In the Afterlight (Bonus Content)

by Alexandra Bracken

  Reluctantly I reached around her, pulling out the Beach Boys CD case from the dresser drawer. The paper was soft and beginning to tear at the center from how many times I’d opened and read it and refolded it again. I don’t know why I felt like I had to keep rereading it every night, punishing myself with it.

  Zu read it, the crease between her dark eyebrows deepening. She clearly recognized his handwriting, but when she looked up, I saw confusion, not understanding.

  “What?”

  She wrote, What does this prove?

  “The fact that he felt like he had to write this is a pretty big clue he thinks I’ll do it again—take his memories, I mean. Send him away.”

  Zu calmly folded the note back up and then reached up to smack me in the nose with it with her patented are you serious? look.

  Seeing I still wasn’t getting it, she picked up her notebook and pen again. OR—he wrote it because he was scared someone else would make you do it, like his brother. He says he wants to stay. This means he wants to stay, with you, with us, even knowing what happened. Did you even ask him about it? Does he know you took it? She gave me a very different look now. You shouldn’t take things that don’t belong to you.

  “I haven’t talked to him about it,” I admitted.

  Did you miss this? She pointed to the last line.

  I shook my head, swallowing hard. “I saw.”

  Zu studied me for a moment, dark eyes penetrating, flickering with understanding. Do you feel like you don’t deserve it?

  “I think he…I think he deserves better than the best I could offer him.” It was the first time I’d admitted it out loud, and somehow putting it into the open only added to the weight of truth. I felt sick, lightheaded. He deserves better than me.

  She looked torn between kicking me and hugging me, but settled on the latter. Too late, I’d realized how this would affect her—how someone already so panicked and afraid would react to seeing the people she thought of as her rocks crumbling.

  When he comes back you have to talk to him, okay?

  “Okay,” I said, not as certain as she was that he’d want to talk to me.

  If you go to the bad place again, she said simply, tell one of us so we can help you back out.

  “I don’t mean to be such a burden,” I whispered. All I ever wanted to do was protect you.

  It’s not a burden if people are willing to carry it, she pointed out and, having made her final point, let herself drift to sleep. I rolled onto my side and tried to do the same.

  It must have taken at some point because then I was dreaming, walking the damp, dark hallways of HQ, taking the path to Alban’s cluttered office, eyes tracking the exposed light bulbs overhead. The next moment, I was in a different hallway, cold tile under my feet, small hands fisted in my shirt.

  I jerked back, my mind ripping out of the foggy haze of sleep, scrambling away from Zu’s terrified look. The lights in the lower-level hallway were switched off, as they always were after midnight. She stood in contrast to the shadows, worry overtaking confusion on her features. Her brow creased as she stepped toward me tentatively, reaching for the hand I’d pressed over my heart, trying to steady it.

  “Sorry,” I told her, “sorry—sleepwalking—stress—it’s—” I couldn’t get my tongue around the right words, but she seemed to understand. Zu took me firmly in hand and walked me back toward our room, never once letting me stumble. My head felt light enough to drift away, and when I climbed back into bed, I banged my clumsy knees against the metal frame. The last thing I was aware of was Zu stroking my hair, smoothing it again and again until the pain pounding in my skull eased, and I was able to breathe normally again.

  In the earliest hours of the next morning, the Op team and I set off for the open desert of Nevada.

  I KEPT MY BELLY DOWN FLAT AGAINST THE WASH, IGNORING THE TINGE OF PAIN IN THE MUSCLES OF MY LOWER BACK. It seemed wrong for the desert to be so damn cold, but I guess without the sun, and without the benefit of thick-leaved trees and brush, there was nothing to trap the heat of the previous day. Nameless mountains hovered behind us, the lighter of two deep shades of black. I kept looking over my shoulder as the hours passed, watching their jagged shapes lighten to the color of a new bruise. Aside from the yellow, dried-out clusters of low, prickly desert shrubs, there wasn’t much anything else to look for.

  “What was that?” I heard Gav ask. “Is that a rattlesnake? I heard rattling.”

  “That was me drinking from my canteen, dumbass,” Gonzo said. “Jesus, dude. Did you leave your balls in California?”

  I shushed them, and then shushed them again when one of the girls started complaining about having to pee.

  “I told you not to drink that much water on the drive,” Sarah told her. “You never listen to me.”

  “Sorry I don’t have the bladder of a freaking sloth.”

  “You mean camel,” Sarah corrected.

  “I meant sloth,” the other girl said. “I read somewhere they only have to go once a week.”

  I rolled my eyes heavenward for strength, wondering if this was what Vida felt like every moment of every day.

  “Status?” Cole’s voice was clipped in my ear.

  “Same as an hour ago,” I said as I pressed my earpiece. “Nothing so far, over.”

  We’d taken the two SUVs down to this barren stretch of Interstate 80 and were dropped off on the side of the road; Lucy and Mike turned the cars around and drove them back to Lodi. Cole and I had mapped out the sweet spot on the highway in terms of distance from the camp. Just far enough from the camp that no one would notice the vehicles making a quick stop. But the only cover we had to hide in was the wash running along the cracked asphalt. We curved our bodies to fit its shape, and waited.

  It was another ten minutes before my ears picked up on the faint hum of a distant engine. I knew I hadn’t imagined it when the others began to squirm, trying to get a better look at the lip of the wash. A few seconds later, the first pinpricks of light appeared—headlights that grew in size and intensity, slicing through the darkness.

  I glanced down the wash—and there it was, three bursts of light from a flashlight. Ollie had been stationed there to check the markings on the truck. It was the right one.

  Zach slapped my back, the excitement bringing a grin to his face. I felt it like a jolt of electricity to my system and flashed a smile back at him as I stood.

  I walked out into the middle of the road, hands shaking only a little bit as the semi-trailer truck barreled down the road. I held up my hands as the headlights blinded me—I couldn’t see the details of the driver behind the windshield, but I saw the quick movement as his hand went to strike the horn. I let the invisible hands in my mind reach out blindly, feeling for his, stretching, stretching, stretching—and connecting.

  The truck rolled to a stop three feet away from me.

  There was a flurry of movement at my left as the makeshift tact team came scrambling up from the wash, moving toward the rear of the truck to open the trailer and jump inside.

  I pushed the earpiece as I jogged around to open the passenger side door of the truck’s cab. “We have our ride, over.”

  “Fantastic. Proceed with second phase.”

  The driver was frozen behind the wheel, waiting for his instructions from me. I searched through his memories and teased one up from the week before, of him making this exact ride in. I pulled that to the forefront of his mind and said one word. “Drive.”

  I crouched as low as I could in the cab, drawing the black ski mask down over my face. I pulled myself up to look over the dash periodically to make sure we were still heading in the right direction. The truck driver had been blasting some rap music that was angry and pounding enough to set me on edge, so I reached over and switched it off, missing the exact moment the gray, sun-bleached two-story structure and its ten-foot fence came into view.

  “In sight,” I said. “Everyone good at the back of the bus?”

  “Peachy,” wa
s Zach’s reply. “ETA?”

  “Two minutes.”

  I took another steadying breath as we turned and headed off the highway onto a dirt road. The two PSFs at the gate dragged the thing open as the driver, a thick-waisted, bearded man in a short-sleeved button-down, went through the motions of turning the truck and reversing through it, his face blank. A tarp was spread out over the loading area adjacent to the main building. There were already flatbed carts out, waiting for the supplies to be unloaded. Two PSFs were sitting on them, smoking, but threw the cigarettes away and stood as the truck backed toward them. The others, having secured the gate, were hurrying back over as I took one last deep breath.

  “We’re in—prepare for action,” I said. “Two PSFs positioned at your door, two more coming around the back.”

  “Silent and fast,” Cole reminded us. “Ten minutes starts now.”

  A fifth approached the driver’s window, calling out a, “Mornin’ Frank!”

  I pushed the image of Frank rolling down the window into his mind, leaned over him, and, before the PSF’s eyes could so much as widen, had my gun pointed directly at his face. He was young, around Cate’s age, maybe. At the sight of me, he lost the easy smile on his face. His whole body pulled back in alarm, and he reached for his rifle.

  “What the fu—”

  “Hands where I can see them.” I couldn’t control Frank and the PSF at the same time, and Gonzo and Ollie eliminated my need to. One of them cracked him on the back of his skull with the butt of his own rifle, and the other had him facedown in the dirt, gagged and secured with zip ties. He was hauled behind the truck, where four other limp forms were already propped up.

  I knew some of the kids hadn’t understood why we’d run through this so many times, but I thought, now that we were there, they saw the answer in how smoothly we assembled into formation. The real benefit of simulations was to train your nerves to behave, to make something like this feel as normal as waking up and walking to the showers each morning. It seemed to have worked—even as we approached the door the PSFs had left open and quietly stepped inside of the building, the group felt as steady as stone to me. We certainly looked menacing enough, dressed in all black and wearing ski masks.

  The hall was dark, but a stream of light spilled out of one of the rooms—the third one down on the right. I felt myself pause. The smell of bleach tinged with lemon, shoe polish, and human odor gripped me in a stranglehold. Some part of me recognized that it made sense for this camp to smell almost exactly like the Infirmary in Thurmond. Why wouldn’t they use the same military-ordered cleaning supplies? But more than anything, it rubbed up against my nerves.

  Gav stepped into place, kneeling down and aiming as the others crept forward. Voices trickled down the tile from the open door I’d spotted before. I waved the kids forward and crept along the wall with them until Zach grabbed my arm and pointed to the door marked CR. Control Room. That was our cue.

  As we ducked out of formation, I cast one look back into the open room—four PSFs were sitting around the table, uniform jackets slung onto a nearby couch and the backs of their chairs as they laughed and smoked, dealing cards around a cramped table. As Gav and Gonzo filled the doorway I saw one look up and then look again, diving for a weapon he never reached. The Blues upended their table, threw the PSFs against the wall, and silenced them before they could gasp out a warning over their radios.

  That made nine. Nico had reviewed the footage from Pat and Tommy repeatedly, counting the different faces in uniform he saw. Two camp controllers, thirteen PSFs. Fifteen targets total.

  Zach and I pressed ourselves against the wall, and I reached out and knocked against the Control Room door.

  “Enter,” a voice called. It was a good thing we hadn’t tried to charge it—the thing was locked from the inside. I heard a buzz and then a click, and Zach didn’t waste a moment before pushing it open with his shoulder.

  Inside there were two young women, both in black button-down shirts and slacks. The room was a wall of monitors that kissed up against a row of computers. Most of the screens were set on a series of bunks and the children sleeping in them, but they switched over to the hall, to the outside area, the recreational room across the way as we stepped inside. The one who was monitoring the screens dropped her mug of coffee down her front when she spotted what was happening across the hall. The other, standing in front of some kind of panel of switches and dials, turned and let out a small scream when she saw us. Zach had her pressed up against the ceiling with his abilities a full second after I was already in the other camp controller’s mind.

  An avalanche of faces, sounds, colors, landscapes streamed through my mind, thundering down over me. I searched for the relevant ones, information about how they reported in statuses, the timing of it, as Zach brought the other screaming woman down, gagged her with cloth, and zip-tied her safely away from the controls to one of the pipes running along the far-right wall.

  “Done!” he called. “We have eight minutes. Erasing camera footage.” Nico had shown him how to set the footage back, to loop through already recorded images, making an educated guess about the programs they used. It must have been close to reality, because Zach punched a fist in the air when he was done.

  “Get the rooms unlocked upstairs,” I told him, pointing to the nearest computer. “Password is capital P, capital S, capital F, one, three, nine, three, eight, exclamation mark, asterisk. Did you get that?”

  “Affirmative.” He relayed the next part to the rest of the team who were, hopefully, already heading up the stairs. “Unlocking doors.”

  I brought up the memory of the woman sitting at one of the computers, the message she’d relayed to the PSF system—exactly how I wanted her to do it now, and then again in another two hours. When I pulled back, I took away her memories of Zach and I entering. She simply nodded and went about her business, standing in front of the monitors, her eyes unseeing, her face a blank slate.

  “Control is out of play, over,” I said.

  “Roger that,” came Cole’s relieved reply. “Proceed upstairs with the others.”

  Zach hit the button beside the door, unlocking it, and stepped out. I was right behind him when he jumped back, raised his gun and aimed—

  “It’s me,” came a familiar voice. “It’s me, don’t shoot—”

  Disbelief, dumb and mute disbelief, stole over me as I confirmed who was standing at the other end of Zach’s rifle.

  Liam.

  “What the hell, man?” Zach shouted, throwing a furious punch toward him. “Jesus, I almost shot you!”

  I hadn’t moved. It didn’t make sense—it wasn’t him, he had gone to find Olivia. He wouldn’t have come in after us, he couldn’t have been so stupid, not Liam, not Liam—

  I was so fixated on his face as I yanked my ski mask up and over mine that I didn’t see the red-haired woman behind him, wild curls tumbling around her long-sleeved black shirt. She wore black jeans and boots, but I didn’t get a clear image of her face until she lowered the camera that was clicking wildly, capturing everything around her.

  “Who,” I heard myself say in a low, furious voice, “the hell is this?”

  “Status?” Cole asked. “Gem—status?”

  Liam matched my stony look with one of his own. “This is Alice, from Amplify.”

  “Dude,” Zach said, shaking his head. “Dude, this is crazy—”

  Alice looked young, late twenties, maybe, but a clean face free of makeup made her appear only a few years older than the rest of us. She was taller than Liam, slender, but strong enough to haul a backpack that looked like it weighed twice as much as she did.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said. “Wow, this is…wild.”

  Liam wasn’t looking at me for my approval, just my reaction. All at once, adrenaline kicked back into my system, throwing me into action. Accept, adapt, act. I pressed a finger to my earpiece, cutting off Cole’s request for status, and turned toward the staircase at the end of the hall.


  “Liam is here,” I told him. “With a reporter from Amplify.”

  Static trickled over the line. Zach shot me an uncomfortable look as we hit the stairs, as if he, too, were picturing Cole’s reaction to this.

  Finally, he answered, “Say again.”

  I repeated the information to him again as we rounded the corner of the stairs and came through the door that the team had left propped open.

  The strange, familiar smell I’d breathed in on the way up finally had an explanation as we burst through the doors: the gagged and bound soldiers were secured against the same wall they’d been using to stencil and paint a message: OBEDIENCE CORRECTS DEVIANCE.

  The Op team had been in the process of ushering the kids out of the five dark rooms lining the opposite wall, trying to coax them to come out. I saw the problem immediately.

  “Take off your masks,” I told the others. “It’s all right, the cameras are off.” The kids wouldn’t come out until they saw that we were kids, too—that they weren’t being tricked or picked up by a different set of monsters in black uniforms. One of the teen boys from the first room stuck his head out, saw the gun Gav was holding, and immediately retreated back inside. He would have slammed the door shut if Josh hadn’t caught it.

  Alice’s camera was clicking like an insect, trying to take in the sight from every angle. I spun on my heel and knocked the camera out of her hand, wishing like hell she hadn’t had the strap around her neck so it would have smashed against the tiled floor. “Do you mind?” I snapped. God—it was bad enough the kids were in here, but couldn’t she at least give them a second of peace to collect themselves?

  “Ruby—” Liam started, but Alice waved him off.

  “It’s fine, I get it.” But I saw her lift her camera again anyway, this time set to record video instead. Clearly she didn’t get it.

  “Five minutes,” Cole warned. “Are you heading out?”

  I jogged to the nearest door, looking inside. The wooden bunks creaked as weight shifted on them, and faces squinted at me. I reached in and turned the lights on so they’d have a better view of my face. The stench of sweat rolled out, slamming into me before the whimpers and whispers of fear came. Dozens of small faces emerged from the dark, hands held up to shield their eyes.