Текст книги "In the Afterlight"

Автор книги: Alexandra Bracken

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“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.”

19

“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 development 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.”

“You say you want to give the world a sense of who these kids are, but you’re really just setting them up to be pitied.” Cole tucked his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, his voice growing louder as the din around him faded. “What motivates people, even more than anger, is fear. Go ahead and release all that intel on Ambrosia, see where that lands this country when people start rioting over the last few fresh, untainted water sources. Or, you can show them Gray’s trump card—that he’s been building an army of Reds.”

“What are you talking about?” Alice demanded.

“You all saw what happened at Kansas HQ today,” Cole said. “But what the news didn’t tell you is that there are reports that it was Reds, not a military unit, that attacked them.”

“Oh, convenient—reports with nothing to back them up.” Alice waved him off.

But, if nothing else, Cole now had the reins of the conversation back in his hand. He was guiding the conversation now, not letting it happen around him. “My trusted source says that there’s a camp of Reds not too far from here, in a place called Sawtooth. I’d like to go and document evidence of them—their training, the camp’s existence—and I’d like to give it to you for Amplify, on the condition it’s used in conjunction with the actual camp hit.”

“Where did this information come from?” Liam asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“A trusted source,” he repeated.

His brother rolled his eyes. Alice, though—Cole had read her right. It was like a cat that had spotted a mouse creeping along the floorboards. She wanted this story, and she wasn’t going to run the risk of someone else getting it first.

“Okay, what about this,” she began. “We send out five teams to the water treatment facilities, and you can take a small group out to assess the situation there. Snap some photos.”

“I only need one other person,” he said, glancing at me.

“I’ll go,” Liam said, before I could. He set his jaw, daring his brother to refuse. Cole crossed his arms over his chest, eyes darting over to me, looking for a lifeline.

He doesn’t want Liam to go. And it had nothing to do with how Liam may or may not have been able to handle himself, or if he trusted him. I saw that now.

“I’d still like to go,” I said. “I think—”

“He just said two would be enough,” Liam pressed, turning back to his brother. “Unless you think I’m going to screw everything up on your precious little mission?”

Cole snorted, his lips twisting up in a rueful smile. “All right, it’s settled. Now...someone talk to me about our car situation. What’s the gasoline level at now?”

Dr. Gray returned to her seat, finally, eyes fixed on her hands in her lap as Senator Cruz asked her something. The meeting came to a natural end as five teams formed to go out to the water treatment facilities, Alice taking the lead, dividing them up by state and choosing which one she wanted to go with.

I didn’t stay around to watch the stiff conversation between Cole and Liam. I turned on my heel, vaguely aware ofChubs saying something to me as I made my way back into the tunnel, through the Ranch, back to the emptycomputer room. I sat back down at Nico’s computer station and switched on the news livestream.

“—obviously this is terrible if it’s true and the president will have a considerable amount of explaining to do—” This was the last one still running; the others had been switched off, one by one. A pattern had formed: a news station would show the kids’ interviews, the conversation between the talking heads would swing dangerously toward the this is true camp, and the feed would go dark. This station seemed to be avoiding the censors by casting the guest commentator as a devil’s advocate instead of a so-called expert. “—but what if these children haven’t been coached, and this isn’t some ploy for attention or notoriety from parents? If they have been removed from their rehabilitation program, then aren’t their lives in danger? Our focus should be on returning them to their camps before it’s too late.”

The host of the program arched a gray, bushy eyebrow and said, his voice deep and penetrating, “Did you actually watch the interviews? They claim that there is no program. Based on the fact that it’s been nearly a decade and we’ve had little to no news or progress in finding a cure, I’m inclined to agree. I don’t think these children would risk exposing themselves without—”

The video window jumped to static.

That’s the end of that, I thought, rubbing my face. The room was warm, the machines humming a low song perfectly in tune with one another. The longer I listened to it, eyes shut, the easier it was to process the tidal wave of information that had come crashing down over our heads earlier in the evening; the easier it was to let the quiet anger roll through me.

What was the point of trying to keep it inside now—my fury over decisions that had been made almost twenty years ago?

And this “cure”—what a joke. Surrendering yourself to an invasive procedure that might or might not work was patching the problem over, not fixing it. I felt strangely betrayed by my own hope; I thought I’d trained myself not to bank on things that were completely out of my control. But...still. Still, it hurt.

What’s the point in getting anyone out now if they don’t have a future? My throat ached with the thought. At least in the camps they’re protected from what they’d have to deal with out here. How many people would really be welcoming to “freaks” out walking the streets? I fought the instinct to walk over to the satellite image of Thurmond, to tear it down off the wall and rip it between my hands, just shred it into a thousand fluttering pieces to match the way I was shattering inside. Why not just let those kids be taken out of the camp, let the PSFs and military raze the buildings without leaving so much as a scar on the earth?

Because if the kids are in the camps, they could be forced to get the procedure, whether they want it or not.

Because they deserve to have a choice about how they want to live their lives.

Because they haven’t seen their families in years.

Because it’s what’s right.

I stood up and stretched my stiff limbs as I moved toward the satellite image of the camp, smoothing out a corner that was becoming unstuck from the wall. The notations I made were all still there, and I saw new ones—arrows that Cole had made, outlining the flow of the assault. He wanted us to enter through the front gate using military vehicles. We would pose, I had a feeling, as either units helping with the move or additional forces. The first drive was split between the Infirmary and the Control Tower, with smaller pairings of fighters in twos and threes moving through the rings of cabins.

I backed up to get the full scope of it all, taking a seat on one of the empty desks.

It’s the right thing to do. It would just be a matter of convincing everyone else.

The door to the computer room swung open, and I turned, saying, “How did it—?”

But it wasn’t Cole. It was Liam. Jaw set, blue eyes stormy. Even if I hadn’t been able to feel the anger pouring off him, he was shaking with the clear effort it took to walk in and shut the door with some semblance of calm.

My whole world tilted toward him. There were so many empty spaces inside of me now, and I don’t know if I’d even have recognized that until he was there to fill them. The longing turned to a dull ache; it played games with my mind. It made me think I saw it in his eyes, too, as he watched me. His anger met my desperation and the sparks from the collision crystallized, trapping us in this moment of charged silence forever.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I know it’s too late now, but I’m sorry.”

Liam cleared his throat. His voice was low. “How long have you known?”

There was no point in lying, trying to gloss over the truth. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t have this guilt under my skin, cutting me to the bone each time I withheld, with each little lie. Cole had asked me to keep his secret and I had, because I felt it was his right to come to grips with his abilities on his own terms and in his own time. But I should never have let this charade go on for so long, not when it did more to tear things apart than it did to bring everyone together.

And at this point, I wasn’t sure it was possible for Liam to hate me any more than he already did.

“At HQ,” I said, “when he and the other agents came in to retake it, he saved my life. I saw it then.”

Liam drew in a sharp breath and, in a blur of furious movement, slammed his fist into the wall next to the door, hard enough to crack the plaster.

“Ow—shit!” He jumped back, cradling his hand. “Christ—why did she say that would make me feel better?”

I was on my feet, reaching for him, before I remembered myself.

“Who—Alice?” I guessed, hating that I could hear the bitterness in my own voice.

“Yeah, ’cause some reporter is the first person I’m gonna tell after finding out my brother is a Red,” he shot back. “Vida. When I asked her where you were.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” I said. I hadn’t realized until that moment, hearing those two words leave my mouth, how carefully I’d managed to balance on the tip of a needle. But it was like every ounce of strength I’d had left just...slipped away. I felt myself take another step, and my knees went out from under me as I dropped to the ground. I couldn’t find the words I needed, couldn’t put them together. I pressed my hands against my face, crying, beyond caring. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”

I heard him come toward me, saw between my fingers as he lowered himself to the ground a short distance away and leaned back against the table. He rested his arms over his knees, letting his swollen right hand hang out in the air. He didn’t say anything at all, waiting for me to finish, or waiting for something in himself; I didn’t know.

“He said he made you swear on your life not to tell me,” he said, his voice hoarse. “That I should blame him, not you.”

“Yeah, but I could have told you anyway,” I said quietly.

“But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

He let out a sound of frustration, running his hands back through his hair. “Ruby...can you at least help me understand why? I’m...I want to understand. This is killing me. I don’t get why no one...why neither of you even tried.”

“It’s because...I know what it feels like to...” I struggled for the right words, but every time it felt like I had a grip on them, they slipped away. “It’s different for us—for him and me. The dangerous ones. I know you don’t want to hear that, I’m sorry, but it’s true. I saw it in the way the PSFs treated the Orange and Red kids at Thurmond, I saw it in how hard Zu struggled to learn to control her abilities, and I see it in the face of every kid I talk to. So I knew exactly why Cole didn’t tell you or your parents. I lived with the fear of being found out, and so did he. First with your family, and then with the League.”

“No one in the League had any idea?” Liam asked in disbelief.

“Three people knew,” I said. “Alban, Cate, me. That’s it.”

He released a harsh breath, shaking his head.

“I wish I was better at this—at explaining. I just kept thinking about how I had to keep my own secret for so long. Six years. And then just like that, in a matter of seconds, I had to show you all what I was to get us away from that woman. It was somehow the hardest and easiest decision I’ve ever made, because it meant you would all be safe, but I was so sure it would be over and I’d lose the three of you because you knew.”

“You...in the woods, after the skip tracer tried to take us in,” he said, fitting the right memory together, “when you thought we were going to leave you behind.”

“Yes.” There was a sharp ache in my chest as I said, “But you talked to me, you told me that you all wanted me. You can’t know what that feels like after...after being alone inside of your head for so long. It changed my life. And I know it sounds stupid, but I think part of me felt like I could be that for him. I could help him get to the point where he wasn’t so damn ashamed of what he was, make him feel comfortable about being one of us so he wouldn’t be so alone. It didn’t seem right, you know? He’s still trapped in this in-between space. Not one of us, but not one of the adults.”

“That was by choice,” Liam said. “He could have told us.”

“Did you see how half of the kids reacted when he brought up the Red camp? Olivia? Brett? He didn’t think, Oh, but I’ve proven the stories wrong; he thought, They’ll hate me, they’ll be afraid of me, they’ll never be able to look me in the eye again.”

Liam looked down at his hands again. “Do you still think those things?”

“It comes and goes,” I said quietly. “Sometimes. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m...like a beam of sunlight, you know? You chase the bad things away. With Cole, he understood the dark I could never shake. I used to think he was the kind of person that wasn’t afraid of anything, but he’s scared of his own shadow, Liam. I don’t think I understood until tonight just how scared he was of you really seeing him.”

“But that’s so unfair,” Liam said, his voice strained with a second wave of anger. “I know it’s not right, but I hate him for thinking that me and Mom and Harry—that any of these kids who basically worship the ground he walks on—would love him less. I wish he’d trusted us. He could have had support in this. Nothing’s changed for me.”