In the Afterlight

  My heart actually stopped. I felt it throb, then nothing as I held my breath.

  “It was successful, and we were able to recover a number of suspected traitors and informants.” He said those words—traitors and informants—lightly, a thread of humor in his voice. “We’ve forwarded on what intel we were able to recover from the site as well as from our own sources in the government. We’ll be joining you by the end of the week, but I wanted to let you know that we did get your—”

  His voice was muffled, moving away from the phone. I heard another voice, this one higher—a woman.

  “Lie back down,” I heard Harry say, “I’m glad you’re awake—these gentlemen will explain what happened—yes, you can speak to her in just a moment—”

  My heart was beating crazy fast, I heard it my ears, I felt it down to my toes. There was a scuffle as the phone forcibly shifted hands.

  “Ruby?”

  Nico let out a cry, pressing his hands against his mouth. Hearing her voice—it couldn’t have been real—they—Cate was—

  “Cate,” I choked out, “are you okay? Where are you right now?”

  “Ruby,” she said, cutting me off, “l-listen to me—” Her voice was so rough my own throat ached in sympathy. “We’re okay, we’re all okay, but you have to listen to me, some...something happened with the League, didn’t it? They—”

  I heard Harry in the background saying, “It’s okay, please lie back—”

  Cole braced his hands against the desk. “Conner, what’s going on?”

  “We overheard some of the...the guards posted there, they were taunting us, they said that Kansas HQ’s going to be attacked. None of the agents—none of us can get a hold of anyone there. Can you warn them? Can you give them the message—?”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Cole promised her. Nico had already moved back to his computer station, his hands flying across the keyboard. “You sit tight, Harry’s going to bring you guys back up here.”

  “The agents want to go to Kansas,” she said, her voice strained.

  “Well, they might not have a choice,” Cole said, not unkindly. “Hey, Conner, it’s great to hear your voice.”

  “You too. You taking care of my kids?”

  Cole gave me a small smile. “They’ve been taking care of me.”

  “Ruby?”

  “I’m here.” The words came out of me in a rush. “Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay—”

  “I’m okay. I’ll see you soon, under—understand? I’m sorry—the—connect—out—”

  Dial tone.

  I stared at the device, letting Cole reach over and turn it off. I didn’t have the strength to fight off the numb dejection that bled through me. I needed more than that. She had to know—she had to know how sorry I was.

  “They’re driving through the middle of nowhere,” he told me. “Bad reception. Harry will call again when they get closer.”

  I nodded. “Do you think it’s true? They’re going to attack Kansas HQ?”

  “Their servers are offline,” Nico said. “I just tried to ping them and...nothing.”

  “I’m going to try to make telephone contact with some of the agents who are still out in the field, see if they know.” Cole tucked my hair behind my ear, ran a knuckle down around my cheek. “This is a solid win. Cate’s okay. We have an actual fighting force coming. Two weeks and we’ll be on the other side of this. Focus on that for now. Don’t let this Kansas thing trip you up. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter either way.”

  “Of course it matters,” I said. “So many people have already died—”

  “I get it,” he said, “I didn’t mean it like that, only that the League is done either way. Claiming the hit as their own was a desperate, last gasp for relevancy. Focus on the future. The cure, now that we have Dr. Gray back in working order. Thurmond—” He tapped his fingers on the printout. “Harry went to all that trouble to track this down for us. Let’s put it to good use.”

  He stood, taking the printout with him to tack up on the wall. I stayed where I was until he left, presumably to make good on his promise to investigate Cate’s claims, and then rose, moving toward the satellite images of Thurmond’s grounds, as if in a dream. My eyes traced the rings of cabins—lopsided, uneven rings, apparently. Seeing it from above, like a free bird passing overhead, smoothed out the sick feeling that had started to squirm around in my stomach.

  “It’s much bigger now,” Nico said. I nodded, accepting the permanent markers he handed me.

  He stepped back to lean against the desk and watch. The longer I worked, the more attention I seemed to attract, until I knew I had a full-fledged audience without ever needing to turn around. I labeled each of the larger structures—FACTORY and PSF BARRACKS on the two rectangular-shaped buildings to the left of the rings of cabins, GARDEN on the square of green at the northernmost point of the camp, and MESS HALL, INFIRMARY, and GATE on the right. Then I moved on to the cabins, and marked the circular CONTROL TOWER. Each ring of small cabins was outlined with either the green or blue marker to indicate its inhabitants.

  I felt the focus of someone’s gaze between my shoulder blades like sunlight coming through a lens, burning until I couldn’t ignore the small waves of self-consciousness that began to rise. It was irrational, but it felt like I was revealing something shameful, something I had to be embarrassed about. My mood had slid so quickly from eager excitement to horror and pity that I felt myself start to prickle in self-defense.

  “Are there only Greens and Blues there?” I turned around at Senator Cruz’s question. She stood in the doorway, her arm looped through Dr. Gray’s, who seemed to be trying to come closer. Nico took one look at her, froze, and then fled to the back of the room, almost tripping as he sat back down.

  “There were Yellow, Orange, and Red children,” I answered, looking back at the women, “but they were moved out of the camp about five and a half years ago. The Reds were taken into a training program, Project Jamboree. The Yellows were moved to another camp in Indiana that specializes in non-electrical containment.”

  “What about the Orange kids?” Dr. Gray asked.

  My hand stilled, as did the air around me.

  “We have no confirmed reports of their whereabouts,” I said.

  “Where is this?” Dr. Gray’s words were still slightly halting, as if she half-expected them to start failing her again at any moment. She took a step closer, taking in the patches of wild grass and snow. If anyone looked hard enough, they would have been able to see the little dots of blue uniforms working in the Garden.

  “This isn’t Thurmond,” she said. “Thurmond was only one building. I saw it myself.”

  “Once they moved the initial research programs out, they rapidly expanded the camp to house more kids,” I said. “I’ve added a little R, O, or Y next to the cabins they used to reside in. They switched out the non-electrical locks on the Yellow cabins and never changed them back. As far as I know, the Red cabins only had additional spigots and sprinklers inside.”

  Senator Cruz put a hand on my shoulder and she leaned forward, inspecting my work. “Why were the Reds and Oranges in the second ring from the center, instead of in the outermost? If they were going to cause problems, it seems like they’d try to move them as far away from the Control Tower as possible.”

  “They surrounded them on either side with a buffer of Green cabins,” I explained, “so that if they tried to attack the camp controllers, or tried to escape using their abilities, they’d have to burn down a few kids on their way.”

  “Did that ever stop them?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did anyone ever escape?”

  I shook my head again. “The ones who tried were shot before they reached the fence. They kept at least one sniper on the roof of the Control Tower at all times—two if a group was working out in the Gar
den.”

  “Well, that kills what little faith I had left in humanity,” Cole said, coming back in.

  “Any luck?” I asked him.

  “Nada,” he said. “We’ll talk later. Right now, can you walk us through a typical day? I’m sure you had some kind of a routine, right?”

  “Five A.M. wake-up alarm. Five minutes later, the doors unlock. After that, it changes by month. They gave us two meals a day, so if you didn’t have breakfast scheduled, you went to the Wash Rooms and worked for the next six hours until midday, when they gave you lunch. Then you had time in your cabin for about two hours before you started an evening work shift, usually some kind of cleaning, like laundry, or mucking out the terrible sewage system that always got backed up. Then dinner. Then at eight, lights out.”

  “My God,” was Senator Cruz’s only comment.

  “There were over three thousand of us,” I said. “They had the system down to the second. They even figured out how to accommodate for the shrinking number of PSFs, once everyone started finishing their four years for the draft.”

  “What would you say the ratio of kids to PSFs was?” Cole said. “Ballpark it.”

  I’d already given him this information in my plan, but he was asking for the benefit of the two women in front of me.

  “Cate told me there were usually two hundred in the camp at all times, plus an additional twenty bodies working in the Control Tower. There may be fewer now that they’re in the process of closing the camp.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t sound like a lot, but they’re strategically placed, and they’re given permission to harass and bully the kids.”

  For someone who had been so involved in researching a cure for IAAN, Dr. Gray looked sick at all of this, like it was her first time hearing it. That seemed impossible. Certain things were bound to be confidential, but her husband was the president—he’d played an integral role in the development of the rehabilitation camp program.

  She looked away. “...You’re like my son, are you not?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but not in the way that matters.”

  “Were you there at Thurmond while he was?”

  “After. We didn’t overlap at all. I didn’t arrive at the camp until they’d already started to expand it. Is there a reason you’re asking?”

  She cocked her head to the side and I fought off the shudder that threatened to move through me. The simple movement was Clancy, all Clancy.

  “I’m assuming that the reason I’m here is because you want to know about my success in controlling the children’s psionic abilities?” she began, straightening in her seat. “As well as Leda Corp’s final assessment as to the cause?”

  “You got it,” Cole said. “So, naturally, our question is what you want in return.”

  It was straightforward and to the point, and still, I was somewhat shocked by it. I don’t know why I had expected her—a Gray—to do this out of the goodness of her heart. I had hoped, I guess, that the apple had fallen far from the tree in that regard.

  “Can we speak somewhere with a little more privacy?” she asked, glancing through the glass windows at the kids moving through the halls.

  “Sure thing,” Cole said. “Nico, grab us if you hear any chatter about Kansas.”

  We followed him upstairs, past the groups of kids moving between the rooms in the hallways, all of whom seemed oblivious to who the blond woman was. When we reached the office upstairs, Cole motioned for the two older women to sit as he walked around to the other side of the desk, and I locked the door behind us.

  Dr. Gray leaned back against her chair, her dark eyes taking the small room in with one glance. “This was John’s office, wasn’t it?”

  I’d somehow managed to forget the fact that the Grays and John Alban were once close personal friends. Alban had helped the First Lady disappear, sponsored her research trials, made a deal with her—Oh.

  “You want us to hold up Alban’s end of the bargain,” I said. “You’ll give us the information in exchange for being able to perform the procedure on Clancy first.”

  Cole let out a soft whistle. “I was under the impression it’s a kind of operation. You couldn’t expect to be able to perform it here....”

  “Of course not,” she said. “You could scrub every inch of this place with bleach and it still wouldn’t be clean enough for an operation. I would need you to quietly help me set up a time it can be performed at a local hospital, where I’ll have trained staff.”

  “That’s a tall order,” Cole said. “There’s almost no way to keep it quiet.”

  “Once the procedure is complete, the plan has always been to take Clancy and go into hiding. I want a return to a life that resembles normal, with the son I once had.”

  The cure is another way to control us, take decisions out of our hands. Clancy’s words worked through my mind in a whisper. I listened.

  “I don’t...” I started to say. What was really my problem with this, though? Clancy had proven over and over to me that he couldn’t be trusted to use his abilities in a way that wouldn’t hurt others. East River...Jude...how many times did he have to show me the lengths he would go to? All to avoid becoming what he’d been at Thurmond: powerless. I’d felt his helplessness when he was strapped down on the table at Thurmond, the pain of having volts of electricity shot through his mind. I’d felt the embarrassment of losing control of my functions, the fury of being treated like an animal.

  He’d save himself before a group of thousands. This time, we had to choose the thousands over him.

  “Okay,” I said, when it was clear Cole had been waiting for me to respond. What was it I saw flicker in his eyes—disappointment? Understanding? It was there and gone so fast, masked by his usual grim smile, I wasn’t sure I had seen it at all.

  “It’s a deal,” he said. “We’ll round up the troops tonight so you can explain. Tomorrow morning, we’ll start looking into viable hospital options for you.”

  Dr. Gray inclined her head, a silent agreement. I stood up, muttering some excuse about needing to check on Vida and the training upstairs. In truth, I couldn’t seem to get the room’s heavy air into my lungs—not in, not out. I was suffocating on the words left hovering inside those four walls, and I couldn’t shake the feeling, not even as I wiped them frantically against my legs, that I had spilled blood on my hands.

  I was alone in the computer room with Vida, telling her about the short conversation I’d had with Cate, when Zu’s face suddenly appeared on the news channel livestream Nico had set up.

  I’d been sitting with my knees drawn up to my chest, doing the best I could to answer her questions, all of which seemed to be a variation on, “But she’s okay, right?” My eyes had stayed peeled to the screen, waiting for any late-breaking news from Kansas, and when I saw Zu I dropped my feet back to the floor so quickly that the chair rocked forward with me.

  “Turn the sound back on,” I said.

  “—more footage released today from sources tied to the rehabilitation camp scandal that’s rocking a newly reopened Washington. This evening, Amplify released a series of videos, purportedly of the children who were removed from Nevada. Let’s take a look....”

  I didn’t know if it was the news network or if it had been Alice’s clever mind at work with the editing, but the initial seconds of footage were of each of the ten kids who’d agreed to be interviewed, introducing themselves.

  “Zach...I’m seventeen years old.”

  “My name is Kylie and I’m sixteen.”

  On and on until finally the video showed Zu; there was footage of her shot later, introducing herself this time. Immediately, the video launched into her describing the way her parents had dropped her off at school. Each of the kids got to tell their own version of how they had gotten away from PSFs, their parents, the world.

  I pressed a hand against my mouth, looking over to gauge Vida?
??s reaction. She took a sip from her water bottle and slammed her palm back down on the cap to close it again.

  “They’re fast on pulling the trigger, I’ll give them that,” she said. “But boo, you know I’m with you. This is great for tugging some heartstrings, but how many asses is it going to get off of couches? Where’s the call to action with this? They needed our input. There’s too much hope here, not enough strategy.”

  “They were right, though,” I said, feeling strangely hollow at my center. “We did need something like this—we have to set the public up with the truth, so that when the kids do get out, they’ll be accepted. This is good.” Liam’s instincts had been right.

  “Just because they’re right, it doesn’t make you wrong, boo,” she said, lowering the volume. “Charlie was right. You dipshits fell apart without us there to tell you what to do.”

  The newscaster, a perky blond woman in a deep red suit, appeared back on the screen, but almost immediately cut to a photo a program viewer had sent in. At the center of what the program had identified as New York City’s Times Square, Zu’s face glowed from a cluster of three billboards, a stark contrast to the dark billboards around it, the ones that hadn’t been lit up for years. It was a heartbreaking photo—even without knowing the girl or the context of the interview from which the still of her had been taken, it tugged at you, demanded your attention. The words PUBLIC ENEMY, AGE 13 flashed over the image, a perfectly calibrated piece of emotional manipulation.

  “Where is Chubs?” I asked.

  Vida began to peel the label off her water bottle. “I asked Cole if our boy there could use one of the empty senior agent quarters to set up a kind of...medical bay, or something. First-aid station. A place to put all of the medical junk and books he’s been carting around like a freaking nerd. He’s in there measuring out all of his jars of cotton balls and Q-tips.”

  “You’re going soft on me, Vi,” I said. “That’s almost sweet—”