In the Afterlight

by Alexandra Bracken

  “She won’t.” The others turned to look at me, and I wondered if I looked as flushed and crazed as I felt. “Cate would die before she’d tell them.” And that was the problem, wasn’t it? She would let them kill her. She would sacrifice herself before she’d ever let them hurt us. A scream bubbled up in my chest as Liam reached over, trying to wrap an arm around me. I shrugged him off, pulling away from his touch. I didn’t want to be near anyone right now. The room was suffocating, got smaller and smaller and smaller as more people turned to stare.

  I have to get out of here. Now. Right now, before the black swelling in my vision overtook everything. I couldn’t get air into my chest, not with so many people around me.

  The air in the hallway was cool, at least. I wanted to go, just go, but I couldn’t take the tunnel out, and I couldn’t keep pacing the downstairs halls like an insane person. Without a thought, without remembering getting there, I was upstairs, pushing through the double doors separating the halls, and I was in the training room.

  I got on the nearest treadmill, blood rushing loud enough in my ears to drown out the electronic beeps as I turned up the speed and began to run. The levels flew by, and still I kept my finger on the up arrow until it felt like I was flying. My feet struck the belt in time with the bruising pace of my heart. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone just like Jude, you told her to leave, you sent her away, they’ll kill her—

  I lost time, I lost my head, I lost everything and ran.

  My arms pumped that much harder at my sides, as if they could keep dragging me forward when my legs started to give out. The air conditioning sent chills shooting down my back, cooling the sweat dripping from my face. I was only getting air to my lungs in long, harsh gasps, each breath sobbing in and out of me.

  There was a blur of black in the corner of my vision, a streak in front of my eyes. I pitched forward as the belt snapped to a stop under me, barely catching myself on the arms of the treadmill. Once my legs stopped moving, they seemed to dissolve under me. I couldn’t put weight on my ankles, let alone straighten my knees.

  There were sounds to my right, murmurs that became words, words that finally took on meaning. I rolled onto my back, raising my hands to cover my face as I dragged in one breath after another. My hands were pulled away. A face swam in my vision. Blond hair, square jaw, blue eyes—Liam.

  “Okay, easy does it. Come on, Gem, that’s enough.”

  Cole. He caught me by the arms and forced me upright, sliding me forward to sit up at the edge of the machine. Sweat stung my eyes, tasted like salt on my lips.

  “I told her to leave,” I said hoarsely. “It’s my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said softly. He pushed the hair sticking to my forehead out of the way. “She made the choice to leave. She was doing what she thought was right, just like you and me.”

  “I can’t lose her, too,” I told him.

  “I know,” he said. “She’ll make it, though. You’re right, she won’t give us up. Of course she won’t. Conner is smart, she’ll figure out a way to survive and get back to her kids. That’s how she is.”

  She and Jude and who else? Who else would I have to lose before this was over?

  “Kansas HQ is probably already on this,” he said quietly. “We don’t have the means to go get her, but they do. It’s a lot of agents to lose, and good ones at that. I’ll see if I can find out if they have something planned.”

  He turned us slightly to the right, reorienting my line of sight toward the door, where there were at least ten kids watching his progress, varying degrees of worry on their faces. I tried to take a step, but now that my muscles were still, it was like they had seized up.

  “You gotta stand up and walk, Gem,” he said quietly, turning his back on them. “You have to walk out of here. Not just for them, but for yourself. Come on. You have to walk out of here on your own two feet.”

  So I did. Each step made my feet scream in pain where they rubbed up against the edge of the tennis shoes. I looked down to where bright red stains were spreading across the white cotton socks.

  I kept my hand on Cole’s shoulder, trying to hide how heavily I was leaning on him as we made a left down the hall instead of heading right to go downstairs, where the bunk rooms were. I didn’t have the energy to protest as he opened the door to Cate’s old room and turned the lights on.

  I managed to stay vertical until the small bed was in arm’s reach; by then, my knees had had enough. Leaning forward, I tried to untie the shoelaces but my hands were shaking so badly Cole had to tease the knots out for me. He clucked his tongue at the sight of the socks as I peeled them off, but said nothing.

  “I ruined it, didn’t I?” I asked. “The other kids won’t trust me.”

  Cole shook his head. “All they saw was someone upset over losing someone they love. No harm, no foul, as the saying goes. Will you cut yourself some slack before you literally run yourself into the ground? Take care of yourself so you can help me take care of them, all right? That’s the deal, and it starts tonight, right now—with you staying here and sleeping for at least seven hours.”

  “But Clancy—”

  “I can deliver the Little Prince’s meal for one night,” he said. “Do you honestly think you could handle him right now if he tried to take you on?”

  “Take someone with you,” I said. “Have them watch from behind the door to make sure he doesn’t try anything.”

  “I’ll ask Vida.”

  “Chubs would be better.”

  “You got it.”

  I spread my legs out on the bed in front of me as he stood up, too tired to argue, too tired to do much beside watch him go. Just as he turned out the lights, I said, “Tomorrow. I’m going to find Lillian Gray tomorrow. I’m going to take care of it.” Of everyone. And when this was over, I’d be the one to go find Cate. I’d save her the same way she saved me.

  “Atta girl. I have no doubt.” He stopped in the doorway, turning back. “There’s someone waiting for you. Do you want me to let her in?”

  I nodded.

  It was Zu. Cole shut the door behind him, and I could just make out the edges of her dark shape, outlined by the faint glow bleeding into the room from under the door. She pulled the thin top sheet up over me, finishing with a kiss to my forehead.

  And that—not the video, not imagining what they would do to Cate as a prisoner—that tender kiss was what brought the tears to the surface.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you worry. She took care of me...and I never treated her as well as I should have, and now she’s gone, and doesn’t know that I’m sorry. They could kill her....”

  I felt her hand around mine, squeezing in reassurance. I know, I know. She used her other hand to smooth the hair away from my face.

  “You lost someone,” I said, my voice sounding rough to my own ears. “The guy who helped you get to California. Will you tell me about him? Not what happened to him, not if you don’t want to talk about it, but what he was like as a person. Would that be okay?”

  My eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to see her nod, even if I couldn’t read her expression.

  “What was his name?”

  Zu picked up the same small notebook she’d been toting around for weeks. I closed my eyes, listening to the faint scratch of her pencil against the paper, only opening them when she tapped my shoulder with it. She reached over and switched on the light on the dresser so I could read it: GABE.

  In the single second before she turned the light off, I saw tears caught in her lashes. The expression on her face knifed clean through my heart. I would have done anything, anything, to take the weight of that pain off her shoulders before it crushed her into dust. But I knew better; there was no real relief from it. You just had to be willing to let the people around you serve as supports, and take their share of it wh
en it seemed too much, too heavy, to hold on your own.

  I shifted back on the narrow mattress, giving her room to crawl in next to me. Zu was all elbows and knees. Growing, stretching up in height, the way everyone seemed to right before they crossed that strange, ambiguous line into being a teenager. An almost-adult.

  But the way she cried, the way she wrapped her arms around me and buried her warm, wet face against my neck—that was a kid. That was a kid who’d already lived a hard life and was being asked to take on more.

  “I know,” I said quietly. “I know.”

  The darkness rose and fell over me like a cold wave. I shut my eyes, relishing the simple fact that my mind was like a blank sheet, drained of all thoughts. But hours later, no matter how still I forced myself to be, I couldn’t shake the rush of sensation in my legs—the feeling that they were still running.

  I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING looking for a fight. Muscles ached that I didn’t know I had, and my feet screamed bloody murder when I slid my tennis shoes back on. All the sleep had done was process my stifling sadness into pure, unflinching anger. I had energy to burn. I opened the door and shut it behind me as quietly as I could, so as not to wake up Zu.

  The manual clock in the hallway said 4:45 A.M. It would be another hour before anyone else was up and ready for the day. Plenty of time to work out the lightning zipping through my body, and return to some state of calm.

  The light in the gym was already on, and my whole body tensed in anticipation when I saw who was running on the treadmill, taking quick, confident strides. Cole must have seen me out of the corner of his eye, but he kept running and didn’t acknowledge me until I was standing right next to the machine and its whirring belt.

  “Not in the mood, Gem.” His voice was flat, edged with warning.

  “Too bad,” I said, walking over to retrieve two pairs of gloves. “I am.”

  I waited for him. Gloves on my hands, stretching, trying to warm my body up for this. Finally, after a good five minutes, he let out a grunt and hit the STOP button on the machine. Cole scooped up the gloves from the floor, his face flushed from the run, his eyes overly bright. I had half a second to drop back into a fighting stance before his knee rose up toward my stomach; I jumped back, but was caught by yet another obvious swing he made to my sternum. That, at least, sent the thoughts shooting out of me, along with every last ounce of air in my lungs. It was a distraction—he had me pinned against his chest in the space of a single heartbeat.

  I twisted out from under his arm, trying to use the momentum to flip him over onto his back. Like that was ever going to happen. The best I got was a stomp to his instep. He didn’t back off, though, not the way he normally would have. I felt the temperature in the room spike dramatically, and then—

  He pulled back, letting me drop onto the floor with a sound of disgust. No. The word shot through my mind as he turned his back to me and started to remove his gloves. The sparring may have started as a way to release some of the heat that was boiling me alive from the inside out, but my head had hooked into the rush of it in a way I hadn’t expected. I needed more. I needed to get the black thoughts of Cate and Jude and what was waiting for us at the end of all of this out of me. And that required sweating or bleeding it out.

  I lowered my head and charged toward him. I saw his expression darken in the mirror in front of him just before he slammed into it. This time, momentum actually did its job, sending us both sprawling back onto the edge of the mat. Without a single word, Cole dragged me by my neck further onto the mat, and then he showed me just how pissed off he really was.

  Trying to roll or kick him off did nothing. He had me pinned beneath him, his whole crushing weight settled on my chest. One hand pinned mine over my head, and the other arm came across my neck, applying just the right amount of pressure there to dwindle my oxygen supply down to nothing.

  He eased up on my windpipe, but not by much. I thrashed under him, knees kicking up to try to hit his lower back. His skin seemed tight against his skull, his face set with fury.

  I choked in a shallow breath, but he didn’t pull back—my mind was floating away from my body, drifting into that same pool of black forming in my eyes.

  “Cole—” I choked out. “Stop—”

  He didn’t hear me. Wherever he’d gone inside, I wasn’t going to be able to touch him. And I knew that the only way out of this was in.

  I drove into his mind like I was throwing a punch. I should have landed the hit and bounced back out, let it register like an electrical shock to his system. But his thoughts had hooks; they caught my mind, dragging it back down, drowning me in the scene melting into place around me. Light swirled around me, bending into shadows that became a small kitchen paneled in dark wood. There was dim, warm light coming through the curtains that masked the window above the sink. I smelled something burning—food. The trail of gray floating around me was smoke drifting from the closed oven door. Pots and pans popped up on the stove, appearing one at a time. The faint sizzling sound came from the brown sauce that had boiled over the lip of the metal pan.

  A woman appeared in front of me, wearing a simple blue dress. I had a low vantage point from the floor, I couldn’t see anything besides her long blond hair and the hands that kept pushing me back, back, back. A surge of anger flooded me and I saw, rather than felt, my own arms up, straining to reach for something—for—

  The man was the last to materialize, facing the woman. His face was in shadows, but there was something familiar about it, the shape of the nose, the set of the jaw—I knew this face, I’d seen two younger versions of it. He had gone a shade past red and was screaming, screaming, sweat and fury pouring off him, clouding the room, making everything feel slow and heavy. My gaze shifted down, taking in his dark, wrinkled polo shirt, the squirming toddler he held like a sack in one arm, slowly going pink in the face as he cried, trying to wriggle free, reaching for my arms. His hair was lighter, curling at the ends. The first sound that broke through the muffled din of the memory was his piercing wail of terror as the man picked up the steaming iron from the board and brought it up near his face, as if he was going to press its tip against the baby’s cheek.

  The woman in front of me fell onto her knees, begging. “Put him down, please, I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it, it’ll be all right, don’t you know I love you? I won’t have anyone over again, I promise. Just—please give him to me, please give him to me—”

  The iron was lowered, set back down on the board, singing the shirt left there, waiting to be smoothed out. The man’s expression transformed, a sickening look of triumph crossing it as he shifted the sobbing boy, holding him under his other arm. He reached out to touch the woman, to stroke her face. The man was so fixated on her bowed head that he didn’t see the skillet she’d pulled off a nearby low shelf, not until she stood and swung it up in a clean arc toward his face.

  The baby fell to the floor and I rushed toward him, the sound of gurgling and pain and metal striking flesh and bone drowned out by his hysterical tears. I turned his soft weight over and picked him up. There was a cut at the corner of his lips, where one of his new teeth had caught the tender skin. It was bleeding profusely, but the boy stilled and quieted, looking up into my face with these wide eyes, rimmed with big tears. His thumb slid into his mouth as I tried to wipe the blood away. He didn’t start bawling again until he saw the woman, his mother, crying too, reaching down to pick him up and clutch him to her chest.

  She snatched up my hand and dragged me away from the man’s prone form on the floor, the mess of his blood on the black-and-white checkered tile. He shuddered and coughed and we only moved faster, toward the door. She swiped her purse off the counter, then doubled back for the keys when she realized they’d fallen out.

  The door led to a garage, and the light that flooded the cramped, dark space dissolved the memory once and for all.

  I surfaced at the exact moment th
e weight came off my chest. I was breathing, coughing, choking on the flood of air that filled it. I rolled onto my side, curling into as small a protective ball as I could. It was several agonizing minutes before fear released its claws from me.

  The small, breathy sobs I heard weren’t my own. I propped myself up on my elbow, looking for the source.

  Cole sat at the edge of the mat, his back to me as he hunched over his knees, struggling to master his breathing. The section of the mirror in front of him was a spiderweb of cracks, stained with blood. I forced my feet under me and stood on shaking legs, taking one halting step toward him, and then another. He clutched his right hand to his chest, ignoring the way it bled onto his shirt. I walked to the towel rack and returned with a small cloth, pulling his hand toward me so I could clean the blood away. His skin was hot, boiling to the touch as he shook.

  “Fuck,” he breathed out. “I’m sorry—we shouldn’t do this anymore. Fuck.”

  “Okay,” I said softly, and stayed anyway.

  I was in the bathroom, still dripping from my shower, when I heard Chubs’s voice carry down the hallway. With one last glance to make sure my hoodie covered the worst of the new bruising on my neck, I dashed out of the room, calling after him.

  He spun on his heel, clearly relieved. “There you are. You missed the others—they had to leave. Apparently it’s an eight-hour drive to Gold Beach and the idiots want to do it in one day.”

  “They found a truck to carry the supplies?” I asked.

  “Yeah, which you would have discovered for yourself, had you made an appearance at breakfast—ah, sorry, that came out wrong. I didn’t get to tell you last night, but I’m sorry about Agent Conner. I want to tell you everything will be all right, but I’m afraid you’ll punch me.”

  It was the first faint smile I’d managed all day. “Was Vi okay about going?”

  He let out a long sigh, deflating somewhat. “She was trying to find you last night to run ideas by you, but it’s probably for the best she didn’t. She had a million ideas of how the two of you could sneak off to find Agent Conner.”