In the Afterlight (The Darkest Minds series)

by Alexandra Bracken

  “Let ’em wonder,” Vida said. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”

  THE HALLWAY WAS WASHED OUT in a familiar shade of red, one that seemed to glow in an unsettling way. It grew brighter, pulsing as I took another step forward, glancing at the framed photos that lined each side of the otherwise bare walls around me. There were faces there I recognized, I remembered: that young agent who’d been killed escaping custody after an Op gone wrong. The woman who’d been picked up just as she was going to meet a contact—shoved into a dark van, and never heard from again.

  I ran my hand under the photos, counting them off in twos, then threes. Dead. This is where the League marked the lives it’d sacrificed, and remembered the bodies that would never get graves. So many—so many men and women who’d died before I ever joined up. Almost eight years of death.

  My fingers stilled under the unsmiling face of Blake Johnson. He looked...small. Young. It might have been because he was surrounded by older faces, or maybe the shot had been taken when the League first brought him in. That had to be it. He had looked so much more grown-up when he’d gone out on the Op that’d killed him, hadn’t he? Why was there such a difference between the face of a fourteen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old?

  Something warm and wet hit my toes. A thin line of black liquid, like ink, was gathering there, soaking my skin. Staining it. That tiny rivulet was the product of four separate, winding streams sliding down the tiled hall. My hand knocked against the next picture as I braced myself, and there was a sharp, white-hot pain in my palm that finally forced me to look up. The last dozen pictures were cracked, their frames hammered together with what looked like twisted pieces of metal and shards of glass.

  The red light burned brighter, dimmed, and burned again. Over and over. I raised a hand to shield my eyes, but it was only an EXIT sign. At the next swell of light, I saw the black ink had a source, a growing pool. I saw it wasn’t black ink at all.

  The figure was facedown, both arms and legs twisted at a strange angle. It was a—it was a boy, all thin limbs. Big hands, big feet, as if he hadn’t quite grown into them yet. Puppy paws, Cate had called them once. The light faded over him again as I rushed forward, and brightened just enough for me to see it was Jude.

  The blood was everywhere, streaking his face, his hands, his broken back. I was screaming, screaming, screaming, because his eyes were open, his mouth was turned down into the pool of it, but his lips were moving. He shook, his body giving those last involuntary jerks—

  Two hands clamped down on my upper arms, ripping me out of that hallway and into another. No—oh God—he needed help, I needed to help him—

  My mind came awake with a surge, so quickly I thought I was actually going to be sick. I spun, my legs disappearing under me, but someone held me up. My teeth knocked together as I was shaken back into reality.

  “Easy—easy!” Southern—Liam? No, Cole. His anxious face came into focus. The lights overhead were pure, unwavering white, with more light from small windows at either end of the hall. I focused on the pane of glass behind his head, where I could see a variety of weights, treadmills, and mats. Gym. Cole’s face was beaded with sweat, his skin was flushed, because he’d been in the gym. But I hadn’t walked here. I hadn’t come to find him. I hadn’t left—

  Cole drew me forward into the training room. The air conditioning was running at full throttle, instantly cooling the patches of sweat on my back and under my arms. He lowered me down onto one of the benches and disappeared for a second, returning with a small towel and a paper cup of water.

  I hadn’t realized I was shaking until I tried to drink. Cole took my left hand and pressed the towel against my palm. I looked down, surprised to find streaks of fresh blood running down my wrist, into the crook of my elbow. It was all over my jeans and shirt.

  I jumped up, or at least tried to. My mind narrowed in on the image of Jude, the way the red light had turned his blood black. But this was—this wasn’t his blood, was it? This wasn’t HQ. This wasn’t Los Angeles.

  We had left Jude in Los Angeles.

  “Do you know where you are?” Cole asked, crouching down in front of me. He waited for me to nod before continuing. “I’m sorry to wake you up the way I did, I know you’re not supposed to, but I saw you pass by and then you started screaming. I didn’t realize you had those kinds of pipes, kid.”

  I barely heard him. “I was...sleepwalking?”

  “Seems like it,” he said, not unkindly. “What did you cut your hand on?”

  I shrugged, my throat aching. “What time is it?”

  “It’s about five in the morning.” The lines around Cole’s mouth were so much more pronounced. Now that the flush was fading from his face, the shadows were returning—under his eyes, under his high cheekbones, the new beard growth along his jaw. “You made off with about five hours of sleep.”

  “More than you,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, I decided to try running from my nightmares instead of diving into them headfirst.” The screen on the treadmill he’d been using was still flashing, paused. “Got too much adrenaline. Too many thoughts knocking around my skull. Energy to burn.”

  I finally came back fully into the present when my ears picked up the soft voice of a broadcaster coming from the TV bolted to the wall. The room’s smell flooded my nose: plastic, sweat, and metal finally driving out the stench of blood.

  Cole gave me a shrewd look, studying me for a moment with a look like he recognized something in me I didn’t necessarily know was there myself. Unlike Cate, unlike Liam, unlike Chubs—unlike Jude—he simply let what had happened drop at our feet. There was no pressing about how I was feeling or what I’d seen, and that was exactly what I wanted. To push it behind me and leave it there.

  He pulled the towel away from my palm, inspecting the cut.

  “Looks pretty shallow,” he announced, rising to his feet. “Already healing. It’ll probably sting like a bitch for a while, though.” Finished with me, he lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, giving me a flash of toned skin I hadn’t asked for.

  I looked away. “Are you here every morning?”

  “All two days we’ve been here,” he said, amused. “Trying to get my ass back in shape. It’s been a while since I trained. Helps, too, to get the...” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “To blow off steam.”

  “I miss it,” I heard myself say, “feeling strong. I just feel like we know where we’re going. You and me. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m just spinning and spinning and spinning waiting to get there. And dammit—the research on the cause of IAAN, I can’t get over what a goddamn waste it is that, after everything, we can’t even have that. I used to be able to handle things. I’m not...” I lifted my hand. “Obviously that’s not the case these days.”

  “Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?” Cole tucked his arms against his chest. “You recognize the problem, how are you going to fix it? Stop thinking about the flash drive, the cause. Don’t waste your energy on regret or self-pity. If that road is closed to us, we’ll focus on figuring out the cure. So, again, tell me: what are you going to do about it?”

  “Train,” I said. “We’ll have to train all of the kids. We’re going to need them to be able to fight.”

  “You’re not training anyone until you get yourself in shape.”

  “Was that an offer?”

  A slow smile spread across his face. “Why? Think your monster can keep up with mine?”

  I thought mine could run circles around his. Tie his into knots.

  “There’s no simple fix, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Cole said, tilting his head toward the treadmill. “I get strong and I get fast, so if I can’t fight the monsters off, at least I can run them out of my head for a little while. When was the last time you trained seriously?”

  “Before...” Jesus, when was the
last time? A week before I left to find Liam? The training at HQ had been brutal at first, the very definition of an uphill battle—one that was fought with limp, weak limbs. I’d had blisters on my feet and the heels of my palms, and the endless string of bruises had made me look like I’d been in a major car accident. The pain had flared and pulled and twisted me, like it was reshaping my body to its own standards.

  Most of the kids had been in the program long enough to hone their bodies for Ops at the same time they were trying to sharpen their Psi skills. It meant weightlifting and cardio every other day, with self-defense, kickboxing, and weapons training thrown into the mix for variety. When you’re working that hard, you’re focusing on every movement your body is making, trying to train each and every muscle to be as sharp as a knife. You get out of your head for a little while.

  There had been a window of time when it had all come together for me—I’d been strong, mentally and physically, and more than a little driven to see each Op through. And somehow, in the process of looking for Liam, I’d managed to lose that piece of myself. I’d let the doubt back in, the insecurity. I’d lost control of myself.

  “I want to be pushed harder than the instructors worked us,” I told him. “I can’t keep falling apart and waiting for everyone around me to put the broken pieces back together. I want to take care of everyone.”

  Cole held up his hands. “I get it.”

  “You don’t,” I said, hating the edge of desperation in my voice. “It’s like every time I turn a corner, I find myself right back in that tunnel with all the walls collapsing, and it feels like—”

  “No.” Cole stood. “We’re not going to sit around, holding hands, and use the Cate Conner method of coping—art therapy with finger painting.” He crossed the room in two long strides and dug through a blue plastic bin to retrieve an old, worn pair of sparring gloves. He tossed them my way.

  Cole crossed his arms but didn’t relax his posture in the slightest. I slid them on without hesitation or consideration for my hand and was rewarded with a nod of approval that warmed me at my center. If I was ready, he was ready.

  He pulled out a pair of gloves for himself. There was a stretch of black mats on the far side of the room, and I crossed over to them. Plastic, sweat, rubber—it was a familiar smell. I took in a deep breath of it and set my stance, letting my weight sink into what little give the mats offered.

  “Just so you know,” Cole said, knocking his gloved hands together as he turned around, “getting strong means taking hits. A lot of them. You ever act like it’s too much, or you can’t get your ass off the ground, then this is over.”

  “Fine,” I said. “As long as you don’t pull back because you think I can’t take it.”

  He snorted. “And Gem? One last thing. You don’t tell anyone what we’re doing. Not Conner, not Vida, not Lee, not any of them.”

  Who the hell cared if we trained together?

  “Let’s see if you can actually hit me first,” I taunted, but his eyes were still grave, darkened by something I didn’t understand. “Are you embarrassed or something?”

  “Let’s just say, I doubt they’d approve of this method of coping,” he said, one foot sliding back, his hands up to guard his face. His voice was so quiet, I almost didn’t hear it. “They don’t burn, do they? Not like us.”

  His fist flew out and clipped the side of my temple. I staggered back, but stayed on my feet. Anger—at myself for not paying attention, at the flash of pain—flooded through me. His lips twisted into a smile as I threw an arm out toward him, and he stopped, correcting the motion, forcing me to do it again and again until I landed the hit the exact way he wanted me to. Cole gave a playful punch to my shoulder, and was still grinning when he lashed a foot out and I caught it with mine. He bounced back, driving another hit to my center.

  Minutes flew by, and I seemed to move with them. My body’s muscles remembered how to fight, even if my heart had bowed out of the game. A hot rush of exhilaration went through me as I blocked a blow and landed a hit square in his stomach. His breath escaped in half a laugh, half a gasp of pain. By the time he remembered he was supposed to be teaching me, we were already flat on our backs on the mats, trying to catch our breath.

  No, I thought, reaching up to wipe the sweat-slick hair out of my eyes. Not like us.

  Hours later, with my muscles like jelly and the fog of my nightmare cleared from my mind, we gathered in the rec room to officially begin planning the camp hits.

  I surveyed our group, including one last, newly arrived car, which had rolled in while I was rinsing off in the showers after training with Cole. The kids, all four of them, were valiantly fighting through their exhaustion, explaining that they’d been held up by car problems, when Cole strolled in behind me and gave me a gentle push forward, toward the circle of kids sitting on the floor. I reared back slightly, confused, but his smile was encouraging. “It’s just what we talked about, remember? Give them the rundown.”

  “Shouldn’t you—”

  “No, it should be you.” He nudged me toward them again, ignoring the narrow expression on Chubs’s face. “Go get ’em, Gem.”

  Make them love you....I shook my head, ignoring the purr of Clancy’s voice in my ear. Zu scooted back and motioned for Hina and Tommy to do the same, opening the circle.

  “So this...” I began, only to catch myself. Suddenly, it wasn’t about the faces that were there, but the ones that weren’t. I turned to Chubs, who was plucking at a hole in his jeans, the perfect picture of forced nonchalance. “Where’s Liam? And Kylie...and James?”

  “They must be in the bathroom,” he managed to squeeze out, his voice unnaturally high. Then, all of a sudden, no one could look at me. Not even Zu.

  You didn’t, Liam, I thought, fighting against the steady rise of panic. Tell me you didn’t rush out to get supplies without even taking a weapon to protect yourself.

  “They left,” a small voice whispered. I looked around but didn’t catch who it had come from.

  “Who left?” Cole said, catching the tail end of this. “One of—”

  I knew the moment that he spotted who, exactly, was missing. He went still, his expression controlled and blank. It was the look of someone just before they calmly and methodically stabbed someone.

  “Why did they leave?” I asked.

  “So we would have something to eat today!” Chubs snapped.

  “Where did they go?” I had to keep myself from shouting, from reaching over and shaking him as hard as I could.

  “The next town over,” Lucy said. “They promised they’d be back in an hour.”

  “Did they.” Cole ground the words out. “Well. If they get their asses killed, that’ll at least bring the average IQ of this place up. Do not”—he addressed the whole group now—“go outside until you’ve had the training you need to survive, and until we’re stocked with weapons. I’m going to take care of everything, and we’re going to take care of each other, but you have to listen to what I tell you, otherwise this won’t work. All right, guys?”

  Several nods. Several affirmative noises.

  “Okay,” I said. Dammit, Liam. What were you thinking? “All right.” I forced my mind to click back onto the right track. “The first thing you need to know is that the flash drive containing the research Cole stole from Leda Corp, about whatever caused IAAN, was wiped by the EMP.”

  Vida must have told Chubs and Zu this, because they didn’t look nearly as rattled as the others did. Seeing their faces, a sharp stab of hopelessness hit me at my center. I pushed past it again, aware of Cole’s eyes on my back.

  “There’s no way to get it back?” Tommy asked.

  “No,” Nico said. “We’ve tried everything. The files are gone.”

  “We still have the research on the cure, though,” I said quickly. The Greens had copied it down again and uploaded it into our lone laptop.
All fifteen indecipherable pages of it. “And we’ll work from there. But in the meantime, I think we should move forward with freeing the camps—it’s the right thing to do, and our strongest strategy to hold Gray accountable for what’s happened to us. But I—we—” I motioned back to Cole, “there’s no way we can do this alone. So I have to ask, are you guys with us? It’s okay if you’re afraid, or you don’t want to participate in the Ops. It really is, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. There’s so much to do here that you’ll still be a part of it. Or, once it’s a little safer, we can find a way for you to go home to your parents.”

  I waited until they were nodding, or had voiced their consent. “The best way to do this, then, is to think through a potential plan for a camp hit together. Can we break up into smaller groups, maybe four or five kids each, and just start thinking about how we could pull something like this off—it doesn’t matter if it seems crazy, or if we don’t have the materials we need now. Just be creative and we’ll run from there.”

  I let them divvy themselves up, and was proud of the way they mixed the old League teams and the new arrivals we’d picked up along with Zu. Cole slapped a hand on my shoulder, grinning his approval, as he began making his rounds. I smiled back, feeling light enough to jump from the floor to the rafters above.

  And just like that, the sensation was gone. A silent, heavy presence came up behind me, falling over me like a shadow. I didn’t need to turn to know it was Chubs. Irritation crept in the longer he punished me with that oppressive silence. I turned away, watching Vida perched like a queen in the middle of a group containing Tommy, Pat, and two other League kids. They crowned her with praise and wonder and adoration for a good three minutes before she deigned to give her input to their proposal.

  “When are you going to start looping us in on these things earlier?” Chubs finally asked. “It feels like you’re springing things on us because you know we’ll disagree with something.”

  I blew out the breath I’d been holding through my nostrils, returning his hard stare with one of my own. “It sounds like the real issue here is that you don’t trust me to make good calls without you.”