She pushed the back door open with her shoulder, and I had a second to react.
I yanked the PSF around, twisting her arm behind her to the point of snapping the bone. She let out a choked noise of surprise that cut off sharply as I entered her mind.
She unfastened her uniform, ripping off her boots, the black camo shirt and pants, the belt, the dark cap, and let them fall to the ground. I kicked off my tennis shoes, trying to match the frenzied pace I’d set in her mind. She took my uniform as I passed it to her, tugging it on with a look of blank obedience. Too calm. I floated the image of her as a young child, standing at the heart of the camp, soldiers moving around her, closing in. I only eased up when she started to cry.
The flash drive fell out of my shoe into the frostbitten grass and I quickly palmed it, squeezing it tight to reassure myself it was really there.
The swap had taken no more than two minutes. Two minutes too long, maybe. I couldn’t tell—the PSFs were allowed to walk us into dark, unmonitored corners, rough us up a little bit before actually carrying out the punishment. If those missing moments had played that way to the camp controllers watching in the Control Tower, I’d be fine.
I walked the PSF toward the Garden, my breath fogging the air white with each sharp exhale. I kept my eyes on the thin chains hooked around one of the fence posts.
I wanted to say I was a good enough person not to feel some satisfaction as I sat the PSF down in the cold mud and locked her into place facing the fence, her back to the cameras on the nearby cabins and the soldiers patrolling the platform on the Tower. I wasn’t. After watching so many kids left out for hours on end, simply for talking back or looking at them sideways on a bad day, I wanted at least one of them to know what it felt like. I wanted one of them to see what they had done to Sam each time they brought her out here.
It wasn’t until I was walking back, passing the red vests posted along the path to the Control Tower and Mess Hall, that the first touch of nerves found me. Somehow, as I came closer to it, the brick tower had grown to be twice its original size; its crooked walls seemed to lean even more sharply up close.
This is an Op, I reminded myself. This is no different than any other Op. I would finish it and go home.
The PSF stationed next to the Control Tower’s door peered at me through the darkness. Searchlights from the watch platform above crisscrossed in front of me, sweeping around the camp, into the dark pockets where other lights couldn’t reach.
“Houghton—that you?”
I nodded, adjusting my cap down lower over my eyes, one hand straying to the rifle I’d slung over my shoulder.
“What’s—” His mind unfurled in spirals of green and white and red. I needed him to tap his security badge against the black pad behind him, so he did. I needed him to step aside, so he did. He did everything I asked, even holding the door open for me as I stepped inside.
I crossed the threshold into the warm heart of the camp. The heat from the vents sank through the layers of borrowed clothes, straight to my skin and bones. As I looked down the hall, toward the stairs leading up to the platform two stories overhead, I don’t know when I had ever felt so powerful in my life.
The door to my right opened, and a camp controller came out, holding a mug of coffee between his hands. The room behind him disappeared as the door slowly swung shut, but not before I saw the TV, the couches and chairs. His black button-down shirt wrinkled as he brought a hand up to yawn. The look he gave me was a friendly, what can you do? Half embarrassed, half unapologetic. Like the whole thing was one big joke.
I smiled, letting him pass by to get to the door propped open a short ways down the hall. After a beat, I followed. The left half of the building’s lower level was little more than an enormous monitoring station. Screens large and small lined the far wall, each showing a different angle of the camp. One was simply set to a satellite image of the weather; one showed a news channel on mute.
There were three rows of computers in total, though only half of the seats seemed to be occupied. It looked as though they were starting to pack this room up as well—working from left to right, slowly removing the nonessential stations.
This is why they needed the Reds, I thought. The draft was up for so many PSFs, and the ones that remained, along with the newer recruits, were tasked with moving the files and supplies in advance of the camp’s closure.
Focus.
I stepped down to the second row, sliding into the seat. The monitor flickered to life, waking up to reveal a basic desktop. Blood pounded in my ears, but my hands were surprisingly steady as I inserted the flash drive.
The folder opened and I transferred the program file over onto the desktop; I thought I’d misread it at first, my mind half-consumed with anxiety, but JUDE.EXE transferred quickly and appeared on the screen’s black background, next to the trash icon, just below a black triangular outline labeled Security.
When it finished, I erased the original file from the flash drive and dropped it to the floor, crushing the plastic shell under the heel of my left boot. The clock on the lower right-hand corner of the screen read 19:20.
I opened the COMMAND PROMPT window, typed START JUDE.EXE, and the icon disappeared from the desktop.
Nothing else happened.
Shit, I thought, glancing at the small clock again. Was that right? Why would—
The blow cracked against the back of my skull so hard I was thrown halfway off the seat—caught, at the last second, by a hand that wrenched me back and slammed me against the table, hand at my throat, gun in my face.
“Here!” The PSF’s face split into two. I blinked, trying to clear my vision as more shapes flooded in through the open door. “Here!”
I was pulled off the desk and shoved onto the floor, the pistol inches from my forehead, to make room for a camp controller to take my seat and begin typing. Someone had finally noticed something, then. It was over, but I’d done what I needed to.
I’d gotten this far.
I’d done this, at least.
The others in the room stood, alarmed, but backed off when O’Ryan’s familiar voice barked, “Stay clear.”
He typed something else, opened the COMMAND PROMPT window.
“What did you do?” he snarled.
I focused on his face, ignoring the warm trickle down the back of my neck. My line of sight solidified again and I shrugged, a smirk working its way onto my lips.
O’Ryan pushed the other soldier away, back into the ring of PSFs and camp controllers who stood nearby with their weapons drawn. My teeth clacked as he threw me back up against the wall, demanding, “What is your purpose here?”
I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and said nothing. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do to me now that could make me feel afraid, or small, or helpless.
The camp controller turned back to another woman sitting nearby. “Key up the Calm Control.”
“Group C is still in the Mess Hall,” she said. “Should they be ordered back to their cabins first?”
“Key. It. Up.”
She turned back to her screen and typed furiously, ending with a stroke of her pinky against the return key. “Wait—”
One by one, the monitors on the wall winked out, then each computer screen, the images blacking out with a sinister electronic hiss.
“Start the fail-safe protocol,” he said.
“Sir?” she said, startled, but tried—she tried. “I’m locked out—”
“Of what?”
“Everything!”
“Me too—”
“—Same—”
I knew it was pointless, even as I got my feet under me, but I didn’t want to admit it—I wasn’t done, I wasn’t ready for it to be over. The guns around me were a dozen different ways to die. I was boxed in on all sides by black uniforms. My ears rang and the ground rolled ben
eath my feet, but I let the invisible hands in my mind go streaming out to the minds around me, I sent them sailing in every direction like arrows seeking targets.
O’Ryan pulled his arm back and punched me in the face.
I couldn’t get my hands up fast enough to block him. Couldn’t get them down fast enough to catch me. I slammed into the ground, my vision bursting with static as my skull cracked against the tile. He leaned over me, unclipping a small device from his belt, holding it next to my right ear. I spit in his face and he only laughed, switching on the White Noise.
The world shattered around me. Hands seized my arms and hauled me up from the ground, dragging me through the tangle of legs and chairs. I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t clear my brain from the sounds polluting it. Every muscle in my body was seizing up, making me jerk, my feet thrash against the floor, and inside I was screaming, I was screaming I’m not done, but I couldn’t hear myself think. The White Noise took me by the shoulders and shoved me down beneath the darkness, holding me there until I drowned.
THE SLAP WHIPPED ACROSS MY FACE, ripping away the shroud of unconsciousness. My vision blurred as my eyes flew open, squinting against the light. My mind felt swollen and tender, as wrung out as the rest of my body. I was half-conscious of the fact that my arms and legs were still spasming, the muscles twitching. The residual pain left me dumb and slow, and I couldn’t remember why, how it had happened.
The noise blistering my mind shut off abruptly. Slowly, slowly, the room solidified around me. Tile floor. Four dark walls. One lamp. Two figures in black, moving in and out of the shadows, speaking in low tones. I heard a faint metallic clicking as one of them came closer. I smelled the mint as he smacked his gum.
“Little bitch...”
And just like that, memory slammed into me.
Tower.
Out.
Run.
I twisted, trying to pull out of the chair they’d put me in, but my hands and ankles were zip-tied to the metal frame. The jolt of fear-induced adrenaline cleared my mind just in time for O’Ryan to backhand me.
“Now that we have your attention...” he snarled, rising to his feet. Cold air bit into my shin, and I looked down to find that he’d rolled both of my pant legs up to the knee. They’d stripped the PSF uniform jacket off me, taking the knife, the weapons, anything I could have used to fight back. The boots, too, though I didn’t understand why, not until O’Ryan motioned for the baton the PSF behind him carried.
The other man took that as his signal to hold up the handheld White Noise machine. I reared like a wild horse, trying to escape it, the way it blanked out my mind. I can...I can do...what could I do? What?
“Who sent you?” O’Ryan asked. “What was your purpose here?”
“To...to tell you...” The words didn’t sound nearly as furious coming out of my mouth as they did in my head. The camp controller leaned forward, eyes narrowing into slits. “To go...fuck yourself.”
The White Noise came on, louder, higher, a bullet that slammed through my temples. I couldn’t keep the cry in. Sweat streamed down my back, my chest. It became a pattern—on agony, off pain, on agony, off pain. I couldn’t catch my breath. I had to fight to keep the sweet nothing of unconsciousness away. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t leave this moment. They would kill me. I wouldn’t be able to...I wouldn’t be able to...
“Who sent you?”
“Fuck you!” I shouted right back in his face.
I braced myself as he swung his arm back, but it did nothing—nothing—to prepare me for the explosion of white-hot agony that rocketed through me as his baton struck my exposed shin. I screamed, jerking against the restraints. I heard the crack, felt it inside of my head like it was my skull splitting apart. The PSF behind the camp controller only watched impassively as O’Ryan struck the broken bone again, smiling as I vomited onto the floor.
He swung again, stopping just short of my leg, a mocking smile on his face. He gave a silent wave of his hand toward the PSF, who reached for the White Noise device again.
“Not the Children’s League,” O’Ryan said over the hurricane of sound shredding my overloaded nerves. “It couldn’t be them. So who?”
I heard the echo of it even when it switched off, white spots sparking behind my eyelids.
“Answer me, three-two-eight-five.” He leaned over my face, thrusting the mangled flash drive in front of it. “What was on this? Tell me, and I promise that you’ll live.”
I want to live.
O’Ryan gripped my chin in his hand. “Three-two-eight-five, you should know I have no qualms about putting your kind down.”
My kind.
Orange. I sucked in a sharp breath, licking the blood that had run from my nose over my busted lip. Orange.
He turned back toward the PSF, motioning him forward. My leg was demanding my attention, burning up my concentration, but my eyes slid over to the younger man and I reached...I reached...
O’Ryan held up the White Noise device in one hand, his service pistol in the other.
“Which would you prefer?”
I have to walk out of here.
The gun came up in his hand, sliding up my throat, under my chin. The White Noise device rubbed along the edge of my ear.
“It would give me no greater pleasure than to see your brains scrambled and leaking from your ears. Splattered against this floor. Tell me why you’re here, three-two-eight-five, and I’ll stop this. It’ll all be over.”
I want to live.
The building shook, throwing him back a step and rattling both the nearby table and the simple light fixture hanging over us. The pop and snarl of distant gunfire. A strange, sweet symphony of hope.
Footsteps pounded down the hall, heading out toward the exit. O’Ryan shoved himself away from me and went to the one-way window lining the wall, cupping his hands against it to try to see through it. He knocked against the mirrored surface, waiting. My line of sight was shrinking again, heading into black. The door in the corner, the one we’d come in through, had no handle. It could only be opened from the outside.
I closed my eyes, tightening my fists against a second wave of nausea.
I want to live.
I want to live.
I have to live.
“Ruby,” I croaked out.
O’Ryan turned slowly. “What was that, three-two-eight-five? You ready to talk now?”
“My name,” I said between clenched teeth, “is Ruby.”
I overturned my chair, knocking myself over onto the ground, and an aftershock of pain lanced up my leg. I played the scene out in my mind, and heard the reality on a half-second delay. The PSF in the corner of the room lifted his gun and fired three times, missing O’Ryan on the first shot and shattering a section of the glass behind him, but hitting his mark on the second and third attempt. Chest. Head.
O’Ryan got one shot off, hitting the PSF’s throat before slumping down against the wall beneath the one-way window.
I must have passed out—for a few seconds, maybe minutes. The Control Tower was eerily silent, and the only sound I heard as I surfaced back to reality was my own heart’s slow, steady beat.
Move, I ordered myself. Move, Ruby, move.
My progress across the floor to O’Ryan’s body was slow and agonizing. I needed the knife on his belt to cut the ties on my feet and hands, but it meant dragging the chair through the puddle of congealing blood beneath him. I sawed frantically, nicking my palms as I worked the knife blindly behind me.
I sucked in a harsh breath and looked down; the strange, tented skin on my shin made me gag, the sight reminding my body all over again that it was in pain. I hopped and hobbled over to the door, but I’d been right—there was no handle, and the hinges were on the other side.
I picked up O’Ryan’s pistol and positioned myself against the opposite wall, using i
t as a brace for the gun’s recoil. The reverberations raced up my arms and shoulders as the glass shards fell in waves. I switched the safety back on and went to work knocking the remaining pieces out of the window frame. Bracing my hands on the ledge, I dragged myself up and over it. The jagged teeth caught and tore at my arms and legs as I collapsed into the hallway.
The gun flew out of my hands. I reached for it through the halo of glass around me. My fingers closed around the grip, just as the squeak of rubber against tile reached my ears.
I rolled onto my back, lifting my torso up just enough to aim at the dark figure running toward me. I fumbled with the safety, switching it off. The barrage of gunfire outside heated my blood, focusing me in the moment. I saw the black uniform and my finger curled around the trigger. I was getting out of here—I was getting out—
“Don’t shoot!”
The power snapped off, throwing the building into darkness, but I’d seen his face as he pulled up his helmet. I thought at first, that I was seeing a ghost—and somehow, the reality was almost more impossible.
Liam.
“Stop doing that!” I cried, dropping my gun in terror. “I almost killed you!”
His face was so thin, practically worn down to the bone. He rushed toward me, dropping to his knees and sliding the last bit of distance between us. His hands were everywhere at once, and he was kissing me—lips, cheeks, forehead, wherever he could reach—and I was breathing him in, clinging to his sopping-wet shirt, unable to process the simple fact that he was here, that he was okay.
He shifted, jarring my leg, and I couldn’t keep the scream from escaping my throat.
“Shit—shit, I’m sorry, Jesus—” Liam fumbled for the radio clipped to his jacket. “I found her—Dad, I need your help!”
It almost happened too quickly. Footsteps pounded against the ground behind me, and when Liam looked up, it was as if his helpless anger solidified, grew teeth. He reached for the gun in the holster strapped to his leg and a shudder ripped through me. I recognized the darkness in his expression; I’d seen all too many times in his brother. My hand flew out, slamming down on his, keeping his weapon in place.