In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(133)

“No!”

I had the keys. I barely heard the lock as it clanged into place.

“No, no, no,” he moaned, “Ruby, you know what they’ll do. They’ll take you back to that place, they’ll kill you—they’ll kill you.”

Dr. Gray had moved over to her son’s side, dropping to her knees to apply pressure to his wounds. At that, she looked over, startled.

“I won’t let them hurt me,” I said, knowing what a hollow promise it was. But in that moment, I felt so sure of this plan, wanted so badly to make sure that it wasn’t derailed in the aftermath of all this, that I felt confident I could, maybe, influence enough of the PSFs to keep my life.

I want to live.

“It was supposed to be me. It should be me!”

“Tell the others March first,” I said, pressing my palm against the glass and letting the keys fall to the floor. “March first. Harry knows the plan.”

“Ruby,” he sobbed, “don’t do this.”

I leaned my forehead against the cool glass and said quietly, “I can see it now—the road Jude talked about. It’s so beautiful. The rain’s gone and the clouds are moving out.”

I want to live.

I shouldered Dr. Gray aside and reached to take Clancy under the arms, refusing to sag under his dead weight. I dragged him through the doorway, into the short hall.

“What are you doing?” The woman trailed after me, her hands, shirt, face all stained with her son’s blood. “Where are you taking him?”

“Shut the door!” I said sharply.

Nico was still pressed up against the glass, slamming his palms against it, when Dr. Gray shut the door on that last image. I looked down at Clancy’s dark head as I moved, listening to his half-conscious mutterings. The coppery stench of blood filled my nose. I looked down at my hands and thought, even now, he’s staining me.

They cut the power just as I pulled Clancy through the last door. He slid free of my hands, thumping bonelessly against the tile. I glanced back, making sure Dr. Gray had shut the last door, securing Nico safely inside. I slid the flash drive into my boot and lay down flat on my stomach, stretched out over the cold tile. I was proud of the fact that my hands didn’t shake as I put them behind my head.

Breathe.

I went to that place deep inside, the one Zu had asked me about. I retreated as far as I could as the first beam of light slashed through the hallway’s darkness. Fear couldn’t touch me there, not even as I was hauled up by my hair and shoulder, a device flashing in my face. The dark spots in my vision blotted out the soldier’s face, and I couldn’t hear anything over my own steady heartbeat. When the grip on me tightened and something cold and metal pressed against the base of my skull, I knew they’d identified me.

Clancy was hidden by a circle of men in dark fatigues as Dr. Gray was dragged off to the side, clawing at the soldier who separated her from her son. One of them, a medic, stepped away long enough for me to see them lower a white plastic muzzle down over his face.

Radios buzzed, a swarm of voices flying over my head, and I heard none of it. Both of my hands were secured, the zip ties unbearable as the soldier holding me yanked them tight and flipped me over onto my back. Something jabbed into the side of my neck and I felt the pressure of the injection being forced into my bloodstream.

They are going to kill me. I wasn’t even going to make it out of the building, never mind the state, if this didn’t work. I should have practiced. I should have found a way to try it on a group when my life didn’t rely on someone’s trigger finger.

The drug they’d given me turned my limbs to powder. I felt light enough to be blown away, but it couldn’t touch my mind, not yet. I fought against the drag of my eyelids, the weight that settled over them. I had one...I had one more thing to do...

I’d spent months carefully winding my gift into a tight spool, only letting it out by inches, and only when I needed it. The strain of keeping it bound up had been a steady, constant reminder that I had to work to keep the life I’d built for myself out here. It was a muscle I’d carefully toned to withstand nearly any pressure.

Letting it all go felt like shaking a bottle of soda and ripping off the cap. It fizzed and flooded and swept out of me, searching for the connections waiting to be made. I didn’t guide it, and I didn’t stop it—I don’t know if I could have if I tried. I was the burning center of a galaxy of faces, memories, loves, heartbreaks, disappointments, and dreams. It was like living dozens of different lives. I was lifted and shattered by it, how strangely beautiful it was to feel their minds linked with my own.

The spinning inside my head slowed with the movement around me. I felt time hovering nearby, waiting to resume its usual tempo. The darkness slid into the edges of my vision, seeping through my mind like a drop of ink in water. But I was in control of the moment, and there was one last thing that I needed to say to them, one last idea to imprint in their minds.

“I’m Green.”

I woke to cold water and a woman’s soft voice.

The smell of bleach.

The aftertaste of vomit.

Dry throat.

Cracked, tight lips.

The metallic banging and clattering of an old radiator in the instant before it let out a warm breath of air.

“—need to run the test while subject is conscious—”