The block from Clancy felt like I’d slammed face-first into the glass wall between us. I cringed, fighting with everything I had not to bring a hand up to rub at the center of the pain right between my eyes. A dull headache flared to an outright, piercing throb.
“You’re rusty,” he said, surprised. “That was borderline pathetic. When was the last time you tried this?”
Shut up, I thought, trying to keep my pride in check.
Would you rather we talked like this? His voice bled through my mind, his lips never so much as twitching. He’d done this to me once before, at East River, as a friendly challenge—the sensation of it was exactly the same. It felt like there were a thousand moths trapped beneath my skin, their wings brushing and beating until I had the urge to scratch them out by force.
I was rusty, but there was a difference between being down and being out. Clancy had to constantly feed his confidence with moments like this in order to support the weight of his ego. I’d been counting on that trademark smugness, his unwillingness to accept that he was anything less than the most powerful person in the room. Come on, asshole....
I wanted him to really believe, even for a moment, that my abilities weren’t just like a muscle I hadn’t flexed in weeks—I wanted him to think I was hopeless.
I shook my head, forcing what I hoped was a frustrated, upset expression onto my face. I had the advantage of him already assuming that his blow would be lethal to my own pride. I could see it in his face: he thought he was torturing me by forcing me to use my abilities, and he was enjoying the struggle, relishing the sight of me trying and failing.
That was one way to feel powerful while locked up behind three inches of bulletproof glass, I guess.
My abilities were practically purring inside my skull in anticipation. It took strength I didn’t know I had not to laugh, to hold that look of fury and annoyance. I just needed a single moment of him being thrown off balance. Just one, but it was like finding a way to land a hit on a guy standing behind a cinder-block wall. As with any fistfight, though, however unfairly stacked it was in one corner, there were tricks. Dirty cheats.
I wasn’t above it. Not by a long shot.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist. Ready to go again?” Clancy crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at me from behind the glass. “My only request is that you actually pretend to try.”
When he smiled again, I smiled right back.
This time I threw my abilities at him like a fist, aiming for the blank white curtain he threw up again to guard his thoughts. I slowed my assault, letting him sweep that same curtain forward to maneuver me right back out of his headspace. His own power brushed against mine like the soft stroke of knuckles against a cheek.
I reached over and unlocked the door to his cell, propping it open with my foot. Clancy jerked back, startled, and that great white nothing that had masked everything working behind his eyes lifted, just enough for me to slide into the twisting hallways of his mind. The colors were suddenly vivid as jewels—pristine emerald lawns, a home perched next to a sapphire sea, a flowing amethyst evening gown, camera flashes like the sun striking the surface of a diamond, dissolving the world in flashes of pure light.
I worked faster than I ever thought I’d be able to, flipping through each memory as I stepped back and shut the door to his cell again, flipping the heavy lock. The win was short-lived. Clancy’s memories and thoughts had always passed through my mind like thunderclouds—expansive, brimming with darkness, and always on the edge of bursting. Now they were overly bright and crisp—still, too, like I was flipping through a stack of photographs, not trying to navigate the winding, endless paths that each memory sent me on. I felt myself coasting, carried along by a firm grip. Someone else was at the wheel.
The cell, detention hall—they were ripped back from the edge of my vision in one sharp tug. A layer of reality gone, just like that. And in its place was an old, familiar scene.
Clancy’s back was to me as I stepped toward him, letting the room solidify around us. Dark wood, everywhere. Shelves that blossomed with books and files. A TV appeared in the corner and burst to life with a flash of silent color. A desk appeared in front of where Clancy sat, his hands poised in the air until the laptop appeared beneath his moving fingers, papers growing up from the surface of his desk in neat white stacks.
He must have left the window open. The white curtain he used to separate his bed from the rest of the office fluttered at my back, and the memory was clear enough for the sound of the kids at the fire pit below to drift up to my ears. A soft breeze brought in the damp, earthy scent of the nearby trees.
I shuddered. We were at East River.
The memory was moving now, throwing me forward with a lurch, but it was only at half speed. I stepped up behind where Clancy was working, dividing his attention between his father’s face on the TV set and the laptop in front of him.
I sucked in a sharp breath, and even though the rational part of my mind knew that none of this was real—I wasn’t here, and Clancy wasn’t actually here—I still couldn’t bring myself to touch him, not even to lean over his shoulder.
How is he doing this? This wasn’t a memory—it was something else entirely. It was walking onto a stage after a play had already begun. I’d crossed whatever barrier had kept me an observer, not a participant.
He took a deep breath, unbuttoning the collar of his shirt with one hand, typing in a web address...a password...
The Clancy sitting in front of me sank down in his chair, tilting his head back so he was looking up, almost like he was looking right at me—
“Did you get that?” he asked.
I shot out of his mind, dropping the connection before he could—he could—I don’t know, seal me in? Was that even possible? Could he—
The lights crackled back to life in the hallway, burning my eyes with the sudden intensity. I knew my head was still tripping, still locked in that initial panic, because all I could smell was that pine—the distant campfire smoke.
He’d moved back to the bed, reclaiming his makeshift ball. And it was so strange—once the memory cleared and the ground felt solid under my feet again, I wasn’t scared or even pissed off that he’d managed to wrest control away from me in the end. I was...curious. I’d never experienced him walking me through a memory in that way—at East River, he’d shown me memories of himself that he’d stitched together, but this was so...different. I had no idea that was even a possibility for us. The throbbing ache behind my eyes had disappeared, and, for the first time, the dive into his head didn’t leave me exhausted or disoriented. I was still riding on that initial high of overcoming his barrier, just for a second.
“See you tomorrow, Ruby,” Clancy said, tossing the plastic wrapper back up into the air. And as I walked out, clearly dismissed from his presence, I had the strangest feeling of lightness spreading through my chest, sparking and trembling and glowing. I’d held back the monster for too long, apparently. It needed to be let out, to stretch its legs, to remember how good the control felt.
I remembered now how good being in control felt.
I think I might have even enjoyed it.
There was one laptop left in HQ, and despite the number of Greens salivating to get a turn on it, their unspoken code of honor seemed to dictate that the kid Cate entrusted it to got ownership of it. Or at least first dibs.
So, at any hour of the day, you could find Nico working at the desk in the center of the otherwise empty computer room. Sometimes there was a small cluster gathered around him, crowding in over his shoulders and pointing at the screen, typing something in for him if he so much as leaned back.
“Those kids make vultures look like fluffy yellow chicks,” Cole said as we stood outside, watching them through the long glass window. “If he were to fall over dead, would they just push the body out of the seat and use it as a footrest, do you think?”
I snor
ted. “They’re bored. If we don’t give them something to work on, they’re going to start taking the electronic locks off the door to try turning them into cell phones.”
“Yeah, well, Conner is the one that’s supposed to be wrangling them. You and I sure as hell don’t have the patience for...” A Green girl let out a squeal as Nico surrendered the laptop to her. “...this.”
I had somehow managed to get through the day without letting my thoughts turn back to Cate and that expression on her face when she’d realized what Cole and I had done.
“Has she checked in yet?” I asked.
Cole rocked back on his heels, a crease forming between his brows. “Nope.”
“She should have listened to us.” I hadn’t realized the words were out of my mouth until Cole dropped a comforting hand on my head.
“Mark my words, Gem. Conner will come crawling back tomorrow, tail tucked between her legs when they reject her. This’ll be good for her. Everyone needs reality to punch them in the face every once in a while. Keeps you on guard.”
But that was just it. I didn’t want her knocked down like that. My anger had shallow roots. It had hurt me when she left; I didn’t have enough pride to act like it hadn’t. But I could understand her decision, that instinctive need she always had to mend fractures and soothe jagged edges. Cate couldn’t understand that the others would gladly abandon us, use us, hurt us, because she’d never once considered it herself.
To have that be our first and only conversation since we’d arrived at the Ranch—that was quietly killing me. I’d let her down so horrifically in Los Angeles, betrayed every last trace of trust she’d put in my ability to protect our team. I should have forced myself to say something to her before she left, any small conversation to start working my way back to her. Maybe it was too late now, and I’d missed my chance of trying to make things right between us.
That single, poisonous thought made me feel like I’d been turned inside out, dragged against the ground. I just didn’t know what to say, how an apology could ever be enough for her to forgive me. How do you pour the weight you feel crushing your chest into two little words? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry....
I’m sorry wasn’t enough. Not for losing him. It echoed hollowly in the space he’d left behind. I’m sorry didn’t balance out all of the things he could have, and would have, been.
Cole gave a friendly wave to one of the Green girls, Erica, who glanced over. She went bright pink and ducked back down, blocked from sight by Nico. The ghostly blue light from the computer screen gave him the look of a half-frozen corpse. The lines of his face seemed deeper, harsher, the longer he concentrated.
“I don’t think this is a good idea to have him access Clancy’s server,” I said quietly. “His judgment is impaired where Clancy’s concerned.”
“Your reservations have been noted, Gem. But he’s our man on this. I’m willing to bet on him—Nico has the most to prove. He won’t let you or Cate down again, not if he can help it.”
“The if he can help it part is the problem.”
“Hey now. You got to plead Lee’s case. I get to do the same for Nico, and it’s your turn to deal.”
“Liam didn’t give confidential information about the organization to the enemy’s son, the same person who then not only betrayed us and him, but also possibly destroyed our one shot at a cure.” I turned my back on the scene in front of me, leaning against the glass.
“Right, but if he hadn’t involved Clancy, if you hadn’t been tricked into coming back, we wouldn’t even know a cure existed.”
I stared at him, momentarily speechless.
“Didn’t think about it that way, did you?” Cole shrugged. “The loss...it opens a hole you in, a goddamn black hole at the center of your world. It sucks in your thoughts before you even have time to stop and examine them, and it’s always hungry for more. It doesn’t hurt any less to weigh what you lost against what you gained, does it?”
I shook my head. After a moment, I kicked myself off the wall, holding out the piece of paper I’d used to write down the server and password information I’d seen in Clancy’s mind. Cole took it wordlessly, glancing down at my scrawl.
“Hey, Ruby,” he said quietly. “The thing is...what they don’t tell you about forgiveness is this—you don’t give it for the other person’s sake, but your own.”
“Who’d you steal that one from?” I asked.
“That one’s courtesy of having lived and learned.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, I’m sure—”
My mind couldn’t finish the thought. It was there, then gone, just like the shadows that passed in his eyes. The recovery was just as quick—Cole’s eyes jumped from me to the floor, and then the smile he forced onto his face was actually painful to witness. After a moment, he shrugged, his arms coming up and crossing over his chest. He was daring me to say something about it, and the longer I didn’t, the harder it was for him to stand there, stand still. I saw the moment that vulnerability welled to the surface inside of him. The uncertainty of the moment made him look young, like a boy standing there waiting for some kind of punishment to be delivered.
“Who did you have to forgive?” I asked. It wasn’t my business, I knew that, but his reaction had left my chest hollow. I wanted to know; I wanted him to tell me, to ease some of the weight of whatever-it-was off him, just for a second.
“It’s not—listen, it doesn’t matter, just—just think about it?” He fumbled for the words, raking his hand back through his cropped hair. There were so many possible answers to my question: his parents for not seeing what he was, Liam for giving him a hard time, the remnants of the League for turning their backs on him. I knew about all of that, and the fact he wouldn’t say, wouldn’t so much as look at me, told me it had to be something and someone else. It had to be much worse than what I’d imagined.
Cole had become so good at slipping into the armor of charm he always wore that I’d let myself be distracted enough to miss the signs of real turmoil beneath. He didn’t trust anyone with the truth of exactly how deep the pain cut, did he? Maybe in time, he could confide in me, and I could be for him what Liam and the others had been to me. They hadn’t let the grip of Thurmond, of what I was, drag me back into a small, lonely existence.
“All right,” I said, taking the paper back from him and pushing him into the room. “Come on.”
Nico had to look up and then look again for his mind to accept that I was the one standing in front of him.
“Can you download the files from this server?” I asked.
He stared at me long enough that I felt an itch to fidget.
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Nico mumbled, taking the paper.
The Greens had backed away from his chair to make room for us, but edged closer in curiosity as Nico brought up a series of screens. The strange code that formed the computer’s language began to scroll by.
“Hey, guys,” Cole said, in his best buddy-buddy voice. “Can one of you go grab the senator from her quarters and send her our way? The rest of you would absolutely be my heroes if you went and helped poor Lucy scrape together dinner.”
They were too smart not to figure out they were being dismissed, but none of them seemed to care. On the screen, a window popped up, and a half dozen folders appeared.
“What was that for?” I asked when the last Green had slipped out and shut the door behind him. Cole silently pointed down at Nico, who’d gone so still in his chair, it wasn’t clear if he was breathing. His shoulders sank, rolled down and forward, like he wanted nothing more than to curl his ends together like an old piece of paper and disappear.
“Nico, my man,” Cole said, with that same casual voice. “Do you think you could go—”
“I’m not going to go.” I had to strain my ears to hear him.
“Maybe you could—”
“I’m not going to go,” Nico said, firmly, and clicked on the first of the file folders. It was only when the bigger folder opened that I saw the label: THURMOND.
There were maybe fifty files total inside of it—a mixture of videos, photos, and scanned documents. Nico navigated across the screen, releasing his breath harshly. The cursor hovered over one of the images.
Somehow, even before he opened it, a part of me knew what face would appear on the screen. He had always seemed younger than he actually was, but the image of Nico as a boy, an actual young child, drove into me with all the gentleness of a spike. His dark hair had been shaved down to black fuzz, and his normally rich, tan skin was the color of cement powder. It contrasted sharply with his dark, expressionless eyes, and the scars still healing along his scalp.
Oh God, I thought, a sick feeling slamming into me. Oh God...
Nico at seventeen stared at the child like he was a stranger. This was the hell he’d had to climb out of, and he wasn’t running from it. He wasn’t even turning his back on it. A slow, grudging respect pooled inside of me as I watched him hold it together when I felt like I was one wrong image away from shattering.
Thurmond. This was Nico at Thurmond. The camp’s early years had been dedicated to researching the cause of IAAN, but had expanded as the years went on. Before I ever set foot there, Leda Corp had taken over that branch of research and moved those original test subjects—kids—to their facility in Philadelphia. Cole had been in deep cover at Leda, trying to turn up valuable intel on the research they’d done on the kids, and it had been Cole who had managed to ultimately extract Nico by secretly supplying the method of doing so to Alban. After Clancy had gotten himself out of Thurmond and left all of the other kids behind.
“You okay?” Cole dragged one of the nearby chairs over so he was right beside him. After a moment, I did the same from the other side. “You don’t have to see this,” Cole added. “Ruby and I can go through the files.”
“These are...his, aren’t they?”
Cole and I exchanged a look. He nodded.
In the Afterlight (The Darkest Minds series) Page 16