In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(110)

I heard Harry in the background saying, “It’s okay, please lie back—”

Cole braced his hands against the desk. “Conner, what’s going on?”

“We overheard some of the...the guards posted there, they were taunting us, they said that Kansas HQ’s going to be attacked. None of the agents—none of us can get a hold of anyone there. Can you warn them? Can you give them the message—?”

“We’ll take care of it,” Cole promised her. Nico had already moved back to his computer station, his hands flying across the keyboard. “You sit tight, Harry’s going to bring you guys back up here.”

“The agents want to go to Kansas,” she said, her voice strained.

“Well, they might not have a choice,” Cole said, not unkindly. “Hey, Conner, it’s great to hear your voice.”

“You too. You taking care of my kids?”

Cole gave me a small smile. “They’ve been taking care of me.”

“Ruby?”

“I’m here.” The words came out of me in a rush. “Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay—”

“I’m okay. I’ll see you soon, under—understand? I’m sorry—the—connect—out—”

Dial tone.

I stared at the device, letting Cole reach over and turn it off. I didn’t have the strength to fight off the numb dejection that bled through me. I needed more than that. She had to know—she had to know how sorry I was.

“They’re driving through the middle of nowhere,” he told me. “Bad reception. Harry will call again when they get closer.”

I nodded. “Do you think it’s true? They’re going to attack Kansas HQ?”

“Their servers are offline,” Nico said. “I just tried to ping them and...nothing.”

“I’m going to try to make telephone contact with some of the agents who are still out in the field, see if they know.” Cole tucked my hair behind my ear, ran a knuckle down around my cheek. “This is a solid win. Cate’s okay. We have an actual fighting force coming. Two weeks and we’ll be on the other side of this. Focus on that for now. Don’t let this Kansas thing trip you up. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter either way.”

“Of course it matters,” I said. “So many people have already died—”

“I get it,” he said, “I didn’t mean it like that, only that the League is done either way. Claiming the hit as their own was a desperate, last gasp for relevancy. Focus on the future. The cure, now that we have Dr. Gray back in working order. Thurmond—” He tapped his fingers on the printout. “Harry went to all that trouble to track this down for us. Let’s put it to good use.”

He stood, taking the printout with him to tack up on the wall. I stayed where I was until he left, presumably to make good on his promise to investigate Cate’s claims, and then rose, moving toward the satellite images of Thurmond’s grounds, as if in a dream. My eyes traced the rings of cabins—lopsided, uneven rings, apparently. Seeing it from above, like a free bird passing overhead, smoothed out the sick feeling that had started to squirm around in my stomach.

“It’s much bigger now,” Nico said. I nodded, accepting the permanent markers he handed me.

He stepped back to lean against the desk and watch. The longer I worked, the more attention I seemed to attract, until I knew I had a full-fledged audience without ever needing to turn around. I labeled each of the larger structures—FACTORY and PSF BARRACKS on the two rectangular-shaped buildings to the left of the rings of cabins, GARDEN on the square of green at the northernmost point of the camp, and MESS HALL, INFIRMARY, and GATE on the right. Then I moved on to the cabins, and marked the circular CONTROL TOWER. Each ring of small cabins was outlined with either the green or blue marker to indicate its inhabitants.

I felt the focus of someone’s gaze between my shoulder blades like sunlight coming through a lens, burning until I couldn’t ignore the small waves of self-consciousness that began to rise. It was irrational, but it felt like I was revealing something shameful, something I had to be embarrassed about. My mood had slid so quickly from eager excitement to horror and pity that I felt myself start to prickle in self-defense.

“Are there only Greens and Blues there?” I turned around at Senator Cruz’s question. She stood in the doorway, her arm looped through Dr. Gray’s, who seemed to be trying to come closer. Nico took one look at her, froze, and then fled to the back of the room, almost tripping as he sat back down.

“There were Yellow, Orange, and Red children,” I answered, looking back at the women, “but they were moved out of the camp about five and a half years ago. The Reds were taken into a training program, Project Jamboree. The Yellows were moved to another camp in Indiana that specializes in non-electrical containment.”

“What about the Orange kids?” Dr. Gray asked.

My hand stilled, as did the air around me.

“We have no confirmed reports of their whereabouts,” I said.

“Where is this?” Dr. Gray’s words were still slightly halting, as if she half-expected them to start failing her again at any moment. She took a step closer, taking in the patches of wild grass and snow. If anyone looked hard enough, they would have been able to see the little dots of blue uniforms working in the Garden.