In the Afterlight (Bonus Content)

by Alexandra Bracken

  All the times I’d envisioned this plan playing out, I had seen myself influencing the camp controllers and PSFs one at a time, planting the suggestion that I was really a Green, working my way through each of them as our paths crossed. But I saw now, as the doctor’s finger pressed down on the device’s largest button, that I didn’t have to influence dozens—just four.

  “This is Green,” Dr. Freemont said.

  The sound that came out of the device was softer than I expected, as if I was hearing it from several floors above me. The shrill pitch and blended mess of beeping and buzzing made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and my stomach tighten, but it was nothing compared to the White Noise they used over the camp’s loudspeakers.

  They’re seeing what frequency I can hear, I thought, shit—

  Our brains translated sounds differently than a normal human mind; if the adults in the room heard the sound, it was nothing more than a buzzing fly around their ears. There was a spectrum of pitches that affected us, each of them specially tuned to sing for each different color. I’d learned about it when Cate and the League had managed to embed the regular White Noise with tones meant for Oranges and Reds, hoping to root out those of us who might have been in hiding or posing as a different color. That sound, the thread of mind-blistering crashes and bangs, had drilled through me and left me unconscious.

  I strained against the Velcro cuffs, letting my eyes bulge, letting my whole body shake and thrash, as if the sound were a knife driving repeatedly into my chest. The sounds that escaped the muzzle were low, animal moans.

  O’Ryan held up a hand and the faint noise switched off. He stepped up closer to the bed, peering down at my face. I had to force my hatred into fear.

  “Successful reaction,” Dr. Freemont said. “Should I—”

  The camp controller’s face was impassive, though I saw his lip curl up in assessment. I got a good look at him now; his wide shoulders filled out his shirt and, standing over me, he seemed ten feet tall. There was something in his stance that reminded me of a knife’s blade. He stood rigidly proud, his eyes cutting through every layer of control I’d built up, and I realized, a second too late, that this wasn’t a normal camp controller. This was the camp controller.

  And I was looking him in the eye.

  I tore my gaze away, but the damage had been done. I’d shown too much will. He’d read it as a challenge. “Set it to Orange.”

  There was a lot I could withstand now, but I knew a hit of that White Noise would be like stepping in front of a speeding train. O’Ryan stood over me, staring at my face. He thought he was in control here, didn’t he? That if he looked at me close enough, he’d detect me using my abilities—that if the muzzle kept me from speaking, I couldn’t issue a command.

  I didn’t need to look at him. I didn’t need to speak to him. And, in the end, I only needed to affect one person.

  Dr. Freemont’s mind was a swamp of faceless children and computer screens. I planted the images there in the middle of them all, a neat, tidy package based on what I could remember from my first processing through the camp, and pulled back immediately.

  I pushed the image of him fiddling with the dial, pulling it back toward his chest as he turned the dial back to its original setting. He was angled away from the PSFs at the door. O’Ryan was looking at me, so smug and sure of himself, that he allowed himself a knowing smirk. I lowered my lashes, glad for the first time that there was a muzzle to keep me from returning it.

  “Begin,” he said.

  It was easy enough to float the command to Dr. Freemont to push the button—I’d seen him do it moments ago, and could choreograph the small movement the exact way the doctor had done before. The White Noise trickled out again, running along my skin like an electric current. I let my eyes flick around, but it was harder to mime fear now. A swell of cool, careful control settled my mind.

  O’Ryan looked back over his shoulder. “Turn it on.”

  It is on, I thought.

  “It is on,” Dr. Freemont said. I froze at the dull tone of his voice, risking a glance toward O’Ryan for his reaction.

  The camp controller’s lip pulled back. “I’m ordering one of the testing machines back from New York.”

  New York? Had they moved all of the big testing machines and scanners out already?

  I forced the words into the doctor’s mouth. That could take weeks.

  “That could take weeks,” Dr. Freemont said.

  This is foolproof.

  “This is foolproof.”

  O’Ryan’s gaze was searing as it moved between the old man and me. I let my control expand, snaring the camp controller’s mind. I skimmed the surface memories, the damp mornings, fog, streams of children in uniforms, but it took a forceful shove to break past them, to plant the idea. This girl is Green. She was mistakenly identified as Orange.

  I pulled back, slipping out of both of their minds, shifting my gaze to the tiled floor.

  “Fine. The Orange classification was an error.” O’Ryan turned to one of the PSFs. “Get one of the Green uniforms and shoes out of the boxes. Her PID is three-two-eight-five.”

  “What size, sir?”

  “Does it matter?” O’Ryan barked. “Go.”

  The doctor blinked. “Will she not stay here, then? I imagine it might be…disruptive to the other children if they saw her.”

  “One night is enough.” He turned to look at me as he added, “I want them all to understand, no matter how far they run, they’ll always be found. They’ll always be brought back.”

  A whole night. Jesus—the drugs they’d given me had knocked me sideways hard enough to lose a full day. The military would have flown us back east to West Virginia—they wouldn’t have risked ground transportation. Meaning…that would make it…the twenty-fifth of February. Shit. Three days to figure this out.

  The doctor didn’t uncuff me or remove the muzzle until the PSF was back, dropping the thin, cotton uniform and laceless white slip-on sneakers on the examination table.

  “Change,” O’Ryan ordered, tossing them onto my chest. “Move.”

  The smell of black permanent marker flooded my nose as I picked them up, working my sore jaw back and forth. If it was a muscle or a joint, it hurt, but I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of limping as I stood up and moved to the corner of the room to begin stripping, aware of their eyes on my back the entire time. I began with my shoes, unlacing them quickly, tilting the right one back to pluck the black flash drive out of it. My hands felt swollen and clumsy as I slid it into my new shoe, pretending to adjust the cloth tongue. They were two sizes too big, at least, but it didn’t matter to anyone watching me. My face burned with hatred as I faced the wall and stripped out of my clothes. The uniform slid over my freezing skin like the dull side of a blade. When I was finished, I turned back and kept my head bowed.

  The PSF who’d gone to get the uniform, Laybrook, stepped up and gripped my arm.

  “Cabin twenty-seven,” O’Ryan said, the corner of his mouth twisting up in a mocking smile. “We kept your bed open for you, knowing we’d see you again. I’m sure you remember the way.”

  O’Ryan gave a small signal with his hand and I was hauled, literally pulled, out of the door and into the hall. Laybrook wrenched my arm again as we turned into the nearest stairwell. God, I could almost see it—all of those little kids trailing up the other direction, not knowing what was waiting for them. I saw myself in my pajamas, Sam in her coat.

  The pace was impossible to keep up with. I slipped, nearly falling onto my knees as we reached the first landing. Laybrook’s expression darkened with irritation as he gripped the back of my shirt and neck, bringing me back up onto my feet.

  This is how it’s going to be, I thought, with all of them. I got out, I got out and beat their system— And now what? They had to prove to me it would never happen again? That I was just as small and powerless at seventeen as I was at ten? They wanted me to stay in that shadowy corner I’d let my
self be backed into, fold myself up small, cut myself off from the others. They wanted to take everything away again, strip me down to nothing.

  I snapped.

  I glanced back up the steps we’d come down and shifted my gaze toward the next set, until it finally landed on the black camera watching overhead. Once we were out of its line of sight, turning the corner to start down the next flight of stairs, I bent my arm, threw my elbow up into Laybrook’s throat, and held it there. I glared up through the inches that separated his stunned face from mine, and slammed into his mind. His rifle clattered against the wall, the strap sliding from his shoulder. The man had decades on me, and at least a hundred pounds, but in the end it didn’t matter. We’d be going at my pace from this point on.

  O’Ryan had been right about one thing, at least—I did remember the way back to Cabin 27. My fear remembered it, too, and I had to fight to keep myself from swaying as the camp spread open in front of me.

  It was just that some things had changed in the months I’d been gone.

  The lower level of the Infirmary had been little more than a hallway of beds and curtains, but all of those were gone now, replaced by stacked, unlabeled boxes. As we moved across the tile, the plastic in my shoe clicking with each stride, I saw PSFs bringing more up from the back rooms and offices. Their curious gazes followed us all the way outside into the pouring rain.

  Gunmetal-gray skies always drew out the vibrant green of the grass and the trees surrounding the fence. The curtain of water falling around us in sheets didn’t dampen the effect in the slightest, nor did it drive away the earthy smell that immediately sent my senses into an overload of visceral memory. I bit my lip and shook my head. It’s different now, I reminded myself. You’re in control. You are getting out of here. I tried to reach for the old, familiar numb nothing I had lived inside while in this camp, but couldn’t find it.

  The soggy ground shifted under my feet as I found the muddy path. I looked down, and my eyes caught on the sight of the white slip-ons on my feet. The number 3285 stared back, splattered with filthy water and wilted grass.

  I took a steadying breath and forced myself forward. You’re here for a purpose. You are going to get out of here. This was another Op. I could be hard and certain and fight here, too. There was no falling apart now. No giving in to fear. Not if I was going to save the others.

  Rings of cabins curved in front of me, looking darker and smaller than I remembered. I saw holes in the roofs patched over with sheets of warped plastic. The wood paneling along the sides was warping, peeling as the remnants of the last snowstorm dripped down from the roofs. The cold ran like needles over my skin, pinching and stabbing until I finally gave in and started to shiver.

  The red brick Control Tower at the center of the cabins had darkened under the rain’s touch, but there were still multiple PSFs out on the upper ledge, their guns following the paths of each line of drenched kids trudging up the paths from the Garden. Their Blue uniforms clung to their shoulders, the hollows of their stomachs.

  Most of the kids kept their heads down as they diverted around us, but I caught a few curious glances, all lightning-fast, under the watchful eye of their PSF escort. No—not PSF—

  I spun on my heel, watching as the soldiers at the end of the line marched on, backs straight, movements choreographed and stiff. They wore crimson vests over their black fatigues.

  I guided Laybrook off the path with the slightest bit of pressure on his arm, letting the next group pass by us to reach their cabins. Again, walking alongside them at the front and back of the two straight rows were the soldiers in crimson vests. No guns. No weapons of any kind. A warning trill sounded in my mind as the last group came toward us, and terrible suspicion solidified into shock.

  The red vests were keeping track of the kids, devoid of any emotion. They were young, faces still round and full. My age maybe, or a few years older. They were inserted in the places where the dwindling PSF force should have been.

  They were Reds.

  THERE WAS AN HOUR BETWEEN THE LAST WORK SHIFT, WHETHER IT WAS IN THE GARDEN, THE FACTORY, OR CLEANING IN THE MESS HALL OR WASH ROOMS, AND WHEN THEY SERVED DINNER. The kids would be returned to their cabins, and each group was allotted a specific time to walk the distance between the buildings. It was a song that only worked if the camp hit each note exactly right. The kids were streams of blue and green, so deeply entrenched in playing their parts that they never stepped out, not even once, to dare interrupt the pace.

  Reds. God, the others had no idea. I had no way of warning them, and the closer I came to Cabin 27, the more it felt like this was already over.

  Laybrook followed me up to the cabin, unlocking the door and holding it open for me with a forced politeness. I stepped inside, my eyes meeting his pale ones for the last time. I plugged memories in over the truth, dropped in scenes of him roughing me up, dragging me around, and made him think he was as tough as he wanted to be. The door shut automatically as he turned and walked back into the rain.

  I knew, by the silence that had greeted me when the door opened, that the girls weren’t back yet. They would have switched, just recently, from Factory to Garden duty, and likely were still trudging back through the mud, or waiting at the low fence for permission to move.

  The cabin—my cabin—was small enough to take in with a single turn. Brown upon brown, broken up only by the yellowing white sheets on the bunk bed. The smell of mildew mixed with a natural body odor, covering even the bland hint of sawdust from the wood. Patches of silver light streamed in through the cracks in the paneling. The wind whispered through the cabin, drawing me around the first few sets of bunks, toward the back wall.

  I stared at my bunk, a familiar hopeless despair crashing over me. I bit my lip again to keep from crying.

  Rain had come in through the nearby wall, slanting in to dampen the mattress. I moved toward it like I was underwater, barely feeling it as I sat down. My breath caught in my throat and stayed there as I looked up at the bottom of Sam’s mattress. My fingers traced the shapes I had peeled off at night when I couldn’t sleep.

  You left them here. A hand rose up, pressing against my chest, making sure my heart was still beating. You left them here, to live in this hell.

  “Stop,” I whispered. “Stop.”

  There was no way I could ever make up for it. There was no way to go back and change the decision I made that night to swallow Cate’s pills. The only way out was forward.

  I am going to walk out of here. I am going to take every single one of them with me.

  The door to the cabin popped open. They were silent as they came in, lining the narrow space between the nearby bunks.

  The PSF came in, counting them off. Then, with a faint smirk, she turned and added me to the tally. The others knew better than to move before the uniform left and locked the door behind her, but nothing could have surprised me more than seeing Sam whirl around, something like hope on her face.

  Her honey-blond hair had been hastily braided back, and her face was streaked with black dirt. She looked tired, pushed past the point of exhaustion; but her stance, the hands on her hips, the expectant tilt of her head—that was Sam. That was all Sam.

  “Oh my God.” Ellie, one of the older girls. She and Ashley had always tried the hardest to take care of the younger girls. Without her best friend standing shoulder to shoulder with her, I barely recognized her. There was a beat of stillness and then she was rushing toward me, climbing over the bunks that separated us. A good thing, too. I’m not sure I could have moved if I’d wanted to. How was it possible to be bursting with happiness at the sight of them, and still terrified about what they’d think?

  “Oh my God.” Those three words over and over again. Ellie crouched down in front of me, her green shirt splattered with rain. She took my face between her freezing hands, a light touch that turned into a fierce grip once she seemed to accept I was real. “Ruby?”

  “I’m back,” I choked out.

  The
other girls bottlenecked the path between the bunks, and some, Sam included, simply crawled over the mattresses and frames that stood between them and me. Vanessa, Macey, Rachel, all of them, reaching out, touching my face, the hands that were limp in my lap. Not angry. Not accusing. Not afraid.

  Don’t cry, I told myself, smiling even as my eyes burned behind my lashes.

  “They said that you died,” Ellie said, still kneeling in front of me. “That it was IAAN. What happened? They took you away that night, and you never came back—”

  “I got out,” I told them. “One of the nurses planned the whole thing. I met other kids like us and…we hid.” The abbreviated truth would have to do—for now. I’d never bothered to ask Cate if the cameras could record sound in addition to video, but the sight of them gathered around me would be dangerous enough. We weren’t supposed to touch each other.

  “But they found you?” This from Vanessa, dark eyes still wide with disbelief. “Do you know if they took Ashley, too? Have you heard anything about her?”

  “What happened?” I asked, careful to keep my tone measured.

  “They pulled her in to work in the Kitchen…maybe two months ago?” Ellie said. That wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. If there were specific, small tasks, or if they needed an additional hand somewhere like the Kitchen or the Laundry, they would pull from the older Green kids, thinking they were trustworthy, I guess. “That night, they wouldn’t let us eat in the Mess. And then she just didn’t come back. Do you know if someone got her out?”

  They were all staring at me, and the hope in their eyes was unbearable. What would the truth do to them? I don’t know if it was kindness or cowardice that made me say, “I don’t know.”

  “What was it like?” one of them asked. “Outside?”

  A faint laugh escaped my lips as I looked up. “Strange and so…loud. Terrifying, violent…but open, wide open and beautiful.” I looked up into each of their faces, starving, desperate for something outside of the fence. “Almost ready.”