Never Fade

by Alexandra Bracken

  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 m
any 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.”