Never Fade

  Clancy actually laughed. “I’ll be the first to admit my East River plan was childish. It completely lacked the sophistication it needed to be successful. I got ahead of myself, testing the waters before they were warm enough. No, I’m here now because I wanted to see you.”

  Every joint in my body seemed to seize in the grip of cold dread.

  His attack came at me like a knife in the dark; the strange, disconcerting feeling at the back of my skull was the only warning. But I was quick, too. It was just like what Instructor Johnson said—sometimes the only time an opponent has his guard down is when he’s mid-swing. So I went for it; I knew what I was doing now. I blocked his assault with one of my own, driving straight into the deep reaches of his mind.

  Images and sensations flittered by, bursting like white hot flashes, changing every moment I seemed to get a grip on one. I focused on the one that kept coming up—a woman’s face framed by blond hair—and seized it, pulling it up to the front of his thoughts.

  The scene slid down around me, shaky and discolored at first but growing stronger the longer I held it. With every breath a new detail would appear. The dark room wavered in my mind before a ring of stainless steel tables appeared. Just as quickly, those tables filled with glowing machines and intricate microscopes.

  The woman was no longer a face but a whole person, and standing in the middle of it all. Though her face was calm, her hands were up in front of her in a pacifying way that made me think she was trying to calm someone down or defend herself.

  The woman tripped on something behind her as she backed away, sending her stumbling to the ground. The glass scattered on the tile around her flared as it caught the light of a nearby fire. I leaned down over her, noticing the small spray of blood on the woman’s white lab coat, and her lips forming the words, Clancy, no, please Clancy—

  I wasn’t sure how the two of us ended up on the ground, crawling away from each other with weak, shaking limbs. I heard Jude shouting my name from outside again, thundering his fists against the back door. I pressed a hand to my chest, like that would be enough to slow my heart’s galloping pace. Clancy couldn’t stop shaking his head—in disbelief, maybe, or to clear it. For a long, terrible moment, we did nothing but stare at each other.

  “I’m assuming that’s Stewart out there, banging to be let in like the dog he is?” he asked finally.

  “It’s not,” I said, clenching my jaw. “He’s gone. They left us here.”

  Clancy’s eyes flicked over to Vida again, and I heard a whimper.

  “I’m telling you the truth!” I said. “Do you think I’d willingly let him get tangled up in this mess? He’s gone. Gone.”

  He stared at me, his eyes tracing the lines of my face with faint amusement and more than a little annoyance.

  The restaurant’s side glass door shattered, blown out by some force I didn’t see. Clancy’s full attention whipped from me to Vida, anger flashing in his dark eyes. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder who was breaking in—my body was way ahead of my brain. I dove for Vida’s legs, knocking her to the ground and wrestling the gun out of her hand before Clancy could do anything.

  I rolled onto my back, aiming both guns at him from the floor. Vida was cursing, raging in confusion as she came up from Clancy’s fog, but my eyes were fixed on Clancy—and his were fixed on the boys who came charging in with such force that they slid across the piles of shattered glass. No! I thought. No, not here!

  “He’s gone,” Clancy muttered, his voice high in a weak imitation of mine. “Gone.”

  Liam’s gaze traveled from where I was on the ground to where Clancy still sat in the booth, rolling his eyes to high heaven in exasperation. Then Liam was moving, coming at him with a mask of pure, unflinching fury stretched tight over his features. I saw his decision there, read it in the way his fist was coming up for blood. So did Clancy.

  “Don’t—!” I shouted. Liam jerked to a stop, every muscle in his body seizing up, as Clancy sunk deep into his mind. I watched him slump to the ground with no way of catching himself.

  I scrambled onto my feet as the president’s son looked down on Liam, crossing his arms over his chest. The blood from his wound dripped down onto Liam’s leather coat. Liam’s face changed from a wince, to a grimace, to a red mess of agony, and I knew it was different than before; Clancy’s cool smile as he looked down on him was so much more terrifying than it had been at East River.

  “Stop it!” I said, forcing myself between them. I pushed Clancy back, one gun tucked up under his chin. “Let him go—Clancy!”

  I’m not sure why he backed off then, releasing his grip. I let my eyes tell him everything I was willing to do to him. And Clancy, he’d come to realize, just as I had, that I wouldn’t kill him to protect myself, but I would to save the people I cared about. And if he couldn’t invade my mind anymore, then he had no way of controlling me outside of them. The anger darkened his eyes as he stepped back, jaw clenched.

  I forced him into the booth, making sure he heard the safety switching off. My hands shook, not with fear but from the sudden spike in my pulse. The power I felt watching him shrink back, without even a word between us, was intoxicating. I would do it—if he tried to compel any of my friends again, I’d kill him, and the last thing he’d see was the smile on my face. We needed to get out of there. While we still had the flash drive and the upper hand.

  I saw the thought flash behind Clancy’s eyes, the way his whole body seemed to relax as he figured out the exact right thing to say to keep himself alive. “If you shoot me now, you’ll never know what’ll happen to your friends back in California. Not before they die, too.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  IT WAS JUDE WHO FOUND HIS VOICE FIRST, weak as it was. I watched his hand fly up, pressing the compass against his chest. “What are you talking about?”

  I drew the barrel of the gun closer to Clancy’s face. “Answer him.”

  In that moment it became just as clear to me as it was to Clancy that he had never been in a situation like this before—one he couldn’t wriggle out of, let alone control. Reluctance and frustration burned an ugly expression on his face. “I have a source in the League who says that they’re going forward with their plans to blow those kids to hell. You kill me, and you have no idea about when or how it happens.”

  I shook my head, but inwardly, my stomach clenched. “Who’s the source? You could have pulled those plans off a computer network for all we know.”

  The smirk on his face was enough to make me want to pull the trigger. He drew the name out, twisting the vowels. “Our mutual acquaintance. Nico.”

  “No!” Jude cried. “No! Roo, he’s lying—”

  “Nico and I go way back,” Clancy interrupted, glancing over to where Liam was struggling back onto his feet, coughing.

  “Do you ever tell the truth?” I asked. “You would never have had access to Nico. He was in Leda’s testing program until the League got him out, and he hasn’t left HQ since.”

  Clancy looked at me like he couldn’t quite believe I hadn’t put it all together by now. “Ruby. Think. Where was he before that? Or do you all honestly not know?”

  “I know I’m going to shred the skin off your face and turn it into hair ribbons,” Vida snarled from the floor, still visibly struggling to get her legs under her. She sneered at him, pulling her fury around her like armor.

  “That’s the spirit,” Chubs murmured, waiting for her to finally accept his help up—which, of course, she did not.

  “What?” Jude was saying, coming up behind me. “What’s he talking about?”

  I felt sick—faint enough that I almost sat down again. “Nico was in Thurmond? While you were there?”

  “Annnnnd she gets it. Finally.” Clancy gave me a little round of applause. “We were scalpel buddies. They liked to compare our brains—to study kids at the opposite ends of the color spectrum. They even brought us in on the same day, way back when.”

  My mind was racing, trying to figure o
ut how I couldn’t have known that until now, if Nico had ever offered up a hint of it. But I couldn’t remember if I had ever told him I was in Thurmond. Had Cate?

  “Are you saying your old man had them experiment on you?” Liam’s voice was rough as he came to stand behind me.

  Clancy tapped his fingers against the table. He had no proof. His father had consented only if the researchers didn’t leave scars. “After I walked out of that camp, I did wonder what happened to the others—I figured that they must have moved the experimentations to another location once they started expanding the camp to bring in kids like our friend Ruby. It took me some time to find they’d been brought to Leda Corp’s Philadelphia lab.”

  My stomach turned over. I tried to say something, anything, but the picture of Nico—small, scared Nico—strapped down to one of the Infirmary’s beds was too much for my mind to take. I couldn’t process anything else.

  “Even before East River,” Clancy said, folding his hands on the table in front of him, “I realized the only kids who would ever truly understand what I was trying to do were those who had been there with me. I thought they could be useful. But by the time I traced them to Leda Corp, Nicolas was the only survivor whose brain hadn’t been completely destroyed.”

  “And all you had to do was wait until the League broke him out to make him useful,” I said, disgusted. “Were you planning on convincing him to break away and meet you at East River before that plan imploded?”

  “I didn’t wait for anyone. Who do you think slipped the intel to the League about what they were doing in that lab? Who do you think suggested a way for them to get the kids out? I had to be patient, of course, and wait until they had him back in California before contacting him. And no—it was never the plan to bring him to East River, Ruby. He was more useful to me there, collecting every piece of intel about the League I asked for.”

  “No,” Jude said, dragging his hands back through his hair. “No, he wouldn’t…”

  “You’ve all misjudged him. Underestimated him. No one has ever suspected him, no matter how much digging I had him do.” Clancy‘s eyes were on the gun as he continued. “He’s the one who told me that the League is moving forward with strapping the bombs to those kids. That’s why he hacked the Chatter link for me. So we could meet. So I could do him this favor.”

  “He told you about the flash drive,” I said. “That’s really why you’re here, right?”

  His eyebrows rose, lips parting just that tiny bit. The eager glint was back in his eyes. “Flash drive? And what would be on this flash drive? Something I’d like?”

  “You—” The word choked off. Clancy was looking at us all, like he was trying to pick which mind to invade. Which one would give him easiest access to the truth. I forced his attention back to me with the gun.

  “He said you were looking for Stewart because he was in danger. My role was only to get you here, to tell you about what happened. But there’s something else involved?”

  “Talk,” I said, “tell me everything and maybe—maybe—you live.”

  Clancy sighed, his reluctance deflating his excitement about the potential gold he’d stumbled across. “Two days ago several agents revolted, killing Alban and seizing control of the organization. Everyone who stood against them was either locked up or killed.” He glanced at Liam, a smile tucked in the corner of his lips.

  Cole. Cate. All of the instructors. Even Alban’s weathered face, his yellowing smile, flashed through my mind.

  Once the initial shock wore off, Liam began shaking—I put my hand on his arm to steady him. But it was Vida I should have been worried about. She threw her fist in the direction of Clancy’s smug face. Chubs barely caught her around the waist, and the strength it took to wheel her back around sent them both crumpling to the floor. She was howling—actually howling—as she struggled and kicked him, trying to untangle herself from his wiry arms.

  Liam had met the news about his brother with shock and Vida had been swallowed up by her own fiery anger. But Jude…he was crumbling into the kind of deep grief that was marked only by silent tears.

  “What’s their plan?” I demanded. “The specifics.”

  “They’re moving them out of LA by six tomorrow morning.” Shock sent me back a step, and the space between us flooded with a palpable terror. I felt it licking at my skin, leaving behind a sheen of icy perspiration. So soon. I tried to calculate the drive in my mind, find the extra hours in the day we’d need to make it there in time. “The other kids have no idea what’s going on, according to Nico. It seems that your beloved Cate was only able to warn him before they took her, too.”

  And somehow—somehow that was the worst part, the hardest thing to hear.

  “Took her where?” Vida demanded. “Tell me, you goddamn bastard, or I’ll rip your—”

  “Why six tomorrow?” Chubs asked, still struggling to pin Vida’s arms.

  “Because it’s Christmas Day,” Clancy said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The pathetic attempt my father is launching at a peace summit? Why wouldn’t they want to steal some of that spotlight? Undermine everything the Federal Coalition might be forced to agree to?”

  No, no, no, no, I begged, like that could somehow change the situation. Like that tiny prayer could destroy the dread crawling through every part of me.

  “Good luck getting back,” Clancy said, malice dripping from every word. “Do you know how long it took me to find a plane and a source of gas to get out here? Days. Almost a full week of looking, and then another day to find a pilot. Even if you could drive the distance in six hours, you’d still have to make it through the blockades my father and the Federal Coalition set up on each side of the California border without getting picked up. That’s going to go down smoothly, huh? Knowing that you could have saved those kids, if only you’d had just a few more hours.”

  I was so sure my hatred of Clancy had a natural end and that I’d hit it one day—a point I could reach not when I forgave him but when I accepted what had happened and moved on. But it didn’t work that way; I saw it now. The feeling was like smoke, changing its scent and shape with the months and years that passed. I would never be rid of it. It would only grow, and grow, and grow until one day it finally smothered me.

  I didn’t give the others the chance to give their opinions. I didn’t want any of them to talk me out of it, not when there were twenty other kids in California about to be sent off to their deaths and we had no time. No time. My eyes slid over to Jude, slumped against the wall, his fingers gripping the compass, his face such a perfect portrait of grief I had to fight to keep from mirroring it.

  Instead, I let the anger flood through me again. I whipped the gun across Clancy’s face and caught him by the collar of the shirt. This is the only way, I told myself as I hauled him onto his feet. His nose was bleeding, and he looked like he couldn’t quite believe it.

  “Let’s go,” I hissed. “You’re buying us the hours we need.”

  “Is someone going to notice this is missing?”

  I glanced back at Chubs as we scaled the stairs into the small charter jet. “Probably.”

  A part of me had wanted to laugh—really, truly laugh—when Clancy had finally admitted there was an airport in the city and that it was how he had come in to meet us. From the look of it, the airport had been converted to cater exclusively to private planes, though there was a single large cargo plane taxiing out onto one of the runways. I’d felt a small jolt of panic at the sight, thinking our ride was about to take off without us.

  But, no, of course not. Why would Clancy travel like a commoner when he could manipulate and compel anyone into giving him anything?

  The jet was ridiculously beautiful. At the sight of the plush carpet and enormous beige leather seats, I did sigh, just that little bit. Each side of the private jet was lined with bright oval windows and warm, cozy lights. The paneling along the back wall and sides of the aircraft was that glossy, expensive-looking faux wood. Fr
om what I could see, there was a fully stocked drink station between the two bathrooms in the back, past the eight enormous, plush leather seats.

  “Who’d you steal this from?” I asked as I shoved Clancy inside, my gun digging into the small of his back.

  “Does it matter?” Clancy grunted, dropping into the nearest seat. He held up his bound hands, nodding to the plastic zip tie Chubs had been oh so happy to supply. “Can you cut this off now?”

  “Is he okay to fly?” I asked, jerking my thumb in the pilot’s direction. Most people could barely remember their own name when I was in their heads, let alone operate delicate machinery.

  Clancy folded his arms over his chest. “Every time he looks at us, he sees six adults on a business trip, all of whom have paid him handsomely for his services in arranging the flight details. You’re welcome.”

  Liam caught my eye as he followed the others in. “When do we get to dump him?”

  It was the first time he’d spoken to me since we’d left the restaurant. I hadn’t even been able to look him in the eye before now, afraid of the disappointment I knew would be there. Liam would have fought me on this if I had let him, just like I would have fought for him and Chubs to stay in Colorado, far away from the upcoming fight.

  But I think we both knew they were losing battles.

  “Mid-flight?” Chubs asked, his voice brimming with hope. “Over a desert?”

  Vida slid into the seat to the right of mine before Liam could. “We’re not dumping him yet, are we, boo?”

  She knew exactly what I was thinking. This was what the League had taught us to do when we located a valuable asset: you brought him in, bled him for intel, and then traded him for something better. I shook my head, trying not to smile at the alarm that flashed in his dark eyes. “No, we’re not.”

  The look he gave me in return made my skin feel tight around my bones. But what could he do? Nothing that I couldn’t do right back to him five times over.