Текст книги "Never Fade "

Автор книги: Alexandra Bracken

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Cole. I knew from League gossip that he was a hotshot—a deep-cover agent with terrifying efficiency. I knew from Liam that he thrived on the pulse of power that came from firing a gun.

But what no one, not even Liam, had thought to mention was how very, very much alike they looked.

THREE

FOR WHATEVER REASON, Jude had nominated himself to serve as the team’s one-man welcoming committee. When I arrived back at HQ after my first Op with the League, it had been his lanky, pacing shape waiting for me at the end of the entry hall, torpedoing toward me, burying me under an avalanche of questions. Six monthslater, he was still the only one who waited there for us, rewarding our safe return with a smile that split his face.

I braced myself for impact as Vida tapped her ID against the door. Rob and the remaining members of the tact team had escorted Cole Stewart in a few minutes before, but I’d forced us to hang back, take our time going down the tunnel. It was important to make sure Rob got the full credit for this one, to let him roll around in the glory like a dog in the grass. We’d heard the cheers go up as they strolled through the entry, and watched them pump their fists as they strode into HQ, almost leaving Cole behind in his wheelchair.

Now there was no one left in the long white entry hall. The agents left a trail of celebratory noise behind them. It shrank with every step they took, until the only thing I could hear was my own breathing, and the only thing I could see was the empty space at the end of the hallway where Jude should have been.

“Oh, thank you, Jesus,” Vida said, stretching her arms over her head. “One day I won’t have to get my back realigned from his death grip. Adios, boo.”

I think some people used the nickname “boo” as a term of endearment. Vida used it to make you feel like one of those little dogs that have brains the size of thumbs, and piddle all over themselves when they get too excited.

I let her go without a word, heading left toward Cate and the other senior agent quarters to check in. Five minutes of fruitless knocking later, I ducked my head into the atrium to see if she was there. She’s probably with the others, I thought, scanning the near-empty space. And while I didn’t glimpse her white-blond hair at one of the tables, I did recognize the mop of reddish-brown curls parked in front of one of the TVs.

I wasn’t lucky enough to pull off a clean getaway—those two seconds of staring had been enough for him to register my gaze. Jude glanced down at his old plastic wristwatch and then back up at me again in horror.

“Roo!” he called, waving me over. “I’m so sorry! So sorry! I totally lost track of time. Did everything go okay? Did you just get back now? Where’s Vida? Is she—?”

I wasn’t a good enough person to say that no part of me wanted to turn and run out before he could come up and loop my arm through his, dragging me across the room with him.

It was only when I crossed the room that I noticed Nico was there, sitting at the opposite end of the table. One of the cement pillars had blocked the sight of him from the door, but it also didn’t help that the kid didn’t seem to be moving. At all. I followed his stony gaze down to the little device on the table. A Chatter.

It was the size of a phone and could easily have doubled for one if you weren’t casting too careful of an eye on it. They’d salvaged an older generation of phones—the kind with an actual keypad, rather than a sleek touchscreen. The new shells they’d created for them were oval and thin enough to slide into a back pocket or up a sleeve during a lesson.

A couple of the Greens had developed this little gem with the idea that agents could relay digital messages, photos, and short videos back home without needing to ditch burner phone after burner phone. The tech behind them was mostly a mystery to me, but I understood they communicated on some un-hackable network the Greens had developed. They could only be used to contact other Chatters on the network, and only then if you had the other Chatter’s secret PIN number. They were useless if you needed to send large images or video files longer than thirty seconds; Alban had rejected sending them out in the field for that reason, dismissing them as some bored kid’s project. As far as I knew, the Greens usually just used them now to chat with one another in HQ when they were in different training sessions or at night after lights out.

“—really come back? Did you get to meet the agent? Was he as badass as everyone says? Can we—?”

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking between Nico and the TV screen. They’d picked the one showing only local California weather and news.

It was like I’d sucked the words straight out of him. Jude tensed in that wide-eyed way of his before flashing the kind of smile that was trying too hard.

“What’s going on?” I repeated.

Jude swallowed, glancing at Nico before leaning down to my ear. His eyes were scanning the atrium like they were looking for dark corners that didn’t exist.

“They sent Blake Howard out on an Op,” he said. “We’re just…”

“Blake Howard? The Green kid from Team One?” The one who looked like you could take him out with one well-aimed sneeze?

Jude nodded, giving another nervous glance behind me. “I’m just…worried, you know? Nico is, too.”

Shocker. Nico was never one to pass up a good conspiracy theory, especially when it came to the League. Every agent was a double agent. Alban was actually working with Gray to bring down the Federal Coalition. Someone was poisoning our water supply with lead. I don’t know where he got it from or if it was just the way his brain was processing all of the information he was absorbing and he didn’t know how to shut it off.

“They must be trading him for something,” Nico said, gripping the Chatter. “For information? To get another agent back? That’s not so crazy, right? There are so many Greens here already. They hate having so many of us. They hate us.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “Did the Op involve tech?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, but,” Jude said, “when have they ever sent out a Team One kid? They’re supposed to be for HQ use only.”

He wasn’t wrong. Vida called them the Squeakers, and the name had stuck with everyone. All Greens with supercharged logic and reasoning skills that the League put to use in deciphering codes and building computer viruses, creating these insane devices. They all had the same stumbling walk; Nico too. A weird half step where they dragged their feet against the tile, causing their sneakers to make these little squeaking noises. I’m sure they had picked it up from one another subconsciously; they were always moving in sync, just like the parts of a working machine should.

“He’s of age and he has the right skill set to help them,” I said. “I know for a fact the other Green teams are occupied this week. He might have been a last resort.”

“No,” Jude said. “We think they picked him on purpose. They wanted him.”

It was a while before Jude built up the nerve to look at me again. When he did, his expression was so obviously ashamed and terrified that I felt myself soften just enough to ask, “Is there something you’re not telling me? What am I missing here?”

Jude twisted the stretched-out hem of his shirt into a knot. Nico only stared straight ahead, eyes unblinking as they fixed on the Chatter.

“Me, Nico, and…Blake,” Jude began, “the three of us were messing around a few days ago down here. We’ve been trying to build one of those remote-control cars from leftover computer parts.”

“Okay…”

“Nico had to go up and talk to Cate, but me and Blake took the car on a test drive around this floor. It was around two in the afternoon, and no one was down here. So we thought it would be fine and that we wouldn’t bother anyone. But…you know those rooms that we use to store things for Ops? Like, the vests, extra ammo, that stuff?”

I nodded.

“We heard voices coming from one of them. I thought maybe the guys were just playing a card game or something—sometimes they do it down here so they can bad-mouth Alban or one of the advisers,” Jude said, visibly shaking now. “But when I heard them, what they were actually saying—they weren’t playing a game, Roo, they were talking about us. It was Rob, and Jarvin, and a couple of their friends. They kept saying things like Reducing the freak population and Getting Alban back on track and how they were going to prove what a waste of time and—and resources we were.”

It was a chill that sank straight to the bone. I pulled out the nearest chair and dragged it closer to Nico. Jude did the same, his hands twisting around each other.

“And they caught you listening?”

“I know it’s stupid, but when I heard that, I freaked out—I didn’t mean to, but I dropped the car. We ran before the door opened, but I’m positive they saw us. I heard Rob call my name.”

“Then what?” I pressed. My mind was making connections now, dangerous ones.

“Then Blake got assigned to that Op even though he’s on Team One. Jarvin said that they needed a Green to hack into the company’s server room, and he didn’t have a choice.”

I leaned back slowly. Reduce the freak population. My ear, the one that had taken the brunt of the grenade’s blast, seemed to have a pulse of its own.

That was an accident, I told myself. Rob was just being reckless. But the second lie sounded less convincing than the first. Reduce the freak population. How? By putting them in deadly situations on Ops that could be waved off as accidents? Rob had killed kids before—I only knew of those two I’d glimpsed in his memory, but what’s to say there weren’t more?

Jesus. A blinding wave of nausea blasted up from my stomach. Did he kill them to keep the number of kids here down?

No—no, I needed to stop. My thoughts were spiraling and getting out of hand. This was Nico and Jude—two boys with too much free time to sit around and trade nightmares. They were constantly poking at trouble, then acted all shocked when it turned around and bit them in their asses.

“It’s just a coincidence,” I said. I had another point to make, I’m sure, but it unhooked from my chain of thoughts when I heard someone call my name from across the room. One of Alban’s advisers, good old Raccoon Face, stood in the atrium’s doorway.

“He’d like to speak to you in his office an hour from now.”

Then he turned on his heel and was gone, clearly angry he’d been tasked to play messenger.

“What does he want?” Jude asked, visibly confused.

You almost never saw the walking suits more than a few feet away from Alban; I wouldn’t have been surprised if they broke into his quarters every night and took turns whispering plans and sweet nothings in his ear while he slept.

There were ten men total, all over the age of fifty, who had divided up the areas of Alban’s focus and assumed control over each. They coordinated and approved Ops, brought in supplies and new contacts, recruited new trainers, managed the League’s finances. All so Alban could focus on “big picture” goals and targets.

Jude claimed they were only there because Gray wanted them dead for one reason or another and they had no choice but to go underground. I still didn’t know half of their names, since most made it a point to never directly engage with the Psi freaks. It was easier just to fixate on their features and nickname from there. Raccoon Face, Monkey Ears, Horse Teeth, and Frog Lips were the ones I saw most.

What the names lacked in creativity, they made up for in accuracy.

“A debrief? Already?” Jude asked, glancing to the TV again.

I reached over and manually flipped the machine off.

“Hey!”

“You’re late,” I said, pointing to the clock on the wall. “Another two minutes and Instructor Johnson will hit you with a demerit.”

“So?” Jude shot back. “This is more important!”

“More important than eventually being activated?” I said. “Because the last time I checked, you were two demerits away from being stuck on HQ support forever.”

It was a mean tactic to play; Nico’s fuming look told me as much. But he knew, probably better than I did, that a future in which Jude never got to go out on an Op was a future Jude would have sold both arms to avoid.

I walked them out, tailing them all the way to the training room in case they got any ideas about slipping away. The teams we usually trained with—Two, Three, and Four—were already there, warming up, darkening the wall of mirrors. This was the one part in all of HQ that actually smelled fully human. The stench of sweat and warm bodies gave this hall a jolt of real, tangible life. It was better than the mildew, at least.

Instructor Johnson nodded in my direction as I held the door open, the fluorescent lights bleaching his already blond hair. Both Vida and I were excused from lessons and training for the day, but tomorrow they’d start all over again for us. I’d fall back into this place’s pattern, grateful for the relief of not needing to think about anything other than moving from hour to hour, door to door. A life lesson on how to cope, courtesy of Thurmond.

Jude and Nico could both hate me for this; I didn’t care. I just couldn’t afford to feed on their fear and let it twist my own. I’d worked so hard to numb myself to this place, and they didn’t get to blow that apart. They got my attention, my concern, my protection, but they didn’t get that.

Showered, fed, clothing changed, and thoughts collected, I was ready to meet with John Alban. But he wasn’t ready for me.

There was a lot you could say about the League’s founder, and maybe two words of it were actually flattering. He was a smart man, no one was going to deny it. The League was what it was today because of him. It was just that some felt it was time for him to take the assaults against Gray to “a new level,” and others were pressing for him to hold the course, since it was working.

I thought he had every right to want to think more about such a huge decision, but I understood their impatience. I knew they wanted to capitalize on the growing discontent and murmurs of protests we’d been tracking.

I heard voices beyond the door, soft at first, then enflamed enough to catch my attention. Every intention I had of knocking fell apart the longer I stood there, listening.

“No!” Alban was saying. “My God, no! No! How many times do I need to repeat the word for it to join your vocabulary? It was the answer the first time you presented it to the senior staff, when you convinced Jarvin to present it to the advisers, and, yes, now.”

“You’re not thinking this through—”

I rocked back on my heels instinctively, away from Rob’s harsh voice.

“You think we can keep this up without making a big statement? How many of these things do you just have sitting around HQ, wasting our time and energy?”

Alban cut him off. “They are not things, as you, I’m sure, are well aware. This is nonnegotiable. The ends will never justify the means, no matter how you try to pitch this. Never. They are children.”

In the back of my mind, a thought was beginning to knot itself with another, darker one, but I forced my attention to stay here. Now.

“You’re the one who always says anything to get Gray out, aren’t you? The distraction would be more than enough for us to go in and dismantle the camps, blast the news out to the rest of the damn country. This is the only way in now. They’ve wised up to our forged IDs—we can’t even get in to extract the agents we still have embedded in the camps. They’re waiting for us! We’re all waiting for you to do something! Decide something!”

There was a long, bitter silence that followed. Whatever words Alban was looking for, he never found them. I couldn’t keep my own mind in check. What kind of plan could get him this worked up?

“I’m just warning you,” Rob continued, sounding calmer, “that even I’ve heard agents wondering about what kind of policy we’re moving toward. A good number still think that you want to rekindle things with Gray in the end. That you miss your friend.”

I closed my eyes. It was an unspoken rule that we didn’t bring up Alban’s former friendship with President Gray and the first lady for any reason. Cate told me once that Alban didn’t even like to be reminded of the work he’d done as Secretary of Homeland Security—so I imagine he wasn’t thrilled to be reminded he was once in a small circle of people who enjoyed private dinners in the executive residence of the White House.

A new voice chimed in. “John, let’s not dismiss this entirely. This is a tactic that’s been employed before, and it is effective. They wouldn’t know. We have ways of hiding the mechanism—”

I was so focused on the conversation in front of me that I didn’t hear the person who hobbled up behind me. Not until he was hovering at my back, tapping on my shoulder to get my attention.

“I’d keep this one to yourself, Keyhole Kate,” Cole said. “Or do you need to hear the old one about that pesky cat and his curiosity?”

It was too late to jump back and pretend I hadn’t been listening, and now I was too flustered to bother trying.

The medic on Rob’s team had done a good job patching up the deeper cuts on Cole’s face, cleaning away the filth from his skin. He was wearing a loose shirt and pants that were a number of sizes too big for him, but he was out of his old vomit-stained rags, at least. He looked like a different person, and I was grateful for it. It was easier to get a look at him.

And I finally was getting a good one.

When Liam had told me he had an older brother, I had imagined him to be much older—twenty-five or twenty-six, the same age as Cate. But I’d overheard some of Rob’s tact team complaining about him on the flight back. About his punk-ass attitude, how he was only twenty-one, but Alban wasted all of the good Ops on him. The little golden boy.

Three years—that was all that separated him from Liam. From IAAN. Cole was a member of that narrow generation that had been just old enough to avoid the disease’s grip.

“Didn’t get much of a chance to talk on the plane, did we?” he said, bandaged fingers brushing the damp hair back over my shoulder.

He had a few inches on his brother, which I became well aware of as he leaned down to study my face, a pirate’s smile working across his own. Cole might have been narrower through the shoulders and waist, but there was something familiar about his stance.…

I shook my head, trying to clear the flush from my cheeks as I knocked on the door. It brought the argument inside to an abrupt end. Alban rose from behind his dark wood desk as I came in, shutting his laptop and cutting off the low murmur of the radio scanners on the nearby table. Rob and the frog-lipped adviser were already standing, both of their faces flushed from the argument. Seeing us, Rob rolled his eyes up and away, leaning against one of Alban’s many shelves of useless knickknacks from his old life.

“Sir,” I said, “you wanted to see me?”

“Goodness, sit down, sit down,” Alban said, waving a hand toward one of the folding chairs opposite him. “You both look dead on your feet.”

“I’m fine,” I said, then added, “thank you,” as an afterthought. I hated how small my voice became around him. Hated it.

Alban settled back down into his seat, lips pulling back to reveal a smile of mostly yellow teeth. The man didn’t make it out that much in public—not with a hefty bounty on his head. If they needed him to make a recorded video speech, they always cleaned up his pockmarked skin and brightened his complexion in post-production. They also liked to Photoshop him into pictures of American landscapes or cities to give the impression that he was a lot more fearless about going outside than he actually was.

“I’d like to have a casual debriefing about the operation to retrieve Agent Stewart last night, if the three of you are agreeable. I don’t think it can wait.”

He waited until Cole had eased himself down into the chair next to mine before reaching across the desk to clasp his hand. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see your face again, my dear boy.”

“Well, lucky you.” Cole dragged the words out, with no short supply of bitterness. “It seems like you’ll be seeing a lot of this beautiful boy from now on.”

Cut it out, I told myself, before I could tense. Cole was not Liam, no matter how much alike they looked. No matter how similar their voices were. Focus on the differences.

Cole was more solidly built than Liam, and cleaner cut, too. He’d buzzed his hair down since I’d last seen him, making it look two shades darker than the blond I knew it was. The Liam I had known was scruffy around the edges, warm in every way imaginable. And here was his older brother, stiff and beaten within an inch of his life, looking like he had been carved from ice. Not looking all that different from the state I’d left Liam in. And it was so awful, so horrible how quickly my mind swapped in one brother for the other. How much it lifted my spirit and eased the tightness in my chest to imagine Liam was here next to me again.

Stop. It.

Frog Lips shut the office door and retreated to the corner of the small room, slipping into Alban’s shadow.

“—would never normally interrupt your recuperation,” Alban was saying, “but after hearing Agent Meadows’s oral report, it sounds like there was some, shall we say, confusion. I’m interested to hear what happened from your perspective, Ruby.”

I didn’t register he had spoken to me at all until Rob pushed himself off the bookcase, the wide expanse of his shoulders spreading as he took a deep breath. Before leaving on the Op, he’d buzzed his dark hair short again; it made the bones in his face more pronounced. It changed the way the shadows fell against his skin.

God, why were we doing this? Where was Cate? I was never debriefed without her and never here, in Alban’s office, behind a closed door. I was surprised by how anxious I was; I didn’t trust her, but somewhere along the way, I guess I’d gotten used to her silent, steady presence waiting to catch me if I tripped up.

“Are…we waiting for anyone else?” I asked, careful to keep my voice steady.

Alban understood my question. “This is just a casual talk, Ruby. The level of secrecy surrounding this Op means that we can’t hold the debriefing in front of the whole organization. You should feel free to speak your mind.”

I pressed my hands down on my knees, trying to keep them from bouncing.

“Agent Meadows,” I started, sounding too loud to my own ears, “ran through the mission parameters with us on the flight, laying out the objective and what we knew about this particular bunker’s layout. He also reminded us of the fallback plans we had discussed prior to leaving.”

Alban’s mouth was wide and fairly unskilled at hiding his feelings. One corner twitched up. “And did any of these fallback plans include you and Vida leaving the bunker?”

“No, sir,” I said. “Agent Meadows ordered us to hold our position in the stairwell to cover them from there.”

Alban placed his elbows on the table and leaning his chin against his fingers. “Can you explain, then, why you left?”

I didn’t turn to look at Rob, but I knew he was looking at me. Everyone was, and from the weight of their stares, I got the impression that “Meadows” had already answered this question himself.

If I get Rob in trouble, I thought, how much trouble will I be in? He had a hot temper. I had known he’d be angry even when I made the choice to stay outside with Vida, but it would be nothing compared to his fury if I sold him out and told the others about what happened on the stairs. I couldn’t let them see the creeping suspicions on my face; I couldn’t ask the questions I wanted to. Why didn’t you warn us? My comm had been working then; I would have heard him.

“The stairwell was…compromised. I gave Vida the order to leave so we could monitor the situation from outside.”

“And you didn’t tell me this because…?” Rob asked, his anger already betraying him.

“My comm was broken,” I said. “As you saw when we regrouped.”

He grunted.

“All right,” Alban said after a moment. “The stairway was compromised? How so?”

There was a grenade. Rob set off a grenade. Nine words. One perfect way to ensure Rob would be forced to swallow every ounce of bitter reprimanding he deserved. Alban would believe me. He had never, not once, doubted my word—had defended it, even, to his advisers after I’d pulled some unwanted news out of an unfortunate mind. Nine words to tell him the truth: that Rob had jacked his own Op, by sheer stupidity or intentionally, and came within a hair’s width of killing both Vida and me.

I don’t know how I knew, or even why I felt so sure of it; it was as certain as the blood thundering in my ears. If I nailed him on this, embarrassed him, next time he had me in his sights, he wouldn’t miss.

“It wasn’t…well built, and it collapsed,” I explained. “It couldn’t handle the weight of all of us at once. Crappy construction.”

“All right,” Alban said, drawing the words out. “Agent Stewart reported that it was you and Vida who actually retrieved him. How did that come to pass?”

“She and the other one completely ignored my order to return to the bunker, that’s how!” Rob said. “I know for a fact she heard it. I know that you were the one who refused to double back.”

All four men had turned toward me. My vision narrowed, black seeping in again at the edges. I pressed a hand to my throat, pulling at the tight collar, trying to free the breath that was caught there.

I wanted Liam. All I wanted was Liam right there, standing close enough for me to breathe in the leather, the smoke, the sweet grass.

“Ruby,” Alban said, his voice as calm, and deep, and patient as the sea, “will you please answer my question?”

I just wanted this to be over. I wanted to go back to the sleeping room, crawl into my bunk in the cold darkness, and drift into nothing.

“He’s right. I told Vida to disregard the orders. Once we went aboveground, we saw that the National Guardsmen were moving the prisoners out of an entrance we didn’t know about. I didn’t ask for permission to proceed. I know I should have.”

“Because you goddamn know the only thing you’re supposed to do is follow your Leader’s orders!” Rob barked. “You think we would have lost so many men if you’d been there to cover our escape?”

The TVs behind Alban were off, but I swear I could hear their static breath growing louder and louder the longer the man stayed silent. He pressed a hand to the top of his head but didn’t once tear his gaze away from me.

And then came Cole’s voice, Southern as sweet tea: “Well, thank God you disobeyed; otherwise I’d be halfway to hell by now.”

It was clear that I had underestimated just how much influence Cole actually carried in the organization. Influence wasn’t the right word for it. A sway, maybe, that was mostly charm backed up by deadly results. Alban’s eyebrows rose, but he only nodded, allowing Cole to continue.

“I mean, let’s call a spade a spade here,” Cole said, leaning back to make himself more comfortable. “She’s the one who got me out. Why would she be in trouble?”

“She disobeyed my direct orders!”

Cole dismissed Rob with a bored wave. “I mean, Christ, look at the poor girl! She got the shit beat out of her on my behalf. If you think I’m gonna stay quiet and let her take the blame for a mission that wasn’t, by the way, a failure, you have another think coming.”

No one spoke; I stared openly at Cole’s smug expression, then at Rob’s murderous one. The sliver of space between them was filled with more than just distrust and annoyance—there were years of history resting there, colored with a hatred I didn’t understand.

The tension in Alban’s face bled off like running rain until he, too, was smiling.

“I’m inclined to agree with Agent Stewart here, Ruby—thank you for thinking so fast on your feet.” Alban shuffled a few papers around on his desk. “Agent Meadows, I’ll review your full report this evening. For now, you’re dismissed.”

When the senior agent stood, so did I, swinging toward the door for a quick escape. Instead, Alban’s voice caught me. “Just one more thing, Ruby, if you don’t mind. I’d like to discuss something with you and Cole.”

Let me go, let me go, let me go.…

Rob did not like this, that much was clear, but he also had no choice. The door shut so hard behind him, it actually rattled the old glass Coke bottles lining the shelf over it.

“Now, on a different note…” Alban looked my way. “I should begin by saying that you’re being trusted here, my dear, well above your security clearance. If I hear a word of this conversation being breathed outside of these office walls, there will be consequences. The same rules apply here as downstairs.”

No, please not this. Please don’t let it be this. “Yes, sir.”

Satisfied, he turned toward Cole. “I meant what I said before. I’m sorry to have to do this before you’ve fully recovered. But, as you’re well aware, we need to retrieve the intel that was taken from you.”

“I am well aware,” Cole said, “but I told you, I don’t know who has it. They knocked me out, and I saw someone take it, but truthfully, sir, I don’t remember much beyond what happened after they got me to the bunker. I’m not sure it was my contact who picked it up.”

I watched him drag a bandaged hand over his close-cropped blond hair, wondering if it was as obvious to Alban as it was to me that he wasn’t telling the truth.

“And that’s understandable considering the circumstances,” Alban said, leaning back in his chair. He threaded his fingers together and rested them over the bulge of his stomach. “This is where Ruby comes in. She’s been instrumental in helping…to jog the memories of assets. She’s helped us track down more than one piece of information that’s gone astray.”

Please, please, please, not him. I didn’t want to see inside his mind; I didn’t want to see flashes of Liam or their life. I just wanted to get away from him before my shrinking rib cage shredded my heart.

Cole went pale under his tan, from the creases between his brows down to the fingers clenching the armrests of the plastic chair.

“Oh, come on now.” Alban laughed. “I’ve been told it’s completely painless—and if it’s not, we’ll have her stop immediately.”