“It’s this way,” Olivia calls back to us, her face lit, her mouth split in a grin. She jumps down from a slant of rock jutting out of the soft earth. The contents of her backpack clack together, quieter now that Hayes and I relieved her of some of the canned food. I’m amazed she’s survived as long as she has, offering up her supplies to strangers without question. “I knew it! I knew that was the right road back there.”
“Well done,” I say. “I never doubted you for an instant.”
Except for the instant when I wanted to bash in her head for walking us around in endless circles in the woods of Nowhere, Virginia.
She beams, flicking her long ponytail over her shoulder. Her eyes seem to fixate on my face, and I wonder if she finds me attractive, or if she’s merely curious about me now that she knows who I am. It hardly matters. I can use either. Both.
Hayes needs tasks to stay out of my way. His mind is too shallow to think about anything deeply; I’ve plumbed it out of boredom and found nothing useful or entertaining. I’ve chosen him simply because he looks threatening enough, and would provide considerable body mass as a human shield. Olivia comes with a surprising set of skills and has managed to keep us alive by hunting and scavenging, but she seems to need constant praise to stay focused—to keep from losing herself to pointless, wearisome self-doubt.
I’ll remember that, too.
“Lead the way, then,” I tell her. “If this place is half as good as you say, we’ll really be able to make something of it.”
She nods, giving Hayes a punch in the shoulder, and for some mysterious reason he returns it with a grunt of approval. She could not possibly like the walking meatloaf better than me. She owes me.
“It’s a good thing we found you just as that skip tracer did,” I say coolly. “Otherwise, who knows where we’d all be.”
Remember who saved you.
Olivia turns her head slightly to the side, but her idiotic smile seems invincible. I force myself to return it as she jokes, “I’d be in the back of a van headed toward a camp, and you’d only have this guy for company.”
Hayes stops and turns to Olivia. For someone so colossal, you could wound him with a single word—pierce that delicate shield of pride. “We’d have found a place to settle by now if we didn’t have to rescue your ass and try to figure out where the hell you camped once when you were five. Remind me again what you bring to this equation?”
Mistrust swirls around Hayes, disgust from Olivia. The feelings rise off them like odors, as if every drop of sweat that beads on their skin only draws more and more of the emotions to the surface. Neither of them knows the first thing about control.
Good. It’s easier to use them when they’re trying to one-up each other.
“Food. Clean water. A tent to sleep in,” Olivia says. “Remind me what you bring to this equation, other than an ungrateful mouth to feed?”
“Now, now, children,” I say. “Let’s not fight.”
Not when we are so very close; in a few weeks, after we’ve gathered more kids to work, they can kill each other for all I care.
Hayes won’t stop staring at Olivia, his hands curling at his side. I know he’s taken swipes at girls before—I’ve seen the memories locked behind the secret door in his mind. He feels shame, but he cannot fight the impulse. It is a good thing, then, that I can manage it for him.
His mind is a steaming bath of annoyance and frustration. I stay there only long enough to push cooling waves of nonchalance. It doesn’t matter. You don’t care.
Hayes’s shoulders relax from where they’ve bunched up around his ears. He releases a sigh, filling the air around us with his sour breath. I glance toward Olivia, considering an attitude adjustment for her as well, but she suddenly springs forward, racing ahead of us through the trees. Before I can call out to her, she skids to a stop through the cold mud, arms raised in the air victoriously. Her breath fogs around her in hot little puffs of excitement.
A few steps forward and I see it, too—the first hint of sparkling water, and the small T-shaped wood dock jutting out into it. As I come to stand beside her, Hayes trailing after me like a reluctant dog, it’s easier to make out the wooden cabins on the other side of the lake.
“What do you think?” she asks, her face pink, that ridiculous grin back in place. “Is this what you had in mind?”
“It’s perfect,” I tell her, crossing my arms. There are enough cabins to house dozens of Psi—and once Hayes and Olivia collect the kids for me, and I implement my system to gather more, we’ll build others.
I’ll build out this camp until there’s room for all of my dreams. All of my soldiers.
“What do we do if there’s already people there?” Hayes asks, scratching at his chin.
I smile. “We take what’s meant to be ours.”
I take a step forward.
A heartbeat, and it’s gone.
The woman won’t stop her incessant weeping.
I stare at the teleprompter, but she’s still there at the very edge of my vision. She’s a dark smear, as if her own tears have melted her form, ruined the very picture of her.
“There’s the pain of being separated from your family, of course,” I hear myself say. “But that’s only temporary. Saving your child’s life is forever. Think of it as a carefully monitored summer camp. As soon as the program ends, you’ll be notified of when you can pick them up.”
The gymnasium’s swamp cooler kicks in like a freight train, drowning out the last of those words. Damp, freezing air ruffles the hair I spent a half hour combing and gelling into the very picture of old-fashioned American wholesomeness. Sweet childhood virtue.
The crowd is riveted. Hundreds of eyes focus on me, picking me apart to confirm what they’ve been told about my “success” story. They lap up every soothing word. These cowards don’t want information, not really. They want evidence that there’s justification for what they’ve done to their children. They want a free therapy session, and a promise it’ll all be okay.
I have never been inside a high school before; all of my events in the heartland swing of this PR tour have been outside on fairgrounds and the steps of capitols and statehouses—the occasional church thrown in, depending on the popularity of whoever is giving the sermons.
Once we hit North Carolina, however, the heat of summer set in. It was either move indoors or let me switch to a non-wool-blend suit. The communications director decided seersucker was too informal for selling parents on the imprisonment of their children.
Hours ago, I sat in the stands where the parents are sitting now, watching as workers swept and polished the crust of dirt and dust off the floor. Reassembled the small stage and speakers. Created the usual red, white, and blue balloon arch. Unrolled and hung the AMERICA: HEALING TOGETHER! sign.
Now the only signs that this gym hasn’t been in use recently are the varsity championship banners. They circle the echoing space in splashes of green and yellow. None of them list a date later than two years ago—the winning suddenly, rudely interrupted.
I brush a stray strand of hair back over the top of my head, pressing it back into place as I continue, “Each day, your children are given a routine of classes, meals, and free time in which they can converse with one another, play games, read, or participate in any number of carefully monitored extracurricular activities. The daily tests administered by caring doctors and nurses ensure that the medicines and therapy are stabilizing, and nullifying, the effects of IAAN. I should know—they cared for me, and I miss the staff at my own rehabilitation center.”
I’ve said those words a hundred times, and I still taste their poison.
“Then why can’t we visit?” someone shouts from the stands. “They won’t even give us a location!”
A murmur ripples through the stands, spreading as the words are passed along to those who hadn’t heard them the first time. I shift in my new leather shoes, hearing them squeak slightly.
Well, if you didn’t want to lose them, wh
y did you give them away?
I hope the smile is enough to hide my sneer. “It’s for their own protection from extremist elements who might harm them. There are many factions in this world that would use or exploit them, and I think you’ll agree that nothing matters more than getting them healthy enough to be able to return to you one day. Once they complete the program, of course.”
I have answers to all of their questions. Each has been carefully chosen after the feedback of multiple focus groups and later finely tuned to disarm anger.
“My father,” I begin as other words continue to scroll by on the teleprompter: NOW LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE EDUCATION THEY’LL RECEIVE. The words pause, rewind on the screen. I ignore them. “My father would never ask for you to do anything to your child he wouldn’t do to his own.”
The teleprompter rewinds again. My unwelcome embellishment will raise the eyebrows of Susannah, the crisis communications director assigned to this propaganda tour, but I can’t resist. I let my eyes slide over to where she’s sitting on the first row of the bleachers and give her an apologetic look.
Everyone in my father’s orbit knows that pre-Thurmond Clancy wouldn’t have needed the help of a teleprompter. But after camp and his treatment, he is just so feeble, so confused, his memory isn’t what it used to be. Isn’t it terrible, my father’s staff say, but at least the treatment worked. At least he is better now.
The sobbing woman is sitting a few people down from Susannah. In her arms, she holds a framed school portrait of her son. He cannot be older than twelve or thirteen in it. The news cameras covering the event swing toward her as she cries out, “Why? Why him?”
Her son has black hair, and his eyes are just as dark as they stare back at me. The curve of his smile, the dusky skin, the way the image of him trembles in her grip—I don’t see this nobody kid.
I see Nico.
I clear my throat, looking down at the microphone in front of me. She is no different from my own mother, I’m sure, sending her son off to camp—the difference being that this woman clearly regrets it, or at least is burning with the fire of her own dark guilt.
Good. She deserves the pain; it is nothing compared to what her son is going through now. My mother watched with blank eyes as they dragged me away. She signed the authorization for experimentation.
She disappeared before I was ever released.
The teleprompter is still frozen on that same line. I know the words. I know them. But there are different ones in my head.
We’ll get out of here, won’t we?
“Now…let me tell you about…their education.…”
Don’t leave me.
“The education that they’ll receive…as part of…”
Don’t leave me.
The woman cries, pressing her face into one hand. The other clutches the portrait. I can’t—I can’t look at this anymore.
Her mind is like soft, wet clay. I cut through it, tearing across the disorder in her memory and scattering every thought until they turn into a torrent of shards, until they fade to black.
The woman collapses, crumpling down to the ground. The picture frame smashes against the wood floor as the women next to her gasp and try to catch her. Susannah has her phone out, her face pale as she preemptively jabs in 9-1-1. I don’t need to cross into her thoughts to know she’s already trying to figure out how to spin this—she’s waving at the TV cameramen, telling them to cut their feeds, turn it off.
I realize I should be saying something, something caring. “Can we get her some water? How about a nurse or doctor?”
As people move around the stands, making room for a man and woman to climb down to help her, my eyes catch a familiar face in the crowd.
Stern stares back at me, expressionless. He’s at the very top of the bleachers, his signature navy jacket folded over his lap. His eyes are fixed on me as he cocks his head to the side, one hand toying with his red silk tie.
It’s disgusting how quickly the look makes me cold at my core. Hicktown, North Carolina, is no place for the president’s chief of staff. I should have known he’d want to check up on me. He’s faded in and out of my heartland swing, just long enough for me to find a moment here and there to break into his mind and check on the plans I’d put into motion with my father.
I don’t break my gaze until his face relaxes without the pacifying nudge of my mind. The middle-aged man shrugs, adjusting his belly over his belt. I force myself to shrug back.
With a small flick of Stern’s wrist, the Secret Service agents posted on the stage step in tight to my side. I swallow as Peterson takes my arm.
“It looks like we’ll end it there before the heat gets worse,” I say. “Remember to check IAAN.gov for updates as well as answers to frequently asked questions. God bless America.”
When I look back to the stands, Stern is gone.
The drive from the high school is made in silence. I blink, sitting up straight as we pull into the empty lot of a derelict roadside motel. Despite the lit NO VACANCY sign, there is only one other car in the entire parking lot—likely the manager’s.
“This is where we’re spending the night?” I ask in disbelief.
Woods loom around it on all sides, crowding in on the low building with its shadows. It’s the only thing to recommend what’s otherwise a business best forgotten.
Planting a suggestion to stay somewhere that looks free of bedbugs and bloodstains in Peterson’s mind wouldn’t be all that difficult. Put a thought somewhere deep enough, and people have no way of knowing it didn’t come from themselves. But I can’t. I have to be careful now. The other agents would become too suspicious at Peterson’s rapid change of heart.
The agent’s reflection in the tinted window is washed out by the neon-pink sign hovering over the parking lot. The tackiness of this place, with its candy-colored building and signs, makes my skin crawl.
“You know the drill,” Peterson says, drumming his fingers on the door handle. The agent driving tucks the car into a parking space right in front of the office and then steps outside to go in. The O in the neon OPEN sign has gone out.
“Stay out of sight or drive through the night,” I finish. Too many people would love to make an example of me to my father—not realizing, of course, that they’d be taking a problem off his hands. “Can we drive through the night, then?”
Peterson shares a look with Susannah, who has finally come up for air after frantically typing out e-mail after e-mail on her laptop. Poor, spoiled Clancy.
“It’s a far cry from the residence at the White House,” she says with a faint, tight laugh. “Even I can admit that.”
Peterson doesn’t smile. He simply continues to tap, one finger at a time. Drumming deeper into his thoughts.
The other agent emerges with several keys. Peterson steps out first, not bothering to glance around. Susannah hurriedly takes the one passed to her and disappears into the room without another word—only a single look back at me.
The coldness at my core begins to prickle again as Peterson takes my arm and starts to guide me away.
“What about dinner?” I ask.
“Well…I mean…we—” Susannah glances at Peterson. “We’ll order pizza. Pepperoni still good for you?”
It takes every ounce of control in me not to slice into either of their minds. The other agents are hovering around my car and its escort, watching. They are weaving a secret between them. I need to get Peterson alone to find out what it is.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “See you in the morning, then.”
“Sorry,” she says quickly, walking back toward me. Her suitcase rolls loudly behind her. “I don’t mean to be so abrupt. We’re all on edge. I don’t know if I should be telling you this, but—”
“Don’t,” Peterson warns.
My brows rise.
Look at that. I didn’t even have to pry. The new Clancy Gray is pathetic enough that people will simply hand him information, the way you want to pet a starving kitten.
> “There have been, ah, a few threats made toward you,” she says, glancing around at the agents. “So we’re not staying in our usual hotels. Your father wants us to cut the tour short for now.”
Finally. I try not to let my elation come bursting out of me. “We’re going back to DC?”
Susannah nods, smoothing her hair back. “So…rest up. All right?”
I let Peterson unload my bag from the trunk, crossing my arms as I watch Susannah enter her room. The door locks audibly behind her.
No wonder Stern showed up to the event today. That was information sensitive enough to need to be conveyed in person.
The evening plays out smoothly. I watch the news as I eat a few slices of pizza, then pass the rest to Peterson and the other agent posted outside. I hang my suit in its garment bag. Shower. Lay towels down on top of the bedspread to sleep on.
Outside, the wind whispers through the woods. The nearby trees break up the light from the motel’s sign, and their forms darken the room’s curtains like shadow puppets. I watch them swaying until my eyelids grow heavy.
Behind me, the closet door creaks open.
I don’t think—I don’t even have to move. The man bursts out of the darkness, and I’m in his head before I even see the flash of the gun. I see it all: Stern, the agents gathered in the car around him, the plan, the body—my body.
It doesn’t even take words. Fury rips through me, and I push the suggestion into his mind. The agent, Matthews, puts the gun into his mouth and fires.
The door bursts open, and all I need to see are Peterson and Olivier with their guns pointed at me before they fire on each other, and crumple to the floor, dead before they can scream.
He knows.
Stern saw what I did to that woman. He knows.
In a few days, he’ll know everything.
“Shit,” I breathe out, “shit!”
I rip the garment bag out of the closet, my heart thundering in my chest. When the next Secret Service agent appears, I don’t even look at them to see which one it is before they fire on themselves. I just clutch the bag in my arms, and I run out into the darkness. The forest takes me by the arm and guides me forward, deeper and deeper into it, until I become a lost thing, too.
In the Afterlight (Bonus Content) Page 51