In the Afterlight

  Cole hefted a black duffle bag over his shoulder, its contents rattling ominously.

  “Have enough guns in there?”

  “Purely precautionary,” he said with a wink.

  “It better be. This is surveillance, not an assault, remember?”

  “Aw, Gem, don’t worry.” Cole brought his free hand around the back of my skull, smoothing my hair down along its curve. “I’ll have him back by tonight.”

  I pushed him away, rolling my eyes. “I mean it. Please...just be careful.”

  “You, too,” he said. “Sorry to leave you to deal with the Little Prince again. If he acts up, don’t be afraid to send him to bed without dinner. And double-check that the teams going to the water treatment facilities have everything they need before they head out.”

  “Got it.”

  “Harry said he’d try to check in tonight around eight. If we’re not back by then, can you ask him to lock down another five pounds of C-four? Tell him I looked into hiring the buses to take everyone back east and it’s a no-go.”

  “Got it,” I said, already eager for Harry to get here at the end of the week, because it would mean finally seeing Cate. “Did you get the phone from Nico?”

  Alice couldn’t bear to be parted from her fancy camera, even for this, and there wasn’t time to get another one. Nico had programmed a cell phone to automatically upload the photographs they snapped of the building and send them back to us.

  Cole looked down at his watch, then over my head down the hall where the others had just appeared. “Taking his sweet-ass time this morning, isn’t he?”

  “Or someone’s a little too impatient to get going,” I pointed out.

  “Just ready,” he said. “Can we pick up the pace a little, Sunshine? It looks like a cat threw you back up.”

  “Better than you—you look like you came out the other end.”

  Cole chuckled. “Got me there.”

  I grabbed Liam’s arm as he passed me on his way to the tunnel door, kissing his cheek. “See you later tonight.”

  He stepped down into the tunnel, shouldering a backpack Cole had left for him there. When I turned to say good-bye to the other Stewart, he’d stooped, turned his cheek toward me, and was waiting. I flicked it with my finger, making him laugh again.

  “You’re impossible,” I informed him.

  “It’s all part of my charm,” he said, shifting the heavy bag on his shoulder. “Take care of things, Boss.”

  “Take care of him,” I said, pointedly.

  He gave one last mock salute before shutting the door to the tunnel. I waited until the sound of his and the others’ steps faded completely before locking the door after him.

  For a moment, I was tempted to go back to sleep—just showering and crashing for a few more hours sounded better than it had any right to. It already felt like a long day, and it had only just begun.

  At around two in the afternoon, I realized I was being followed.

  She never spoke, and she stayed well away, but Lillian Gray was there, observing from a safe distance. It made my skin crawl, the way her eyes were always assessing.

  Dr. Gray was there, watching the training through the windows of the gym; hovering outside of the computer room; leaving the kitchen just as I was coming in. It took me another two hours to realize that it was likely she was trying to work up the courage to ask me something. And even then, it was only because Alice pulled me aside after harassing the woman into a short interview and told me, point-blank: “She wants to see her kid.”

  Seeing my expression, Alice added, “Look, I don’t have any kids of my own, so I can’t exactly give you insight as to how a woman’s brain can get rewired to unconditionally love the same little dirtbag that scrambled her brains, but I have a feeling she’ll be a lot warmer toward us if she gets her way.”

  “Did she give you anything you could actually use?” I asked as we walked back toward the big room.

  “She’s a true politician’s wife,” Alice said ruefully. “She talked for two hours and managed to say nothing useful. Any interest in sitting down with me for a chat, by the way?”

  “Not even a word about the president?” I asked, turning the subject back to the matter at hand. That was what worried me most about this arrangement—Dr. Gray had made the arrangement with Alban to help Clancy, and she’d done it behind her husband’s back. As far as we knew, they hadn’t been in contact for years, but we had no sense of how she really felt toward the man. His name came up, and she shut down.

  “I think she’ll talk—she’ll give me the smoking gun on how long, exactly, the president has known about Agent Ambrosia—but not for free. Is there any way—”

  “No,” I said, firmly. “It’s not a good idea.” Clancy had been reasonably well behaved up until now. I didn’t want to tempt fate by even hinting his mother was nearby.

  “Liam would say yes.”

  “Good thing he isn’t here.”

  Alice’s look of irritation morphed into one of amusement. “You’re the boss, lady. I’ll figure out another way to get her talking before I leave tonight.”

  “Are you all set for the trip?

  “We should be fine. Our water treatment facility isn’t too far away, otherwise we would have left early this morning like the others.”

  I had no idea if Alice told the other woman that I was the roadblock, but it was about an hour later that Dr. Gray found me in the kitchen, slowly and reluctantly pulling together a meal for Clancy. One look at the rapidly depleting pantry stock had taken my mind off her until, like an unwanted chill, she stepped inside the kitchen and shut the door behind her.

  “If you’ve been following me in the hope that I’ll slip up and reveal where he is, you’re going to be disappointed. And,” I added, “you’re delaying his meal.”

  Her mouth tightened into a flat, bloodless line. Everything about this family was cold and distant, wasn’t it? With both this woman and her son, it felt like I was constantly walking on my toes, trying to keep my balance.

  “He has a mild nut allergy,” she said, nodding toward the open container of peanut butter I’d scraped clean. “And he doesn’t like Granny Smith apples.”

  Instead of being touched by this demonstration of motherly concern, I felt my expression rearrange itself into one of total and complete exasperation.

  I actually bit my tongue to keep from saying, He’s lucky he gets any food at all.

  “I suppose Miss Wells told you about my request, then?”

  Miss Wells...oh. Alice. I cut the sandwich in half and turned to walk the knife over to the sink. She was still there, watching me expectantly, when I walked back over. “Yes, she did. I’m surprised you even asked.”

  “Why?”

  “Do I really have to remind you about what happened the last time he saw you?” I asked. “You’re lucky you walked away with your life.”

  Finally, a crack appeared. “Clancy would never kill me. He’s not capable of it. I realize how deeply troubled he is, but it’s because he was never able to get the emotional help he needed after he left that camp.”

  “Plenty of us went into those camps,” I said. “Not all of us turned out like him.”

  Dr. Gray held my gaze a second too long for it to feel comfortable. “Is that so?”

  I felt myself straighten to my full height, ignoring the familiar stab of guilt.

  “Yes,” I said coldly. She doesn’t believe me. At all.

  “You should know that I have always disagreed with the rehabilitation camp program, even before it turned into what it is today,” Dr. Gray said. “I have never liked my husband’s foreign policy, nor can I comprehend the extreme action he took in California. But if he were to give me the facility and materials I need to perform the procedure on my son, it wouldn’t even be a decision. I would go back to him in a heartbeat. I wo
uld do that, for Clancy.”

  I almost felt sorry for her. The simple truth was that the camps didn’t damage us all in the same way. If you spent your time there feeling small and terrified, once you stepped outside of the electric fence, you didn’t just stand up tall one day and resume your old life, forgetting the desperation you’d had to make yourself invisible. If you spent your time there simmering in your own anger and helplessness, that rage carried over; you took it with you into your new life.

  It was disturbing to me how clearly I could see Clancy’s point now. His mother really had no idea what they had done to him at Thurmond. How could someone who participated in, or at least viewed, the research conducted on the Psi kids have no conception of the kind of pain or humiliation he went through?

  “You realize that giving him the procedure won’t fix him, right?” I asked. “Not in the way that really matters to you.”

  “He won’t be able to influence anyone,” she insisted. “He’ll come back to himself.”

  The idea was too ridiculous to even laugh at.

  “Taking away his ability wouldn’t take away his desire to try to control others,” I said. And it sure as hell wouldn’t cure him of being an asshole. “It’s just going to make him angrier than he already is.” And hate you that much more.

  “I know what’s best for him,” she said. “He needs the treatment, Ruby—and, more than that, he needs his family. I just want to make sure that he’s okay. It’s not enough for me to hear he is—I need to see it. Please. Just for a moment. I gave you everything that you wanted last night, didn’t I? Can’t this be a show of good faith?”

  I was willing to give her that—so far she had taken us at our word, and she had given us far more than even I’d expected. Alban, the sole person in the Children’s League she’d known and trusted, wasn’t around to tell her that it was okay to put her faith in us.

  Nico’s voice floated up to the back of my mind. They broke something in him. Something fundamental. Maybe she needed to see it to understand it.

  “If I were to take you to see him,” I began, “you couldn’t give him any indication that you were there. Not a word. You’d have to do exactly what I tell you to. If he knows you’re here, he’ll stop cooperating and likely start figuring out how to escape. And you need to answer all of Alice’s questions—for real this time.”

  “I can do that,” she said. “I just want to see him, that he’s been treated well and is strong enough to undergo the procedure. I don’t need to touch him, just...”

  Is it the mother or the scientist in you who wants to see him? I wondered, unsure which was preferable.

  “All right,” I said, gathering his food and a water bottle up in my arms. “Not a single word. And you stay exactly where I position you.”

  It didn’t make sense to her until we reached the inner hallway that led to the room with the small cells. I shook my head, cutting off whatever question she was about to ask, and showed her where to stand to look through the door without Clancy being able to spot her through the small window there.

  For the first time in nearly a week, Clancy Gray looked up and met my gaze as I came in. The book he’d been reading remained limp in his lap until I walked the food over to the locked metal flap on the door and held it out, waiting for him to take it. He stood, taking care to stretch his shoulders before crossing the small cell. His dark hair was nearly long enough to be tied back with a rubber band, but he kept it neatly combed and parted.

  Clancy had three pairs of sweats he rotated through, and today clearly was a washing day, because he silently bent and picked up the other two sets of clothing and passed them to me through the open hatch.

  “I didn’t expect to see you,” he said casually enough. “Did he go to Sawtooth, then?”

  Did he really expect me to answer that?

  No. Obviously not. “How does it feel?” he asked, placing a hand flat against the glass. “To be on that side of things? To control the flow of information?”

  “About as good as knowing you’ll never experience it for yourself again.”

  “It’s incredible how things have turned out,” he said. “A year ago, you were still in that camp, still behind that fence. Now look at you. Look at me.”

  “I am looking at you,” I told him. “And all I see is someone who wasted every chance they had to really make a difference for us.”

  “But you understand now, don’t you?” he asked, surprised. “You see why I made the choices I did. Everyone survives in their own way. When it really comes down to it, would you have changed any of the decisions you made, good or bad? Would you have stayed in Thurmond, with the opportunity to escape within reach? Would you have gone straight to Virginia Beach, not let them convince you to try to find East River? Would you have sealed off the younger Stewart’s memories? You’ve come such a long way. It’d be a shame for our friendship to end here.”

  “I think there was a compliment buried in there somewhere...?”

  He snorted. “Just an observation. I wasn’t sure you had it in you. I’d hoped, though.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Didn’t you ever ask yourself why I wanted you to come with me after East River was attacked? It wasn’t because I liked you all that much.”

  “Obviously not. You wanted me to show you how I messed with others’ memories.”

  “Well, that. But also because I was trying to gather people around me who could step up and help me build this future. Granted, I probably wouldn’t have wasted time trying with this camp strategy. I would have taken us straight to the top. I still will.”

  “If only you weren’t trapped in this little glass cage,” I said flatly.

  “If only.” Clancy smiled. “It’ll be so easy to get rid of everyone now—if what Stewart, the elder Stewart, told me is true, you’ve badly hurt the government’s credibility. I’ll take it a step further. My father. His moronic advisors. The camp controllers. One by one, I’ll tear their lives apart. The thing is, Ruby, you can stand at the head of those kids, and they’ll listen, they will, if for no other reason because you’re an Orange and it’s the hierarchy of things. But you can’t bring the world to its knees the way I will.”

  “The way you will, huh?” I asked, knocking against the glass. “When’s that?”

  One corner of Clancy’s lips turned up, and I felt a cold drip of something run down my spine.

  “Ruby, this is your last chance to align with the right side of history,” he said. “I’m not going to offer again. We can leave now and no one will get hurt.”

  His gaze was as black and bottomless as it had always been, sucking me in, trying to drown me in the smooth, easy possibilities he presented.

  “Enjoy your time in your box,” I said and turned to go, holding his laundry out in front of me in distaste.

  “One last thing,” Clancy called. I didn’t look back, but it hardly mattered to him. “Hello, Mother.”

  I whipped the door to the hall open, but the woman was already gone, chased out by her son’s laughter.

  That night I fell into a deep sleep, the kind that grips you by the ribcage and refuses to be shaken off easily. The voice in my dream, the same one that had been echoing somewhere behind me as I walked down the familiar path to Cabin 27 at Thurmond, shifted from the deep baritone of a man to a loud, almost shrill call, this time from a woman.

  “—up! Ruby, Ruby, come on—”

  The lights in the room were on again, highlighting the ashen quality of Vida’s face as it hovered over mine. She shook me again, violently, until I broke free from that last bit of disorienting sleep.

  “What happened?” Five minutes could have passed, or five hours—I couldn’t tell. Zu hovered behind Vida, her cheeks already wet with tears. Fear ripped through me as I grabbed Vida’s arm, feeling the way she trembled.

  “I was in the computer lab
,” she began, the words pouring out of her. Was she shaking? Vida—shaking? “I was talking to Nico, watching the photos come in as Cole took them, and it went quiet for about an hour—I had just left to go to bed but then another photo came through and Nico ran out to get me and...and, Ruby...”

  “What? Tell me what’s going on!” I tried to untangle myself from the sheet, my heart hammering in my chest like I’d just sprinted ten miles.

  “All he kept saying was...” Vida swallowed. “He kept saying one thing—Stewart is dead.”

  “LIAM OR COLE?”

  The question, the same one I’d asked her a hundred times, became more frantic as we made our way down the hall toward the computer room. The clock on the wall inside said it was two in the morning.

  “Vida,” I begged, “Liam or Cole?”

  “They don’t know,” she said, the same answer she’d given me the first ninety-nine times I asked. “They can’t tell from the photo.”

  “I can—” The words were out before I could think about why it would be a terrible idea. “Let me see it. I can tell them apart.”

  “I don’t think so.” She caught my arm before I could go charging into the room. I barely felt the touch. My whole body had run ice-cold. Panic made my thoughts disjointed, bursts of terrifying images interlaced with thoughts of not him, not them, not now—I couldn’t break the pattern, I couldn’t catch my breath.

  “No!” That single word, a sharp bark from Chubs, brought Vida up short. “Absolutely not! Take her back to the room and stay there!”

  There were a number of Greens hovering outside the window.

  “Get lost!” Vida barked at them. And by the force of her voice alone, they did, scrambling to get away as she opened the computer room’s door and thrust me inside.

  “What’s going on? Did something happen?” Senator Cruz appeared in the hallway, Alice not far behind, her flaming red hair collected in a crooked ponytail, red marks from her pillow and sheets on her face. Vida must have tried to explain to them but I heard none of it. Nico looked like he’d been sick several times over, and the smell in the computer room seemed to align with that theory. He was drenched in sweat as I came toward him.