In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(134)

Wake up, I commanded myself, wake up, Ruby, wake up—

“Good. There cannot be any confusion on this, do you understand?”

I dragged myself up and out of a haze of pain and grogginess. My eyes were crusted with sleep. I tried lifting a hand up to wipe it away, to ease the tingling at the tips of my fingers. The Velcro restraint jerked but held firm, cutting into my bare wrists with a vicious bite as I tried to rise up off the freezing metal examination table.

The cold water hadn’t been water at all, but sweat. It dripped down into the white plastic muzzle trapping each labored, heated breath. The black spots floating in my vision cleared, adjusting to the room’s harsh artificial light. The pieces began to make sense. The poster on the wall, the one with the color chart outlining each of the abilities, Red to Green—Psi Classification System, my lips formed the words on top.

High up in the corner of the room, a lidless camera eye was blinking like a heartbeat.

Calm down, Ruby. The rational part of my brain was still firing, at least. Calm down. You’re alive. Calm down....

It was sheer will and nothing else that finally brought my pulse back down. I breathed in my through my nose, out between my teeth. This was Thurmond—the Infirmary. I recognized the lemon-scented terror of it and the sounds of kids crying nearby, the rattling of carts, heavy booted footsteps, and still some part of it felt unreal to me, even as the last moments at the Ranch slammed back into me. The flash drive—my boots were still on, they hadn’t taken them, thank God. I tried twisting my foot around the restraints, but I couldn’t feel it against my ankle bone. I flexed and then pointed my toes, nearly crying in relief when I felt the sharp plastic corners under my heel. It must have slipped down.

You came here for a reason, I reminded myself. The others need you to finish this. You have to finish this.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the images that poured in from the darkest corner of my imagination. They wouldn’t have brought you here if they were just going to kill you. I saw the image of Ashley’s pale, gray face. The way her stiff hand had fallen onto the ground, dangling into the ditch they would lower her into. Maybe this was about having an official record of where my body was buried.

And suddenly, it didn’t matter what I was and what I had been through. I was ten years old all over again, waiting in terrible silence for someone to wake me back up from the nightmare I’d let myself get caught in. Help me, I thought, someone help me—

Gem.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the familiar voice whispering in my ear, choked again, this time by grief. Don’t let me screw it up, please, help me, I thought. I was alone here, I knew I would be, and somehow I had misjudged how terrifying it would be. I reached for the image of Cole’s face and held it at the forefront of my mind. He wouldn’t be afraid. He wouldn’t leave me.

You have to walk out of here. I felt the words settle in my mind. Not just for them, but for yourself. You have to walk out of here on your own two feet.

The door cracked open, and the sounds from the rest of the building came flooding in. An old man’s face appeared there, gray hair ringing his head like a cluster of old dust. His eyes narrowed behind his glasses, but I didn’t recognize him, not until he stepped inside and I sucked in a lungful of his terrible scent—alcohol and lemon soap. Dr. Freemont, still haunting the halls of this place.

The man let out a noise of surprise. “She’s awake.”

Another face appeared directly behind his, a woman in gray scrubs, who was quickly pushed aside to allow two PSFs in the room. Their black uniforms were pristine, from their polished boots to the stitched red Ѱ on their chests. I saw their faces and it was like living inside of a memory. The moment took on an unreal quality.

Focus.

One last person entered the room. He was middle-aged, with sandy hair that turned silver under the lights. His uniform was different than that of the soldiers, a black button-down with matching slacks. I knew this uniform, but I’d only seen it once up close. Camp controller. One of the men and women who worked in the Control Tower, monitoring the cameras, keeping the day’s schedule.

“Ah, there you are,” Dr. Freemont began. “I was just about to begin the test.”

The man—his shirt was embroidered with the name O’Ryan—stepped up, sweeping a hand forward, a clear go ahead.

I set my jaw, fingers curling into fists. I knew better than to ask what was happening, but I read the situation quickly enough to put together a guess. The old man pulled a small, handheld White Noise machine out of his pocket and adjusted a dial on it.

All the times I’d envisioned this plan playing out, I had seen myself influencing the camp controllers and PSFs one at a time, planting the suggestion that I was really a Green, working my way through each of them as our paths crossed. But I saw now, as the doctor’s finger pressed down on the device’s largest button, that I didn’t have to influence dozens—just four.

“This is Green,” Dr. Freemont said.

The sound that came out of the device was softer than I expected, as if I was hearing it from several floors above me. The shrill pitch and blended mess of beeping and buzzing made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and my stomach tighten, but it was nothing compared to the White Noise they used over the camp’s loudspeakers.

They’re seeing what frequency I can hear, I thought, shit—