In the Afterlight

  Vida was frozen in place, her face ashen. The instinct to protect Cate from any insult was clearly at war with the side of her that knew the truth. Cole reached out to put a hand on my shoulder, but I sidestepped him, waiting for Cate to look at me. Waiting for an answer.

  “Dolly and I will leave first thing tomorrow,” she said quietly. “The other agents only left a few hours ago. We can still catch up to them.”

  It felt like she’d slapped me across the face. “Fine. Then go.”

  “Good luck,” Cole added, with only a trace of mockery in his voice.

  Her pale eyes flicked down over me one last time before she went out of the room, letting the door slam open and shut behind her. Vida was fast on her heels; I watched them go through the windows lining the computer room until they finally disappeared. I couldn’t stand it anymore and started after them.

  Cole caught my arm and drew me back. “Let them cool off. They’re just upset, but it had to play out this way.”

  “Did it?” The question escaped before I could stop it, the doubt trickling in through the cracks in my heart.

  There was another loud groan of protest from the tunnel door—the sound got me on my feet, and both of us rushed out into the hallway. I was so sure that I’d see Cate charging down into the darkness, about to make good on her promise to leave, that the dirty, tired faces of the eight kids standing there hit me like a blow to the chest.

  Each of them looked a little more terrified than the last. Senator Cruz brought up the rear, brushing away all of the hands that reached in to help her climb the last few steps. She glanced around, avoiding the assessing look from Dolly as she appeared to my left.

  “Made it in record time!” Cole said, pounding each of them on the back in turn, earning a few smiles and even more relieved hugs. “Did you have any problems?”

  “No, we were a little confused about the instructions you gave us on how to get down into the base from the pub, but once we saw the place we figured it out.” Zach, a tall, tan-skinned leader from one of the League’s Blue teams, seemed as unshakeable as ever. He dragged a hand back through his dark hair and surveyed the place.

  If Zach looked relaxed now, confident, Nico had swung to the other side of the spectrum. He looked small and terrified, black hair standing up every which way, like he’d spent the last day running his hands back through it in dismay. Nico crossed his arms over his chest, cupping his elbows, breathing in deep. At least, until he saw Cate. She pushed toward him, shouldering her way through the other agents, but instead of flinging himself at her the way Vida had done, he reached up, covered his face with his hands, and began to weep.

  It was the only word to describe the sounds coming from him. They rose over the excited chatter, smothered each and every question, sapped the laughter until it died down to a whisper. My guts twisted until I finally had to look away, and let gray static fill my ears instead. None of the other kids moved toward him, only Senator Cruz, who made it very clear with her expression what she thought of us for that. Her arms were around him even before Cate’s.

  I turned to Dolly and asked where to find the showers and the sleep rooms, grateful for the excuse to get away from the horrible sound of Nico crying, from Cate’s disappointment, the others’ unknowing excitement for a place that had been stripped to the point of being almost uninhabitable.

  From what I could see, the Ranch was split along two hallways that ran parallel to each other and were connected by double doors at either end. The lower level had the same floor plan as the upper one did: two narrow, twin halls with over a dozen closed doors lining each of them. One hall the stairwell emptied into was little more than a series of bunk rooms to sleep in, the kitchen, and a laundry room. One of the doors had been left open and I glanced inside at the four bunk beds.

  The voices in the next room were muffled, but I recognized Chubs’s “What?” when it burst out of him. I crossed the last few feet to the door and gripped the door handle, wondering why they’d shut it at all.

  “—she couldn’t have just told us?” Vida was ranting. “Un-fucking-believable. If our lives were in danger, she shouldn’t have dicked around with Cole. We should have been the first people she told!”

  I leaned toward the door, pressing my forehead against it as I listened.

  “She and Cole have been acting all buddy-buddy for a while,” Chubs said. “I’m not surprised they pulled something like this.”

  “It doesn’t make sense—” Liam’s voice dropped low enough that I couldn’t hear it, but I was already backing away, blood pounding in my ears at the anger laced through their voices.

  I made my way down the hall, to the linen closet that Dolly had mentioned. All of the towels had been claimed, but there was a soft, oversized black shirt tucked into a bag of street clothes the agents had missed when cleaning the joint out. I took that with me as I walked to the bathroom, grateful I wouldn’t have to change back into all of my dirty clothes.

  The morning took on an unreal quality as I stepped into one of the shower stalls, stripped, and stepped in before the water could warm. The water burst out of the rusted showerhead and hit my skin with a freezing slap, cooling me instantly, easing the prickling on my scalp. They’d installed pumps of soap and shampoo in each stall: big, industrial-sized containers that were already half-empty. I let my shoulders hunch as my gaze dropped down to the water swirling deep, down, away under my feet. I breathed. The patches of dirt that didn’t wash away on my ribs and legs turned out to be bruises. I breathed. I breathed.

  I just breathed.

  I DON’T KNOW IF I ACTUALLY SLEPT, so much as dipped in and out of unconsciousness. Flat on my back, my hands folded over my stomach, I listened to the sound of the Ranch waking up. Voices called up and down the hall to each other, asking about the laundry they’d put in, complaining about the lack of hot water in the showers, laughing—I closed my eyes at the sound of Vida calling for me.

  Get up, I ordered myself. You have to deal with this.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bunk, scrubbing my face, trying to smooth my hair back into a ponytail. By the time I switched on the lights and opened the door, Vida was already at the other end of the hall, doubling back when I stepped out.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Oh? Finally done getting your beauty sleep, boo?” she sniped. “They waited for you—they waited an hour for you and you didn’t show! What? You’re too fucking good to even say good-bye?”

  Something cold coiled in my stomach. “Cate and Dolly left already?”

  After everything that had happened over the past few months, I was surprised by how deeply that cut. Didn’t stop to say goodbye, didn’t stay to hear us explain it fully. Cate would rather try to blow up everything we’d accomplished in getting the agents to leave by begging them back. She’d sabotage this for us.

  “It’s almost three in the afternoon,” Vida said.

  I stared at her in disbelief. Some of the ice finally broke from her expression. She shook her head, muttering something under her breath that I pretended not to hear. “You were sleeping this whole time? You must have been more wrecked than I thought.”

  “Listen,” I started, “about earlier...”

  She held up a hand. “I get it. I just have one question—did you keep Sen’s plan from me because you thought I’d knife the bitch in the kidney?”

  “That might have been part of it,” I admitted.

  “Then you don’t know me as well as you think,” she said. “Because I would have gone straight for the heart. But...fair.”

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “Gran is lying around moping somewhere,” Vida said. “Boy Scout is annoying the shit out of everyone in the kitchen.”

  “What? Why?” At her shrug I asked, “And Zu?”

  All at once, her expression shuttered again. When she spoke,
her voice could have cut the skin from my bones. “Do I look like I give a single shit where she is?”

  “Vida,” I said, “seriously—”

  Whatever it was, she didn’t want to talk about it. Vida was already backing away, heading toward the stairs.

  “We need to talk about this,” I said, starting after her. The look she shot back stopped me. That was the expression of someone who wanted to be left alone.

  “By the way, if you decide you fucking care, when Cate was walking down into the tunnel,” Vida said, “she said something to me: tell Ruby playing with fire only gets you burned. That mean anything to you?”

  “No,” I said finally. “I have no idea.”

  Vida had been partly right. Liam was in the kitchen—only he was actually in the pantry, past the stoves and sinks, in the darkened back corner. He’d left the door wide open, likely to encourage some light inside other than the small flashlight he had clenched between his teeth. He was scribbling something down on a small flip notebook. I reached over to flick on the light switch, about to laugh at him for missing it, but...nothing. I tried it twice to be sure.

  Liam took the flashlight out of his mouth and smiled. And just like that, the past few hours seemed to melt away into a murky puddle that I stepped clear of.

  “Did you know this place needs thirty-six new light bulbs? Why in the world did they have to take the light bulbs, too?” Liam asked.

  “Thirty-six is very exact,” I said with a faint laugh. “Is that your best guess?”

  He seemed confused. “No, I counted. I did a walkthrough with Kylie and Zu earlier. We also could use five new door locks, several gallons of laundry detergent, and about two dozen towels. And this—” Liam gestured to the sparse shelves in front of him. “This is pathetic. I have no idea how they even found this many cans of beets, but good Lord. What can you even do with them?”

  “Well, there’s fried beets, beet soup, pickled beets...”

  “Ugh.” He covered his ears and actually shuddered. “I’d rather take my chances with the stewed tomatoes.”

  “Is it really that bad?” I asked, stepping into the pantry with him. I didn’t really need to ask—it was. Actually, it was worse. Aside from a few loaves of bread and deli slices in the refrigerator, we had mostly canned vegetables and junk food like pretzels and chips.

  I leaned against him as Liam went on about trying to find pasta, cans of soup, and oatmeal, and closed my eyes. His chest was warm against my back, and I liked the way I could feel every animated word as it rumbled through him. He reached over and gave my hair a gentle tug. “I’m boring you, huh?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I’m listening,” I said. “You were talking about Lucy?”

  “Yeah. She was one of the girls who kept track of the food at East River. I think she’ll be able to give some insight into how to rotate supplies and what we should be looking for.”

  Right. We would need to set up some kind of team to handle supply runs, though there were already so few of us, I couldn’t imagine Cole giving consent unless the situation was absolutely desperate. And I couldn’t imagine him giving consent at all if Liam were the one going out.

  “You’re tired,” he said, running a thumb under my eye. “Where did you disappear to? I tried waiting up for you, but passed out the second I lay down.”

  “I took a shower and was too tired to figure out which room you guys were in,” I said, because how could I admit that I’d purposefully avoided the bunk room they chose? I didn’t want to deal with the questions, not when my head felt as heavy as my heart. After having it out with Cate, there just hadn’t been any kind of fight left in me. “I found the first open bed and tried to sleep.”

  He reached up and pulled one of those small, individual servings of canned fruit off the shelf and popped the lid off before I could refuse. He continued his careful count of the shelves as I tipped the can into my mouth and downed the fruit. I saw each and every possible conversation play out across his features, every question he wanted to ask, and felt a prickle of anxiety with each silent second that ticked by.

  “I don’t want to ask this, but...you were going to tell us about the agents and what you did eventually, right? You wouldn’t have just let us figure it out when only cars of kids showed up?”

  “I should have told you guys as soon as we were out of the city,” I said. “It just...slipped my mind with everything that happened.”

  “You could have told us before we left,” he said gently.

  “It had to happen fast,” I said, “and if anyone showed a hint that they knew what was going on, it could have clued the agents in to what I was doing. We had to scramble.”

  “You and Cole.”

  “He knows the other agents better than any of us. I needed his input on how to make the suggestion feel real.” And if I had told you, you’d have tried to force us to leave.

  Sometimes—most of the time, actually—it was hard to think of us as having had any kind of separate lives before they converged. Our lives were so closely knit together that it was a compulsion to tell him everything, to hear his thoughts on it all, to see if they matched mine. I’d held back from him before, about what I was, what I had done to my parents, but somehow...it wasn’t that it felt worse, exactly, more like there was just this nagging, this unflinching sense that something wasn’t clicking the way it had before. I’d interrupted some natural pattern in our lives. I bit my lip, watching his brows draw together the same way Cole’s had as he concentrated.

  “That’s why you panicked, isn’t it? You’d just found out about it...” Liam rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead. “Damn. So what’s the plan now?”

  “We’ll all meet for dinner to talk through a plan for freeing some of the camps.”

  “Maybe not dinner, if this is all we have...” he started. “But I’ll figure something out. Everything will be all right.”

  Liam draped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in. I pressed my face against his shoulder and let out a shuddering breath. My arms locked around his waist.

  This was right. Being close to him like this was right. For the first time all day my mind wasn’t racing. Here in the dark, my pulse fluttering at his closeness, everything else seemed far away. He kissed my hair, my cheek, and I thought, Can’t lose this, can’t lose this, too—I couldn’t tell him everything, not if I wanted him to benefit from what we were trying to do, not if I wanted to protect him. But we could have this, couldn’t we?

  “Do you trust me to keep you safe?” I asked. I knew it must have seemed like I pulled the question out of nowhere, but all of a sudden it felt vitally important. I could see that he’d been hurt by my not telling him about the agents.

  “Darlin’, if it were a choice between you and a hundred of Gray’s finest, I’d pick you every time.”

  I caught him by surprise, rolling up onto my toes and kissing him full on the mouth.

  My fingers were still gripping his shirt when I pulled back. My voice sounded low, rough to my ears. I had to fight for the words, and I was so self-conscious I wasn’t sure I was ever going to pick the right ones. “I want to—”

  The dazed look faded from his face as he watched me, waiting.

  I want to...I felt my face flush, but I couldn’t tell if it was out of embarrassment or because of the images flashing through my mind. I’d never felt so awkward and tense. I’d kissed him before, really kissed him, but every time before had felt like it had been prompted by stress or urgency or anger, and each had been cut off by the demands of the world around us. This was really the first chance I’d had to think about him, all of him, slowly; to make a thorough study of him. The feel of his hands. The rasp of his stubble. The small, breathless sounds he made at the back of his throat.

  We were in a pantry and there were kids working outside in the kitchen. The rational part of me knew the limits of this mo
ment, but next time, if we were somewhere else, and if we had another moment to ourselves alone—what then? I felt a small tremor work through me, powered by equal parts panic and longing. I wouldn’t know what to do. How not to mess it up.

  Liam’s hands covered mine as he leaned back against the shelves. Relief broke over me when I saw his smile. He understood. Of course he did. From the moment I’d met him, he’d known me better than I’d known myself.

  When he spoke, his voice was sweet, but his expression was anything but. There was mischief in his eyes, a hungry look. There was a jolt low in my gut as I realized it was because of me. “Now, darlin’, I just had myself a little thought.”

  “Did you?” I murmured, distracted by the way he reached up to run his thumb over my bottom lip.

  “I did indeed. It being that you are seventeen and I’m eighteen, and we have every damn right to make out like teenagers. Like normal, happy, crazy kids.” He hooked two fingers over the waistband of my jeans and tugged me closer. I loved his voice when he lowered it like that. His accent broadened, warmed like summer air in the minutes before a thunderstorm. It was the full-on Stewart charm assault, and I was totally helpless against it. “You want to hear the rules?”

  My heart jackhammered as I nodded. That same hand slid around my hip, up under my shirt, and felt warm and perfect against my lower back. I closed my eyes as his lips just barely brushed mine. His touch made me feel brave. It pushed the uncertainty back until it couldn’t reach me.

  “The first one is you can’t think too hard about it. The second is you say when you want to stop. The third is you do whatever feels good to you. The fourth is—”

  “—you stop talking,” I said, blindly reaching back to pull the door shut, “and kiss me?”

  He was still chuckling as he complied, and then I was laughing, too, because of the bubbling nerves, because his happiness was infectious, and because that dumb first rule didn’t matter at all. Liam was the only thought inside my head. He was the hundreds of wild feelings exploding inside my chest. He deepened the kiss and coaxed my lips open to his; I mimicked the stroke of his tongue and was rewarded with a small growl of approval.