In the Afterlight

  “There hasn’t been a situation like this before, though,” I said. “You can’t know for sure.”

  The metal banged and screeched as Cole reached into the bottom drawer of the desk and slammed it shut again. He stood up and began slapping down sheets of paper across the empty desk, one at a time, lining them up in neat rows, a gruesome echo of the pictures’ contents.

  They were—all of those pictures were of kids in those thin, color-coded camp uniforms, black Psi ID numbers across their backs. Some of their eyes were open, but more often than not, they weren’t. Some were bloodied, their faces swollen. A few looked like they were just sleeping.

  The only thing they had in common was the long, empty ditch at their feet.

  “Where did you get these?” I whispered.

  “Amplify released them a few days ago,” Cole said. “I don’t think I need to tell you that these aren’t doctored, no matter how hard Gray’s cronies try to spin it on the news shows.”

  I shook my head, feeling like I was about to crawl out of my own skin. I would have backed away if there was room to move. As it was, the walls were folding in over my head, falling down over me, crushing, crushing, crushing.

  I had to get out of this room. My palms were drenched in sweat, too slick to open the door. Cole grabbed my arm and forced me to stand in front of the desk, forced me to look down at the photos and see them, absorb the blood, the bone, the vacant eyes.

  “These are the people we’re dealing with,” he said. “This is reality. These are people who won’t hesitate to kill anyone who interferes with their orders. This is what hesitation has cost us. This is why we have to fight. Revolutions are won with blood, not words. These photos have been out for days, and what have they done to get people involved—angry enough to stand up and protest? Nothing. Ruby, even this isn’t enough. They all think they’re fake.”

  “Let me go!” I struggled out of his grip, the floor rising and rolling under me. That face, I knew that face—the girl in green—

  “No one is going to fight for us, Ruby—we have to fight. We have to end this. Match force with force. Every second we waste circling back and debating the same shit is a second we could be saving these kids from something like this. What do you think sparked this? They were beaten to death. Was it because they tried to escape? They were caught in the middle of a fight? Did some PSF snap? Does it matter?”

  Oh my God, I was going to be sick. I pressed my fists against my eyes, trying to remember how it was I usually went about breathing. “These pictures are from Thurmond—this is Thurmond. That girl—that girl in green—”

  Cole’s grip on me tightened. I had the vague sense that he was the only reason I was still standing on my feet.

  “I know her. Her name is...was...Ashley. She was one of the older girls in my...”

  “In your cabin?” Cole finished. “Are you sure? Maybe you should take another look.”

  I did and it changed nothing. I lived with those girls for years, I knew their faces better than I knew my own. Ashley had been at Thurmond for over a year before I showed up, and she took care of us like you’d think a big sister would. She was nice. She was...

  Dead.

  “Okay,” Cole said quietly. “I’m sorry. I believe you. I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have showed them to you at all if I’d known. The source that sold them to Amplify didn’t identify which camp they’re from.”

  Jesus—that ditch. The realization thundered down around me. They were putting them in that ditch? That was what they got? After everything—this?

  Too late.

  This was Thurmond. This was real. We weren’t going fast enough. I hadn’t been able to get to them in time. A swell of bile rose up in me, and I ripped myself out of Cole’s grip, collapsing onto my knees. I barely got my face into the trash can before I could throw up everything in my stomach.

  When I came back to the moment, Cole was holding my hair back with one hand, rubbing a circle across my shoulder blades with the other. I braced my arms against the plastic container and gave in to the sting of tears.

  “Did the source say what happened?” I used the tissue he handed me to wipe my mouth. I felt lightheaded, like I was slipping out of the moment, and fought against the pull.

  “They issued a statement saying one of the PSFs stationed there snuck a cell phone into the camp and snapped the photos. Ruby...I think—I don’t want to believe this, but it seems like too much of a coincidence that this happened and they’re closing the camp. There are over three thousand kids there and the other camps are small and crowded. Is it possible they’re trying to reduce the population of kids before the move?”

  “They’ve killed kids before,” I said. “The ones who tried to escape...the Oranges. Reds who wouldn’t let themselves be controlled. If this has happened once, it’ll happen again. They’re going to keep doing this. We’re sitting around, waiting to get one useful piece of information, and they’re dying. This can’t just be about evidence. Not for Thurmond. We need to get those kids out now.”

  I saw the future with sharp clarity and it wasn’t a road, it wasn’t a sky, it wasn’t anything that beautiful. It was electricity singing through metal chain-link and bars. It was mud and rain and a thousand days bleeding into a stream of black.

  Cole must have sensed it, seen it reflected in my face, because he leaned back and finally let me go.

  “We’re going to need actual fighters for the Thurmond hit,” I said. “Trained soldiers to go in first.”

  “Agreed,” Cole said, looking away. “Harry...Harry offered to help us fight. I wasn’t going to say yes. I hate the idea of owing him anything, but we don’t have any time to waste now. Nico is right. The only way to shut down the camp’s defenses is by attacking them from within. I’ll see if I can try to bribe one of the PSFs—someone has to know someone there—”

  “No,” I said, my voice calm. “It has to be me. I have to be the one who goes back. A PSF can flip, take a bribe, tip the camp controllers off to what we’re doing. If it has to be done, I’m going to do it myself.”

  “The others will never agree to it,” Cole said quietly, but he didn’t disagree. He didn’t want to stop me.

  “I know,” I said, “that’s why we aren’t going to tell them until we have to.”

  Over the next week, the face of the Ranch seemed to change.

  Kylie and the other driver who had gone out looking for tribes returned victorious, even as Liam set out to find Olivia twice and came back empty-handed both times. If he was frustrated by the wasted time and gas, he didn’t show it—a part of me wondered if he used the time to get away from all of this for a few hours, taking Lovely Rita in the direction of the rising sun and returning in time for the sun to set.

  The new recruits were willing enough; the group of five Blues that had come back—Isabelle, Maria, Adam, Colin, and Gav—had all served on East River’s watch and, in theory, knew how to use weapons. The issue was, after months spent in the wilds of Utah looking like they’d survived a meteor apocalypse, they only took orders from Gav—who didn’t particularly enjoy taking orders from anyone, least of all an “adult shithead” like Cole. He complained about the cramped sleeping conditions, the plain, basic food we ate, the smell of the shampoo—like he was some kind of connoisseur of floral notes in fragrance. Gav was stocky, had a ruddy complexion, and seemed mean enough to want to fight, but only if we begged him.

  The Saga of Gav the Asshole ended when Cole hauled him up by the arm from dinner, dragged him into the shooting range, and locked the door behind them. Five minutes and a muffled gunshot later, Gav came out a team player, and Cole looking far less like he wanted to set the kid’s hair on fire.

  The other tribe was a group of Greens, who spent days circling the various computers that the resident Greens now seemed chained to night and day, if only to keep the new hands from tampering with their set
tings. Only one of the girls, Mila, offered to join the tactical team, but I had to work with her each morning to get her to understand what each hand signal meant so she’d be able to follow my commands.

  The third group that arrived, two days after Mila’s, found us. And we knew them.

  Nico had spotted the three teens looking around Smiley’s, clearly drawn to the crescent moon that we’d painted on the now-defunct bar’s door. Kylie and Liam had all but run for the tunnel door to greet them. It wasn’t until I saw their interaction on the computer screen, the way Liam pounded the back of one of the guys with shaggy dark hair and tan skin, that I recognized him.

  “Friends of yours?” Cole asked, coming out of the office as the five them came up through the tunnel laughing, practically talking over each other to get answers.

  “You remember Mike,” Liam said, gesturing to the kid in the Cubs baseball hat. He was thinner than I remembered—a good ten pounds lighter from stress and the strain of the road, likely—but I knew him by the wary look he cast in my direction. The kid gave me a stiff nod, then turned to accept a bear hug from Lucy.

  Cole let out a faint whistle at that. “Not a fan of yours, I take it.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” I assured him. Mike hadn’t liked me or trusted me, and had never really wanted to take the blindfold off his eyes about Clancy.

  “That’s Ollie and Gonzo over there, they’re brothers,” Liam continued, pointing to the two teens standing off to the side. One—Gonzo, I think—had his hand on a makeshift knife made out of a glass shard, a stick, and fabric. “They were on watch with me. You guys hungry? I think dinner should just about be ready....”

  I caught his arm before he led the group away. “You can’t tell them about Clancy.”

  “I already did,” he told me in a thin voice. “And they don’t care as long as he stays locked up.”

  “If they try to find him—”

  “They won’t,” Liam said, pulling his arm away. “They’re not here for him.”

  I wanted to ask him what, exactly, he meant by that, but he was already gone, jogging to catch up to the others. Zu, who’d been idling nearby in the hall, had come to stand beside me, looking up at me in question.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I promised her. Because we didn’t have time. I didn’t have time to think about Liam, let alone constantly seek him out in the garage where he kept to himself.

  The morning after the Greens perfected the cameras embedded in the glasses, two and a half weeks before March first, Kylie and drove Tommy and Pat out of California. They wound their way down surface streets and access roads until they reached Elko, Nevada, the closest town to Oasis that was more than a few houses baking in the desert sun. The boys spent the next few days hanging out at the fringes of town, appearing, disappearing, causing just enough suspicion for some money-hungry soul to call them in for a reward. There was a close call, during which it seemed like the PSFs who collected them were going to take them out of state, up to the camp in Wyoming, but they changed course at the last moment.

  Their glasses captured everything. We had a front row seat as the kids were driven up through the desert, as they were processed into Oasis, as they walked through the hallways with their many doors, as they were brought into their rooms, as the PSFs roughed them up a little to show off, slapping Tommy hard enough to knock the glasses off his face. We charted meal times, lights out, rotations, and compared the personnel lists on the PSF network to the faces we saw.

  After one day, we’d already seen the entirety of the premises. The camp was a two-story building, shrouded from outside eyes by a tall electric fence and canopied tarps, both to keep out the sun and to block any views of the yard from above.

  We knew that the weekly supplies came at four-thirty every Friday morning. The loud engines and tires chewing gravel and dirt announced their arrival.

  “The batteries in the cameras will run out soon,” Nico warned.

  “Is everything saved and downloaded somewhere?” Liam asked, standing behind him, next to a clearly impressed Senator Cruz.

  Nico turned around in his chair. “Yeah, but why?”

  Liam glanced toward the floor. “In case we need to refer back to it when we figure out planning and timing.”

  “There’s nothing left to do, then,” Cole said, “but practice. And wait.”

  Four days of waiting.

  Four days of basic self-defense training.

  Four days of reminding the kids to keep the safety catch on the guns until they were ready to fire, to brace themselves when they needed to, and to use their abilities before they’d think about firing.

  And now, day three of the run-through. The first day had been simple enough—most of the kids in this group, the East River kids at least, had experienced overpowering a large truck in a highway setting. They’d had to do it any number of times to steal supplies and food. The trick was reminding them repeatedly that they couldn’t destroy the truck in the process.

  I adjusted the strap on my tactical helmet, tightening until I felt it dig into the soft skin beneath my jaw as I crouched down, breathing in the clean, cool February air. It was my first time outside in what felt like a month, and we’d only been allowed to position ourselves outside of the garage’s loading dock door.

  It had taken us nearly half a day to clear out space in the garage, temporarily moving the cars, Liam’s bike, and the bigger pieces of furniture and crates outside. I saw him lean back, as if checking to make sure they were all still on the other side of the building where we’d left them. I’d had a hard time putting a finger on his mood today. It seemed to shift by the minute.

  The kids behind me were a cluster of disordered black fatigues. Each piece had been found, collected, and pulled by Liam and others running the supplies specifically because they were close to the fatigues worn by the PSFs. The look was pulled together with the assault rifles in their hands. Everyone had spent hours of the last three days in the makeshift shooting range we’d set up. The rapid firing of the bullets had steeled my nerves more than I’d expected; lacing up black combat boots, adjusting holsters and utility belts, had made me feel like I was stepping back into a shell I’d abandoned when I’d split with the League. It was a good fit—steadying, at least. I felt my feet fixed firmly to the ground with the added weight of the necessities of combat.

  Liam put a hand on my shoulder to steady himself as he adjusted the strap on his rifle, and for the tenth time today I felt my chest tighten, my hands clench around my own gun. To think I’d believed being in the Children’s League would destroy him, ruin every good part of him. The only person dragging him into this firefight was me.

  “Begin!”

  We came at the door in a rush of overeager energy, pouring through the opening. I felt the lick of adrenaline against my heart, counting off the timing in my head. The two Blues in front of me, Josh and Sarah, raised their rifle sights to their eyes and stepped into the makeshift hallway we’d constructed out of pallets, simulating the layout of the lower-level hall we’d seen. They swept their hands out toward Zu and Hina, who were pretending to be the PSFs posted at either end of the hall standing guard, and the girls made a dramatic show of pretending they were thrown back. Liam actually laughed behind me, which set my teeth on edge.

  “Stop!” Cole called from his perch atop one of the ladders. “Girls! You have to take this seriously, otherwise I’m subbing you out. There’s not enough time for us to be dicking around, not when it could mean this team not getting their timing down. Got it?”

  Zu and Hina wilted at his sharp words, but nodded.

  “Go from the top,” Cole said. “Everyone reset—but this time, Liam, switch places with Zach—yeah, you’ll be behind Ruby. Lucy, hop out—you too, Mila. Sorry, ladies. You’re not right for this Op. I want Gonzo and Ollie to take their place.”

  Liam opened his mouth but c
aught himself. I gave him a quick nod, letting him know it was all right. Cole had been making these switches and substitutions for the past two days, trying to get the best chemistry in the group. We were getting there, but the birthing process had been painful and I was feeling each day passing like a strike to the back of the head.

  I would have given anything for Vida to be here next to me. I checked in with Nico every single day to see if he’d gotten another status update from them, but the last contact they’d made had been to let us know they had safely arrived in Kansas.

  “Begin!” And the dance started all over again.

  We moved into the garage two at a time—Gav, at my left, grunted as he dropped down to his knee. He pretended to cover Josh and Sarah, as they pretended to zip-tie Zu’s and Hina’s hands and feet.

  “Remember,” Cole was shouting, his hands cupped around his mouth, “the point is to be as silent and fast as possible. Do not fire unless your life depends on it. Get the PSFs down silently so they can’t alert the camp controllers!”

  Zach and I bolted forward, him covering me as I ducked into a gap between two pallets meant to represent the Control Room. I reached a hand out toward Lucy, who was now posing as the camp controller at the helm of the camp’s security. She took a generous step back, her eyes widening in what I thought was real alarm. My stomach clenched.

  Zach went through the motions of restraining the other kid posing as a camp controller. Then we were at the back of the pack, joining the others as they hit the other end of the hall, and we mimed going up a flight of stairs. Liam said something under his breath that made Mike, Gonzo, Ollie, and Sarah burst into laughter.

  “Stop!” Cole called. “Lee, you’re out. You too, Mike.”

  Liam swung around, a look of total disbelief on his face. “Excuse me?”