In the Afterlight

by Alexandra Bracken

  I went cold to the core. The shock of it—jumping from his warm touch to this—it was too much. I was the ash brushed aside after the fire had finally been blown out. You are so stupid, so stupid, so stupid. He doesn’t trust you, no matter what he says.

  “Stop.” The world broke me out of the free fall I dropped into, and all at once the sensation of falling, sinking eased. I said the word again, forcing my heart down out of my throat, stilling my thoughts. I said it again, and one more time, until my voice sounded like my own again, not some dry rasp.

  I paced the length of the room, trying to stop the torrent of thoughts shooting through my mind. Quick steps were moving down the hall, bare feet slapping against the tile. I panicked, shoving the note inside of the CD case just as Liam swept back into the room.

  He was drenched in random places—his left shoulder, down his right side, the back of his sweats, the fabric below his knees—and the expression on his face was the resigned look of someone nominated for sainthood against his will.

  I plastered a smile on my face, holding my breath in the hope it would keep me from crying. Just seeing his face was enough to start unraveling the binding I had wrapped around the hurt.

  “Soooo,” he said, wiping his damp hair off his face, “apparently I have to stop telling people I know a little bit about plumbing. Because a little bit is how to twist the knob to get the water to turn on and off—what? I look that pathetic?”

  “No—no, not at all,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” He took a step toward me. “Your voice sounds—”

  “I just realized it’s almost seven,” I said. “Cole wants us upstairs to talk through the plan for the camps. We should—we should go.”

  His brow creased but he stood back from the door, opening it for me. Just as I passed, he caught my shoulder and turned me back toward him. A droplet of water worked its way down from his hair, mapping out a trail on his cheek, over his jaw, down his throat as he swallowed hard. I couldn’t meet his eyes as he studied me, and managed not to cringe as he leaned forward and pressed a sweet kiss to my cheek.

  The others were only just starting to mill into the computer room, joining the Greens who were rearranging the desks out of their usual, tidy rows and dragging them against the walls so they lined the room instead. Nico had reclaimed the laptop and was sitting at one of the desks along the rear wall, his back toward us. Everyone else faced the old, marker-stained white board and the map of the United States taped up next to it on the opposite end of the room.

  Chubs was standing in front of the map, pushing in small red pins as Vida read something—city names?—off a printed list.

  “Nicely done with the brain voodoo, boo,” she said when she saw us. “Consider your ass forgiven for not coming down to help us haul shit around the garage.”

  Chubs glanced back over his shoulder, one hand still splayed out on the map. “If we’re going to try picking some of these groups up, we have four good options. There are at least ten kids in Wyoming alone.”

  “If they haven’t already moved on,” Liam pointed out.

  “Now who’s Mr. Doom and Gloom?” Chubs shot back.

  Whatever Liam was about to say was preempted by his brother sweeping into the room like a tornado of energy, a visibly pleased Senator Cruz at his side. The rare glimpse of happiness on her features made her look ten years younger. She smiled when she caught my gaze, giving a small, affirmative nod.

  She’d done it, then. She’d managed to secure some supplies for us.

  Zu, Hina, and Kylie were the last to appear in the doorway, and carefully made their way through the field of kids on the floor to come sit beside us.

  “Okay,” Cole said, clapping his hands together. “So. Thank y’all for all of your ingenious planning and scheming. I reviewed everything, and I think we’ve landed on a winning strategy.”

  He walked back toward the white boards, picking up one of the markers. A blue line was drawn down the middle of the board. At the top of one half he wrote, THURMOND. On the other, OASIS.

  Without any other preamble, he started in. “We’re going to be making two hits: one, Oasis, is in Nevada. It’ll serve as a kind of test run for our big hit on Thurmond in five weeks’ time. In addition to getting those poor kids out, think of Oasis as an opportunity to work out the kinks in our strategy.”

  I crossed my legs and rested my elbows on my knees, hands gripped in front of me. Calm. Something in my mind clicked into place at the familiarity of this—being debriefed on an upcoming Op. The other League kids, Vida included, appeared to feel the same way, leaning into the moment when everyone else seemed to edge back, unsure.

  “One or two volunteers will enter Oasis ahead of the actual hit.” He turned to face the cluster of Greens sitting together. “We’re going to need to install a small camera in the frames of someone’s glasses, and it can relay back to us here. We need to get a sense of the compound’s layout to fine-tune our timing.”

  “Why glasses?” Senator Cruz asked. “Won’t those be taken when they’re brought into the camp, too?”

  “No, they’re considered essential items,” I piped up. “They’re probably the only things that won’t be taken.”

  If Liam recognized that that had been lifted from his original plans at East River, he didn’t show it. He sat with his legs sprawled out in front of him, leaning back on his hands. He watched his brother with wariness.

  “The catch is, the kids who volunteer can’t have been previously in a camp. PSF policy dictates that kids be returned to the original camp they were processed through, and Oasis is a relatively new camp. There is absolutely no pressure to participate. Like I said, this is purely volunteer.”

  Zu glanced between Liam and Chubs, but it was Vida who smoothed a tuft of her hair down in silent reassurance.

  “That aspect of the plan won’t be necessary for Thurmond, as we have three people who have been inside of the camp and are intimately familiar with its layout. The other difference between this and the big hit is what we’re doing with the kids we free. From what intel we have”—otherwise known as what intel Clancy let us have—“Oasis has approximately fifty kids, all of whom I’d like to have return with us. Depending on how willing they are to fight, we can ask them to join us in the Thurmond hit, or we can slowly return them back to their parents, a few kids at a time.”

  “Are we still going to go out and try to round up the tribes of kids?” Chubs asked, jerking his thumb back toward the map.

  Cole nodded. “We’ll start sending out cars once we have supplies. We need as much manpower as possible if we’re going to pull this off ourselves.”

  He moved through the other parts of the plan quickly; they were sketchy at best until we had actual images from inside of the camp’s walls. It would be a small team, no more than ten of us, armed but with the order to avoid a firefight if we could. With only fifty kids, there would be maybe twelve PSFs there at most, and one or two camp controllers. We would pose as a military convoy bringing in the weekly supplies; I would be out in front, of course, because I’d have the job of influencing one of the camp controllers. He or she would continue to report that everything in the camp was fine while we drove the kids out using the camp’s own transportation, whether it be SUVs, trucks, or a bus.

  The kids were silent, processing this, until Liam finally said, “Fifty kids is a hell of a lot different than three thousand kids.”

  “Better to run this through on a scaled model,” Cole said, smiling but somehow not smiling.

  “Okay, that may be true, but other than giving us practice, and rescuing a small group of kids, what is this going to accomplish?”

  Cole put his hands on his hips, one brow raised. “That’s not enough for you? Really?”

  “No, I mean—” Liam ran an agitated hand back through his hair. “The plan is good, but couldn’t it serve as something
else, too? Are we going to release the photos or video that’s taken so people can actually see what conditions are like in there?”

  A few kids murmured in agreement, including Lucy, who added, “I like that idea a lot. People should have the opportunity to see what it’s really like.”

  “Do you have the means to do that without Gray tracing their source, swooping in, and blowing this place sky high?”

  Liam’s face was still hard, but I could sense him retreating under Cole’s look.

  “Whose plan was this?” Chubs asked. “I read through all of them, and I don’t recognize it....”

  Cole’s jaw set, just for a moment. “It’s a combination of a number of them. I pulled the best elements from each.”

  Actually, it was the exact plan I had handed him, and he knew it. I faced the front of the room, refusing to turn when I felt Chubs’s gaze fall on me. There was no reason to fuel the fire by pointing it out to them.

  “Senator?” Cole motioned for her to step up.

  “Ah, yes,” she said, “I was able to secure a promise of supplies from my contacts in Canada. Food, gasoline, technology, and a limited supply of guns. The issue is that they refuse to bring them across the border into California. They want to bring them in by boat to Gold Beach, Oregon. Is that doable?”

  Liam spoke up before Cole did. “I just need a map and a car, both of which I can find around here.”

  “And at least three kids as backup,” Cole amended. “Kylie, Zach, and Vida.”

  “And me—” The words were only just out of my mouth when there was a bang at the other end of the room. I turned around in time to see Nico stumble backward and trip over the chair he’d been sitting in. He pressed both hands against his mouth as his knees gave out under him. The noise that escaped him was a high, keening moan.

  I was up and moving toward him before I could stop myself, gripping his arms to steady him and stop his rocking. “What? What is it?”

  By then, Cole and the rest of the room had already surrounded the laptop, blocking my view of whatever was on the screen.

  “Cate,” Nico cried, “Cate. Ruby, they took her—they took Cate.”

  Gasps flew up around me like a flock of birds. I released my grip on Nico and pushed to the front of the kids, who folded against each other to create a path for me. Vida was gripping the laptop, had lifted it off the desk, and it was only because Chubs was there to grab her arms that she didn’t get to slam it down against the hard surface.

  “You son of a bitch!” she spat at Cole. “This is on you, asshole! God dammit—dammit—” Chubs wrapped both arms over her chest, pinning her arms to her side as she lashed out with her feet, not caring who she kicked. She thrashed around, trying to headbutt him off, and only succeeding in knocking his glasses off his face. Zu rushed to pick them up before they could be trampled.

  The video on the screen was looping on the homepage of a news site, fuzzy and shaky, as if it had been shot from a distance. A long line of men and women with black hoods and bound hands and legs were lying on the side of a highway, with smoking car wreckage nearby. They were loaded onto the back of a military truck one at a time, overseen by soldiers armed with assault rifles that reflected the late afternoon light. The headline running beneath the pictures was Children’s League Agents Captured in Colorado.

  My head throbbed as I watched it play through again, searching for her, trying to see what made Vida and Nico certain. Nearly all of the prisoners were dressed in black sweats or Op gear, the same things they had left the Ranch in—some were easy enough to identify. Sen’s long braid. Instructor Johnson’s imposing height.

  Maybe she hadn’t reached the other agents in time to try to turn them back—maybe she was the one who had recorded the video, and was safely on her way back to us—maybe she—

  Cole paused the video on a shot of the prisoners lining up at the truck, and pointed to a smaller figure at the end. I leaned forward, bringing my face close to the screen. When he moved his finger, I saw the traces of white-blond hair escaping from beneath the hood. The figure was standing calmly despite the awkward angle at which they’d bound her arms. The other agents bucked and bumped the soldiers, hassling them even on their way into imprisonment. Cole unpaused the video and she walked forward, head down, not so much as shrugging off the touch of the soldiers who lifted her into the back of the truck.

  No.

  I felt a painful crack down my center. The shapes and faces around me seemed to blur as I stepped back, wrapping my arms around myself. Blood pounded through my veins, making my legs feel light, my head lighter. I couldn’t calm the sensation, couldn’t get the jitters out of my nerves long enough to think a whole, coherent thought. Cate.

  She left.

  I let her go.

  They’ll kill her, they’ll execute her as a traitor, I let her go, and now they have her—they have Cate—I heard Nico’s crying and felt the pressure build behind my own eyes, a pain that spread to cover my whole face.

  “What does the AMP watermark mean?” Liam was asking. “It’s in the upper right-hand corner of the video.”

  “That’s short for Amplify,” Senator Cruz answered. “They’re an underground news outlet. Gray must be livid. They’ve shown he hasn’t successfully stamped out the League in the Los Angeles attacks like he promised.”

  “Do they collect information? How do they distribute it?” Liam pressed. “Do you have any contacts there?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “But it doesn’t matter, Lee,” Cole cut in.

  “Look at this,” Liam said, gesturing toward the laptop. “They got the video to a major online news outlet. They convinced them to run it, knowing that Gray could come after this company, too. This is what we should be focused on, not fighting.” Kids were nodding now, whispering. “We don’t need guns, we need to get people information—information about camp locations, what the conditions are like there. Amplify could help us get the word out, and then the parents will want to do something to help the kids themselves. They’ll go to the camps, stage protests-—”

  “Liam!” Cole barked. “Pay attention to what’s important here. New organizations cannot be trusted, no matter how underground they claim to be. They’ll sell you out in a second if it means attaching their name to a good story. You want to know why I won’t contact them? Because I don’t want to risk the lives of everyone here by accidentally or intentionally revealing our location. We can do this ourselves. End of discussion.”

  Liam stood his ground, color washing up from his throat to his face as his temper rose. Cole squared off against him, looking as furious as I’d ever seen him.

  “We have to go after them,” Vida was saying. “Where is the nearest prison bunker to where they were picked up? Would they fly them east? They’d have to keep them alive, they’d want to interrogate them, right? We can put our ear to the ground, stage an Op—”

  “We can’t do that, Vida, and you know it,” Cole said. He leaned back against the desk, his arms crossed over his chest. Still, I saw how his hand gave a small jerk, and how he pressed his arms closer to his body to try to hide it. His face was painted with fury, lined with sympathy. The words didn’t make sense to me, not in the context of his expression.

  “What the fuck—”

  “Hey—hey! You think I don’t want to go after my friend? You think I want her to go through this? No one deserves this, least of all Cate. It’s too late to do anything. You’re right, they’re probably going to try to bring them in for interrogation, but once they have them underground, they’re gone. They’ve disappeared. We’re not ever—” He swallowed. “We’re not going to see any of those people alive again.”

  Vida let out a scream of frustration. “We got your ass out! We got you out of one of those prisons—”

  “With a fully armed, well-trained tactical team,” Cole said, “and even then
there were casualties. Even if we find where they’ve brought them, do you honestly think Cate could live with herself knowing that any of you were hurt trying to get her out? This is why we had that rule in the League. If you’re caught, we can’t come for you.”

  “Yeah, unless it’s you,” she snarled.

  Because Alban thought he might still have the flash drive of information from Leda, the one that was now worthless. Because of what he really was. I looked over at him, silently willing him to just tell them so they’d understand.

  “You’re always bragging about those crazy-ass missions you went on,” she said, her voice taking on a pleading tone. Vida slumped, her furious energy sapped to the point that Chubs was holding her up on her feet. “Why not this one? Why?”

  “Because this one wouldn’t be crazy, it’d be suicidal,” Cole said. “And the fastest, best way we have of getting her and the others out is to see our plan through. It’s to get Gray out of office.”

  “Talk to Harry,” Liam said. “He has contacts in the different branches of the military. He can recommend someone to talk to.”

  Cole looked like he wanted to argue with that, like the idea of asking his stepfather for help repulsed him, but he held his tongue. “The bigger concern we have now is deciding whether to stay here or go. Any one of them could compromise our location.”

  “You said that your plan was to trick them into thinking we were going, too,” Chubs said. “That we weren’t coming here at all.”

  “Right.” Cole hesitated. “But Conner knew that we were staying.”

  “Oh, fuck you!” Vida yelled, finally breaking out of Chubs’s hold. “Fuck you, Stewart! You think she’d give us up?”

  “Having experienced their interrogation methods firsthand, darlin’,” Cole said, his voice venomous, “I would say that is an unfortunate possibility.”