In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(138)

They were all staring at me, and the hope in their eyes was unbearable. What would the truth do to them? I don’t know if it was kindness or cowardice that made me say, “I don’t know.”

“What was it like?” one of them asked. “Outside?”

A faint laugh escaped my lips as I looked up. “Strange and so...loud. Terrifying, violent...but open, wide open and beautiful.” I looked up into each of their faces, starving, desperate for something outside of the fence. “Almost ready.”

“For what?” Ellie asked.

“For us.”

After we ate the bread and tasteless soup they served in the Mess Hall for dinner, we made our way back to the cabin again, a Red shadowing our every step, arms swinging at his side. They’d shaved his hair down to dark fuzz beneath his uniform cap, let his tan skin go sallow. There was nothing in his eyes, not a trace of emotion in his face. During dinner, I’d had to look away to keep my heart steady and caught Sam doing the same. He’d stopped behind her at one point. She’d dropped her spoon into her bowl and stopped pretending she wanted to eat. But afterwards, I saw her look at his back, eyes devouring his shape...and I wondered.

Up until that moment, I had managed to clear my thoughts of what was happening to the others. What they were doing. If they were safe. Whether or not they were actually coming. I couldn’t let it distract me from what needed to happen here. Just thinking of Liam out there alone, trying to find his parents to tell them what had happened...

As we walked, I shifted my thoughts to sweet, small memories instead. Laughter at dinner. Firelight on Zu’s smiling face. Jude falling over himself and Nico when one of their handmade toy cars worked. The way Pat and Tommy had worshipped the ground Vida walked on. Seeing Chubs in North Carolina for the first time in months, and knowing he was alive. Cole’s easy smile as he reached over and smoothed down my hair. Liam. Liam in the driver’s seat, singing along. Liam kissing me in the dark.

I am going to walk out of here.

I am going to live.

Sam was tracking me now out of the corner of her eye; the skin tightened around her lips, pulling their corners down. There was still a hooked scar, a faint pink line curving to connect the chapped upper lip to her nose; but that, like the rest of her, had faded. And when I turned to meet her gaze, she only looked away.

I knew Sam, though. A year apart, three years since I’d blanked out every memory she had of me, and I still could read her face like it was my old, favorite book. She got braver as time went on, less uncertain about my presence. The thoughts were working behind her light-colored eyes, and she watched me from the moment the morning alarm went off at 5:00 A.M., through the entire ten minutes we were allotted to eat oatmeal in the Mess Hall, and then next to me, as we made our way through the damp, freezing morning air to begin the day’s work.

I’d noticed her slight limp the night before as we moved to and from the Mess Hall, but her right leg was clearly stiffer that morning, and the movement was more pronounced.

“What happened?” I whispered, watching her catch herself on the edge of her bunk. The moment she slid over the side of her bed and down to the ground, her ankle collapsed under her. I leaned over to help her make up her bed, since no one had bothered to give me sheets to use on mine, and tried to see what had caused it.

In their typical casual cruelty, the PSF in the Infirmary had given me a summer uniform set, shorts and a shirt, but the others wore their winter ones—long-sleeved shirts and pants. The loose fabric hid whatever was it was that was bothering her.

“Snake bite,” Vanessa answered as Sam pushed past me to line up. “Don’t ask. She won’t talk about it.”

The Garden was all the way at the far end of the camp, opposite the entry gate. The electrified fence sang to you when you got this close to it; when I was younger, I used to imagine that the hum came from families of bugs that lived in the trees surrounding us. I don’t know why that made it feel more bearable.

Our Red escort was the same boy we’d had the night before: hair shaved, eyes dark and almond-shaped. Beside me Sam cringed, her hands balled up tight at her sides, and limped along.

They took the life out of them, I thought, stepping through the low white fence and taking the small plastic shovel that was handed to me. I knew so little about how they had been—what had Clancy called it? Reprogrammed? Reconditioned? Mason had been shattered by what they’d done to his mind. Maybe they’d made a mistake with him, or he hadn’t been strong enough to take what they’d dealt him.

How many Reds were involved in Project Jamboree? Was it possible that—no. Stop it, I ordered myself, think about anything else but that.

A PSF was passing out heavy work coats, which they allowed us to have while we were out here. He looked down at the number across my chest and skipped me completely. The ten-year-old me would have accepted the punishment, mind fixed on the cruel smile the soldier offered in exchange instead. But I didn’t have to accept anything now. His mind was like glass, and all I had to do was pass through it like a ray of light. I shuffled back, taking the coat from him.

I followed my line down to the mounds of earth they’d turned up yesterday and knelt down. The dirt gave way under the softest touch, packing beneath my nails as I used the shovel to ease the buried potatoes up from the ground. I brushed the dark dirt away.

The shade of burnt skin.