In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(81)

I had to lean against the desk to stay vertical. “Nico—no.”

“It’s already installed—right there,” he said, ignoring me and pointing to one of two shiny silver screws that looked like they were holding the frames together. “This is the camera, and this is just a screw the frames don’t need. We had to make them seem as real as possible. Tommy said they’re fine, so he’ll get this pair. For Thurmond, maybe I could take one of the thicker frames—break up one of the arms that hooks behind the ear and replace a piece of it with a small flash drive? It’s either that or embedding it under my skin, but they still do strip searches, don’t they? The cut would be too obvious.”

“Nico!” I interrupted. “Listen to me! No. There’s no way in hell you’re going back in there! Even if they brought you back into the camp, how would you get yourself into the Control Tower to upload it? You haven’t been there since the camp changed. They don’t just let you walk around unsupervised. Every move you make in there is choreographed down to the minute. And it’s the most fortified building in the camp.”

He paused, trying to think this through. “I’d need to observe the schedules of the PSFs, figure out a moment I could slip away. It doesn’t matter if they catch me in the end, not really. It would be okay...I would get to...there’s not anyone left for me now that Cate’s gone. And this is how I could make it right.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “This is how I could make it right for Jude.”

I stood straight up at that, whirling around to face him fully. “Throwing yourself into danger...throwing your life away...what would Jude say about that? What would Cate say? I haven’t been a good friend to you these past few weeks, but Nico, I swear to God—please, I forgive you, I do, I understand what happened and I’m sorry I treated you the way I did. I’ve been up in my own head too much, and it was hard for me to see things clearly. But please listen to me—”

“It’s okay.” Nico’s voice was hoarse.

“It’s not!” It wasn’t. It wasn’t even remotely all right how I’d been acting—blaming him for everything, hating him because I couldn’t function if all of my energy went into hating myself. I tried to think of what Jude would say and do in this situation. Or even Cate, all those times she’d had to talk the kid out of a manic fit about some conspiracy.

“We can’t change what happened in Los Angeles. I was angry—I was so damn angry that he just...slipped away, and I couldn’t save him. I should have talked to you, should have helped you, or at least tried to understand what you’d done. I let everyone down, but it was easier to blame you. It hurt less. But the truth is, I knew what Clancy was capable of. I should have tried to confirm some other way that what he said was true. And you know what? Jude would have wanted to go anyway, even if I said no.”

“He was my best friend,” Nico choked out.

“I know. But...it’s different with Clancy, isn’t it?” I said quietly. “Rules don’t apply when you love someone. And that’s how it was with Clancy, right? It’s not like how you loved Jude, or the way I love Chubs.”

I’d known it the moment I saw his face in Clancy’s memory. The tortured expression and the ragged sobs were only part of it. It was the way Nico had held the other boy, how he’d fed him and cleaned him with every ounce of tenderness he had in him. You see it in others, I thought, when you recognize it in yourself.

“You trusted him, and he took your words and twisted them for his own ends,” I said. “I was so angry with you for believing him, for giving him everything you did. But I know firsthand that people are capable of doing things for the people they love that they never would have considered before.”

Nico buried his face in his hands, letting out a shuddering breath.

“I didn’t mean to ruin everything,” he whispered. “I trusted him. All the intel I gave him, he swore he was using to help us and I thought...”

“You thought that he would help keep us away and safe, didn’t you?” I finished for him. “I know. It sounds to me like maybe you fell into my pattern for a while there.”

“I don’t know why—I knew it was wrong, that it was bad, but he was good. When I knew him, he was good and he helped me. And I just extrapolated it would apply to everyone else. The only reason you were there was because I forecast the results incorrectly. I didn’t factor all of his behavioral outliers in.” His voice became so small, I had to lean in that much closer to hear him. “He wasn’t always the way he is now. They broke something in him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For not letting you explain. For acting the way I did and not being there for you.”

“I have to fix this,” he said, voice ragged, “I have to make things right. I can’t—I can’t stop thinking about all of the other outcomes we could have had. Vida said if you hadn’t been there we wouldn’t have had the cure, but we don’t have it, do we? It was for nothing.”

It was a punch to the gut. I felt tears spring to my eyes and fought to hold them back. The pain in him was unending. His life was tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy. And I’d ignored him, punished him. Vida hadn’t made any real attempt. Cate had left altogether. He didn’t have anyone to help him through this. We’d stranded him out in a dark sea without so much as a life vest.