In the Afterlight

by Alexandra Bracken

  I nodded.

  “You really shouldn’t eat raw meat,” Chubs said somewhere beside us. “It can carry pathogens—”

  We both turned to him slowly. He lowered the computer box he’d been holding down to the ground and backed away.

  “The Canadians came through, didn’t they?” Senator Cruz looked around at the haul, strolling between the piles.

  “What are they going to want for this stuff?” one of the kids asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Senator Cruz said. “The reparations are still quite a ways off yet. This is what we’d call a favor. Oh—did they not provide gas?”

  “They sent a fuel tank,” Liam said. “We hid it behind the bar, since it wouldn’t fit through this loading dock. I also did not, um, feel super comfortable having a ton of explosive material in here.”

  “Fair point,” Senator Cruz said with a faint laugh.

  “They seem really invested in this. We established a drop site so they can bring things down when they find openings. They gave me this—” He pulled a sleek silver phone out of his pocket. “To make contact when the supplies are ready.”

  “Spray paint?” Chubs asked. “Did you remember to grab that?”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “When we send the cars out to pick up the tribes,” Liam explained, using his hands to add emphasis, “they’re going to mark the safe routes they take with the road code. That way, we can get back in one piece and there’s a chance other kids we don’t know about will catch on and follow the route in.”

  That smile on his face had always been contagious. I bit the inside of my lip; he was looking at me like I was the best damn thing he’d ever seen.

  Ruby can take your memories...

  “Great idea,” I said, glancing away.

  “Yeah...” His voice faltered. “Thanks?”

  The kids were only too happy to cart the load off into the Ranch. Cole stood at the back door of the white van, leaning against it as he watched the progress the kids were making around him.

  “Wait—” I said, catching Chubs and Liam by the backs of their shirts before they could follow Zu and Hina to the tunnel. “We need to talk about something.”

  Cole and Vida must have picked up on the nerves in my voice because they came around into our huddle.

  “I...dealt with Clancy today,” I said. “To find out where his mother is.”

  Cole straightened. “And?”

  “She’d been working out of some facility in Georgia, protected by the agents from the HQ there. They seem to have gotten her out in time. Her lab burnt down, though.”

  “Damn, girl,” Vida said softly. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. And I doubt they would have let her out of their sight.”

  “You think they’re hiding her in Kansas,” Cole said.

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s League procedure that when the organization is under attack, remaining forces and resources fall back to a central, safe location. I don’t know that they would risk keeping her in an external location anymore after what happened with Clancy, and I don’t think she’s the kind of prisoner they would have cut loose...”

  “Would they trade her?” Vida interrupted. “A prisoner exchange?”

  “The First Lady?” Cole said. “Not even for a hundred agents. I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t have used her before now—they aren’t exactly shy about using hostages to make demands.”

  “Well...they might not want to put her in front of a camera,” I said.

  “Explain.”

  “Clancy tampered with her mind. Really tampered with it.”

  “Brain voodoo?” Vida clarified. “Awesome. So much for getting any answers.”

  “You want to go get her.” Liam’s voice was quiet, and I could hear the hint of unhappiness in it that went unspoken. “You think you can fix whatever he did.”

  I nodded.

  “You mean you want to send an extraction team into a secure facility, manned by a hundred trained ex-soldiers who specialize in torture and terror...because you have a theory,” Cole said.

  “If she’s not there, then at least we’ll find answers about where she is,” I said. “It’ll be a quick in-and-out. It’s not like we don’t know where Kansas HQ is. Two of us could go, survey the situation. If it seems too dangerous, we’ll back off. It’s worth the risk. If we find her and I can fix her, we’ll have answers about the cure. If not, then...we’ll have someone to trade for Cate.”

  Vida’s interest in the Op shot way up at that. “Promise me that we’ll eventually trade her for Cate, and I’m in. You and me, we can do this. It’s nothing we haven’t done a dozen times before.”

  Chubs groaned, putting a distressed hand to his face. “Don’t tell us that. That makes it worse.”

  “It can’t be Ruby,” Cole said, “she’s needed here. To deal with it.”

  I opened my mouth to protest.

  “Wait—wait, wait, wait—” Liam interrupted, “slow down. A few hours ago you were worried about Agent Conner revealing the location of the Ranch, but what if they spill their guts about Kansas HQ? What if they’ve already packed up and left?”

  “Then we’ll follow their trail,” Vida said. “Though I’ll put a hundred bucks on the smug assholes feeling too invincible and secure to beat a hasty retreat. They’re still there—a hundred bucks.”

  I turned to Cole. “If anyone is going in to bring him food, it’s going to have to be you. I can pretty much guarantee he’s not going to want to see my face for a while.”

  Cole looked intrigued by this, but ultimately shook his head. “No, you’re needed here. If not for that, then to lead the camp hit.”

  “It would just be for a few days,” I protested.

  “No. I mean it.”

  The others shifted uncomfortably as Cole and I stared each other down.

  “I’d offer, but I told the others I’d start organizing a search for the tribes,” Liam said, running a hand back over his shaggy hair. “I want to go out and try to find Olivia’s group myself. I think I have an idea of where they are.”

  “Really?” I asked. Olivia and Brett and all of the other kids we’d met at Nashville had some experience with fighting. They’d be invaluable if they were willing to help.

  Chubs straightened his windbreaker, zipping it up with a startling amount of conviction. “I’ll go with Vida.”

  There was a moment of total and complete silence.

  “Uh, no thanks,” Vida said. “Pretty sure it would be more helpful to bring a dish towel.”

  “I still have my skip tracer credentials—it’s just a matter of stopping somewhere to get a new ID made,” he said, more to her than the others.

  “You? You were a skip tracer?” Cole started to laugh, only to realize the rest of us weren’t. “Wow, okay then. Why not? Continue.”

  “I can access their network and GPS system to make sure we steer clear of them.” He swiveled toward Vida. “Also, screw you—maybe you can be all stealthy and break into their building to get the woman out, but I can get us there and back safely. I did this for months and never got a second glance from anyone, including PSFs.”

  “Probably because your ugly-ass face blinded them on the first look,” she muttered.

  “Really? Ugly jokes?” he hissed. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally emptied out your arsenal of wit.”

  Liam stepped between them, blocking their view of each other—and still they kept slugging words to each other under their breath.

  “Look, Vida, I’m happy to agree to the trade you want, but the odds of pulling this off really aren’t that great, kid,” Cole said. “I can’t even begin to predict what would happen if they caught you. How would you even play it?”

  “By saying I was sick to death of how chickenshit everyone here
is, and that I was ready to take an actual risk if it meant a huge payoff,” she said, pointedly. “The ‘payoff’ in their minds being that I want to enlist with them.”

  “That’s actually pretty plausible,” I offered.

  To Vida, this wasn’t about getting the cure; her investment was a hundred percent in the fact that this was a real avenue to getting Cate back. I wish I could have had her confidence. I wish I could have let myself believe that they’d keep her alive long enough to matter, but what was the point? It was easier to feel the numbness of certainty than live along the burning edge of hope.

  “All right, Vida. All right. You can go, as long as you take Skippy the skip tracer here with you. Unnecessary risks aren’t an option. Do you understand?”

  I almost told him that the two of them had pretty much opposite definitions of “unnecessary risks,” but kept my mouth shut. I didn’t like the idea of either of them being out of my sight for that long, let alone what could happen along the way. But if we were going to take a big risk, it needed to be for something like this.

  “You got it,” Vida said. “If you think I’m going to blow any chance to get Cate back then you must be smoking the good stuff.”

  “Darlin’, I wish.”

  Cole, Liam, and I worked silently, hauling in one crate of weapons at a time. For once, I was grateful for the uneasy silence; no matter how unbearable the tension was, another fight would have been infinitely worse. There was a moment when I’d leaned forward to pick up a rifle and place it up on its proper rack in the weapons locker, and my sweatshirt had gaped. Liam had reached over and pulled the fabric down out of the way. He didn’t comment on the bruise on the side of my neck, only smoothed the collar back up and turned away. When we were finished, he was the first one out of the room, disappearing through the double doors, heading, if I had to guess, back to the garage.

  I followed the route he’d taken, stopping to check our bunk room first. Most of the kids had checked out for the night, but the door to our room was open; only Chubs was inside, passed out on his bed with all the lights on, a book resting across his chest. I smiled and reached for the light switch when I noticed the colorful, small box on Vida’s bed.

  It took less than thirty seconds to figure out where she’d gone. The top of the hair dye box had been ripped straight off, meaning one thing.

  The ventilation in the bathrooms was bad enough that we had to prop both of the doors partly open to keep the spaces from feeling like the South in late summer. The steam had been thick enough to make me light-headed.

  “That’s okay, you know,” Vida was saying, “but Z, that’s a really shitty way to live.”

  I paused outside of the door, one hand pressed against it as I leaned forward, catching the one-sided conversation.

  “Yeah, but doesn’t it bother you?” she continued. “Aren’t there things that are important enough to say—I know you can write it out, don’t get me wrong, but how are you ever really going to get this shit off your chest if you can’t talk it through? I mean, look, Z, you know I feel you, but the only person that’s being hurt with this silence is you. Don’t give them that power. Don’t let them trap you into never saying anything. There are people worth remembering, speaking up for. You’re important. You deserve to speak and have people shut the hell up and listen to you. You’re smarter than ninety percent of our population.”

  I closed my eyes, pulling back to lean against the wall.

  “Oh, girl, I get scared, too,” Vida said. “I’m always a little scared when I go out on an Op. Not, like, shit-my-pants scared, but I’m afraid of what could happen to the others if I screw up or don’t cover them well enough. Our friend Roo owes me about five years of my life back.” She paused, likely waiting for Zu to write something. “Thing is, though, fear is worthless. It stops you when you need to keep moving most. And it only exists inside of your head. You can hate yourself for being scared, but that’s still letting it control your life. Aren’t you tired of that same old shit? It’s just going to keep dragging you down.”

  There was another pause; long enough that I started to open the door again.

  “People come in and out of our lives all the time,” Vida said, her voice tight. “They can promise that they’ll be right back, but you might never see them again. We got a good unit here, and you know why it’s so strong? Because we chose it. We made it. My sister, she wasn’t like your parents, but she still left me. The bitch called in my location for a reward, but I won’t let her win. I won’t give her the satisfaction of not letting myself trust anyone ever again. She didn’t choose me, and now I’m choosing a different family.”

  I waited until Vida was back to humming a little song before slipping inside.

  “Hey girl, what’s doing?” Vida glanced over.

  For once, the smell of bleach wasn’t coming from the cleaning products we used to scrub out the showers, but from the thick cream Vida had combed through her short hair. There was an old ratty towel over her shoulders to catch the gooey mixture before it hit her sports bra. For a second, I couldn’t see anything other than the scar tissue on her shoulders from the burns she’d gotten in Nashville, fighting Mason. It made my stomach go sour.

  Zu sat perched on the counter next to her, swinging her legs back and forth, little white socks bobbing up and down through the air. She held up two different boxes in her hands for me to see—one blue, one red—then gestured toward Vida.

  “I made Boy Scout stop on our way back from Oregon,” Vida explained, taking the towel from her shoulders and wrapping it around Zu’s much smaller ones. “Glad I did, too. Had to get my war paint on to go into battle tomorrow.”

  I gave her a look in the mirror.

  “Fine. My carefully planned, reasonably cautious reconnaissance mission.” Vida cocked a brow. “You sure you and me can’t just sneak out tonight?”

  “Chubs is useful,” I reminded her. “Please try not to kill him.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we’ll see. All I’m saying is, accidents happen.”

  Before I could even think of questioning it, she used her gloved fingers to scoop some of the product out from the cup she’d mixed it in and made a thin stripe of it in Zu’s hair.

  “Uh...” My mind blanked, cutting quickly to how Liam—and, worse, Chubs—would react to this development.

  Zu glanced back in the mirror and made an impatient gesture, like, more! Vida shook her head. “Start with that and see if you like it first. Did you decide which color?”

  “She’d rather have pink,” I said. Zu whipped around to look at Vida again, her eyes wide with the possibility.

  Vida cocked her head to the side, looking at the two boxes. “I could try mixing a separate batch and using a little less of the red dye than I normally would. Might not work, but it’s worth a shot.”

  Zu nodded eagerly, flashing me a big smile.

  “Charlie Boy’s going to kill me,” Vida sang out, leaning back against the counter. “But we don’t give a damn what boys think, do we, girlfriend?”

  I laughed, startled. “Charlie Boy?”

  “Well—I mean, his name is Charles, right?” Vida said quickly, glaring at me in the mirror’s reflection. “How is Chubs any better?”

  “Good point,” I said. “Well...I’ll leave you guys to it....”

  “Where’s the fire, boo?” Vida asked, hopping up on the counter next to Zu. “Stay awhile. It seems like we haven’t seen your face around much.”

  I hesitated, knowing that I still needed to find Liam, but how could I say no when for the first time in days, Zu looked like her old self? When I’d missed seeing their faces, too?

  “All right,” I said, reaching for the bowl of dye. “Let’s see if we can get you the perfect shade of pink....”

  AFTER LYING AWAKE FOR THREE hours in the dark, counting Chubs’s snores, waiting for Liam to come back, I finally pushed mysel
f up off the stiff mattress and headed for the hallway. I wouldn’t bother him, but I just...needed to make sure he was where I thought he was.

  The music flowing down the tunnel to the garage was a pretty good hint I was on the right track. The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger was crooning about wild horses, the promise in his voice stopping me just outside of the door.

  I thought of the CD he’d brought in for me, the note that was still hidden inside, and felt caught between the need to go in, and the need to walk back to the bunk room, slide under a blanket, and disappear.

  There were a few kids lingering around the space. One was working at the table along the opposite wall, her back hiding whatever it was she was doing. The others were playing cards on a blanket they’d spread out over the floor. It was strange to me that they were down here instead of using the chairs and tables in the big room upstairs, where it had to be at least twenty degrees warmer.

  I stepped forward, wrapping my arms around my center to try to trap some warmth in. There was a sticky pull at the bottom of my shoes. I glanced at the ground and immediately jumped away. A large, white crescent moon. Someone must have painted it there earlier in the night.

  Liam had his back to me as he crouched down, working on the motorbike he’d found. Its gray shell of grime had been polished away, and the silver accents and black panels gleamed under his care. It looked like he’d just brought it home from the store.

  He stood up suddenly, reaching for a piece of foam, and started to wrap it over the bike’s seat to cover the gashes in the leather.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place!” I had to shout over Mick Jagger to be heard. The radio stood a foot away from my feet, and somehow I had the feeling that I didn’t have the right to turn it off. You listened to music this loudly to drown out everyone and everything, letting the rhythm and beats flow around you like a shield.

  Liam spun around, startled. His white shirt was spotted with oil and dust, and somehow, clearly without realizing it, he’d managed to wipe some of it across his forehead and cheek. It was disarming how good he looked to me, how much I wanted to go straight toward him, take his face in between my hands and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until that carefree smile was back. It made me forget everything that had happened between the start of this and now. My mind was still on blown-out tires, socks, and the Beach Boys, even as he said, “What’s wrong?”