Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds Collection) (A Darkest Minds Novel)

by Alexandra Bracken

  The blood drains from my head at that rush of information—killed, death threats, bounty—Ruby came for us in spite of all of that?

  Vida smiles. “Please. Like you could hide bodies without my help. Besides, acid works faster.”

  “True,” he concedes. “And you’d probably be the one to shoot them.”

  The silence that follows is somehow louder than his ranting. Mia’s breath catches as she turns to look at me. I hear myself ask, “Ruby, is that true?”

  “Yes, but—” she starts to say, only to be cut off by Charlie.

  “She’s been expressively forbidden by President Cruz and the interim government to leave Virginia, never mind Zone One,” he explains. “It’s bad enough that we already crossed state lines!”

  “And you agree with her?” Ruby says, her voice sharper than I’ve ever heard it. “You agree with all of them that I need to be monitored, that I need to be contained, that I can’t be trusted?”

  “No, it’s not that,” Charlie says, flustered. “You know that’s not what I meant! And, once again for the record, it’s not about them seeing you as a threat, it’s about you being an asset to them, and them wanting to protect you from the people who are literally hunting you!”

  “It’s about what happens when you get caught missing your check-in tomorrow,” Liam presses. “We don’t know. We have no idea what they’ll do if you provoke them, and darlin’, that’s what we’re scared of, even if you aren’t. This is bad enough—do you really want to make it worse?”

  I don’t know what to say. My loyalty is with Ruby, always, but I understand Liam’s side, too. If Lucas or Mia had a target painted so prominently on their backs, I would find an underground bunker and lock them inside of it until the trouble blew over.

  I feel horrible for being comforted by the fact that they seem just as lost, as at sea about everything, as I am; if these kids, the ones who played a huge role in the turnover of the government and the end of the camps, don’t even really know what our future looks like, how are the rest of us supposed to paint a picture?

  Ruby has remained silent through both boys’ outbursts, waiting for her turn to speak. The strain on her face makes her exhaustion that much more obvious, but she doesn’t let it dampen her words. “What’s the point of everything we did if we can’t help kids who need it? We let them take the Reds, we let them put them back in a facility, and nothing is being done to help them. Can’t we help this one?”

  “Facility?” Mia repeats.

  “Is this really about proving Cruz wrong?” Liam asks. “Showing her you should be allowed to try to treat them? Why not give them time to at least try to do it themselves?”

  “Luc isn’t—wasn’t—like the others!” Mia insists. “He did this thing, when we were little…he retreated into his head a lot. Sort of lived there, you know? The first time he went through the Red training, he avoided being controlled by them. When he got to Thurmond, he told Sam that’s how he got through it all—escaping into his memories. Isn’t that right, Sam?”

  I nod.

  “Can people lock themselves up—retreat—into their own heads and just go too far?” Mia asks Ruby. “He’s still in there, I know he is—he just needs help, more time. Please don’t let them have him, please. We were figuring it out, we were drawing him back up to the surface, and it was working…it was going to work.”

  I lean my cheek against the back of the seat in front of me. “We don’t know that.”

  “You don’t know that,” Mia counters, “but I do! He’s in there, but they’ll destroy any part of him that’s left if they take him back in!”

  “Look, I’m sorry—” Liam starts.

  “You’re not!” she snaps. “You’re not sorry, so give me a break and stop pretending like you are! You have no idea what it feels like! You get to keep all the people you care about safe—he is the only family I have left!”

  I can feel it, even if Mia can’t or won’t—the dead weight that seems to settle over the car in the silence that follows, underscored only by the hiss of the warm air coming through the vents. Liam’s jaw is a sharp line, jutting out slightly as he works it back and forth. He can’t stop blinking as he stares out at the rest stop. Charlie looks like he wants to climb back and strangle her; he opens his mouth, eyes shining with anger, but someone else speaks first.

  “We owe it to him to finish what he started.”

  Vida and Charlie exchange a look of raised brows with each other before turning to look out their respective windows, but Ruby holds Liam’s gaze until he releases his breath in a long sigh. She hasn’t just played a winning hand with that, she’s wiped every other card off the table. I’m not sure I totally understand the dynamic of this group, beyond what Charlie said about them not wanting to separate—why is it so important that we convince Liam to do this?

  He leans forward and rests his forehead against the steering wheel. Ruby puts a familiar hand on the back of his neck, stroking the skin there. And I know, if I know nothing else, that the he they’re talking about isn’t Lucas, and that Mia is wrong—that he does know what she’s feeling. Maybe better than the rest of us.

  “Ruby, when do you have to be back for the check-in?” I ask.

  “The government agent usually comes by in the morning,” she admits. “They randomly pick a time to make sure I’m where I’m supposed to be—usually around eight o’clock.”

  “And that was the compromise,” Liam said, “to avoid her having to wear an electronic monitoring device.”

  That sends a shudder through me.

  “But I talked to my dad before we left,” Ruby charges on, “and he can stall them until at least noon.”

  “How?” Chubs demands.

  “By saying he sent me off so he could talk to them privately about safety concerns,” she explains. I have to imagine that her parents are terrified of her leaving, but, at this point, are willing to do just about anything out of their lingering guilt for letting her be taken to a camp.

  “Fine,” Liam breathes out, “but promise me that if it looks like it’s going to take us an extra day to get there, we turn around. Promise me.”

  Mia tenses again, and I think she’s about to call him out on being selfish for choosing her over Lucas, but I grip her wrist and give a sharp shake of my head.

  Ruby doesn’t look like she’s about to cut that deal until Liam adds, “That’s also what he would want.”

  Finally she nods.

  Charlie throws his hands up into the air before settling back against his seat, arms crossed. Vida gives him an affectionate pat on his knee, and it turns into a surprisingly sweet, quick kiss on the cheek when Ruby and Liam turn and face forward. I’m almost embarrassed I get caught watching.

  It’s decided.

  We’re going to find Lucas.

  I’m surprised at the small scream I feel welling up inside my chest, ballooning out until I’m sure I’ll burst at my seams. I don’t want this—I do, but I don’t. If something happens to Ruby while we get him, it will be trading one of my people for another, and I don’t have any spares, I don’t have a single person I can lose now. I’ve handed out all the keys to my heart, and losing either of them—or, God, both—will lock it forever.

  The phone vibrates. Ruby looks down and then back over at Liam.

  He sits up, reaching for the small screen on the car’s console, bringing up a menu. “All right, darlin’, read me the address. When you’re done, you’d best ask him where we can still cross the zone border undetected.”

  Mia looks like she’s about to jump out of her seat and punch the air—and, actually, so does Vida. But I keep my hand on Mia’s, pinning it to the seat. We can’t celebrate yet—my mind is already churning out all of the reasons why we can’t. He could be gone by the time we get there. Too far gone to save, or already removed from the safe house, brought to the…my mind stretches the word, turns it into a hiss. Facility.

  The same one he was in before?

  I bit
e the inside of my lip hard enough to tear it, draw blood.

  We are not safe yet, either. When this is all over, we will not have our own safe house to return to. This will be our life now. Cars, moving, guessing, fighting, hoping.

  I’m so grateful Ruby has found her courage, but I wish she could carve off a piece of it and pass it back to me. How strange that we’ve managed to trade places, that I’m the shadow now. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe I get to rest, just for a little while.

  No. It’s not okay.

  Liam pulls back onto the highway after Ruby reads off some instructions from Nico about where to cross the zone lines, as well as a reluctantly delivered estimate of the new driving time factoring in traffic patterns and roadblocks.

  Ruby reaches over and turns on the radio, searching until the static is pierced by a man’s wailing voice as he rocks out about heartbreak and fury. My mind can’t make sense of it against the sight of Liam kissing the palm of her hand and holding on to it, fingers interlaced.

  “Okay,” she says. “We have a few hours to kill. Why don’t you start from the beginning—what happened when you left Thurmond? We’ll see if there’s some clue about how to help him….”

  The burn of tears is real at the back of my throat, choking me up all over again, leaving a confused Mia to explain.

  Ruby has found her strength—she’s escaped the cocoon of fear that kept her too terrified to even meet anyone’s gaze directly.

  I can do this, I think. I can do this, for him. I can’t let Ruby risk herself for me, not when she’s already sacrificed so much. I feel my hollow heart swell with it, the determination.

  If anyone is going to risk their life getting Lucas out, it should be me.

  It’s right there in the name, safe house, but some part of me still doesn’t expect them to keep him in an actual house. It’s an indication of how dire it is, I think, this whole situation, that they haven’t brought him to a more secure location, some kind of a bunker or prison to try to contain his abilities. As it stands, this house looks like it could belong in any town; it’s as perfectly American, with its white trim, blue paint, and swing on the front porch, as the Fourth of July; and I resent the hell out of it because I know what a mask it is, what its sweet face is hiding. It reminds me of a story Lucas told us once, about a witch that lured kids in by decorating her house with candy and sweets, only to try and eat them.

  We park two streets over and walk between the rows of foreclosed houses and their neglected backyards until we reach the house directly across the street from the one we’re trying to get to. Vida leads us, and forces us to wait as she crawls forward to make sure that this house is empty, too. That no one is watching the safe house from across the street. The boys go next, then Ruby, and finally me and Mia. We crouch down like the others and keep low, using the house’s brick fencing out front as cover.

  “All right,” Vida says, voice low. She checks her gun’s clip with a kind of practiced ease that’s unnerving if I think about it too hard. “Liam, Charlie, and I will do a quick sweep of the streets and houses—”

  “I want to go,” Mia interrupts.

  If I think Vida will laugh off the suggestion, I’m so wrong. She seems to take a moment to size up Mia. “You’re with me, then. And you do everything I say, understood?”

  Mia nods eagerly, and I want to protest this, to keep her here beside me where we can both keep an eye on the house, but I can’t bring myself to clip her wings. Despite what little sleep she’s gotten, she’s vibrating with energy, ready to spring into whatever Vida wants her to do.

  “Okay, she and I will take nine o’clock, you take three o’clock,” she tells the boys, before giving me and Ruby a loaded look and adding, “And you keep your asses planted right there until we get back.”

  “I want to go in,” I tell her. “To get him.”

  “One step at a time, boo,” Vida says. “We’ll get you in, no problem, but only after assessing the threat.”

  Assessing the threat. There’s a handgun casually tucked into the back of Ruby’s jeans, like it belongs there, and I realize that assessing the threat has been her life, probably from the moment she got out of Thurmond. I need to ask her about that night, about all the new scars I see and feel in her, the grim days spread out between when they took her away and when they brought her back into my life.

  I ease back a bit, settling more firmly on the ground. My mind is flinging thoughts at me too fast to take apart. As much as I want to storm across the way, push Ruby back to safety, I trust this system they have. I’ve already messed up so badly in losing him in the first place. I can’t make another misstep. I will wait.

  For now.

  As Liam crawls by her, Ruby grips his hand and pulls him back around, stealing a quick kiss. It leeches some of the tension from his face, but doesn’t erase it completely.

  “Be careful,” she whispers.

  “Who? Me?” The smile he sends her actually makes my stomach do an unexpected swoop, too. He’s no Lucas, but he’s what Mrs. Orfeo would call “easy on the eyes.” I wonder if this Liam, the one with the bright eyes and sly smiles, is the Liam the others know and recognize—not the distant, defensive one with his back up against the wall.

  The others have been gone for less than a minute when Ruby turns to me and says softly, “I’m sorry about all that in the car. The truth is, he does want to help—it kills him to know what’s going on with the Reds. He’s just…fighting his way back from fear.”

  “I know how that is.” The words are barely a whisper, but she catches them. Ruby nods, turning back to watch the safe house. There is something instantly validating, something that fills the cracks in me, about how her immediate response isn’t, You? or even a look of surprise. I find that I can finally breathe again.

  “You know, the most poisonous thing about the camps wasn’t really our time there,” she begins slowly, “it’s how they tricked us into being afraid of the world outside of them.”

  “The world is kind of rotten, as far as I can tell,” I argue.

  “It is and it isn’t, but it’s always been that way, even before all this. We just were conditioned into a routine, so everything else feels overwhelming in comparison.” Ruby shifts so her weight is off her walking cast. “When I got out of Thurmond, I could barely stand to be around the others: Liam, Chubs—sorry, Charlie—our friend Zu. I couldn’t stand their attention, or to be touched.”

  “No problem there anymore,” I note.

  She gives a little smile, lifts one shoulder into a shrug, as if to ask, Do you blame me? “Part of it was being trapped in the fear of what I could do, but when I think about it now, I realize it was an issue of control. I couldn’t control my abilities, I couldn’t control the way the world reacted to me, I couldn’t even control whether or not I lost the people I cared about. The thing is, there’s plenty about life none of us will ever be able to control. You have to let uncertainty become your normal. And that just takes time. You have to give yourself permission to let it take time, without beating yourself up about it.”

  “I don’t have time,” I remind her.

  “You will, but I get it.” Ruby glances over. “When I was having a hard time, when I didn’t think I was ever going to find solid ground, the only thing that helped was focusing on the people around me, instead of whatever fears were chasing each other in my head. If I couldn’t find the courage to protect myself, I could find it for them, protect them the way you protected me, the way you protected all the girls in our cabin.”

  I barely remember that Sam.

  “You want to know the real reason they never let us touch or talk to each other if they could help it? It made us strong. If you have people who love you, you can fall back on them when you’re afraid.”

  She reaches over, takes my hand, waits until I’m looking at her before she says, “It may feel like you’re alone, but we’re here with you now. We will always be here for you. That is a certainty.”

  The promi
se hollows me out at my center; isn’t the fact that she’s here now, that she had someone watching for my name to appear in a system, that she came without being called, proof enough? It takes away whatever weight has had my stomach in its grip for the past few weeks, and leaves room for something else to come rushing in. “Ruby—”

  The sound of a rattling engine cuts me off and sharpens Ruby’s attention on the world around us. She motions for me to get down, and—walking cast and all—crawls over to the edge of the fence, where it meets the open driveway at the house’s garage.

  I try to stay as low as I can without losing my own view of the white van as it comes down the road, its brakes screeching to a stop just outside of the safe house. There’s a single beat of stillness before the front door opens, and an older soldier tromps across the porch, down the steps. His National Guard fatigues are rumpled in a way that hints at how often he’s had to sleep in them, and he can’t seem to stop his hands jittering at his sides. There’s a jumpy swing to his steps as he comes toward the van, gun drawn, and that sets my panic trilling.

  Two more men, both dressed in beat-up black clothes, step out of the van and shut the doors quietly behind them. The driver stays where he is at the wheel, obscured by the window’s dark tint.

  They aren’t PSFs despite the colors they wear, and they aren’t UN—so who are they? The medics?

  That innocent, rosy little guess is stomped out when I see Ruby’s face, the fury carved into it. She recognizes them—or at least what they are.

  “You’re late—Christ, we’ve been waiting hours.”

  “Traffic,” deadpans one of the men wearing black. “It’s a bitch. Where is it?”

  “Give me what I asked for first—I need to count it before I let you in.”

  The one who spoke before, his hair buzzed short and his whole body stiff with obvious impatience, shoves the small duffel bag in his hand at the soldier’s chest. I take a closer look at the other, what he’s swinging around in his hands. It looks like a plastic mask, only it’s attached to chains and handcuffs.