In the Afterlight

by Alexandra Bracken

  “They also showed this video,” Nico said. The moment it loaded, from the very first frozen screen, I knew exactly what it would be of.

  I couldn’t see my face—Alice had filmed it all from behind me, so that she would have a clear shot of the children coming out of the rooms. “My name is—” The audio recording beeped straight through my name. “I’m one of you. All of us here are like you, except 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—fast, fast, fast, okay?”

  I gripped the edge of the desk hard enough that Nico leaned back as he said, “I take it they didn’t ask you before they used this footage?”

  “They did not.” And this, too, felt personal—it felt like they were throwing it back in my face. The rest of the video was shots spliced together out of order: the bound-and-gagged PSFs, a close-up of their uniforms, equipment with military decals—smart choices, to try to lend it additional authenticity.

  “From the comments I read on the different message boards, it sounds like at least two major papers picked up the story. By the time I tried streaming the TV news, though, there were already government people analyzing it, pointing things out that supposedly made it fake. Did you know they released a list of kids, too? Individual photographs of them and what their parents did for the Federal Coalition?”

  “I didn’t,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Did Cole see this?”

  “Yeah, he was in here watching with me earlier,” Nico said. “Look, they’re probably all down there patting themselves on the back for this. But the truth is, it didn’t stick. Less than twenty minutes after it went up, Gray scrubbed the web. Not only that, but a number of web hosting companies were taken offline. The comments on the forums—look, like this one?” He pointed to the timestamp. “From early this morning when the news broke.”

  The post read: This is sickening—are they all like this?

  “And two hours later,” Nico said, “the tone of the comments changed.”

  This has to be a hoax. It’s too perfectly put together. I could do this in my backyard with a few actors.

  The post below it read, Then how did they get images of the kids? Old stock images? Old movies?

  Have you never heard of Photoshop?

  “A lot of people don’t think this is real,” Nico said. “Part of the problem is that they—we, I guess—we don’t have a name or identity as a group. We couldn’t claim responsibility for this and then back it up with a history of other information dumps. Amplify is only known for boosting information that’s already been released by third parties; that’s where their name comes from. And even they haven’t had enough big breaks to seem wholly credible to the general population.”

  “But people at least saw the images,” I said. No matter how Nico spun it, that was a small victory. Because now, when others thought of the camps, these images were likely the first thing that would spring to mind.

  “This isn’t going to bring Thurmond down,” Nico said, his dark eyes flashing. “I believe in our plan. It’s the only option.”

  “Thanks, Nico,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “Keep me updated, okay?”

  He nodded and turned back to his computer, fingers flying over the keyboard. I stood and made my way back over to Chubs. He was partially angled in the direction of Nico’s computer, wearing the expression of someone who’d been pretending not to listen, even as they heard everything.

  “I’m surprised you’re not working in the garage,” I told him, taking the empty seat next to him.

  “I have no idea what you mean by that,” Chubs said, though it was clear that he now had the full picture. Or, at least, Liam’s half of what had happened.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” I said, “but if that’s where you want to be...I can understand you picking Liam’s side. Everyone else did.” Even Zu. Even Zu.

  His hands came slapping down against the desk. “There is one side. That is the side of friendship and trust and love and that is the side that everyone should be on, and I am refusing to acknowledge that any other side could exist. Do you understand?”

  I blinked. “Yes.”

  “Though,” Chubs said. “I am inclined, being co-founder of Team Reality, to think the garage is being overly idealistic about how easily this will play out for them, as evidenced by your discussion with Nico.”

  “What does Vida think?” I asked.

  “Vi is down in the gym right now,” he said, “not in the garage. And she is, by her nature, inclined to the side that involves guns and explosions.”

  I nodded, then motioned toward the books, all of which, now that I was closer, seemed to be medical texts. “Are you trying to figure out what’s wrong with Dr. Gray?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Did you make any progress on that front?”

  I met his weak smile with one of my own. “It’s the weirdest thing,” I told him. “When I tried to look into her mind while she was awake, everything was racing—really intense colors and sounds, and images that moved so fast. But when I tried again when she was asleep, they were real memories. Coherent, whole.”

  “Were you able to stay in her mind for long—the first time, I mean?”

  “No, it made me feel sick.”

  He nodded, taking that in. “Maybe that was the point. That’s the only way she knows how to keep Oranges out.”

  “That was my thought, too.”

  “It makes sense. If you knew you had a son capable of coming in and making a mess of everything inside of your skull, wouldn’t you try to teach yourself a few ways to block him out—protect yourself?”

  Someone intelligent and determined enough to come up with a cure for this sickness would have taken every precaution against it.

  “So her memories are in there, and they’re not damaged...” Chubs trailed off, running his finger down the side of one of the open textbooks.

  “Where did you get these?” I asked, picking up the nearest brick-like book.

  “A bookstore,” he said, then added quickly, “after hours. Vida took them for me since I was too chickenshit to get out of the car.”

  “I’m glad you stopped,” I said, flipping through its pages. Most of them were on anatomy, but several, including the one he was looking through now, were neuro-this and neuro-that, all with pictures of the human mind on the cover.

  He looked up, an unreadable expression on his face. “Clancy can...he can break into a person’s mind, right? What can he do once he’s inside?”

  I thought about it. “Influence their feelings, keep them frozen so they can’t move, and...project images into their head so they’re seeing something that’s not there.”

  Another voice chimed in. “He can also—” Chubs and I pivoted toward Nico, who looked like he wanted nothing more than to dive back behind the wide computer monitor. “It’s not just...it’s not just that he can make them freeze up. He can move people around. Like they’re toys. I saw him do it to the researchers at Thurmond a few times. He’d jump into their minds mid- conversation to listen to what others were saying. It was really hard for him to keep up. The last time he tried it, he slept a full day to recover. He would get terrible migraines so he had to stop.”

  Chubs gave me a look I read perfectly. Migraines, not human decency.

  “Can he affect someone’s memories?” Chubs asked. “Can he erase them...actually, I don’t think you’re erasing them, so much as suppressing them. But can he manipulate someone’s memories?”

  “He’s can see someone’s memories—” I caught myself, half-stunned by the realization that slammed into me. “He only ever saw my memories when I let him in. I don’t think he could do it on his own. The real reason he tried teaching me control at East River was because he wanted to figure out how I was doing it.”
>
  “That other Orange kid you knew—what could he do?”

  Martin. My skin crawled at the thought of him. “He manipulated people’s feelings.”

  Chubs looked intrigued, flipping back through the book to a diagram each section of the brain. “That’s fascinating...you’re all using different parts of a person’s mind against them. Er, sorry, that came out the wrong way.”

  I held up a hand. “It’s fine.”

  “This is complicated to explain, but even though the mind has many different structures within it, they all work together in different ways. So it’s not really that you’re accessing different sections of the brain, but different systems within it. Like the frontal lobe plays a part in making and retaining memories, but so does the medial temporal lobe. Does that make sense?”

  “Sort of. So you think I’m somehow interrupting different parts of that process depending on what I’m doing?”

  “Right,” he said. “My understanding is that ‘memory’ is many different systems, all of which function in slightly different ways—creation, for instance, or bringing one to mind, even storing.” He picked up the book in front of him. “The memory of what this object is, how to lift it, how to read the pages, how I feel about it...all different systems. My best guess is that when you ‘remove’ someone’s memories, you’re not removing them at all, just disrupting a few of these key systems and rerouting the real memories to imagined ones...or disrupting the encoding process before the memory can take shape and the neurotransmitters work, so the person can’t—”

  “Okay, but how do you jump between different systems? Control other functions?”

  “I don’t know,” Chubs said, “how did you do it to Clancy?”

  That brought me up short.

  “You froze him the same way he froze Liam and Vi. What did you do differently?”

  “It was...the intent, I guess? I went completely still and wanted him to do the same—” The words choked off.

  Mirror minds.

  That’s what he had told me, when I couldn’t figure out how to get back out of the darkness there, sever the thread between us. Once I brought up a memory, my grip on his mind shifted back to his memories. When I went still and wanted him to do the same, he did.

  I explained the theory to Chubs, who nodded. “It sort of makes sense. When you intentionally go into a person’s memories, you’re using the memory of how to do it rather than a memory itself. Wow, that sounded less confusing inside my head. Anyway—it involves being vulnerable to the other person having access to your memories, some sort of natural empathy on your end. I can’t imagine him being willing to run the risk of releasing any part of the control he has over his mind, or that he possesses a shred of empathy. Do you want to experiment with this? Maybe we can see if you can get me to move my hand—”

  “No,” I said, horrified. “I just want to know what system, or part of her mind, he affected to leave her like this.”

  Chubs sat back, his excitement still there, verging on gleeful. “It’s going to take me a little time to find the answer. I’ll have to go through all of these books.”

  “Hey, losers,” Vida said from the doorway, still flushed and dripping with sweat from her workout. “I think you’re going to want to see what they’re working on in the garage.”

  IT TOOK ME A MOMENT to even understand what I was seeing as we approached. Duct tape held up two white sheets as a backdrop behind Zu, who was perched on a folding chair. She glowed under the flood of light from four desk lamps that had all been turned and angled toward her. They’d set up a poor man’s version of a studio in the corner of the room.

  There were two other chairs; the one facing her, next to the camera, was for Alice, who was fiddling with the device. The other was for Liam, who sat to Zu’s right, talking to her quietly.

  He was the one that spotted us first, and scowled.

  “What’s going on?” Chubs asked, trying to take in the scene.

  “Suzume’s agreed to do an interview with us,” Alice said, craning her neck around to look at us. She was still dressed in all black, but her hair was twisted now into a messy bun. Next to her were two different notebooks, each open to a page full of scribbles in blue ink. She had a third in her lap.

  Cole said you only get one shot to prove this would work. I almost said it, but it felt petty. After only a few hours, there was no real way to measure the full impact of the first media package they’d already released.

  “Is there a problem?” Liam asked.

  Vida let out a whistle, as if already predicting how this situation was going to play out. But contrary to what Liam apparently thought, I wasn’t here to pick a fight.

  “Zu,” I said, “can I talk to you? Just for a second?”

  She nodded immediately, and I felt tension release its hold on my stomach. I led her a little way away from the others.

  “Are you okay doing this?” I asked. She gave me a bright nod, and held up her fingers in an “okay” sign.

  “And you understand that if you do this, your face will be all over the place—they explained that, right?” I didn’t want her to think I was treating her like a kid incapable of making her own decisions, and I didn’t want to imply that Liam would ever purposefully trick her, but I needed the confirmation from her. My first instinct with the others, no matter what, would always be to act like a shield, positioning myself between them and the prying eyes of the world. And Zu, being Zu, seemed to understand.

  She slid the small, narrow notebook out of her pocket and wrote, I can’t fight, right? Not at Oasis. Not at Thurmond?

  When I shook my head she didn’t seem upset by it, just resigned. This is the only way I can think of to do something. I want to help!

  “I hope you don’t think I haven’t noticed or appreciated all that you’ve done here at the Ranch so far,” I said.

  Zu kept writing. What happened yesterday made me realize it’s important to speak up and say your piece—what you believe in.

  “Liam has that effect on people,” I said quietly.

  She took my arm and moved her thumb from the corner of the page, so I could see what else she had written. I want to be strong like you. I want to do this to help you get what you want. I’m tired of being scared. I don’t want them to win.

  The words stole the pain in my heart away, just for a little while. I managed to smile at her, and hugged her tight enough that she let out a silent, shuddering laugh.

  “Okay,” I said. “Liam’s talking for you?”

  She nodded. I told him he could as long as he wasn’t in the shot. He said it was okay, but I don’t want anyone to go looking for his family because of this.

  “What about your family?”

  My family is here.

  I bit my lip. “You’re right. We are. And, for what it’s worth, I think you’re going to knock ’em dead.”

  Zu scribbled something down in her notebook and held it up for me to see. I will. I’ve been practicing. Will you stay and watch?

  “Of course.”

  Chubs and Vida were still standing where I’d left them, talking quietly to each other, their backs turned to Liam. They stepped away from each other as I came closer, and the quiet conversation between Liam and Alice ended the moment Zu sat back down.

  I felt Liam’s eyes flick to me, just for a moment, but I kept my own eyes on Zu, gave her an encouraging little smile when she glanced over one last time.

  “Ready?” Liam asked.

  “I have paper and a pen for her to write with,” Alice said, picking up one of the bigger notebooks from the floor and holding it out to her. “She can tell me to stop at any point, and I will. She and I shook on it.”

  “I know. Go ahead.”

  Liam’s jaw worked back and forth, but he said nothing. Alice waited only a moment for me to lodge another protest before she
turned. From where I stood behind her, I could watch as she switched her camera over from still photos to video. Zu couldn’t fix her eyes on the camera lens for long, not without a look of wariness. I watched as she adjusted her plain white shirt and jeans, folded and unfolded her hands in her lap. Crossed and uncrossed her ankles.

  “Okay, sweetheart, make sure you write nice and big so Liam can easily read it. If you don’t want to answer anything, just shake your head. Okay? Great—let’s start off with two easy ones: can you tell me your name and age, please?”

  Zu scribbled the words down, looking relieved to finally not have to stare at the camera. I thought that was the only reason she bothered writing, even though Liam clearly knew the answer to both of the questions.

  “My name is Suzume,” he said, “and I’m thirteen years old.”

  “Suzume? That’s a lovely name.”

  “Thank you,” Liam read. “My friends call me Zu.”

  “Can you tell us a little bit about why your friend is speaking for you?”

  Zu looked away from the camera, over to where we were standing. I saw the small movement in the corner of my eye, the way Vida gave her a low, quick thumbs-up.

  I’ve been practicing.

  “Because...because for a long time I was too scared to say anything,” Zu said. “And I didn’t t-think anyone would l-listen.”

  Liam jumped as if she’d shot him in the chest, his face pale with shock. The world ceased to spin under my feet for that first second when her sweet, high voice emerged. It was slightly halting, edged with the nerves she wasn’t letting anyone see on her face. So different, too, from the way it sounded when she had talked in her sleep—not scratchy with disuse.

  “I did it,” she said, almost in wonder.

  “Yeah you did! Get it, girl!” Vida said, and her loud clapping was the only sound that emerged in the silence that followed. The kids who’d been watching the interview happen from where they sat fanned out on the floor to the side looked, in a word, stunned.