In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(8)

“I’d be happy to discuss my ideas with you,” Senator Cruz said. “Provided we have a way out of the city?”

The room’s attention swung to me. “Yes—it’s like we thought. They don’t have enough manpower to be patrolling the streets and guarding so many miles of freeway. They’ve set up a few stretches that, at night, are just empty vehicles and floodlights.”

I walked over to the driving map of Los Angeles we’d pinned to the wall after finding it in a nearby car. I pointed out the three spots I’d seen in the soldier’s mind, proud of how steady my voice was as shadowy images started creeping in at the corner of my mind. PSFs. The red-stitched Psi symbols. Zip ties. Muzzle. Money. Guns. I couldn’t look at any of the agents. Now that I knew what they really wanted, how they were going to repay me for getting their asses out of this city, a dark little voice at the back of my mind started whispering, lie. It wanted me to leave out a few key details. Let them brush close enough to danger to get bruised.

“Here,” Cole said, passing me a pen. “Mark them for us.”

Gates muttered something under his breath and I turned toward him, crossing my arms over my chest, meeting his gaze dead-on. He looked away immediately, playing it off as he wiped his mouth and nose against his sleeve. That flicker of fear I saw in his expression was better for my confidence than the steadying hand that Cole dropped on my head as he leaned over my shoulder to study the marks I made.

“I’m sure there are more,” I said, “but these were the only ones I saw.”

Cole glanced around the room, silently calculating how many there would be per group if we only had three potential exits. Seventeen kids. Twenty-four agents, down twenty from the group that had come to liberate HQ. Five had died in the initial attack, and the rest had deserted. Eight groups of five or so. It was doable.

“It’ll have to be quick and timed exactly right,” Sen said. “It could be hundreds of miles before we reach an area the EMP didn’t affect. All on foot.”

“They had it marked on the map I saw,” I said, uncapping the pen again and sketching out the area for them. Beverly Hills to the west, Monterey Park to the east, Glendale to the north, and Compton to the south. All in all, not a huge area. At least, much smaller than I’d expected.

“We’ll assign teams tonight and head out in a few hours—three or four A.M.?”

“We need to talk our strategy through,” Gates protested. “Gather supplies.”

“No, what we need is to get the hell out of this city,” Cole said, “as quickly as possible. The others are waiting for us at the Ranch.”

I gripped his wrist, eyes flicking toward the door.

He gave me a slight nod before shifting his focus back onto the room. “Y’all need to hit the sack ASAP, because we’re rolling out in a few hours. Yeah, that’s right, Blair,” he said, turning toward one of the younger Green girls who actually gasped. “That’s what I like to hear. Excitement! We have a change of scenery coming our way.”

“You can’t make a decision like that without the rest of us having a say,” Sen interrupted. “You don’t make the call.”

“You know what?” Cole said. “I think I just did. Anyone got a problem with that?”

The room was silent. The kids shook their heads, but the agents were a gallery of grim, tight expressions. No one spoke up, though.

“What about the people in the detention camps?” Senator Cruz asked, making her way over to us to study the map for herself. “We just leave them to their own fates? I’d rather stay here and—”

“Get yourself caught and put on one of those trials?” Cole cut in. “You said you were in the middle of a big negotiation with world leaders; why would you want to table that discussion when seeing it through will help everyone? Unless you were lying about it?”

“I wasn’t lying,” she shot back, dark eyes flashing. “Those people are my friends and colleagues. We’ve risked our lives trying to right this country.”

“People will know what happened here,” Cole promised. “They won’t be left for long. I’m going to make sure of it, and you’re going to help me.”

The conversation shifted then, moving toward strategy, the right way to break the groups up and which surface-street routes to take up north.

“Everyone good?” Cole asked the clusters of kids, slowly working his way toward the door. His eyes jumped back to me as he continued, “Everyone get enough to eat?”

There was a chorus of Yeah!s. They were lying, of course. I wondered if they thought the truth would disappoint him, or if it would send him back out again. Even if you were to subtract Cole’s ability to charm a cat into giving up its fur coat, he still would have won them over, by virtue of just acting like he cared.

“I still want in on the crazy eights tournament,” he added, pointing at one of the Green boys as he passed. “I’m coming for that crown, Sean. Watch yourself.”

He snorted. “Keep trying, old man. Let’s see if you can keep up.”

Cole mimed like he’d been shot clean through the heart. “A bunch of whippersnappers! I could teach you a thing or two about winning—”

“Or what the rest of us would call cheating,” Liam called over from where he, Chubs, and Vida had posted themselves by the window, talking quietly with Nico and another Green. My eyes darted from their backs to their hands to their feet. Where is it?