The glow from the screen changed abruptly from the electric blue and white of the news station. The set flashed red, drowning out even the color of Vida’s hair. “Oh, shit.”
The structure was almost unrecognizable, but the words running below it were clear enough: CHILDREN’S LEAGUE HEADQUARTERS DESTROYED.
“—reporting live from just outside of Colby, Kansas. Government officials have confirmed that drones were used to hit a warehouse believed to house the remnants of the Children’s League. Earlier this morning, faked photographs and documents were leaked to the press, and the organization claimed to—”
I didn’t stay to hear the rest. If they had sent drones to Colby, then what we were seeing really was Kansas HQ—and all of those agents, unless they’d abandoned it earlier in the day, were gone.
Cole was in the office with the door shut, but he’d left it unlocked. I slipped inside, finding him in the chair, his hand covering most of his face. At the sound of the door shutting again, he looked up, then switched the phone over to speaker.
“The guys said it was still burning when they got there.” Harry. “They picked up two survivors about a mile out of what was left of the structure, but can’t get any closer. I’m going to have them pull back and meet with us in Utah.”
“How did they escape?” I asked. How could anyone?
“Unclear. The connection was rotten and the survivors had completely lost it by the time our guys found them. The story we got was unreal.”
“What makes you say that?” Cole asked.
Static filled the room, filled my brain. It was only because of the murderous look on Cole’s face, the way the heat beneath his skin evaporated that last trace of softness in him, that I knew I hadn’t misheard Harry.
“The survivors,” Harry said. “They claim they were attacked by a unit of kids. They said they were Reds.”
“DO YOU BELIEVE IT?” I asked. “That Reds did this?”
Cole looked up at my question. “I wish like hell I knew. It just makes me want to—”
“Want to what?” I asked.
He stood suddenly, unable to stay seated, his hand spasming the whole time. “I need to tell you something before we go in and present our plan to the other kids.”
My hands twisted in my lap as I fought to keep my voice calm. “What is it?”
“I want us to go investigate and document the activities of a camp—Sawtooth, in Idaho. Clancy claims that it’s one of the facilities they use to train Reds.”
“And you believe him?” I asked, shaking my head. “Cole—”
“Yeah,” he said, “I do believe him—and not because he’s been working me over with his abilities. Because every piece of intel he’s given me up until now has panned out...and I might have promised I’d consider letting him go if he helped. Obviously not, but still. A good motivator.”
“Why, though?” I asked. “Why do we need to investigate it?”
“Senator Cruz told me she needs hard evidence of the army of Reds in order to spook the international community into action. I want to get it for her—at least try. If it’s a dead end, so be it. But tell me I have your support on this. I promise it won’t affect our Thurmond hit.”
My patience finally dissolved. “If you want to do this, you have to tell the others that you’re a Red. That’s the only way I’ll agree to support this.”
He reared back in surprise. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“We’ve been losing the support of the kids—I can feel it. They need to know once and for all that you do have our best interests at heart because you’re one of us.” I could hear my own exhaustion in my voice. “Hasn’t this gone on long enough?”
He opened his mouth, angry and clearly defensive, but closed it again, studying my face. After a long while, he said, “I’ll tell Liam. Start with him tonight. Then, depending on how that goes, I’ll tell the others. Is that reasonable?”
I could have cried, I was so relieved. “Yes. But you have to tell him before the meeting tonight.”
He waved me off, taking a seat. “Before that, I want to run through with you how I think we should get you back into Thurmond. Figured you might want to discuss that here, rather than in front of the others?”
I nodded. “I’ll tell them, but not until we’re all in agreement on the strategy. Are you still thinking you want to drop me in Virginia?”
“Yes,” he said. “The goal here is to get you in front of one skip tracer to start, while making sure you’re not overpowered from the get-go. We’ll call in a fake tip about a Green kid on the loose, and you’ll have to get into the skip tracer’s mind before he can run your face through the program. He’ll bring you into the nearest PSF base for your reward, and you’ll have him lead a PSF out to you so he can ‘officially’ test you and confirm you’re Green. You’re going to have to jump between the minds of every person you cross paths with—they can’t know the truth, otherwise you’ll never make it to Thurmond. The key is to control the total amount of people you come in contact with at any given time. Is that even doable?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling my spine stiffen with resolve. “It is.”
We assembled in the garage two hours later, sitting in a circle around the white crescent moon painted on the floor. I’d set up chairs for Cole, Senator Cruz, and Dr. Gray to sit in while we talked, but Cole walked up beside me with another, set it to the right of his, and gently pushed me down into the seat. I snuck a glance at him, trying to read how his conversation had gone, but his expression was carefully blank.
Liam, on the other hand, looked like he had just stepped off a thundercloud. I felt his eyes on me the entire time, and wasn’t brave enough to try to meet his gaze.
“So as you can see, we have a new guest with us on this fine evening,” Cole began, arms crossed, stance strong. “She’s the scientist who conducted the research about the cure, and she’s here to explain to you the cause of IAAN, as well as what the cure exactly is.”
The whispers died out so quickly, I was sure we could have heard a car backfire from a hundred miles away.
Lillian brushed out invisible wrinkles in her sweatpants and started to rise from her chair, only to change her mind and sit back down. Some of the older kids must have recognized her from old news reports, but most...they were just looking at her in awe, totally oblivious to her last name. Alice, on the other hand, was a different story. I saw the exact moment her mind made the connection.
“Hello.” With a deep breath, she turned to Cole and asked, “Where should I begin?”
“Start with the cause, end with the cure,” he said.
“Ah. All right. Initially...when Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration—IAAN—was first recognized, the common assumption was that it was some kind of virus whose manifestation was more pronounced and deadly in children than in adults. This quickly was proven to be false by the scientific community, as cases outside of the United States proved to be fairly rare or mild in comparison. After several years of research...Leda Corp concluded its experiments and has confirmed what some, myself included, had privately believed to be the cause.”
I leaned forward in my seat, heart hammering in my chest. I bit my lip.
“Almost thirty years ago, there were attempts...several, actually...on the security of the nation. These bioterrorism attacks were launched by enemies of the United States, all involving tampering with our crops and our water supply.”
Liam stood at the periphery of the group, next to Alice. He’d been watching Dr. Gray through the digital screen on the back of her camera but looked up at that, startled. I shifted impatiently, waiting for her to continue. There had been theories for years that IAAN was the result of a terrorist attack, this wasn’t new information—
“The president at the time, not my—not President Gray—signed off on a confidential order to begin de
velopment on a chemical agent to counteract and nullify a number of poisons, bacteria, and drugs that could be added to a population’s water supply with us none the wiser. Leda Corp developed and distributed the chemical, called Agent Ambrosia, to our country’s water treatment facilities.”
I rubbed a hand against my forehead, fighting the way my vision seemed to blur.
“Did they test this agent in conjunction with the usual minerals and compounds added to our water?” Senator Cruz asked, white with anger.
Dr. Gray nodded. “Yes, there was routine testing. The participants signed ironclad confidentiality agreements and were generously reimbursed for their time. They studied children, adults, animals. Even pregnant mothers, who all safely delivered their babies without complications and no defects. In truth, these researchers received so much pressure from the government to quickly implement the program that they weren’t able to study the long-term effects of the agent.”
They poisoned us. My lip curled back in disgust and I had to grip the sides of my chair to keep myself in it. They poisoned us and kept us locked up for their mistake.
Cole swung up out of his seat and began pacing, his head bowed, listening.
“Leda’s recent study concluded that Agent Ambrosia is what we call a teratogen, meaning...meaning that women who drank the treated water unknowingly took the chemical into their bodies and it affected the brain cells of their children in vitro. My understanding of their report is that these mutations remained dormant in the children’s...in your minds until you reached the age of puberty—around eight, nine, ten, eleven years old. The change in your hormone levels and brain chemistry triggered the mutation.”
“Why did so many die?” At Cole’s side, his hand gave a sharp twitch.
“Those mothers ingested higher quantities of the chemical, or there was a third, unspecified environmental factor.” She said all of this so coldly and clinically, with such professional detachment, that it made me angry all over again.
This happened to you, too. Why aren’t you furious? Why aren’t you upset?
Olivia climbed to her feet; the sight of her scarred face made Dr. Gray flinch before she could catch herself. “How do you explain our different abilities? Why can we each do certain things?”
“The common hypothesis is that it has everything to do with genetics—individual brain chemistry, and which neural pathways are affected at the moment you transition.”
“Is the chemical still in our water supply?”
Dr. Gray hesitated long enough for us to know the answer before she so much as opened her mouth. “Yes. Though now that Leda has confirmed that Agent Ambrosia is to blame, I would say it’s fair to assume they’re most likely planning to introduce a neutralizing chemical into the water supply, beginning with the larger cities. But seeing how many women and young children have ingested the tainted water, it may be a full generation or two before we start seeing children without this mutation.”
Generation. Not just months or years. Generation. I pressed my face into my hands, took a deep breath.
“So if that explains what happened,” Cole said, “what’s your method for curing it?”
Dr. Gray shifted her posture, relaxing slightly. This was her territory, and she clearly felt more comfortable crossing into it. “The scientific community has known for some time that, essentially, your psionic abilities involve shifting the normal flow of electricity in your minds. Spiking it, really. When...when a child classified as Orange, for instance, is influencing someone, they’re manipulating the electrical flow in the other person’s brain, tampering with its usual systems and processes—not entirely different from a what a child classified as Yellow does on a larger, external scale when they control an electrical current in a machine or power line. And so on. Everything, including us, is made of particles—and those particles have electrical charges.”
Regardless of whether or not any of us understood that, she continued. “The cure isn’t a cure so much as a lifelong treatment. It manages, rather than cures, the affliction.”
My heart ground to a stop in my chest. I could see Clancy’s face as he told me exactly that, but I’d dismissed it because—because he lied all the time, because a real cure would have to eradicate the mutation entirely.
“It’s an operation during which something called a deep brain stimulator—essentially, a kind of brain pacemaker, if you will—is implanted. Where it’s implanted depends largely on abilities, but the stimulator, in all cases, releases an electrical charge of its own. It regulates the abnormal flow, shifting it into what a typical human would have.”
“It neuters the abilities,” Cole clarified, “rather than removes them.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“And this procedure can be safely performed?” Alice called. “Have you done one?”
“Yes,” she said. “I have successfully treated one child.”
“One isn’t exactly a track record, Doc,” Cole said. “One doesn’t give us any sort of odds of success.”
She merely raised her hands and said, “There wasn’t time for more than that. I’m sorry.”
“And the idea is to...” I almost couldn’t get the question out. I felt crushed by this, choked with anger. “The idea is that every kid that’s born will have to get this to prevent them from dying or changing? At what age?”
“Around age seven,” Lillian said. “They may have to undergo regular maintenance, however.”
That got an uneasy murmur from the kids, who finally seemed to be waking up from their shocked daze.
“What are our next steps?” Alice asked, repositioning her camera. “This is all incredible, but we have no solid proof about Agent Ambrosia being added to the water supply. Leda quickly shuttered the research program. None of the Greens have turned up any information.”
“What would be proof enough for you?” Dr. Gray asked.
Alice didn’t have to think about it. “Some kind of documentation that shows it as part of the treatment mixture.”
“We could go to nearby treatment facilities,” Liam said. “Break in, take photographs, try to find hard copy or information on their computers.”
“That could work,” Alice said, eyes gleaming. “I think we’d need to hit at least five or six, just in case some of them turn out to be duds. And in different states, too, so they know it wasn’t limited to California. Do we have enough gas left to pull this off?”
“Wait—wait,” Cole said. “Our priority now should be lying low, refining our hit on Thurmond, and waiting for reinforcements to arrive. If anyone goes out, it should be to gather more forces for the fight.”
“Reinforcements?” Liam repeated, practically growling.
Cole raised his brows.
“Oh, you bastard,” Liam snapped. “Harry? You’re asking Harry to fight?”
“He volunteered. He and his unit of forty ex-military guys and gals are eager to do their part.” Cole turned to address the kids. “Contrary to what he’s been telling you, I would never have asked someone to fight who didn’t want to.”
“How many times do we have to drill it into your skull before you grasp the reality of this?” Alice asked. “The kids don’t want any fight.”
“Oh, they want a fight,” Cole said, rounding the circle to stand directly in front of her, “but they don’t want to have to wage it themselves.”
“No, we want to coordinate a media blitz with the truth,” Liam said. “To release the locations of camps we know about, along with the lists of the kids there. We let the American people rise up and go after them. It’ll cause some chaos, but now that we have the information that IAAN isn’t contagious, it increases the likelihood that foreign powers will come in as a peacekeeping force. Isn’t that right, Senator Cruz?”
“It’s not a guarantee...” she said. “But I could try to work with that.”
?
??You’re overestimating how much people care,” I said, shaking my head, noting with some satisfaction that the others actually stopped to listen. “I’ve seen too many times that the only way we’ll ever get what we want—the only way we’ll ever be able to get our freedom from this—is if we get it ourselves. The camps have sophisticated security systems, and Gray has shown time and time again he’ll do anything to cover his ass. What’s to say the minute you release the camp information, he doesn’t take it out on the kids? Use them as hostages, move them, kill them to bury the evidence?”
If they’d thought about that in all of their planning, it didn’t show on their faces. And the fact that Dr. Gray didn’t try to refute me seemed to lend some credence to the possibility.
“You absolutely cannot just release the information about Agent Ambrosia, I’m sorry, but no,” she said. “You are severely underestimating the widespread panic it’ll induce in the population.”
“True,” Senator Cruz said. “I’d rather not see people start tearing each other apart to get to natural water supplies. But I agree with Alice that we need evidence; not for the public, but for our foreign allies.”
The buzz that moved through the room was palpable—kids were already shifting around, assigning themselves to groups to drive out to the water treatment facilities. And there was Cole, watching it all. His hand gave a painful jerk as he lifted it to rub the back of his neck, and I wondered if he felt it, too, the slow unraveling. The train that had been so clearly under our care had jumped the tracks entirely. When he looked at me, there was a silent plea in it, a desperation I had never seen in him before.
I couldn’t stand it—it pushed me past furious. He’d done everything in his power to help us. To make the hard decisions. And now they were trying to push him out as leader? He was being mocked by the looks Liam and Alice exchanged? In that moment he could have backed out of the room and I wasn’t sure anyone but me would have noticed.
“Well,” he said finally, “I have some intel for you, if you’d like it.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you do.”