Текст книги "Never Fade "

Автор книги: Alexandra Bracken

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

“I don’t see anyone in there,” Chubs said for the tenth time. “I don’t know…maybe we should circle around it again?”

“Grannie, chill—you’re giving me an ulcer,” Vida said, shifting the car into park. “She’s probably waiting in one of those cars.”

“Yeah,” Liam said, “but which one?”

Most were smaller sedans in a variety of colors and shapes. The one thing they had in common, aside from the beating their paint had taken from the sun, was that every inch of them seemed to be coated with dust. The roofs, the windows, the hoods. The only exception was a white SUV—the wheels and lower half of the car were caked with grime, but the rest of it was otherwise clean. It hadn’t been there long.

“She said to meet her inside,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt. “We’ll start there.”

“Wait,” Chubs began, a note of panic underlying his tone. “Can’t we just…wait a few more minutes?”

“We can’t keep her waiting,” Jude said. “She’s probably worried sick.”

I met Vida’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Why don’t you stay here and pack a bag of supplies,” I suggested, keeping my voice casual. “Vida and I will get the full picture from her. We’ll see what her plans are and if it’s safe for you guys to travel with us.”

“Okay,” Jude said, “I’ll meet you in there in a second!”

“Take your time,” I said, stepping over his long legs. “Think about what we’re going to need.”

“But Cate will probably have everything we need,” he protested. “And anyway, I want to see her. It feels like it’s been forever.”

Vida took her cue from me and unbuckled her seat belt.

I shut the door behind me, careful not to look at Liam’s face as I walked around the back of the car to meet Vida. There was a faint click as she checked the magazine of the gun in her hand.

“We don’t go inside unless we confirm we’re not going to walk into a wall of guns, capisce? In and out only long enough for you to do brain voodoo and see if the others are all right,” she said. “How long until Judith gets whiny and impatient and comes after us?”

“Ten minutes, max.” Maybe twelve if Liam distracted him.

We kept to the street’s shadows, weaving in and out of the cars. I hadn’t felt nervous until that very moment, when I thought I caught a flicker of light and movement in one of the restaurant’s windows. But Vida was gripping my arm, dragging me around the enormous garbage Dumpsters and their rotting, forgotten innards. The back door was propped open with a small rock. Vida wasted only one second to look at me, then ducked into the Dairy Queen’s dark kitchen. The door slipped shut behind us, and I turned the lock as quietly as I could.

Vida’s reflection flashed in the stainless steel refrigerator on the other side of the room, and I turned to see her crouching, moving along the silver fryers and empty shelves. I met her at the door leading out to the service counter and dining room.

Switching the safety off my gun, I ducked low, moving along the front counter and the empty spaces where the ice-cream machines should have been. No—despite the lights, the faintly sweet smell still clinging to the air, this wasn’t an operating restaurant.

And the only soul alive in that dining room aside from us wasn’t Cate.

He was sitting in the one white plastic booth not in the line of sight of the large glass windows, idly flipping through an old ratty paperback of a book called The Collected Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. He wore khakis, and a gray sweater over a white button-down shirt with the sleeves of both neatly rolled up. The dark hair was slightly longer than I remembered; it fell into his eyes every time he leaned forward to turn the page. And still, the strangest part of this picture of Clancy Gray wasn’t the fact that he was here, in the desert, in a Dairy Queen under a faded sign advertising some kind of new waffle cone—it was the fact he was relaxed enough he had propped his feet up on the other side of the booth.

He knew I was there—he must have—but Clancy didn’t move as I came up behind him and pressed the barrel to the back of his head.

“Can you at least wait until I finish this chapter?” he asked, his voice as pleasant as ever. I actually felt my stomach heave just that tiny bit. I felt something else, too—the all too familiar trickling at the back of my mind.

“Put down the gun, Ruby,” Clancy said, shutting the cover.

A part of me wanted to laugh. He was honestly trying this? I let the invisible fingers of his mind brush up against mine for one single, solitary second before I threw down the razor-edged wall between them. This time, Clancy did move—he jerked forward, hissing in pain as he turned toward me.

“Nice try,” I said, keeping both my voice and hand steady. “You have thirty seconds to tell me what the hell you’re doing here and how you accessed our Chatter before I do what I should have done months ago.”

“You clearly don’t know how to bargain,” he admonished. “There’s nothing in it for me. I die if I tell you, and I die if I don’t. How is that supposed to be motivating?”

Clancy gave me his best politician’s son’s smile, and I felt the long-simmering anger inside of me boil over. I wanted to see him afraid before I ended his life. I wanted him to be as scared and helpless as the rest of us had been that night.

Stop, I thought. Calm down. You can’t do this again. Control yourself.

“Because there’s a third, worse option,” I said.

“What? Turning me over to the PSFs?”

“No,” I said. “Making you forget who you are. What you can do. Ripping every memory out of your head.”

The corner of Clancy’s mouth twitched up. “I’ve missed your idle threats. I’ve missed you, really. Not that I haven’t been keeping up with your activities. It’s been fascinating to watch these past few months.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” I said, my grip on the gun tightening.

He leaned back against the seat. “I keep track of all of my good friends. Olivia, Stewart, Charles, Mike, Hayes. You, especially.”

“Wow. You really know how to flatter a girl.”

“You have to tell me, though—why did you and Stewart split up? I read the report on the League’s servers. You both were taken in, but there was no mention of why he was let go.”

I said nothing. Clancy laced his fingers together on the table, a knowing smile stretching over his handsome face.

“Look at you, making the impossible choice,” he said. “That’s what that Minder of yours said about you in your file, you know. That was her justification for naming you as Leader of your sad little team. Ruby is fiercely protective and possesses the strong will and resilience needed to make impossible choices. I liked that. Very poetic.”

He slid out of the booth, lifting both hands in the classic pose of surrender. It was about as genuine as his smile.

“Ruby.” His voice was soft, and his hands lowered, angling themselves like he was about to step into an embrace. “Please. I am so happy to see you again—”

“Stay right where you are,” I warned, raising the gun again.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” Clancy continued, his voice taking on that silky quality it always did when he was trying to influence someone. It made my skin crawl, my hands slick. I hated him—I hated him for everything he had done, but, more than that, I hated him for being right.

My expression must have given me away, because he lunged toward me, his fingers straining toward my gun.

The shot was all lightning and thunder; the bullet ripped through the air, catching him across the arm, and the explosion of it followed a second later. Clancy howled in pain, dropping onto his knees. His left hand clutched the place where the bullet had clipped his right forearm.

I could hear Jude banging on the back door of the kitchen, his muffled yells, but it was Vida who came into view. She rose up from behind the counter, the gun in her hands aimed directly at his head.

“She told you to stay where you are,” Vida said coldly as she came to stand behind me. “Next time it’ll be your nuts.”

I realized the danger two seconds too late, when Clancy lifted his head.

“Stop—!”

Vida made a noise like a small gasp, her face scrunching with the force of Clancy’s intrusion. She shuddered, fighting it—I could see it in her eyes just before they went glassy under his mind’s touch. Her arm shook as she lifted the gun again, this time pointing it at me.

“Put down your gun and listen to me,” Clancy ordered. He had hauled himself back up so he was sitting on the edge of the booth, glancing at the line of blood darkening his formerly pristine shirt. I didn’t budge, fighting every urge in my body to shoot him dead on the spot and just be done with it. Vida was shaking behind me; I felt the barrel of the gun tremble as it came to rest against my skull. Her cheeks were wet, but I didn’t look long enough to see if it was sweat or tears.

It surprised me how very little fear I had in that moment outside of what was happening to Vida. If Clancy had gone out of his way to do this—to come here, to hack into our Chatter link, to degrade himself by waiting in a Dairy Queen of all places—then he had done it for a purpose. He couldn’t talk to me if I were dead.

“Ah,” he said softly, like I’d spoken my thoughts aloud.

Clancy shifted his eyes back to Vida. The gun pulled away, coming to rest against the side of Vida’s temple.

“You wouldn’t,” I whispered.

“Are you really going to test me?” He only raised his brows and swept his hand out to the other side of the booth. Inviting me to sit. I stayed on my feet but switched the safety back on my gun and slid it into the back of my pants.

I can break the connection, I thought, letting my mind reach out for hers. But it was like a sheet of steel had melded around Vida’s thoughts—no matter how hard I threw myself against it, I was knocked back. Shut down.

“You’ve improved a great deal,” Clancy said. “But do you honestly think you could break my hold before I could have her fire?”

No, I thought, hoping my eyes would be enough to convey to Vida how sorry I was, that I hadn’t given up yet.

“How long have you been monitoring our Chatter’s link?” I asked, turning back to him.

“Take a guess, and then another, at when I actually started answering in Catherine Conner’s place.” He began drumming his fingers against the table, and Vida’s hand steadied, finger tightening on the trigger. I clenched my fists but took a seat across from him, not bothering to hide the revulsion on my face. “She’s very worried about all of you. To her credit, she figured out I wasn’t you faster than you figured out I wasn’t her. And, even better, she sent you to Nashville. I’m guessing you ran into that little poser while you were there. Did you take care of him?”

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about Knox.

“It must have killed you,” I said, “to know a lowly little Blue was parading around with the identity you built. Did you know he had one of your Reds?”

“I heard murmurs about it.” Clancy gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “I knew the Red was damaged, otherwise I would have gone and gotten him myself. He would have been incredibly useful to have around, but I don’t have the time to sit around and retrain that kid, to strip all of the mental conditioning and build it back up.”

“They destroyed him—you destroyed him,” I said. “By just suggesting the program to your father. That boy was…he was like an animal.”

“And what was the other option for them?” Clancy asked. “Would it have been better to let my father’s people murder all of them the way they did the Oranges? Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?” He fingered the edges of his old paperback. “A good question from Nietzsche. I know my answer. Do you know yours?”

I didn’t know who Nietzsche was, and I didn’t particularly care, but I wasn’t about to let him derail the conversation.

“Tell me why you’re here,” I said. “Is it about the Reds again? Or are you finally bored with screwing people over? I bet it gets pretty lonely with only your ego for company.”

Clancy actually laughed. “I’ll be the first to admit my East River plan was childish. It completely lacked the sophistication it needed to be successful. I got ahead of myself, testing the waters before they were warm enough. No, I’m here now because I wanted to see you.”

Every joint in my body seemed to seize in the grip of cold dread.

His attack came at me like a knife in the dark; the strange, disconcerting feeling at the back of my skull was the only warning. But I was quick, too. It was just like what Instructor Johnson said—sometimes the only time an opponent has his guard down is when he’s mid-swing. So I went for it; I knew what I was doing now. I blocked his assault with one of my own, driving straight into the deep reaches of his mind.

Images and sensations flittered by, bursting like white hot flashes, changing every moment I seemed to get a grip on one. I focused on the one that kept coming up—a woman’s face framed by blond hair—and seized it, pulling it up to the front of his thoughts.

The scene slid down around me, shaky and discolored at first but growing stronger the longer I held it. With every breath a new detail would appear. The dark room wavered in my mind before a ring of stainless steel tables appeared. Just as quickly, those tables filled with glowing machines and intricate microscopes.

The woman was no longer a face but a whole person, and standing in the middle of it all. Though her face was calm, her hands were up in front of her in a pacifying way that made me think she was trying to calm someone down or defend herself.

The woman tripped on something behind her as she backed away, sending her stumbling to the ground. The glass scattered on the tile around her flared as it caught the light of a nearby fire. I leaned down over her, noticing the small spray of blood on the woman’s white lab coat, and her lips forming the words, Clancy, no, please Clancy—

I wasn’t sure how the two of us ended up on the ground, crawling away from each other with weak, shaking limbs. I heard Jude shouting my name from outside again, thundering his fists against the back door. I pressed a hand to my chest, like that would be enough to slow my heart’s galloping pace. Clancy couldn’t stop shaking his head—in disbelief, maybe, or to clear it. For a long, terrible moment, we did nothing but stare at each other.

“I’m assuming that’s Stewart out there, banging to be let in like the dog he is?” he asked finally.

“It’s not,” I said, clenching my jaw. “He’s gone. They left us here.”

Clancy’s eyes flicked over to Vida again, and I heard a whimper.

“I’m telling you the truth!” I said. “Do you think I’d willingly let him get tangled up in this mess? He’s gone. Gone.”

He stared at me, his eyes tracing the lines of my face with faint amusement and more than a little annoyance.

The restaurant’s side glass door shattered, blown out by some force I didn’t see. Clancy’s full attention whipped from me to Vida, anger flashing in his dark eyes. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder who was breaking in—my body was way ahead of my brain. I dove for Vida’s legs, knocking her to the ground and wrestling the gun out of her hand before Clancy could do anything.

I rolled onto my back, aiming both guns at him from the floor. Vida was cursing, raging in confusion as she came up from Clancy’s fog, but my eyes were fixed on Clancy—and his were fixed on the boys who came charging in with such force that they slid across the piles of shattered glass. No! I thought. No, not here!

“He’s gone,” Clancy muttered, his voice high in a weak imitation of mine. “Gone.”

Liam’s gaze traveled from where I was on the ground to where Clancy still sat in the booth, rolling his eyes to high heaven in exasperation. Then Liam was moving, coming at him with a mask of pure, unflinching fury stretched tight over his features. I saw his decision there, read it in the way his fist was coming up for blood. So did Clancy.

“Don’t—!” I shouted. Liam jerked to a stop, every muscle in his body seizing up, as Clancy sunk deep into his mind. I watched him slump to the ground with no way of catching himself.

I scrambled onto my feet as the president’s son looked down on Liam, crossing his arms over his chest. The blood from his wound dripped down onto Liam’s leather coat. Liam’s face changed from a wince, to a grimace, to a red mess of agony, and I knew it was different than before; Clancy’s cool smile as he looked down on him was so much more terrifying than it had been at East River.

“Stop it!” I said, forcing myself between them. I pushed Clancy back, one gun tucked up under his chin. “Let him go—Clancy!”

I’m not sure why he backed off then, releasing his grip. I let my eyes tell him everything I was willing to do to him. And Clancy, he’d come to realize, just as I had, that I wouldn’t kill him to protect myself, but I would to save the people I cared about. And if he couldn’t invade my mind anymore, then he had no way of controlling me outside of them. The anger darkened his eyes as he stepped back, jaw clenched.

I forced him into the booth, making sure he heard the safety switching off. My hands shook, not with fear but from the sudden spike in my pulse. The power I felt watching him shrink back, without even a word between us, was intoxicating. I would do it—if he tried to compel any of my friends again, I’d kill him, and the last thing he’d see was the smile on my face. We needed to get out of there. While we still had the flash drive and the upper hand.

I saw the thought flash behind Clancy’s eyes, the way his whole body seemed to relax as he figured out the exact right thing to say to keep himself alive. “If you shoot me now, you’ll never know what’ll happen to your friends back in California. Not before they die, too.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

IT WAS JUDE WHO FOUND HIS VOICE FIRST, weak as it was. I watched his hand fly up, pressing the compass against his chest. “What are you talking about?”

I drew the barrel of the gun closer to Clancy’s face. “Answer him.”

In that moment it became just as clear to me as it was to Clancy that he had never been in a situation like this before—one he couldn’t wriggle out of, let alone control. Reluctance and frustration burned an ugly expression on his face. “I have a source in the League who says that they’re going forward with their plans to blow those kids to hell. You kill me, and you have no idea about when or how it happens.”

I shook my head, but inwardly, my stomach clenched. “Who’s the source? You could have pulled those plans off a computer network for all we know.”

The smirk on his face was enough to make me want to pull the trigger. He drew the name out, twisting the vowels. “Our mutual acquaintance. Nico.”

“No!” Jude cried. “No! Roo, he’s lying—”

“Nico and I go way back,” Clancy interrupted, glancing over to where Liam was struggling back onto his feet, coughing.

“Do you ever tell the truth?” I asked. “You would never have had access to Nico. He was in Leda’s testing program until the League got him out, and he hasn’t left HQ since.”

Clancy looked at me like he couldn’t quite believe I hadn’t put it all together by now. “Ruby. Think. Where was he before that? Or do you all honestly not know?”

“I know I’m going to shred the skin off your face and turn it into hair ribbons,” Vida snarled from the floor, still visibly struggling to get her legs under her. She sneered at him, pulling her fury around her like armor.

“That’s the spirit,” Chubs murmured, waiting for her to finally accept his help up—which, of course, she did not.

“What?” Jude was saying, coming up behind me. “What’s he talking about?”

I felt sick—faint enough that I almost sat down again. “Nico was in Thurmond? While you were there?”

“Annnnnd she gets it. Finally.” Clancy gave me a little round of applause. “We were scalpel buddies. They liked to compare our brains—to study kids at the opposite ends of the color spectrum. They even brought us in on the same day, way back when.”

My mind was racing, trying to figure out how I couldn’t have known that until now, if Nico had ever offered up a hint of it. But I couldn’t remember if I had ever told him I was in Thurmond. Had Cate?

“Are you saying your old man had them experiment on you?” Liam’s voice was rough as he came to stand behind me.

Clancy tapped his fingers against the table. He had no proof. His father had consented only if the researchers didn’t leave scars. “After I walked out of that camp, I did wonder what happened to the others—I figured that they must have moved the experimentations to another location once they started expanding the camp to bring in kids like our friend Ruby. It took me some time to find they’d been brought to Leda Corp’s Philadelphia lab.”

My stomach turned over. I tried to say something, anything, but the picture of Nico—small, scared Nico—strapped down to one of the Infirmary’s beds was too much for my mind to take. I couldn’t process anything else.

“Even before East River,” Clancy said, folding his hands on the table in front of him, “I realized the only kids who would ever truly understand what I was trying to do were those who had been there with me. I thought they could be useful. But by the time I traced them to Leda Corp, Nicolas was the only survivor whose brain hadn’t been completely destroyed.”

“And all you had to do was wait until the League broke him out to make him useful,” I said, disgusted. “Were you planning on convincing him to break away and meet you at East River before that plan imploded?”

“I didn’t wait for anyone. Who do you think slipped the intel to the League about what they were doing in that lab? Who do you think suggested a way for them to get the kids out? I had to be patient, of course, and wait until they had him back in California before contacting him. And no—it was never the plan to bring him to East River, Ruby. He was more useful to me there, collecting every piece of intel about the League I asked for.”

“No,” Jude said, dragging his hands back through his hair. “No, he wouldn’t…”

“You’ve all misjudged him. Underestimated him. No one has ever suspected him, no matter how much digging I had him do.” Clancy‘s eyes were on the gun as he continued. “He’s the one who told me that the League is moving forward with strapping the bombs to those kids. That’s why he hacked the Chatter link for me. So we could meet. So I could do him this favor.”

“He told you about the flash drive,” I said. “That’s really why you’re here, right?”

His eyebrows rose, lips parting just that tiny bit. The eager glint was back in his eyes. “Flash drive? And what would be on this flash drive? Something I’d like?”

“You—” The word choked off. Clancy was looking at us all, like he was trying to pick which mind to invade. Which one would give him easiest access to the truth. I forced his attention back to me with the gun.

“He said you were looking for Stewart because he was in danger. My role was only to get you here, to tell you about what happened. But there’s something else involved?”

“Talk,” I said, “tell me everything and maybe—maybe—you live.”

Clancy sighed, his reluctance deflating his excitement about the potential gold he’d stumbled across. “Two days ago several agents revolted, killing Alban and seizing control of the organization. Everyone who stood against them was either locked up or killed.” He glanced at Liam, a smile tucked in the corner of his lips.

Cole. Cate. All of the instructors. Even Alban’s weathered face, his yellowing smile, flashed through my mind.

Once the initial shock wore off, Liam began shaking—I put my hand on his arm to steady him. But it was Vida I should have been worried about. She threw her fist in the direction of Clancy’s smug face. Chubs barely caught her around the waist, and the strength it took to wheel her back around sent them both crumpling to the floor. She was howling—actually howling—as she struggled and kicked him, trying to untangle herself from his wiry arms.

Liam had met the news about his brother with shock and Vida had been swallowed up by her own fiery anger. But Jude…he was crumbling into the kind of deep grief that was marked only by silent tears.

“What’s their plan?” I demanded. “The specifics.”

“They’re moving them out of LA by six tomorrow morning.” Shock sent me back a step, and the space between us flooded with a palpable terror. I felt it licking at my skin, leaving behind a sheen of icy perspiration. So soon. I tried to calculate the drive in my mind, find the extra hours in the day we’d need to make it there in time. “The other kids have no idea what’s going on, according to Nico. It seems that your beloved Cate was only able to warn him before they took her, too.”

And somehow—somehow that was the worst part, the hardest thing to hear.

“Took her where?” Vida demanded. “Tell me, you goddamn bastard, or I’ll rip your—”

“Why six tomorrow?” Chubs asked, still struggling to pin Vida’s arms.

“Because it’s Christmas Day,” Clancy said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The pathetic attempt my father is launching at a peace summit? Why wouldn’t they want to steal some of that spotlight? Undermine everything the Federal Coalition might be forced to agree to?”

No, no, no, no, I begged, like that could somehow change the situation. Like that tiny prayer could destroy the dread crawling through every part of me.

“Good luck getting back,” Clancy said, malice dripping from every word. “Do you know how long it took me to find a plane and a source of gas to get out here? Days. Almost a full week of looking, and then another day to find a pilot. Even if you could drive the distance in six hours, you’d still have to make it through the blockades my father and the Federal Coalition set up on each side of the California border without getting picked up. That’s going to go down smoothly, huh? Knowing that you could have saved those kids, if only you’d had just a few more hours.”

I was so sure my hatred of Clancy had a natural end and that I’d hit it one day—a point I could reach not when I forgave him but when I accepted what had happened and moved on. But it didn’t work that way; I saw it now. The feeling was like smoke, changing its scent and shape with the months and years that passed. I would never be rid of it. It would only grow, and grow, and grow until one day it finally smothered me.

I didn’t give the others the chance to give their opinions. I didn’t want any of them to talk me out of it, not when there were twenty other kids in California about to be sent off to their deaths and we had no time. No time. My eyes slid over to Jude, slumped against the wall, his fingers gripping the compass, his face such a perfect portrait of grief I had to fight to keep from mirroring it.

Instead, I let the anger flood through me again. I whipped the gun across Clancy’s face and caught him by the collar of the shirt. This is the only way, I told myself as I hauled him onto his feet. His nose was bleeding, and he looked like he couldn’t quite believe it.

“Let’s go,” I hissed. “You’re buying us the hours we need.”

“Is someone going to notice this is missing?”

I glanced back at Chubs as we scaled the stairs into the small charter jet. “Probably.”

A part of me had wanted to laugh—really, truly laugh—when Clancy had finally admitted there was an airport in the city and that it was how he had come in to meet us. From the look of it, the airport had been converted to cater exclusively to private planes, though there was a single large cargo plane taxiing out onto one of the runways. I’d felt a small jolt of panic at the sight, thinking our ride was about to take off without us.

But, no, of course not. Why would Clancy travel like a commoner when he could manipulate and compel anyone into giving him anything?

The jet was ridiculously beautiful. At the sight of the plush carpet and enormous beige leather seats, I did sigh, just that little bit. Each side of the private jet was lined with bright oval windows and warm, cozy lights. The paneling along the back wall and sides of the aircraft was that glossy, expensive-looking faux wood. From what I could see, there was a fully stocked drink station between the two bathrooms in the back, past the eight enormous, plush leather seats.

“Who’d you steal this from?” I asked as I shoved Clancy inside, my gun digging into the small of his back.

“Does it matter?” Clancy grunted, dropping into the nearest seat. He held up his bound hands, nodding to the plastic zip tie Chubs had been oh so happy to supply. “Can you cut this off now?”

“Is he okay to fly?” I asked, jerking my thumb in the pilot’s direction. Most people could barely remember their own name when I was in their heads, let alone operate delicate machinery.

Clancy folded his arms over his chest. “Every time he looks at us, he sees six adults on a business trip, all of whom have paid him handsomely for his services in arranging the flight details. You’re welcome.”

Liam caught my eye as he followed the others in. “When do we get to dump him?”

It was the first time he’d spoken to me since we’d left the restaurant. I hadn’t even been able to look him in the eye before now, afraid of the disappointment I knew would be there. Liam would have fought me on this if I had let him, just like I would have fought for him and Chubs to stay in Colorado, far away from the upcoming fight.

But I think we both knew they were losing battles.

“Mid-flight?” Chubs asked, his voice brimming with hope. “Over a desert?”

Vida slid into the seat to the right of mine before Liam could. “We’re not dumping him yet, are we, boo?”

She knew exactly what I was thinking. This was what the League had taught us to do when we located a valuable asset: you brought him in, bled him for intel, and then traded him for something better. I shook my head, trying not to smile at the alarm that flashed in his dark eyes. “No, we’re not.”

The look he gave me in return made my skin feel tight around my bones. But what could he do? Nothing that I couldn’t do right back to him five times over.

I could tell Chubs wanted to ask exactly what we meant by that, but the pilot’s voice interrupted, telling us he had finished his final checks and was ready for takeoff.