Business as usual, the Washington types keep saying. We’ll get there soon.
Yeah. Right.
I count about a dozen kids left—not bad for a camp this big. The radio report said there were upwards of twelve hundred kids at Black Rock—a little less than half the size of Thurmond, but it’s like comparing a leopard to a lion; size is relative when a camp has you between its teeth.
They’ve been reporting on camp closures for the last three weeks. The peacekeeping force is clearly working its way down some secret list. Most of the shock and novelty of seeing the kids and the camps has worn off, but Black Rock sent a ripple back through the calming waters. It’s one of only two camps that took kids before they changed, whether their families volunteered them or not. To study them, or…I don’t know.
Mia would know. They grabbed her before her switch was flipped: death or freak? Lucas didn’t even know if she had survived the change after they were separated.
I squeeze my eyes shut, grateful to whatever stone is lodged at the base of my throat. It’s the only thing that keeps me from screaming.
Because…she’s here.
She’s still here.
I recognize Mia right away, sitting on the far side of the lobby. This place must have been expensive, a real jewel, before the economy sputtered to a stop. The furniture curves around the sitting area in a smooth arc, facing the large television screen. Someone’s started a fire in the hearth on the far wall, which makes the dark coils of her hair gleam. Wide, dark eyes like Lucas, rimmed with thick lashes. Small for fifteen—too thin, but I can fix that.
She’s still here. I press my hands to my face, trying to get control of my breathing again. I’ve become so used to the feeling of terror these past two weeks, I don’t even bother trying to stop it as it grips my lungs and shakes me until the world blurs.
Every small clatter or groan of a sound makes me jump. No matter where I go, it feels like someone is constantly two steps behind me, trailing after my shadow. I can’t sleep. I can’t close my eyes. Fear and I have long conversations in my head, and I tell it to stop being ridiculous, to leave me alone, but it never does. And when it hits me, I just have to wait for it to pass, hating myself the whole time, wondering what happened to the Sam who could look a PSF in the eye and risk getting a beating for it.
I think I left her behind at Thurmond.
The kids around Mia are fixated on the same news report about the progress they’re making to strip Agent Ambrosia out of the water supply. It’s the same story they’ve run a thousand times at this point.
Unlike the others, she has her standard-issue supply pack given to her by the government at her feet, all packed up and ready to go, ready to leave at any moment.
Like she hasn’t spent the last week sitting here, waiting, watching a thousand kids get escorted back to their former lives. Waiting, waiting, waiting…
The papers added her to the “unclaimed” column a few days ago. It’s the only reason I knew to come. If her grandparents were still alive, they would have been here days ago, no matter what. I tried to get here faster, I did. It’s just…things got really complicated.
And now the only one left to get her is me.
I need to get her attention somehow, lead her away from the others, or follow her up to her room when it’s time to call it a night—and I need to do it before the soldiers wrap up what they’re doing and actually start paying attention. One goes outside to light up a smoke, and I have to grit my teeth to keep from snarling at her. If I’ve heard the reports of snatchers after their next big pay day, abductors selling kids on something the news has taken to calling the “freak market,” then they have, too. They need to have eyes on these kids at all times.
I crawl forward, toward the roster of names posted on the wall next to the concierge desk, considering my options.
The sliding doors behind me glide open, sending me scuttling back behind the desk. It’s no shield against the freezing air that blasts the back of my neck, raking icicles down my spine. My whole body clenches as I ease back, just a bit, to see who’s come in. I absorb the most important details: adult man, suit a little too tight, an outline of a holster under his jacket. The tightness in my shoulders doesn’t ease until he holds up some kind of ID badge, and the soldiers give a distracted wave in greeting.
The man’s focused on the kids. His shoes click a quick path toward them. They’ve been sucked into the void of the TV screen after years of separation, and nothing can break them out of it until the man reaches down to turn it off.
“Hey!” protests a kid in a plaid shirt, maybe fourteen at the most. They’ve given them all street clothes, and something about it looks unnatural to me—I wish I didn’t expect to see uniforms, I wish I’d never had to wear mine, but I don’t know how to mentally sort these kids without them wearing who they are and what they can do.
“I know,” the man says, his voice soothing; like he’s speaking to toddlers, not teenagers. “But I have something important I need to talk to you all about.”
I ease back a step, around the corner, toward the dark set of elevators behind me. A soldier passes by, bringing a box of supplies outside. Packing up, heading out. I can already see the direction this conversation is moving, and it cracks what’s left of my heart in half. Because the kids don’t.
“It might…” the man looks up to the ceiling for a moment, gathering his thoughts—or cursing his bad luck. His hands burrow deep into his pants pockets and he rocks back on his heels once, clearing his throat. “We’re hitting the road today. The hotel owners have plans to reopen, and it’s time to get you ready for the next phase of your lives.”
Next phase. Something in me coils so tight, I can’t breathe.
“Where are we going?” the girl sitting beside Mia asks.
Mia hasn’t so much as looked in the man’s direction; although she’s physically present, her mind is clearly skating a million miles away.
“We’re going to Chicago,” the man continues. “You’ll be given the procedure by a very skilled doctor there, and then safely re-homed.”
He seems relieved to have it out, the whole of it. The longer I stare in disbelief, the more it feels like the floor is knocking up against the soles of my shoes, trying to move me forward. To take all of these kids and run.
The procedure? The “miracle cure”? Do these kids even know what it involves—that they’d be letting this doctor drill into their skulls and implant some kind of device that might change who they are, or might one day stop working, or might not even work for them at all?
“I thought we had a choice?” one of them asks, the words trembling only a little. It’s another boy, all bony limbs and untidy hair, his knees drawn up to his chest. This one is even younger than the first. I’d put him at twelve. “That’s what the lady said.”
The man looks up at the ceiling again and taps his fingers against his leg, one at a time. I know what he’s doing now—counting to ten—to, what? Steady his temper? He’s annoyed with these kids? I bristle, feeling my hackles rise. My ribs ache from how hard I’ve wrapped my arms around them.
“There’s no law on the books saying that yet,” the man continues, his voice strained by the effort it’s clearly taking to sound patient and compassionate. “It’s hard to understand, I know—”
No. Nothing about this is hard to understand.
“But you’re our responsibility—you’re officially wards of the transitional government until otherwise notified, and it’s been decided that our wards will proceed with the instructions we were given.”
Unclaimed. Unwanted. And now, everything that they are…undone.
If he’d tried to use the argument that the procedure would make the kids less appealing as targets to snatchers, more appealing to prospective parents fostering and adopting them, I would have understood; I maybe even would have supported the idea just a little bit. But he doesn’t say that. There’s no other reason than because we said so, and I’m so tir
ed of that attitude, that no-explanation explanation.
The man kneels down beside one of the younger girls. She can’t be more than thirteen, and I can see the tears filling her eyes from here. “Don’t you want a home? To live with a kind family?”
So many parents lost their kids to IAAN. I have to imagine that there are some kind ones out there that want to fill that hole in their family again. But I also have to imagine there are plenty who have dollar signs in their eyes over the promised “support packages” from the government for each child taken in.
“I have a family,” she says, her voice trembling.
The man doesn’t touch her, the way you’d normally comfort a kid who’s clearly on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. I can tell by the set of his shoulders that he didn’t expect this. There’s no strategy. The expectation was clearly that they would just nod and follow him out like a line of ducklings.
“Sweetheart,” he begins, looking around. “You don’t. I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks trying to track down your families. They’ve either moved and disappeared, they’ve passed on, or they—”
Say it, I think. Finish that thought. Or they said they didn’t want you back.
Then, a new voice: “My brother is coming for me. I’m staying.”
I’m sure I make a sound, but I can’t hear it over the growing buzz in my ears. If someone wedged a dull knife into the back of my skull, it wouldn’t hurt half as bad as this.
I was right.
In all the hours and days that I spent wrestling with myself over whether or not to come, one fact kept slipping under the chains of my resolve: Lucas wanted, more than anything, more than his own life even, to find his sister. Enough of his mind was intact after the training the Reds were subjected to that he actually volunteered to serve at Thurmond to search for her there, knowing full well that he could be caught. Instead, he’d found me.
Why did you turn around?
Why did you hesitate?
Lucas, why didn’t you leave me?
We were going to find her. He was going to get us both out of the camp, and we were going to look for Mia together. As much as the scars from that day still burn, and as many times as I’ve relived the moment they caught him, the emptiness in his face when he was brought back to duty at Thurmond, fully broken…it’s nothing compared to the way this image is scorching my heart. Mia has been waiting weeks for a brother who will never come for her.
I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.
She’s not alone. For the first time in weeks, I muster up enough anger to pull against the chains that apprehension has thrown over me. Anger—beautiful, dark, sweltering anger—burns out all my trembling uncertainty. Adrenaline hums through my blood, and I wish I were any other color but Green. I’d throw this man and all of these soldiers across the room, as far away as I could get them. I’d blow out the electricity and drag her away in the darkness. I’d burn this place and its lies to rubble.
Mia turns slowly. Her eyes are sharp, dark, with none of the distant dreaminess that softened them before.
“Your brother?” the man repeats. “I searched for him in the system, but there’s no record of him at all.”
“That’s bull—” Mia manages to catch herself before the curse can slip out. “He’s a Red! They knew what he was when they took him. And if the other camps are closed, then he’s coming to get me.”
“Mia…” the man begins. The other kids go stiff at that word: Red. It’s a single syllable that carries nightmares in its back pocket. Mia doesn’t know to be afraid. She knew the Lucas who was in control of his abilities, the fire simmering beneath too many layers of soft sweetness to be frightening. She hasn’t seen what they made him. How they cut, and cut, and cut to make sure he’d never bloom again.
“I’m staying,” she says. “If that’s still a problem, then you need to check your equation and solve it.”
The man’s back on his feet, looming over her, his arms crossed. “I need you to be a good girl and listen to me.”
Mia’s features pull back in a snarl. “I’m not a good girl. I’m waiting for my brother.”
“Even if he—” The man shakes his head. “Even if he were to come, he would be in the same position as you. He’ll be a ward of the government.”
“No he won’t, he’s eighteen now. He can be my guardian.”
Mia is so clearly proud that she’s figured this out. She has no idea that the usual rules don’t apply to us—we’re Psi, not human. The classification doesn’t overlap, not as far as the rest of the world is concerned. We can’t be our own guardians. That’s a direct quote, courtesy of the radio station I listened to on my drive through Nowhere, South Dakota to get here. We don’t have enough education and we lack a basic understanding of how life works, according to them.
And maybe…maybe that’s true. I hate that idea, that we can’t take care of ourselves, but…we had our world in the camp, we had our rules, and now we’ve been pushed back into this one. None of it makes sense. Everything changes out here so quickly, I can’t keep up.
The man exhales loudly through his nose. “If he isn’t in the system, he never was—”
“My sister is eighteen….” one begins.
“I have a cousin—he’s nineteen, he should be able to—”
“I searched for every name you gave me,” the man snaps, whirling back toward the other kids. “Either they never made it into the system and are out there, lost to the world, or they died before they ever made it far enough to be sorted into a camp!”
So much for patience, I think, biting my lip.
His temper blows his lid off. The words crash down around them, blasting whatever is left of their world into a storm of flaming wreckage. One of the kids bursts into tears, shattering the shocked silence that follows.
“They took him! I saw them!” Mia protests, jumping to her feet. “I was right there!”
“You’re my ward, and you’ll do what I say,” the man says, bending down so he’s eye level with Mia. “Understood?”
Mia’s face hardens, transforms right in front of my eyes into something so much harsher than all of the sorceresses she used to play in the make-believe world of Greenwood. I’m barely keeping myself still, and it only gets more difficult when I recognize her posture, the way she shifts and her hands tremble at her side. This is the Mia who used to put the forest at her mercy, control the animals, take hostages up in her tower.
Only now her power is real, and I don’t know what the punishment is going to be for her shoving or striking this man, only that it’ll come. All I need to see is the outline of the man’s holster, and any final reservations I have about this melt away like the last of the early spring snow.
“Look, it’s just the way it is,” he says, and I can hear the regret adding weight to those words. He might not have meant for the truth to come out like a punch, but he still has the gall to clap his hands and say, “Come on, quick-quick. I’ll wait here while you go get your things….”
Most stand, casting quick glances at each other as they move to the elevators. The soldiers trail behind them like reluctant babysitters.
Mia slumps back into her seat, resting her elbows against her knees and her face against her hands.
“Sorry,” she mutters from under a veil of dark hair.
“It’s fine, kid,” the man says. “This isn’t easy for any of us.”
Oh really? I think savagely. I can tell how difficult this is for you.
“Are you going to be okay waiting here for a sec?” he says. “I need to make a call.”
Mia nods, says nothing more.
“Good girl. Thanks.” The man hesitates for a beat, then steps out of my line of sight, toward the main elevator bank. I can just barely make out his reflection in the darkening windows behind Mia as I creep back around the corner, and I say a small, tiny little prayer that they can’t see my likeness there, too.
I have a plan. It’s just a matter of getting
her attention now, and in the right way. Because if I get caught, then I’m in the same situation as the rest of these kids. And there’s so much more than just my and Mia’s lives riding on this.
Carefully, I peel one of the sheets of the camp roster off the wall. There’s a pen buried somewhere deep in my backpack, and it has one last gasp of ink left to write a single word. I start the S’s curve, only to change my mind halfway through—there are so many Sams in this world, who’s to say she’ll be able to put together that I’m the girl who used to live next door to her? I’m too far out of context.
So instead I write a different name, making the letters as large and bold as the pen’s thin tip will let me—a secret we kept between the three of us.
Greenwood.
I glance toward the windows again. The man has shifted away from Mia, turning to lean his shoulder against the wall. His voice is a low murmur of sound, almost indistinguishable from the heat snapping and hissing out of the vents around us.
Mia’s eyes are fixed on the ground, like she’s trying to find the scattered pieces of herself there. I wave my arms, hoping the movement is big enough for her to see it out of the corner of her eye.
It is.
Her face goes blank with surprise in the second before I see her start to gasp. I hold up my makeshift sign, hands shaking. Please, God, please let this work, please, please let me get her out of here, away from them….Mia’s forehead wrinkles, and I know the exact moment she realizes who I am. Her eyes are electrified, her mouth starts to form my name. My pulse is hammering, and I barely manage to get a finger up to my lips in time to shush her and wave her forward.
She’s confused. Glances over to where the man is still on the phone. I shake my head.
And then she gets it.
Mia rises slowly, silently, her eyes fixed on the man’s back. Her movements are as light as a mouse’s as she weaves through the curving furniture, and her sneakers barely register a sound as she starts toward me. I turn, already prepared to spring forward as she reaches my side.
Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds Collection) (A Darkest Minds Novel) Page 21