But I’m not…am I? I can’t claim I’m one, not anymore. I lean forward and press my forehead against my knees, ignoring the way it pulls my shoulders painfully with my hands behind my back. I drove around and around for an extra hour, wasting gas to lead the snatchers off my trail, and I still managed to bring them home with me. I basically surrendered to the snatchers instead of trying to get us all out of there. I didn’t try to fight these soldiers.
I wanted to bring Lucas back to the people who made him this way. I am a coward. I’m not a lion, I’m not a knight. Out here, I’m nothing. I hate myself.
I turn, watching as the paramedics take Lucas’s vitals and put an oxygen mask on him. I don’t know if I should be grateful or terrified that he’s still passed out. He was already weak from exhaustion, from not eating nearly enough, and I know the fires must have taken what strength he had out of him, but…
What if he doesn’t wake up?
What if they do take him away?
What is wrong with you?
It might be the smoke still coating my lungs, the aftershocks of what happened, but my stomach heaves, and I have to close my eyes and swallow hard to keep from throwing up.
He saved us. Lucas…he…I shake my head. No—there wasn’t anything in his expression. He was just reacting to the sound of gunfire. His instincts told him to fight and protect himself.
“—to the hospital!” One of the paramedics has been fighting with the soldier in charge for the last fifteen minutes, since they tried to run Lucas’s photo through the system and nothing came up. After hearing the officer in the hotel tell Mia that there was no record of Lucas that he could find, I’m not sure why I’m so surprised by this. I guess I’ve always thought of the government and military as one big body; I didn’t realize that they could wall off sections of themselves when it came to keeping secrets.
It makes me think that Mia is right, though. Maybe there is no record of him because the other Reds have already had their records purged, and the kids have been…dealt with.
And you wanted to give up and give him back.
I squeeze my eyes shut harder. I want him to live. I don’t care how. I want him to live, and I can’t help him—
“No, not until he’s been positively ID’d.” I don’t know what the soldier’s rank is, but he’s lording it over everyone else around him, to the point that even the woman who identified me stops to stare at him. He’s broad-shouldered, tall, a huge presence with his red hair. The neighbors actually scrambled back to their homes when he barked at them to stop gawking at us. If I hadn’t dealt with his type every day for seven years, I might have been impressed.
Firemen are still fighting the blaze across the street. Mia ignores the woman snapping her photo and watches as the flames devour the small house. She won’t look at me, and I can’t think of anything to say to her. So neither of us try.
I did this.
The skin on my neck and arms still feels like it’s on fire, burning down layer by layer. When I was a little girl, my mother once tried to pretty up my hair with a curling iron before church. I couldn’t sit still long enough for her to finish, and the barrel accidentally brushed my neck; all Mom could say was You did this to yourself. I feel the same small agony with each burn on my skin now.
It must have happened when I was trying to push myself onto my feet, after I got out of the back of the truck. Holding on to Lucas was like embracing a furnace, but there’s no way his skin could have been that hot…right?
I don’t know what I believe anymore—I can’t shake the idea that there is someone out there, a God that created us. My father used the Bible as an instruction manual for how to earn the right to Heaven. He saw everyone’s life as split between that destination, and another very different one below. I guess some of his words have burrowed into my heart deeper than I imagined, sinking in like thorns, because there was a moment before I reached him, when Lucas was standing in the middle of a ring of fire, and all I could think was I’ve already lost you.
Hell isn’t a place you go; Hell is where we live now. Hell is being helpless to protect the people you care about the most, and save them from themselves.
We will never have that Lucas back, I think. Not the one we grew up with. Even if I can shake him from this, the last thing to heal will be his soul. It will break his heart, and no matter how many times I’m there to help piece it back together, the cracks will always be there, the mends will only harden it. But then again, am I the Sam he grew up with? Is Mia the same sister? How can we fit together, now that this world has snapped and bent our edges?
“Girls!” The word is barked at us from across the street.
I sit up again, bracing myself. The soldier in charge is cutting a path toward us, shouldering aside anyone who stands in his way. The woman who processed us with the device makes a quick, quiet report to him, and both of their eyes shift to Mia, who is glaring back at them from under a mass of curly black hair.
“Girls,” he says again, standing over us, hands on his hips, “I need to know who the young man is.”
Here is something else that’s different: they ask us questions like they expect to believe us. And, well, the PSFs would have already had us rolling in the direction of the nearest camp. I wonder for the first time if the only reason we’re still here is that these people literally have no clue what to do with us now, or who should make that call. With the PSFs, at least I knew what to expect. I have no idea what these people are capable of, what they’re willing to do, and that’s a whole new flavor of fear.
Closing the camps didn’t knock the players off the game board. It didn’t even rearrange them. It just added unknown rules and elements; now we have to learn how to live all over again, and it’s still not even on our own terms.
“He’s no one,” Mia says.
“Yes, apparently,” he says, impatience rushing the words. “There isn’t a record of him. No ID, either.”
“He’s no one,” Mia repeats, daring the man to ask her one more time. He senses the challenge in her voice and shifts the full weight of his attention to her. I can barely make out his face in the dark.
I know what Mia is trying to do; if he’s no one, then they won’t send him wherever they’re sending us. But that’ll only last as long as he’s unconscious. When he wakes up, and he’s surrounded by people in a hospital he doesn’t recognize, then what?
“He’s her brother,” I say, and my shoulders hunch at Mia’s hiss. At this point, I don’t think she could hate me more than she already does. But this might be our only chance to stay together. “He’s a Green. There’s no record because he was never taken into a camp.”
“That so?” The soldier glances back at the ambulance, and I think, Is that a hint of admiration in his tone? “What happened to him?”
“He tripped as he was coming down the stairs, knocked his head,” I say. “We were running to avoid these people…they were trying to kidnap us.”
He looks like he can’t quite believe this.
“Didn’t you see them?” I ask. “Two men and an older woman.”
The man shakes his head and my fragile little piece of hope starts to splinter. I’m so used to thinking about life in terms of action and reaction, crime and punishment, that I can’t take my eyes off his sidearm, or the baton hanging against his thigh. A new thread of worry weaves in and out of the mass already choking me.
“We didn’t mean…the fire was an accident,” I continue, and I can’t believe he’s let me say this much. “We were just trying to protect ourselves.”
“You could have destroyed this whole neighborhood,” he says sharply. “You shouldn’t be out here running around—this isn’t a game!”
I’m so stunned by this—that of all the conclusions he could have drawn, it’s that we’re out here for fun. That they think we would actually choose this for ourselves.
They’re going to punish us, I think, fear battering my anger. How do I stop this? What can I say? If I say I
’m the one that set the fire, me and me alone, then will they let Mia off? I will work the rest of my life to pay off the damage if I have to.
“You’re lucky that someone called this in and our patrol was close enough to answer.”
Lucky is not the word I would have chosen in this situation, but I nod anyway, feeling my stomach flip.
“There’s no family contact listed for either of you,” he begins.
How completely unsurprising that my parents have figured out how to legally wash their hands of me. I’m “unclaimed,” too.
“But I have a notation that you”—the man nods toward Mia—“at least, are the ward of the government. Officer McClintock has been notified of your whereabouts.”
“My parents are dead,” Mia says, her voice wooden. “I’m with the only family I have left.”
I know she means her and Lucas, but the man seems to lump me into that family as well.
Another soldier, a young man, jogs up to us from behind one of the Humvees with a large cell phone in his outstretched hand. “Sir, there’s a call for you—”
The man swings around, and I can only imagine the expression on his face, judging from how quickly the blood drains from the young soldier’s.
“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s from Washington.”
I lean forward, trying to catch every one of the man’s gruff words as he presses the phone to his ear and strides away, back in the direction of the ambulance. Mia sighs and rests her forehead against her knees, closing her eyes, but my mind is spinning itself sick, churning out one horrible theory after another, each a tiny needle moving through my veins. I can’t make out his words, but I can read the language of his body—the way he storms toward the paramedics and begins to gesture between Lucas on the gurney and something else, and they begin to gesture back.
The younger blue beret is standing a few feet away from us, his gaze fixed on that same scene, shifting his weight between his feet. My anxiety deepens to outright dread.
They know.
They know about Lucas. What he is. Where he should be. I don’t know how, but they found out, and now they’re going to take him away—
The man ends his call, gripping the phone in his hand for a moment. When he turns back toward us, it’s like Mia can feel the wave of furious heat pouring off him. She sits back up, her spine as rigid as the streetlights around us. She swings around toward me, eyes wide.
The man barks, “Load them!” to the soldier still standing over us. He windmills one arm, and it’s the signal that sets the gears around us into motion. The soldiers scatter, stomping out flares, packing up supplies.
“What’s going on?” Mia asks. “Hey—ow!”
We’re hauled up and deposited onto our half-frozen legs. I lean back, trying to see around him, see the ambulance. Doors are slamming, people are shouting; the buzz and crackle of radios electrifies my nerves until I think my blood is humming. The muscles in my right calf are so stiff, they send a lance of pain shooting up my knee, my thigh, my hip. The younger soldier has us both by the arms and all but drags us forward, toward the back of a black van. I try to drag my leg to slow us down, but Mia is the one who’s doing most of the work.
“Where are you taking us?” she’s shouting. “Where is Lucas? Lucas!”
“You can’t separate us, please,” I’m begging, “he’s a good person, he’s not what you think, don’t separate us, please!”
There are benches running along the sides of the van, cuffs dangling above them, a metal grating separating the two front seats from the back area. Up close, the soldier looks even younger than I thought; there’s still a fullness to his face, and his age is never more obvious than when he glances at me, frowning. He hesitates, a flash of pity cutting through the stiff mask of determination.
And I think about it. I do. If he’s soft, I can be hard. I can shove him, give Mia a chance to run—
She beats me to it, drives her shoulder into his chest, hard enough to knock me sideways too.
I’m not sure what hurts worse, the first jolt of hitting the street, or the hundred-plus pounds of the soldiers who slam me right back down onto it. My vision blanks to static white as the air explodes out of my lungs all over again.
The soldier snaps at Mia in a language I can’t understand, lashes out a booted foot. Words sputter in my throat as he catches Mia around the ankle and trips her before she can take two steps. It’s almost impossible to get myself up onto my feet with my hands bound and my whole right side throbbing. I grit my teeth and lurch forward onto one knee, then the other.
“Stop this!” A large hand hauls me up by the scruff of my coat. The head soldier has a voice like a cannon, but I don’t catapult back into the thick fear until he holds up a small black device and brings it to within an inch of Mia’s panting face.
“Do you know what this is?” he asks, biting out each word.
My body is already trying to curl around my core to prepare for the piercing grind of White Noise. Our hands are still tied, there’s no way to even cover our ears. Hate powers through me, pumping like thunder. Because, of course. Of course—they can close the camps, they can disband the PSFs, but they still need a way to control us. As long as there are freaks in the world, there will always be White Noise and the people who get to use it, who will never understand what it feels like to have a noise send razors through your brain.
“I do not want to use this,” the man tells her. “Not one of us wants to use this. But we are authorized to do so, and we will. Understood?”
I see now that Mia is braver than I am, because I nod, distracted by what is happening over by the ambulance. She’s the one that asks, “Where are you taking us? Which camp?”
His surprise betrays the hardened expression on his face, like he can’t quite believe that’s our first assumption. All of this, the new government, the international peacekeeping force, happened so fast—these people have been injected into a reality that must feel as upside-down to them as it does to us.
“No more camps.” He shakes his head. “You are to be processed, and…re-homed.”
Re-homed. My lip curls back. Meaning…rewired. Released back into civilization with tiny machines implanted in our brains. I wonder if this will be our lives, for however many years we have left—no say, no choice, just orders and changes and handcuffs. I wonder if they think we are even really human.
We are, aren’t we?
“My brother—” Mia starts.
“Get in,” the soldier cuts her off, jerking his head toward the back of the van. When she doesn’t move, Mia is picked up and tossed inside.
“Stop it!” I shout, launching myself at his back. I’m thrown back immediately, lifted up and dropped onto the bench before the dizzying black spots can clear out of my vision.
I try to stand, but the man already has a seat belt whipped out and over my hips, securing me in place. The zip ties are traded for cuffs attached to the seat. Resentment steams under my skin, and my burns feel like they’re blistering.
Lucas, I’m sorry. If there’s a way to fix this, if it’s not too late, I will.
I won’t let them change her. Give her to adults who’ll mistreat or neglect her. I can find my old self long enough to do that one last thing.
“Where’s my brother?” Mia says, and it’s the first time she sounds like a kid to me. I think she’s hit the point where pride doesn’t matter, when desperation isn’t a weakness but a last resort. “Please don’t take him away, not again—he’s all I’ve got, he’s all that’s left—don’t take him to a place we can’t find him—”
“For Christ’s sake, kid—you are goddamn relentless!” he cuts her off. He steps back from the doors to allow the two paramedics to get to the van. A stretcher is slung between them, weighed down by Lucas’s body. I try to jump up from my seat, even with the belt and cuffs, and Mia does the same, just as another soldier secures her hands to the bench.
He’s been strapped down, and bags of clear fluid are rest
ing on his stomach, feeding the IV lines. The paramedics shoot furious looks at the soldier in command as they slide the stretcher into that tiny bit of space at our feet. Mia and I both have to lift our legs up to make room.
“Luc!” Mia says, ignoring the soldier slamming the back doors shut. In the instant before the internal lights shut off, I get a good look at him. They’ve cleaned the smudges of dirt and soot off his face, bandaged a cut on his upper arm. Aside from the slight rise and fall of his chest, he doesn’t seem to be moving at all.
When we first got out of Thurmond, I could never get through a full night of rest. It was like trying to fall asleep while floating on my back in a pool of water—every time I relaxed enough to sink into it, I’d startle myself awake again before I could drown. Every small sound was amplified and stretched by the paranoia that someone was creeping up on whatever house or hole I’d found for us to spend the night in.
Lucas never had that problem. I used to check on him while he slept. Count the measure of his breathing. Watch the way his eyes moved beneath his lids. I heard somewhere once that that only happened when people were deep asleep and dreaming…maybe it was Mr. Orfeo who told me? He was so smart, spilling over with the need to explain every mystery to us. Seeing it happen to Lucas was like some small miracle. I remember thinking, He’s still there. He’s dreaming. Something was happening beneath the blanket of his skin and bones. He never thrashed, he never cried out—they weren’t nightmares, I don’t think. I hope not.
And now he’s just…still. He breathes, but he doesn’t dream. But if there’s still a piece of him to save, I’ll find it.
We travel by darkness.
Time is broken up by the faint voices of the men talking to each other in the front seats, the scratchy van radio, and the few times we get to use the filthiest rest stops on the face of the earth. There isn’t an opportunity to talk to Mia without them listening in or tracking us with their eyes, not even when they uncuff us to give us sandwiches and water. Every word would be dissected, anyway, and I don’t want to give them any reason to discipline us or suspect we’re planning something.
Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds Collection) (A Darkest Minds Novel) Page 27