In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(30)

Cate couldn’t even look at me. “I’m sure there’s been a misunderstanding...”

“You’re right,” I said, “I misunderstood how in denial you are about who these agents are—”

“Ruby!” Vida snarled. “Shut the f—”

“I don’t know how many times they have to prove it to you, but these agents have never cared about the League you joined, the one that actually cared about the kids who are still stuck in camps—who are still dying every day from something we’re within an arm’s length of finding a cure for. We don’t need them! We don’t need to have them taint what we’re trying to do here! Wake up!”

“I am not interested in sending kids out to play soldier,” Cate said.

“You didn’t have a problem with that before,” I said bitterly.

“You were supervised by trained agents who led the tact teams—”

“Right. You mean the agents who then turned around and started picking us off one at a time? How about Rob? The one who tried to kill both me and Vida in one ‘accident.’ Do you even know that he came after us? He hunted us. He put a muzzle on me!”

Vida was frozen in place, her face ashen. The instinct to protect Cate from any insult was clearly at war with the side of her that knew the truth. Cole reached out to put a hand on my shoulder, but I sidestepped him, waiting for Cate to look at me. Waiting for an answer.

“Dolly and I will leave first thing tomorrow,” she said quietly. “The other agents only left a few hours ago. We can still catch up to them.”

It felt like she’d slapped me across the face. “Fine. Then go.”

“Good luck,” Cole added, with only a trace of mockery in his voice.

Her pale eyes flicked down over me one last time before she went out of the room, letting the door slam open and shut behind her. Vida was fast on her heels; I watched them go through the windows lining the computer room until they finally disappeared. I couldn’t stand it anymore and started after them.

Cole caught my arm and drew me back. “Let them cool off. They’re just upset, but it had to play out this way.”

“Did it?” The question escaped before I could stop it, the doubt trickling in through the cracks in my heart.

There was another loud groan of protest from the tunnel door—the sound got me on my feet, and both of us rushed out into the hallway. I was so sure that I’d see Cate charging down into the darkness, about to make good on her promise to leave, that the dirty, tired faces of the eight kids standing there hit me like a blow to the chest.

Each of them looked a little more terrified than the last. Senator Cruz brought up the rear, brushing away all of the hands that reached in to help her climb the last few steps. She glanced around, avoiding the assessing look from Dolly as she appeared to my left.

“Made it in record time!” Cole said, pounding each of them on the back in turn, earning a few smiles and even more relieved hugs. “Did you have any problems?”

“No, we were a little confused about the instructions you gave us on how to get down into the base from the pub, but once we saw the place we figured it out.” Zach, a tall, tan-skinned leader from one of the League’s Blue teams, seemed as unshakeable as ever. He dragged a hand back through his dark hair and surveyed the place.

If Zach looked relaxed now, confident, Nico had swung to the other side of the spectrum. He looked small and terrified, black hair standing up every which way, like he’d spent the last day running his hands back through it in dismay. Nico crossed his arms over his chest, cupping his elbows, breathing in deep. At least, until he saw Cate. She pushed toward him, shouldering her way through the other agents, but instead of flinging himself at her the way Vida had done, he reached up, covered his face with his hands, and began to weep.

It was the only word to describe the sounds coming from him. They rose over the excited chatter, smothered each and every question, sapped the laughter until it died down to a whisper. My guts twisted until I finally had to look away, and let gray static fill my ears instead. None of the other kids moved toward him, only Senator Cruz, who made it very clear with her expression what she thought of us for that. Her arms were around him even before Cate’s.

I turned to Dolly and asked where to find the showers and the sleep rooms, grateful for the excuse to get away from the horrible sound of Nico crying, from Cate’s disappointment, the others’ unknowing excitement for a place that had been stripped to the point of being almost uninhabitable.

From what I could see, the Ranch was split along two hallways that ran parallel to each other and were connected by double doors at either end. The lower level had the same floor plan as the upper one did: two narrow, twin halls with over a dozen closed doors lining each of them. One hall the stairwell emptied into was little more than a series of bunk rooms to sleep in, the kitchen, and a laundry room. One of the doors had been left open and I glanced inside at the four bunk beds.

The voices in the next room were muffled, but I recognized Chubs’s “What?” when it burst out of him. I crossed the last few feet to the door and gripped the door handle, wondering why they’d shut it at all.

“—she couldn’t have just told us?” Vida was ranting. “Un-f*cking-believable. If our lives were in danger, she shouldn’t have dicked around with Cole. We should have been the first people she told!”