Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds Collection) (A Darkest Minds Novel)

by Alexandra Bracken

  “We’re…leaving?” Ellie managed. “For real?”

  “For-fucking-real, girl,” she confirmed. “We’re taking you out of here to your families. But we aren’t going anywhere if you keep staring at me like this place fried your brains. I’m not going to let anything happen to any of you. You’re Ruby’s girls, and she’d straight-up murder me.”

  That, at least, got us rushing back to our bunks for our shoes and sweatshirts, assembling into the usual line. The girl gave us a look of disbelief, shaking her head as she waved us forward—outside.

  I was the first one out the door, grabbing the front of her bulletproof vest. The girl’s eyes narrowed as she wrenched herself out of my hands.

  “You’re going to kill the PSFs?” I demanded. “What about the Reds?”

  “Nothing would give me more pleasure—”

  I didn’t hear the rest of what she said. Kids were pouring out of the cabins around us now, flowing toward the main gate, assembling in a long line of blue and green shirts. But in front of me, still guarding Cabin 40, his gun’s sight raised to his eyes, was Lucas.

  Aiming at us.

  At my sharp “No!” the girl spun around, throwing out a hand. Blue. She was Blue. I launched into an uneven, limping run just as Lucas flew back, skidding across the mud, the gun in his hands knocked free.

  “Hey!” the girl called after me. “Get back here, dumbass!”

  “Sam!” Ellie. “Come back! Sam!”

  “Go!” I called. “I’ll catch up!”

  “What are you doing?”

  I shook the last of their voices out of my head, didn’t turn back to watch them leave me behind.

  “Lucas, Lucas—don’t—” I fumbled for the words as he jumped up onto his feet. Smoke filtered through the air. I’d seen it coasting over the tops of the cabins, but I had no idea where it was coming from, the Reds or the firefight. “Lucas! Listen to me!”

  I wondered if he could hear me at all. His beautiful face was set in a grim mask of violence, spattered with blood. Pale with anger. There was a buzzing coming from somewhere nearby, like an insect, and I realized almost a second too late that the earpiece he was wearing over his right ear was still active. He was still getting orders.

  “Lucas!” The name ripped out of my throat as he raised a hand. The air heated, jumping twenty, thirty degrees around me. “Stop!”

  I tackled him hard enough to nearly bite my own tongue off. Lucas went wild under me, bucking and thrashing to get me off, but it wasn’t going to happen, not until I ripped that piece of plastic out of his ear and sent it sailing into the wall of Cabin 40.

  They’ll take him, they’ll kill him, they won’t let the Reds live, I will never see him again, can’t have him, can’t take him—my thoughts spun out as Lucas stared at me. As his eyes fixed on me. There wasn’t a whisper of emotion in his expression, but, for a second…for a second there was something.

  Doubt.

  Confusion.

  And all at once, I understood. There was no one barking commands in his ear. He didn’t know what to do if someone hadn’t directly ordered it. They must have—conditioned them? Was that the right word? They must have done something to get them to listen to the Camp Controllers and PSFs. Lucas hadn’t wanted to talk about his training. I scrambled to remember if he’d said anything that I could use now.

  Mud stuck to the back of my legs and side, and the rain, it didn’t stop. I reached toward him, brushing his red vest. Need to get him out of here, need to save Lucas, need to hide him—he had fought so hard to get us out, it was my turn now.

  My fingers brushed him and he snarled.

  I held my hands up. “We need to get you out of your uniform! They’ll take you!”

  He didn’t move, and when I tried to grab him again, it felt like his skin was going to blister my palm. His own hand convulsed violently at his side.

  Why had he stopped before, but not now? What had I said, done, beyond telling him to stop?

  You didn’t tell him. You ordered him, I thought. Commanded him.

  The Reds responded to commands, the way trained dogs would. Not requests.

  “You listen to me now. I’m in charge.” God—would he hate me for this later? I sucked in a deep breath. There wasn’t time for this. The girl who had come to my cabin was working her way down toward us, clearing each cabin as someone else in black did the same from the other direction. They were about to cut us off before we even had the chance to run. They’ll take him, you have to get him out of here.

  “Take off your vest!” I shouted, the words hard and clipped. I couldn’t look at the number spray-painted there: M27.

  Lucas stripped off the blood-red vest, the whole of his attention focused on me. My throat squeezed so tight, I couldn’t breathe.

  “Drop it!”

  He did.

  “Stay beside me! Run!”

  He did—into the open door of the cabin in the next, outer ring. It housed the Green boys we’d passed on the way to the Mess Hall. In their scramble to leave, to fall into the line flowing out through the open gate, they’d left behind their spare summer uniforms. Shorts and a t-shirt would be brutal in the freezing rain, but so much better than his uniform.

  “Change into this!” I barked, closing off the part of me that felt agonized about this. “Hurry up!”

  I turned my back, drifting toward the door, and watched the shockingly calm progress of the kids being ushered forward by men and women in ski masks. The firing had stopped, but here and there you could still pick up the crack of one-off shots. When I turned back, Lucas was in the green uniform, shoeless.

  I looked for a pair of the camp-issued slip-ons, I really did, but if the choice was between him going barefoot and someone noticing his black boots, I would risk the boots. He pulled them on, silent and efficient, so machine-like. I knelt down, searching his face, trying to find some hint of what he was thinking or feeling—Lucas was someone who registered pain on such a deep level, who let himself live in feelings of soul-lifting joy, and this…Lucas in front of me had all the working parts, but not the electricity to spark them.

  “Follow me, stay close beside me, don’t say anything, don’t look at anyone—”

  Lucas let out a sharp yelp, his hands digging into his hair like he was trying to crush his skull. It was only then that I realized how close I was to the edge of breaking down completely.

  I made the mistake of trying to touch him again, and this time he threw me off hard enough to send me slamming to the ground.

  Suddenly, Lucas curled down, moaning as his hands slid down, pressing over his ears. Blood dripped down his chin from where he’d bitten his lip. I’d only ever seen kids react this way for one thing, and one thing alone: White Noise. But I couldn’t hear anything, only a metallic grinding sound coming through squeaky, sputtering speakers. It wasn’t anything like what they used to blast us; it didn’t cut, it didn’t split me open.

  No time, no time, no time…I dug through his uniform, still warm from his skin. My hands fumbled with the pockets and pouches on his belt until they found the earplugs I had seen them use when the Camp Controllers turned on the White Noise for us.

  “Put. These. In. Now!” I bit out, knowing better than to try to do it myself. “Follow me. Say nothing. Do nothing but follow me. Understood?”

  Lucas didn’t even blink.

  “Understood, Luc—M27?”

  He let out a sharp breath. Nodded. I dropped the earplugs onto the ground in front of him, and another little piece of me broke off into numbness as he scrambled for them, jabbing them deep into his ears with a heaving sigh.

  This will work. This has to work.

  “What the hell are you still doing here?”

  The deep voice rocketed me out of the moment, slamming me back into full-on panic. I whirled, finding an older man, his face stained with soot, gun at the ready. “These cabins are supposed to be cleared! Get going, or you’ll be left behind! Go!”

  I didn’t
need to be told twice, and neither did Lucas. It was back out into the rain. Back on the sopping wet, muddy trail between the cabin that would lead to the main path out. I felt him a step behind me, a walking radiator against my back as we fell in line with the rest of the stragglers being waved forward, forward, forward by another set of kids, their ski masks up around their faces.

  Do they know Ruby, too? That boy—I hoped he found her, that she was already clear of the fence. I knew there was something crucial I was missing here, some obvious connection between her return and this, but my thoughts were as scattered as the PSFs were across the grounds of the camp. Some lay on their backs and stomachs, unmoving. Others were bound hand and foot.

  Several of the older soldiers had bullhorns in their hands—the source of the White Noise that only Lucas and the other Reds could hear?

  Lucas jerked at my back. I turned, strangely hopeful that I’d find some kind of feeling reflected on his face. Instead his dark eyes were hooded, fixed on the spots of crimson a few hundred feet away. Two men were dragging a limp Red forward, easing her down in line with the others. More men in black masks were working quickly, snapping cuffs around their hands and feet, linking them together so they were bound like animals, like they used to back when Thurmond had Red cabins.

  My feet slowed. Something dull and silver flashed in their hands—needles? It must have been. They jabbed them into the exposed skin on each Red’s neck, leaving the kids to slouch back into the mud, boneless.

  Dead?

  God, would they kill them?

  Don’t think, just go, don’t think, just go—

  Maybe I should have looked back, taken in the sight of the few smoldering cabins left behind by either Reds or explosions. Maybe I should have taken more pleasure in seeing the PSFs trapped in the mud, kicked down again and again. Maybe the moment should have felt bigger than it did—maybe it would, later. After all, I never forget anything.

  But what mattered was right behind me, that I was finishing what he’d started.

  We slowed our pace, drifting back farther and farther from the thousands of kids in front of us spreading out among the trees, edging farther and farther to the right until I could barely make out the trail of lights they cast, and a booming voice telling them to stop where they were.

  I didn’t need to go with them. I was with my family.

  I got us out of there. He was with me. That should have been enough.

  But just because you want something, it doesn’t mean you’ll get it.

  Just because I wanted to save Lucas, it didn’t mean I could.

  THE CAR GLIDES UP INTO the carport with a tiny jolt, the headlights sweeping up over the house. It’s a small—minuscule—wooden structure. A cottage, almost; the stone walkway leading to the door is overgrown, covered by dead crabgrass and pockets of snow. There are a few icicles dripping, dripping, dripping off the edge of the steeply peaked slate roof. A sunshine-yellow paint trim is peeling off the windows and has been dropping into the snow-filled flower boxes.

  The car’s wheels find the well-worn grooves in the dirt as we coast around the side of the house. Sam brings the car to a hesitant stop, inches from some kind of shed.

  Neither of us have said a word since we crossed out of South Dakota and into Iowa. The sign at the city limits proudly declared LE MARS: ICE CREAM CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. And, okay, I guess there are worse things to be known for, but what good is ice cream going to do in our situation?

  This place is a people desert, and I’m sure that’s why Sam picked it—why she felt safe here leaving him behind. Alone. We haven’t seen a single person out, even when we were blazing down its main street.

  Sam slips the keys out of the ignition and sits back. I can’t tell which has exhausted her more: the drive, or the story she just unloaded on me.

  “Remember what I said….”

  “I remember!” I snap. God, like I could forget with her repeating it a thousand times. I don’t need her rules or her warnings. If I want to hug my brother, I will. He was looking for me. He was coming to find me.

  And he would have been there at the hotel if he hadn’t tried to save her, too. He wouldn’t have left me feeling humiliated, like a stupid overeager kid who was one of the first to board the buses, only to end up being one of the last to leave.

  Am I supposed to be grateful that she came to get me at the very last second, out of guilt? Sam can say whatever she wants, throw a million denials my way, but Lucas will know me. You don’t forget family. And when we leave, it won’t be with her.

  I slam out of the car, running—bounding—up the stairs. But of course, Sam makes me wait for her to limp up and unlock it, and then pockets the key. I see the little stone hedgehog she found under by my feet.

  “Move,” I growl, shouldering her out of the way when she doesn’t.

  “Mia, remember—”

  Slow, use a quiet voice, don’t touch him—she wants me to treat Luc like he’s some kind of rabid dog, foaming at the mouth, and I won’t. I refuse to. Screw all her stupid rules.

  “Lucas?” I call the second I’m through the door. “Luc?”

  I wrinkle my nose, trying to breathe through my mouth. It smells like sour milk and weeks-old garbage. I spin around like I’m balanced at the center of a merry-go-round, trying to see everything at once. The décor in here is like…cut and pasted together from an old lady’s dreams. Ugly—hideous—floral wallpaper is curling off the walls, mimicking the shape of the faded green vines. There are flowers sewn—embroidered—onto the pillows and samplers. The curtains are yellowed white lace, pooling onto the dusty rose-shaped carpet. A part of me wants to laugh at how ridiculous it is, but the bigger part wants to find Lucas.

  I pass through the kitchen, carefully picking my way through the sticky black-and-white checkerboard of tiles, the shards of broken pink plates and glasses all brushed to the side under the lower cabinets. Somewhere a clock is ticking, keeping track of how many seconds I’m wasting.

  There’s a bundle of blankets on the floor between the white sheet draped over the couch and the ancient TV set, and it’s so still, I look right past it at first. It shifts ever so slightly, like it’s being ruffled by a soft breeze from the nearby window. The room is dark, the whole house is, and it makes me feel like a shadow as I slip around the furniture and say, “Lucas?”

  It would be wrong to say that his face is set in a blank expression—it’s not set at all, but soft, almost waxy, like it’s waiting for the right hands to carve a smile there. He is so still, it makes my insides bob up and down in my chest. Next to him is a bottle of water and a plate with a sandwich, both untouched. He’s wrapped the blankets around himself so many times, I don’t even know how to begin untangling him from them.

  “Luc?”

  His gaze is fixed on the floor, near the glow of a lantern flashlight. My brother doesn’t even look up as my feet pound across the floor and carpets. “Lucas?”

  He must not recognize me—he’s probably so tired after everything he went through, and he just doesn’t—

  “It’s me,” I manage to choke out, dropping to my knees in front of him. “Lucas…Luc, it’s Mia. It’s me.”

  Nothing. A swift, jagged claw seems to cut me, neck to toes. He won’t look up, it’s like he doesn’t hear or see me, but that can’t be right. That can’t be. I’m right in front of him. It’s been years, and he needs to know that this is real.

  “It’s me, Mia,” I say again, the words high, brittle. Don’t cry, you can’t cry. “Do you remember me?”

  I think I hear Sam say my name, high and sharp, like she’s trying to slice through the air. But I’m already reaching toward him.

  There are so many stories, you know, sweet little tales about princes and princesses who are turned to living stone, cast into eternal sleep. They breathe, they live, but their eyes never open. Until someone comes and breaks the curse.

  Some stupid part of me thinks I’ve done it when his head jerks up the moment before
I touch him. I don’t stop to think about the way his eyes harden as they fix on my face, like he’s taking aim.

  I just hug him.

  And I pay for it.

  “Mia!”

  Lucas throws me off him, knocking me back with the full force of his weight. The breath explodes out of me as sharp pain rips up my tailbone. He’s struggling to get his arms free from under the blankets—to, oh my God, hit me again? To hurt me worse than this? I scramble back. “Lucas! Lucas, stop!”

  Sam limps over, coming to stand between us just as Lucas climbs up onto his knees and I catch the first hint of smoke coating the air.

  “Stop!” she snaps. “M27, sit down!”

  He fixes that same look of hatred on her, and I see her hands shake in the instant before she presses them flat against her baggy jeans. And apparently it is possible to hate her more than I do, because he listens. She treats him like he’s a dog, an animal, and he listens, settling back into his previous position.

  Sam’s voice is thick as she says. “You didn’t eat. I told you to eat! Do you understand? Eat that. Drink that!”

  “Shut up!” I yell. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! He’s not your pet! Don’t talk to him that way!”

  “Mia—listen—”

  I can’t. I won’t. Lucas has picked up his food and is eating it slowly, mechanically, just as she asked. I back up and even though Mia knows it’s a rotten thing to do, the monster shoves Sam with every ounce of strength in her, knowing it’ll be harder for her to get up and follow me with her ruined leg.

  She goes down hard, with a gasp, and I ignore it, starting back toward the kitchen, only to change my mind at the last second and turn—veer—left, where I see another door. I don’t want to leave Lucas. I want to stay close, but I don’t want to deal with her.