In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(129)

“You can’t,” Chubs told me gently. “You have a responsibility here.”

So? I wanted to shout. I felt like tearing at my hair, my shirt—but I couldn’t, I couldn’t do any of those goddamn things because Cole had wrested that stupid promise out of me. Take care of things, Boss. Take care of things. Cate and Harry wouldn’t be here for another two days. I needed to...I had to tell everyone.

He trusted you with this. He thought you could do it. You have to do this.

I had to. If Cole wasn’t here, if Liam wasn’t coming back, then I was in charge, and I had to tell the others. I had to stay here and keep it together.

“Give me a minute,” I said. I only needed one. I walked briskly toward Cate’s old quarters and shut the door behind me. I found the edge of the small bed in the darkness, the same one Liam and I had slept in the night before, and sat down hard. My hands reached along the coarse sheets until they found the soft fabric of the hooded sweater he’d left behind. I buried my face in the fabric, dragging in the scent of him, until finally I released it all in a silent, throat-burning scream.

Why did you have to go in? How am I supposed to do this? Why hadn’t I pushed back harder, knowing where the information had come from?

And there was no answer, just the terrible silence, just the darkness pressing in.

Clancy.

He’d known this would happen—had banked on it. He’d shown Cole the camp, planted the images of it in his mind knowing that Cole was the kind of person who wouldn’t be able to let it go, seeing others like him treated so damn badly. He would obsess over it, stop thinking about the odds of an actual rescue. After all, how many times had he beaten the odds?

He never had a chance.

The words blistered over my mind. I swayed with the force of the hot, singeing rush that ran from my temples to the base of my neck. My vision flashed, splitting the door in front of me into two, then four. I saw, rather than felt, my hand rise up and reach for the handle. The closer I got, the further back I seemed to be; someone dragged me back and back and back...

It was the last thing I remembered before the blurring dark turned to a gray static, washing over me, hooks and needles running through my veins.

When I surfaced again, there was a cold gun in my hand, and it was pointed at Lillian Gray’s head.

22

“—DOING? STOP IT, STOP—”

“—Ruby, wake up!”

“You can’t do this—stop—Ruby—STOP!”

I was floating underwater, deep enough where there was nothing but sweet, cool darkness. I didn’t need to move, I couldn’t speak—there was a gentle current, and it was taking me where I needed to go. It was urging me forward and I went willingly, giving myself over to the feeling. This was better than the pain.

“—look at me! Look at me! Ruby!”

The voices were distorted by the waves, stretched into a long, continuous drone. The words filled the spaces between heartbeats, the steady ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum in my ears. I didn’t want them to find me here.

Gem. Hey, Gem.

I turned, looking for the source of the words, forcing my stiff muscles to move.

Take care of things, Boss.

There was no one there. The black currents around me were swirling harder against my freezing skin. There was nothing there.

Gem. Ruby.

The air burned where it was trapped in my lungs. Where are you?

Roo, are you okay?

I thrashed against the water, stretching my arms up and up again to drag myself to the surface. Up—there was a light, a pinprick of it, growing larger, waiting—

Come on, darlin’, come on...

I pulled, dragged, clawed my way up—

“She’s going to—”

“—do something! Stop her!”

“Ruby!”

I slammed back into my own mind. The thick, murky water drained around me as reality took shape. The static, dry smell of the computer lab. The glow of monitors reflecting against the nearby white wall. Nico’s face, bloodless, hands up in front of him. My eyes shifted from the cold, heavy gun in my hand to the pale-haired woman on the floor, her arms up over her head protectively.

I jerked, looking at Nico again as the gun came down a fraction of an inch. My arm was on fire, aching like it had held the weight for hours. Comprehension dawned in his eyes, and I saw his stance relax, only to tense again as he shouted, “Vi, no!”

One minute I was vertical, the next I was on the ground, pain consuming every confused, disoriented thought. I’d been laid out flat by a hit between the shoulder blades, and what breath I had left flew out of my lungs as Vida kept me pinned to the ground.

“Wait!” Zu said. “Ruby...?”

“What...” My mouth felt like it was full of sand.

“Ruby?” Chubs’s face floated above me. “Vi, get off her—”

“She was going to shoot her—I thought she—she was going to shoot—”

“What is going on?” Senator Cruz cried, somewhere above us.

“I don’t...” I started to say, the pain splitting my head in two. I felt turned around and upside down, flipped inside out. “How did I get here?”

“You don’t remember?” Dr. Gray asked, sounding the calmest of anyone in the room. “You left and came back in—you shoved me to the ground. You didn’t say a word.”