—and he used me to arrange the ride.

  “There’s been a security leak,” I told them. “Me.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Vida said, helping me up from the ground.

  “Nico…he noticed someone sending messages outside of the Ranch and trying to cover them up, delete them from the server activity log, we thought it was—” I turned toward Alice. “We thought it was you, or one of the kids working with you. But it wasn’t, was it?”

  “No, dammit, I told you that!” Alice said.

  “I know, I’m sorry. I know that now. He’s been walking me around, using me to spy on what’s happening. He had me send messages for him. Shit!”

  Escape. I let my mind work it through the way he would have. The only group that could extract him was his father’s military or some kind of contractor. He hadn’t known exactly where the Ranch was, likely, until I’d gone out to Oasis and he’d been able to watch through my eyes how to get back.

  He’d only need the soldiers to unlock his cell, and then it’d be as easy as compelling them to leave him alone, to turn their attention to rounding up the other kids in the Ranch. All he’d have to do was slip away.

  But why hadn’t he just compelled me to open the cell door for him? Why wait, go such a roundabout way?

  “You weren’t in control of yourself?” Dr. Gray said. “Who was, then?”

  I stared at her and I had my answer. Clancy wanted us to find her. To bring her here, to finish what he’d started. Only, she’d been right—he would never kill her.

  He’d have me do it for him.

  I looked away. She’d know soon enough that I couldn’t keep our bargain.

  “Lillian, let’s go,” Senator Cruz said. “I have to get Rosa—the others—Ruby will follow us, won’t you, Ruby?”

  “That’s—” I could see the need to protest this in her eyes, but the senator took her arm firmly and began walking her to the door.

  I ran to the board at the front of the room, wiping it clean, tearing down the satellite image of Thurmond, folding it up, and tossing it at Vida. “Please,” I said to her and Chubs, “go get the kids, get them out—I need to take care of Clancy, but I’ll be there soon. Guys—please! Pull the server and take whatever you can out of the locker.”

  The weapon stock would be low; the kids who’d gone out to the water treatment facilities had taken most of the handguns as a precaution. There were so few of us left in the compound—Oasis kids, mostly, who were still too wet behind the ears to go out into the field. We hadn’t had time to train them for something like this.

  “If you think I’m leaving you, you’re out of your damn mind,” Chubs said.

  I doubled down on my grip, broken nails cutting into his skin. “Go! You have to go right now—right now. The Ranch’s location has been compromised. You have to get the kids out. Take Senator Cruz and Dr. Gray. Charles! Listen to me! I’ll be right behind you, but if—if you stay, no one is getting out. Go!”

  Vida’s dark eyes flashed as she took his arm and started to drag him away by force. “Right behind us?”

  “Right behind you.”

  I ran from the computer room, shouldered my way through the double doors and stopped dead. A shiver raced through me as the unnatural silence in the hallway was punctuated by the sound of a hysterical voice. I recognized it with a terrible, sinking feeling.

  I pivoted toward the storage room. The door was already unlocked, left partly open. My anxiety spiked and I couldn’t tell if the low growls I heard in the distance were actual helicopters or the product of my frantic imagination.

  “—you promised! You promised you wouldn’t do this again
!”

  I bolted down the small hallway, through the open door, and into the scene already unfolding.

  Nico’s hands were gripped in his black hair, destroying its slicked-back shape, making it stand on end. He was pacing alongside Clancy’s cell, his face bright red, as if he’d been crying. “And you did it to her! How could you hurt Ruby? How could you?”

  Clancy sat cross-legged on his bed, looking annoyed but otherwise unfazed by the breakdown Nico was having in front of him. His eyes shifted over to me as I entered, his arms coming up to cross firmly over his chest. Nico hadn’t gone into the cell, thank God, but I saw a copy of the same keys I had in my hand.

  Cole’s set, I realized. We’d kept this area a secret from most everyone here at the Ranch, but Nico could have seen any one of us go inside, or found some kind of layout of the building on one of the servers. Hell, he could have just deduced it.

  “Ruby—he can’t keep getting away with it! He can’t!” There were tears in his eyes. “You have to make him leave, just let him go, before—”

  “Finally,” Clancy said to me. “Can you please get him out of here? I already have enough of a migraine.”

  “If your head aches now, imagine how it’ll feel when I rip it off your neck,” I snarled.

  Clancy smirked, looking me up and down. “It looks like you had an interesting night.”

  “Shut up! Shut up! Ruby, he—” Nico sucked in a breath. “It’s like I told you—he can control other people’s bodies. He can move them around like puppets without them realizing it. He did it all the time, to all of the researchers, I know he can do it—and he made you—he made you send those messages through the server!”

  For a moment, I was sure he’d try to deny it all, brush Nico aside as being out of his mind. But Clancy didn’t bother to hide the small smile tucked in the corner of his mouth.

  “Really had you going there, didn’t I?”

  “You…” The idea of it was almost too much. Coming into my mind while I was asleep would keep me from sensing the tingling rush down the back of my skull that came when someone tried to force a connection between our minds. He’d walked me around like a doll—listened in on conversations, stolen whole moments of my life. I’d been his eyes and ears, and I hadn’t even thought that it could be done, that there was the possibility of it.