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

by Alexandra Bracken

  Grade Five restraints. The words bloom a bloody red inside my mind.

  I know those restraints.

  I saw them at Thurmond.

  I saw the Reds shuffle around in them through the mud, in the months before they disappeared.

  “Medic did what he could. Hope you packed ice to transport the body,” the soldier says, unzipping the duffel bag, rummaging through it.

  The body.

  Mr. Orfeo explained to me once that the light we see from distant stars travels years and years and years to reach us, and that, after that time, some of them may no longer be burning. He said that when certain kinds of stars die, they burn themselves through, collapse under their own gravity, shrink to a core that explodes into a blinding supernova. And what’s left, when all of that energy, that stardust, is gone, is nothing but a sucking void.

  I know that feeling. I am alive with it; the pain as my ribs seem to contract in around my heart is staggering. But it’s the power of my fury that pushes me up over that fence, even as it feels like the world is collapsing in on me. I am halfway across the damp, empty street before the men on the porch register me, before any of them go for their guns.

  I don’t care.

  What was the point? I want to scream, beat my fists against the ground until I split it open and fall through the crack. I don’t care what happens to me now, if Lucas is gone then—

  No one else will be there for Mia.

  The thought brings me up short, almost stops me dead, but I’m too far into this to pull back, to run. I don’t stop, not even as shots ring out behind me, and the soldier and one of the men in black fall, clutching wounds that are pulsing out more blood than I’ve ever seen in my life. A car revs and peels away, shrieking. More shots explode from the street, as if chasing it.

  One day I will think about this, that my friend has just sent two men to their deaths without a second thought, but that day is a long way off from this one.

  “What the fuck—” the last man snarls, aiming his gun at my head. I don’t care, I don’t care what he’ll do to me now—there’s nothing that can be worse than this. I see my hand outstretched, my fingers curled like claws, and I think, I will tear you apart, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care anymore—

  He goes rigid, straightening up like a kite that’s suddenly caught the wind. I turn, only to find Ruby is right behind me, her chest hauling in breath after breath, face flushed, her cold focus on the man’s face. It’s like she’s released a valve in him; his expression drains away from his face, leaving slack, roughened skin.

  She tilts her head to the side. A small movement. Tiny. But it sends him running, his gun clattering onto the porch as he disappears into the sunset at the far end of the street.

  “Stop where you are!”

  There are soldiers on the other side of the screen door, rifles trained on us through its fine silvery netting. Three in all, eyes wide and dark like beetles. The one in front risks a glance down at the duffel bag that exchanged hands. A stack of green bills has spilled out into the pool of blood collecting at my feet.

  It’s more money than I thought existed in the world, and it damns them all, not just in my eyes, but Ruby’s.

  I have never been afraid of Ruby, never once in all of the years I’ve known her. But now I see that I should be; that, if she was anyone other than my friend, I should be following after that man, running as fast and hard as my lungs would let me without bursting.

  She might not have had control before, but she does now. It takes a single look from her, and the soldiers, all three, step back as one, set their weapons down, and then move again, pressing their backs to the hallway walls.

  There’s yelling, voices behind us.

  “Ruby! Ruby!”

  “Sam!”

  I shove my way inside, grateful beyond words that it is the two of us alone right now, and Ruby turns and tells Vida, “Keep her outside!”

  “Sam!” I hear Mia yell again.

  The body.

  The body.

  The body.

  Mia can’t see this—I’m sobbing so hard, the rooms in front of me disappear into blotches of color and light as I move through them, searching, and I’m calling for him, I’m calling, even though I know he can’t call back.

  The kitchen is littered with clear, empty IV bags. There’s still one hanging from a thin, silver stand beside where they’ve stretched out his dark form on the wood table. And my first thought, the one that rises above all the others as I catch myself in the doorway, is that it looks exactly like the one we ate on hundreds of times in the Orfeo kitchen.

  “Sam,” Ruby says from behind me, “Do you want me to…?”

  Do you want me to see? Do you want me to tell you for sure?

  I love her for this, I do, but it has to be me. It should be me. I can be strong enough to do this, to force my legs to solidify under me, to wipe my face. I don’t want anyone else’s hands to touch him.

  Liam’s voice carries down the hall, through the house, followed by heavy steps on the porch.

  “Here,” Ruby calls back, “We’re…we’re all right.”

  I am not all right.

  Lucas is so, so still on the table, his normally rich skin a sickly gray ash. His too-long dark hair has fallen across his forehead and I start to reach out, to brush it away, but I catch myself. I have to…I have to know for sure, but I can’t…

  The body.

  It’s the kind of touch I’d use to brush away a stray eyelash on his cheek: light, quick. His skin is still warm.

  Somewhere inside he is still burning.

  I lower my head down, and in that instant before I give in, close my eyes and scream, I see the slightest movement of his chest rising. I hold my breath, too terrified to move and disturb the moment—but there it is again. There it is.

  He is breathing.

  I choke out a gasp, a laugh, a sob, all rolled into one. When I look up, it’s Charlie pushing into the kitchen, picking up Lucas’s wrist, feeling for his pulse.

  I want to cover him so they can’t see him like this, so weak, so gaunt, not when my Lucas is as bursting with life and light as the first morning of summer. Liam looks as stricken as I feel, and Ruby has her eyes shut. When she opens them, I see the relief there. I know we three have confirmed it in our own ways.

  “Lucas?” Mia’s panicked voice breaks through the breathtaking relief that swamps me. It pushes everyone into action. I catch a glimpse of Vida’s bright hair as Mia slips past Ruby and Liam and rushes over to grab her brother’s other hand.

  “We need to make a pass through the house, grab any of the camera feeds’ hard drives,” Liam says. “They can’t know we were here.”

  “The exterior cameras were already switched off, so no worries there,” Vida says. “They must be knee-deep in something sketch to risk that.”

  A deal. An under-the-table deal to sell Lucas to snatchers.

  “I’ll have the soldiers deal with the…” Ruby trails off before she says bodies. God—she’s broken all of the rules they set for her, for me, and now she’s killed soldiers.

  “It’s okay,” Ruby says, seeing the terror pull down my face. “It’s taken care of. I’ll give them a story to explain it. Chubs, can we move him?”

  The boy rubs his forehead. “Yes, but he—”

  “Good enough for me,” Vida says, looking at Liam. “You take his legs. We’ll carry him out—and someone grab one of the AK-47s for me, yeah? Cate took mine away.”

  “I wonder why,” Chubs mutters, unhooking the IV bag from the stand and tucking it into the front of Lucas’s shirt for now. He turns and grabs the red bag on a nearby counter, the one with the white cross printed on it, and peers inside. “Ooh! Coagulant!”

  “Chubs!” Liam grunts, adjusting his grip on Lucas. “Focus!”

  “Right, okay, sorry.”

  The soldiers are gone. So are the bodies. We trample through the blood like it’s a puddle of sun-warmed rain, moving at a p
ace that’s slower than a run but faster than a walk and it is agonizing, every second of it, not just for my stupid limp, but because we have him out in the open for anyone to see. All of us are moving targets.

  “Get in the back,” Liam tells Mia and me when we finally reach the car. “We’ll get him laid out between the middle seats.”

  If he wasn’t so thin, there’s no way Lucas would ever fit, but he is, and we are running out of time. I keep my hand on him at all times, just to monitor the tiniest movement of his breathing. The car rocks as Liam helps Ruby into the front seat and climbs into the driver’s. He doesn’t wait until we’re buckled up before he speeds us out of there. Mia flies against my side and I have to fight to keep us both upright.

  “Way to fuck up my plan, boo,” Vida says, reaching forward to punch Ruby’s shoulder. “Want to enlighten the rest of us about what the hell just happened?”

  Me. I happened. Old Sam came back, as brave and stupid and reckless as always. Ruby was right. I couldn’t do it for myself, but I could do it for him.

  “Plan changed,” Ruby says, looking back to meet my gaze. My heart is still thundering hard enough that I swear I can feel the echo of my pulse in my teeth. Did we get him out—did this really work?

  “Who were those men? The ones in the van?” Mia asks. “What were they doing there?”

  No one seems to want to tackle that one, so I venture a guess. “Snatchers?”

  “Looks like it,” Ruby says bitterly. “The reports about the freak market have been all over the press. They must have realized what a gold mine they were babysitting. I’m sure they had the story all figured out for the report on what happened to him.”

  Liam shakes his head, running a hand back through his hair. “This is turning into a goddamn epidemic.”

  “Preaching to the fucking choir,” Vida says. “Anyone get a plate number off that van?”

  “Vi’s group is trying to figure out a strategy for the snatchers,” Ruby explains. “The Greens are trying to track down all of the different digital copies of the old skip tracer network they’ve made—that’s what they’re working from, unfortunately. There seems to be a large, central one that’s gone out internationally to bidders.”

  “They’re actually smuggling kids out of the country?” Mia asks, but I can see the real question in her face: They would have taken us out, too?

  “Yeah, and once they’re gone, they’re in the wind,” Vida says. “And of fucking course, retrieving them isn’t priority number one when half of the countries buying them to study or use are the ones involved with the peacekeeper force.”

  The SUV goes quiet again.

  I don’t let myself picture it this time. I don’t let myself play through what would have happened to Lucas if we hadn’t come for him. All that matters right now is that he’s safe. That I got him out of that lion’s den.

  “I need you to explain something me to me, if you can,” Ruby says. “I saw something in his mind while we were in the house—I don’t want to get your hopes up, but…”

  “What was it?” Mia asks.

  “His mind is…it’s…everyone’s mind looks a little different to me, but his is layered. At the top are the memories I’d expect to find, like his training. Thurmond. But there was this one thing—this one image. A tree. A tree house with a line of wildflowers leading up to it. There was something there—a kind of monster?”

  Lucas had woven any number of stories with monstrous hearts at the center of them. I’m too scared to breathe. To move. I’m too close to exploding with the hope that unleashes inside me. Mia…Mia was right all along?

  “Do you remember what it looked like?” I ask.

  Charlie and Vida turn back toward Ruby, intrigued, as she says, “It stood on two legs…very hairy, horns on either side of its head, like this—” She demonstrates, cupping her hands over her ears and letting the fingers curl away from her skull. “A nose like a hound’s?”

  I press my hand against my chest, trying to pin my heart in place. I know what monster she’s talking about.

  “That’s an old one,” Mia says quickly. “I don’t really remember it, though. Do you?”

  I let out a small, harsh little laugh. I have a perfect memory, but only since I’ve been a Green. My box of memories, all perfectly organized and formed, waiting to be recalled at any given moment, only extends as far back as when my ability manifested. And that was after the Orfeos had moved. After Lucas had told it to me.

  “I tried to follow the image through since it was so different than all the others, but I got shut out completely from that part of his memory when I tried to push past it.” Ruby raises her brows. “That’s not something that happens very often. Almost never. There’s a lock on whatever it is, and he’s protecting it with everything he has left.”

  Mia and I look at each other. I see the victory crashing across her face, the tears that she has to cover her eyes to hide.

  “It’s…there’s a tree house in their old backyard we used to play in,” I say, and it’s almost painful to distill what Greenwood is to us into such simple terms. “When we were little. He’d make up stories for us to act out.”

  “He responded before—yesterday, just a little,” Mia says, choking on the words, “when I told him a story about it.”

  “But you can’t remember that specific one?” Ruby asks.

  “What are you thinking, darlin’?” Liam asks, uneasy. His eyes dart over to her again. “I see the wheels turning, but they need to be turning in the direction of home. I’m pretty sure that we’re going to have a hard time explaining him if we just roll up to your house.”

  “So you want to dump him off somewhere?” Mia challenges. “Wash your hands of him?”

  “I’m trying hard as I can to not add to the tally of things they’ll hold against her if we get caught,” he fires back.

  Her jaw juts out. “Then don’t get caught.”

  Vida actually laughs, but she’s the only one.

  “I’m not sure if this is a good idea or a terrible one, but I really think it could work. Not just on him, but the other Reds, too,” Ruby says slowly. “From what I saw of the Reds’ training, the Trainers cut into their memories and detached emotions from them by associating certain images and names and places with intense pain and deprivation. I wonder if everything is just so deeply repressed in their minds that they can’t function when they’re removed from their environment of orders, except to retreat further.”

  It’s confirmation of what both Mia and I have figured out, but the knowledge only drains a little bit more of my hope away.

  “No shit?” Vida breathes out. “Damn.”

  “That image, that monster, felt like a path in,” Ruby says. “A key that could fit into a lock. If he retreated there because it was a safe place, he might not know how to get himself back out.”

  “And you think hearing that story again will call it to the front of his mind, and you can access the other memories he’s suppressing through it?” Charlie ventures. “Kind of like what you did with Lillian?”

  It sounds to me like she’s talking about some kind of mental Trojan horse, that there are paths inside his mind that she can wander down.

  “Can we try an experiment?” Ruby asks us. “Can you tell him about Greenwood? Tell a story you do remember?”

  I exchange a look with Mia. This is her theory. I want her to be the one to try.

  “Hey, Luc,” she begins, “do you remember that time we got trapped up in the tree during that freak thunderstorm? The way the whole backyard turned into a swamp…”

  Her words take flight, weaving in and out and around our silence, as it becomes the story of a sinking ship and of us getting stranded on an island. She talks for an hour, at least, before her voice gets dry and thin, and she finally looks up at Ruby.

  She opens her eyes. And, after a moment, shakes her head. “Nothing. He’s listening. What you’re saying is getting through—it’s like little fizzles of images here and
there. I can’t hold onto any one of them long enough to chase it.”

  “What are you saying?” Charlie asks.

  He’s fading, he’s too far gone, he’s slipping away—

  “Do you think he needs that one story?” I ask, finally. It feels too much like a fairy tale for me to really invest much hope into it. Instead of the right prince coming along to wake a sleeping beauty with a kiss, we have a boy who needs the right recipe of words and ideas and images.

  “You guys really don’t remember it?” she asks. “Is there anyone else who might?”

  So it all hangs on this: the one memory I can’t touch. Of course.

  “My parents, but they’re gone,” Mia says. “He wrote the stories down, but he—”

  I sit straight up. “He wrote them down. He wrote all of the stories down.”

  “Yeah, and?” Mia asks. “Mom probably threw out all of his journals with the rest of our stuff before we moved—”

  “No, she didn’t,” I interrupt. “Lucas gave them to me before you left.”

  Her dark eyebrows shoot up. “And you seriously think that your parents kept them? That they’re still in the old house, and they’ll be happy to have you come up and knock on the door?”

  I know she doesn’t mean that last part to be cruel; it’s the truth and we both know it, but it goes down burning like unflavored cough syrup.

  “I didn’t leave them in my house,” I say. “I hid them in the tree house.”

  Silence sweeps through the car as everyone absorbs this.

  “Ruby,” Charlie says, taking his glasses off to rub at his forehead, “don’t tell me we’re going to push back your check-in in the hope that a bunch of notebooks haven’t been moved or ruined.”

  “We are going to push back my check-in in the hope that a bunch of notebooks haven’t been moved or ruined,” Ruby says.

  “Really?” Mia asks, clinging to that thought with every ounce of desperation I feel. I know what Ruby did to me, the way she stowed away my memories of her and retrieved them with all the ease of someone pulling old, dusty file boxes off a shelf. I knew this, but somehow I never once considered that she could help Lucas.