In the Afterlight

by Alexandra Bracken

  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 wall. 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.

  Oh my God.

  They were wearing those thin, papery uniforms, coded by whatever color they’d been classified as. I felt my stomach start to churn. One girl turned, flashing the Psi ID number someone had hastily scrawled across the back of her shirt in permanent marker. These were really kids—nine, ten, eleven, twelve, with only a few clearly older than fourteen. All of them with those hollow cheeks, carved out by hunger. Narrowed by need—if not for food, then for everything else.

  “You made it!” The longer I stared at the boy that pushed his way to the door of Room Three, the harder it was for me to believe that it was Pat. They’d shaved down his dark mass of hair, stripped him down to a blue scratchy cotton T-shirt and shorts. He’d been here less than a week and already he’d let his edges bleed into the darkness of this place.

  All at once, the boys in Tommy’s room gasped and reached for him as he stepped into the hall, pleading him in these small voices to come back.

  At night, you don’t leave the cabin, one of t
he older girls in Cabin 27 had told me. You don’t leave, even if it’s burning down. They’ll just say you were trying to escape, and that’s the only reason they need to shoot you.

  None of the other kids followed Tommy and Pat out.

  My mind scrambled to come up with something to avoid us having to carry them out.

  “My name is Ruby,” I said, quickly, “and I’m one of you. All of us here are like you, except for the woman with the camera. We’re getting you out of here—taking you to somewhere safe. But we have to move fast. Fast as you can, without hurting yourselves or anyone around you. Follow them—” I pointed to Gonzo and Ollie. “Fast, fast, fast, okay?”

  Dammit—they still weren’t moving. We weren’t moving, and time was ticking down so loudly in my ears, I couldn’t distinguish the seconds from my heartbeat. I opened my mouth, wondering what else I could say to them. What were the words that had convinced me to take the pills Cate had offered? Or had I just realized it was my last chance of ever getting out?

  For them, maybe, it was a matter of shock—we’d come charging in so quickly, they couldn’t wrap their heads around the reality of it.

  “Rosa?” I called. “Rosa Cruz? Is there a Rosa Cruz here?”

  No one spoke or raised their hands, but I saw a small movement out of the corner of my eye—a shifting that was as subtle as someone straightening up. I took a step around Tommy, scanning the ten faces of Room Six. There was a girl at the back—nearly as tall as I was, maybe thirteen or fourteen. She must have had long, glossy curls at one point in her life, but someone had gone to town hacking it all off. I didn’t see a trace of Senator Cruz in her face, aside from the warm olive tone of her skin and her dark eyes. But when she tilted her head and shifted her gaze toward me, defying her fear, just for that second—that was all her mother.

  “Rosa,” I said. “Your mom is waiting for you.”

  She flinched at the sudden attention, but after a deep breath, she stepped out of her pitch-black room like she was tearing away from the last grip of a nightmare. Rosa’s hands clenched at her sides. Her breathing came hard and fast as her eyes darted around.

  “Look at me,” I told her, holding out my hand. “Just at me. This is really happening. I’ll get you out of here. Okay?”

  Okay. Her trembling, cold fingers touched the tips of mine, sliding into place. The tension bunching her shoulders didn’t relax until my grip on her tightened. The other girls in her room flowed out behind her, and it was only then that the other kids lost that last bit of hesitation and followed.

  “Home base,” I said, pressing my earpiece. “Initiating evac.”

  “Two minutes,” Cole said, sounding a hell of a lot more stressed than I felt. This was good. They were coming with us. They trusted us. The gratitude I felt for that small fact made my eyes prick with tears.

  The others followed, lining up one by one and moving quickly. Feet slapped against the tile, smearing out the puddle of wet paint that had drifted from the forgotten can. Some of them stopped to look at the two bound PSFs, but there was no laughter, no smiles, no cheers—of course not. It must have felt like they were moving through a dream.

  I guided Rosa into the line, glancing at the wall where the soldiers had been writing out that message. The kids leaned against it and used it to brace themselves as they rounded the corner down into the stairwell, smearing that same red paint, tracking their hands and fingerprints through it. Alice stood frozen in front of it, lifting her camera one last time.

  It was the last clear, still image I had before the night sped up, gliding into a blur that carried us down the stairs, down the main hall, and out the very same door we had come through. The blast of cold air washed away the pounding heat from my blood. I shook the fear off, and I let myself imagine it—how good it would feel when this was Thurmond we were walking out of, when I passed through that gate one last time.

  Cate may have gotten me out, but until that moment, I’m not sure I’d fully recognized that I was still a prisoner of that place. And it wasn’t the cure that would give me the feeling of finally being freed from this horrible reality. It was knowing, with certainty, that I would never be forced to go back.

  Zach helped Liam lift his motorbike onto the back of the truck, and gave Alice the lift she needed to get up into it. I caught his questioning look as he took her hand and nodded. She had to come back with us. She’d seen too much, was a security risk. Gonzo and Ollie were the last to climb into the truck’s trailer, having dragged the PSFs we’d left outside into the interior of the camp, along with the secured truck driver.

  The kids were forced to sit on the plastic-wrapped pallets and boxes, some of them clutching yellow and orange glow sticks and flashlights we’d given them so they wouldn’t feel like they were being locked in total darkness. As I rolled the trailer door down, I saw Liam sitting with his back against the siding, his arms resting over his knees, watching me. I pulled the door firmly into place and secured it with the latch.

  Zach was already up in the front seat, ripping the GPS out of the console. He rolled down the window and tossed it outside. One less way for them to track us when they figured out what was happening. I was the one to run to open the gates; the fence wasn’t electrified, but the PSFs had managed to secure it with a padlock. I turned to look at Zach and shook my head. He waved me back and I climbed into the cab with him.

  “Brace yourself,” he warned, relaying the message to me and the whole team in the back. The truck lurched forward and barreled through the gate, sending pieces flying as if they’d been made of Styrofoam. A section caught on the front hubcap and sparked against the ground, but was knocked away as we veered onto the highway, and we sped away before the sun had the chance to start rising at our backs.

  WE DROVE A FULL FOUR hours before ditching the semi-trailer truck in Reno. In an ideal world, we would have taken it straight to Lodi, only stopping once to let the kids relieve their bladders and stretch their legs, but it was marked with military insignias. Someone was bound to notice it if we kept going.

  Senator Cruz had arranged for an old Greyhound bus to be brought down from Oregon and left at Reno’s city limits, warning it was the only time she’d be able to put this particular contact into play as the former state governor, her college classmate, had been careful to never entangle himself too deeply in matters of the Federal Coalition and had been rewarded by Gray with the right to keep his job.

  Zach and I helped each kid down, and I couldn’t stop the small smile on my face at seeing the way they all seemed to want to spin around in the warm sunlight. Rosa was one of the last off, bypassing Zach’s hands for mine.

  “Okay?” I asked her. “How are you doing?”

  She stretched her arms back and forth, swinging them around. I made sure that I kept the smile on my face so she’d know it was okay to let herself believe this would work out. Something I’d learned from Cate.

  I wondered what she’d think of all this as we lifted the boxes of food and medical supplies off the truck, putting them in the undercarriage of the Greyhound bus. When I saw her again, I would make sure she knew the full magnitude of what she had done for me. I wanted to believe that if I felt all of these things, if I brought her face to mind and focused on it, she’d somehow be able to tell I was thinking about her—that I hadn’t forgotten her.

  That I was coming for her.

  Liam walked Alice to the bus, ignoring the glances the team shared as they passed by them. After exchanging a few last quiet words with her, he got back on his motorcycle, explaining to Zach he was going to ride behind us.

  I held a hand out to Rosa, who took it gratefully. Zach jumped into the driver’s seat and craned his neck back, counting to make sure that everyone was on. The kids squeezed into the seats and onto the floor; after a moment of petrified uncertainty, the older kids began to play with the vents, fiddling with the lights.

  “
Pull your curtains all the way closed,” I told them. “It’s going to be another three or four hours to where we’re going.”

  “Where is that?” one of the kids asked.

  “Cali-for-nia!” Gav sang out, pounding his meaty hands down on the seat in front of him. “Let’s go, already!”

  “Seat belts,” Zach called as he started the bus. Then, realizing there was a speaker system, repeated the order through that. “Seat belts. Welcome to Psi Bus Services. I’m Zach and I’ll be your driver on this epic quest to freedom. If you look out your windows—but, obviously, don’t, because Ruby just told you not to—you can give Nevada the finger as we pull away.”

  That, at least, made a few of them crack a smile. I gave Zach a thumbs-up and he returned it. The bus lurched forward and we were off again, really cruising. I smiled despite myself, winging along on my own cloud of happiness. I didn’t come down, not for a second, until I glanced at Rosa.

  She had taken the window seat, drawn her legs up to her chest to tuck under her shirt, and pressed her face into her knees.

  “Rosa,” I said, putting a hand on her back. The number on her shirt pocket, 9229, had been her whole identity in that place. I wanted her to hear her name. To feel human.

  “You shouldn’t have come, we’re not ready yet. We’re still broken.”

  “No,” I said quickly, “no you’re not. You’re different, that’s all.”

  “They said the good ones were the ones that died,” she said, and I noticed a faint scar running down her left cheek, a narrow, spiraling pink line. What could have left a mark like that, other than someone intentionally scratching it into her skin? “That we were all wrong and we’d—we’d never get out. But they never did anything to help us. I want—I want to be fixed, we all did, we did everything they asked, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “If they made you feel that way, then they were the ones who were wrong,” I said. It took me a moment to realize why the words came so easily. Clancy. How was this any different from what he kept trying to tell me? I shifted uncomfortably, trying to think of Cate instead, how she had talked me down after I escaped Thurmond. “The most important thing you ever did was learn how to survive. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you shouldn’t have, or that you deserved to be in that camp.”