Never Fade

by Alexandra Bracken

“What is it?” he asked. “Some kind of a fight?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “You can do this. It’s simple. We’ll have most of the attention on us, so you just need to find the right moment to slip away. Then you need to contact Cate and have her put Nico on the search for a place we can hit for whatever medicine Chubs needs. Tell them we need it now and that it has to be close by. Can you remember that?”

  “Okay.” Jude took a step back, bouncing on the balls of his feet. His face split again into another quick, nervous grin. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  His hand instinctively went to the place where the solid lump of the compass should have been.

  “Where is it?” I asked, startled.

  “They took it. When they brought us in. It’s cool—it’s fine. I’ll find it. It’s probably in that room.”

  “Are the others all right?” I asked. “Liam?”

  “Umm…” He hesitated, biting his lip. “Not good. He won’t say it, but I think Chubs is really worried. He said if we don’t get medicine, there’s a good chance that he and the other kids could die. And I believe him. Roo, it’s bad. It’s really, really bad.”

  I pressed my hand against my forehead, closing my eyes, trying to control the rise of bile in my throat. You had him right there, and you couldn’t stop him. Liam is going to die, and you couldn’t do anything. After everything, Liam is going to die, and it’s on you.

  “Jude,” I said. I slipped a hand through one of the warped sections of woven metal, reaching for his shirt to bring him close again. He had a few inches on me, but I had a few years on him and a fair bit more experience when it came to slipping in and out of places unnoticed. “I know you can do this. I trust you. But if you think you’re about to get caught, ditch the Op, you hear me? We can figure out another way.”

  “I got this, Roo,” he said, his voice thick with promise. “I won’t let you down.”

  He backed away, flashing us a thumbs-up that all but proved to me he had no grasp on how serious the situation actually was. I let out a long breath, watching the evening steal him away in a cloud of white, the swirling paths of the snow altering their course to follow. He was moving fast, with so much unchecked energy, even the wind seemed to shift direction to catch his heel.

  I knew he could do it; in training, a break-in was one of the very first simulations they put us through. And, honestly, the awful truth of it was that while the kid was about as sneaky as a pair of cymbals crashing to the ground, he was also the kind of person you wouldn’t necessarily notice was missing. Not from a crowd, at least not right away.

  “Five minutes, max,” Vida said, leaning against the fence beside me. “That’s how long I give it before he gets his skinny ass caught and handed to him.”

  “Then we’d better put on a good show,” I said, closing my eyes against the snow, “and give him a fighting chance.”

  They came for us silently, emerging from the night’s cold, clammy hands like ghosts.

  “Stop,” I muttered to Vida. The kids shoving us forward, six in all, evenly divided between girls and boys in their very best white, didn’t speak a word. The old linen sack slipped easily over my head, but Vida wasn’t about to let them dull a single one of her senses.

  “It’s okay,” I coaxed, “stay with me here.”

  Every limb and joint felt heavy and stiff; just walking sent a spike of pain through my shoulders and hips. We made a sharp turn back in the direction of the warehouse. I felt the water from the parking lot splash up over the tops of my heavy boots and grimaced. We’d be inside soon enough. At least it’d be dry.

  But the metal door never groaned. It never opened.

  Vida’s mind must have been guiding her along a similar line of thinking, because I heard her say, “Ruby?” once, a mumble as it rolled past her lips.

  “Stay with me,” I said again, because what else could I say? It’ll be okay?

  I remembered, when I was little, my dad used to take me to some of the high school sports games. Football mostly, sometimes baseball. He loved a good game—any game—but what I liked best was just watching him. Seeing his whole body turn to follow the path of an incredible pass, the grin that broke out when the baseball blew over the far fence. Dad knew the cheers for each team by heart.

  So I recognized the tone when I heard it, the growls of a hungry crowd. The pulsing beat of clapping hands as they finally found the same rhythm. It set my teeth on edge, long before the fire smoke curled in my nostrils.

  I stumbled again and again as the kids pushed me forward, dragging me over the crumbling edges of pavement onto the soft, sinking earth, back again onto ground that was harder. Solid. A wave of scorching air brushed my arms as they led me past what felt like a wall of fire.

  I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over everyone else’s voices. I thought, just for a second, I heard Chubs bellow out my name and a softer girl’s voice echo it back. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby—and something else, too.

  They herded us right into a small crush of bodies, and it felt like every single one was trying to push back, to keep us from getting in.

  The minute my face was clear of the mask, I sucked in a lungful of warm air, trying to shake off the feeling I had a thousand pins pumping through my veins. There were too many faces around me—too many big eyes, cracked lips, scarred faces. The sight of them, the smell of their unwashed clothes and bodies combined with the earthiness of the smoke, until it became something else entirely. I craned my neck around, searching for Chubs’s face through the hands that were stretched out toward us. Firelight flickered in the dark.

  I found him eventually, Olivia by his side. Jude, thank God, was nowhere in sight or earshot, but the wave of relief that washed over me at the thought only lasted until the terror came spilling over their faces, their lips, their entire bodies as they tried to push their way forward. The panic buzzing at the back of my mind drowned my ears with something that sounded almost like white noise.

  Olivia had her hands around her mouth, shouting something to us. Dead, I thought.

  We were in another building, likely the one I’d seen set off to the side of the warehouse. Part of the roof and eastern-facing wall had collapsed in on itself, forcing us to drag our numb, exhausted bodies over the piles of downed cement and twisted metal. It was another, smaller version of the warehouse, nearly burned out by the look of it. The walls and cement floors were bare, with the exception of the black shadows the kids were projecting onto them. At the very center of the room was a large ring of metal trash cans, golden flames leaping up past their lips, stretching toward the kids in white watching from overhead.

  In Thurmond, the Factory had been set up in a very particular way to ensure that all of the PSFs would be able to watch a building full of freaks do their work. The floor plan there had been open, much like this, and stacked in the very same way. Hanging overhead were the two remaining metal pathways—low-hanging rafters, really.

  It was a sea of white up there, Knox positioned comfortably in the middle of them, sitting at the edge of the rafter. Michael sat at his right, leering down at us with a can of something at his side. At the sight of their grinning faces, my hand pulsed in pain. I pressed it flat against my pants, my mind racing as they pushed Vida and me through to the center of the circle of fire.

  Dammit. We really were going to have to fight each other.

  I glanced over, watching as Vida ripped the old sack off her head and threw it into the nearest flaming trash can. The veins in her neck were bulging with anger, and she looked as close to tears as I had ever seen her. That was the first moment I actually felt fear. I needed Vida now—I needed her sharp intuition and her refusal to back down, even for a second, from a losing fight.

  “Stay with me,” I murmured again. Her hands flexed and clenched at her sides, as if she were trying to work her anxiety out that way.

  Then, one voice rose above the others.

  “Hellooo, ladies,” Knox called. “Have you been
behaving yourselves?”

  The ring took up most of the room on the ground level, but there was enough space that the kids from outside, the ones not in white, could have squeezed in if they had wanted to. Instead they kept their distance—even Chubs, whose shape I could just barely make out through the screen of hot, shimmering air streaming up from the fires.

  “I could bring him down here,” Vida whispered. “Catch him by surprise and put him right in your hands.”

  I shook my head. “Too many guns.” And all aimed at our backs. Too many Blues, too. We’d have to wait until he chose to come down, then I’d have him. I felt the steady rise of rage and let it fill me, pump through my blood, drive out every single thought of mercy. I felt like a predator, ready to step out of the shadows and make my true face known.

  “The rules here are simple,” Knox said. “You get pushed out of the ring, you’re out of the fight. You get knocked out, you’re out of the fight and I get to do what I want to with you. There are no mercy calls. The only way out is to stay standing or throw yourself out to get burned. Got it? Oh—how could I forget? Because it’s the two of you, I’m bending my own rules. No powers. This is a fist fight for you, girls, so don’t hold back.”

  Vida and I shared a quick glance. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but the only thought rocketing through my skull was figuring out the fastest way for her to beat me without cheating. Flat-out refusing to fight would mean the deal was off, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of Vida literally kicking me through a ring of fire.

  “What about the deal?” I called up. “Supplies in exchange for letting me join one of the hunting parties?”

  Knox stiffened at the word supplies—more importantly, the kids around him leaned forward. A little reminder for them of what their leader was withholding.

  “Goddamn,” he said, “you are annoying. Win, and maybe I’ll think about it.”

  I took a few steps back, closing my eyes. How hard would she have to hit me to knock me out with one blow?

  “Bring him in!” Seeing our reactions, Knox laughed. “What? You actually thought you’d fight each other? God, that’s hilarious.”

  Vida spun back toward me to the demolished opening of the building. I didn’t; I knew by the look on her face that whatever it was, it was bad.

  There was a whisper from above, quickly stifled as new sounds replaced it. A groan, the long, low purr of something heavy being dragged against the ground.

  A line of sweat slipped down my back at the grunts of effort, the throaty scream, the jangle of what could only be chains.

  The mind is a strange thing, mine stranger than most. It’s selective about what it remembers and even pickier about which memories remain as clear and cutting as a shard of glass. Those were the ones that stayed with you, that a single sound or smell could drag out. I had forgotten so much about my life before the soldiers had picked me up, but I would be damned if I ever managed to banish one single black memory from camp.

  There was no forgetting the sorting, the test I almost failed.

  There was no forgetting the look on Sam’s face as I wiped myself clear from her memory.

  There was no forgetting the gleam of black guns in the summer sun or the snow falling softly on the electric fence.

  There was no forgetting the long line of dangerous ones chained together, their faces hidden beneath leather muzzles.

  “What the… What the actual fuck?” Vida breathed, her hand reaching out to yank me toward her, behind her.

  There he was, pale as a new morning sky, dressed in the tattered remains of camo pants and a shirt that hung off his sunken chest. On first glance, I thought he must have been my age, but it was impossible to tell. He looked shrunken and soft now, but the way his pants were being held up by what looked like a plastic bag threaded through the belt loops made me think he had once been much bigger.

  Knox had made sure to wrap him up real pretty in a series of robes and chains. There was a bandanna over his mouth, clenched between yellow teeth, and all I could think was, I wish they had covered his eyes instead.

  Rimmed with crust and lined with bruises, his eyes pierced through the shadows between us, black and bottomless. He was looking at us, straight through us, into us.

  I knew what Olivia had been calling out to me now. I could hear her voice ringing high and clear in my mind.

  Red. Red, Ruby, Red.

  SEVENTEEN

  THERE ARE NIGHTMARES, and then there are nightmares.

  The Red lowered his face, a thick curtain of long, dark bangs falling over his brows. But still, it didn’t hide his eyes. They watched us through the gaps between his tangled curls. His body gave a sharp jerk, like his muscles were seizing up, and he blinked to ride the spasm out. When his eyes opened again, they were wider, glassy—but another jerk tightened his body, and the hint of humanity was gone.

  “Ladies, may I introduce you to Twitch.” Knox looked like he was enjoying our stunned expressions. “I picked him up in Nashville after he bolted from the PSF holding his leash. He was stumbling around, jerking like some tweaker. He’s come a long way since I started training him.” Knox waved a hand toward a kid who, with a look of undeniable terror on his face, walked up and began to cut through the Red’s ropes with a knife.

  “I think you guys are gonna get along real damn nice,” Knox called. “Have fun.”

  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen two teenage boys run faster than they did once the last metal chain was in a puddle around Twitch’s feet. He took one step forward, walking through the wall of flames the trash cans provided. A ripple went through the glowing circle, dimming just for an instant, then flaring up to a blinding white.

  “That ass-sucking mofo,” Vida muttered. She turned to look at me. “He actually sicced a firebomber on us.”

  Twitch made good on his name. His head cocked to the right, then jerked to the left in a way that looked painful. In the moments—those precious half seconds—between movements, the only noticeable change was the flash of something like confusion in his eyes.

  Knox put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Then there was no more thinking.

  Vida and I dove away from each other as the first kick of fire jumped from the flaming garbage cans to the ground between us. I hit the ground and rolled, trying to put out the smoldering edges of my right pant leg. The burn on my palm felt like it was about to burst open with a blast of fire on its own.

  The air above my head grew hot—hotter—then deadly, eating the oxygen and forcing me to roll again. The fire in the barrel I had crashed into flooded over the edge of the metal can and came pouring toward me. It raced along the cement toward us.

  The Red lifted a hand in front of him and snapped his fingers. A burst of flame appeared between his curved fingers, and he lobbed it my way like a ball.

  Get up, get up, get up, my mind screamed. The sweat on my palms slid against the loose rubble. I pushed myself up and looked for Vida.

  She was running, her arms pumping at her sides, charging for the Red’s center.

  “No!” I cried. The fires from the garbage cans rose up again, crossing the circle to connect in a series of bridges. Vida hissed in pain as a whip of fire branched out and caught her across the shoulder blades.

  For an instant, I really thought Vida was going to charge straight through the lines of fire in front of her; there were only two between her and the Red, but they were there, burning, golden red, lighting her skin to a warm, earthy brown.

  “Vi—!”

  She landed on her hip, sliding the last few feet of distance straight into the Red’s legs. He went down with an inhuman roar of protest that was only bounced back to him by the kids in white watching above us. I risked a look up.

  Most of the garbage cans were still burning, as were patches of the cement where the lines of fire had collapsed. I stomped one out as I ran toward Vida.

  Twitch surged up off the ground, throwing Vida off him with a fierce, pulsing ha
tred that filled the space between us. I got there to catch her before her burned back could slam into the ground. My vision blanked as her head made impact with my jaw, but I didn’t let us fall. I hauled her right back up onto her feet.

  I had only ever sparred against Instructor Johnson once, and the “fight” had lasted all of fifteen seconds. It had been right at the beginning of my training, when he needed to “evaluate” my skill level. I walked with a limp for two weeks and had two hand-shaped bruises on my upper arms for twice as long.

  Instructor Johnson would have wilted like a daisy under this Red.

  Twitch was no longer twitching. His movements were sharp, precise, schooled—something in him had clicked. Vida and I danced away from him time and time again, twisting and bending to get out of the way of his fists sailing toward our faces.

  And I had thought the kid looked scrawny.

  “Come on, ladies!” Knox heckled. “This is so boring!”

  I caught Vida’s arm before she could launch toward him again, pulling her back a few steps. Twitch didn’t follow immediately; instead, he kept to his half of the circle, pacing back and forth like a panther, military-issue boots squeaking underfoot.

  It was the first time I had been able to think this entire fight. My body shook with exhaustion and pain. Think.

  He hadn’t been in a rehab camp, not recently at least. Maybe never—but then, where had his gear come from? Twitch didn’t seem like he had enough independent thought to rob a National Guard station. In fact, save for the brief bursts of confusion on his face, it didn’t look like he had any independent thought at all. Which meant…

  No way, I thought. It’s not possible.

  But at this point, what wasn’t possible?

  “Jamboree,” I gasped out to Vida.

  She blinked. “No shit?”

  Vida knew Operation Jamboree the way some kids know about ghost stories, from whispers and the darkest dreaming of her own imagination. President Gray’s secret army of trained Reds was common knowledge in the League; they’d been trying to leak information about it for months with no success. The whole thing, apparently, was too “preposterous” for the Federal Coalition to believe, and the Internet watchdogs snagged and blocked any reference to the project before word had a chance to bleed out to international papers.