In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(84)

Too late.

This was Thurmond. This was real. We weren’t going fast enough. I hadn’t been able to get to them in time. A swell of bile rose up in me, and I ripped myself out of Cole’s grip, collapsing onto my knees. I barely got my face into the trash can before I could throw up everything in my stomach.

When I came back to the moment, Cole was holding my hair back with one hand, rubbing a circle across my shoulder blades with the other. I braced my arms against the plastic container and gave in to the sting of tears.

“Did the source say what happened?” I used the tissue he handed me to wipe my mouth. I felt lightheaded, like I was slipping out of the moment, and fought against the pull.

“They issued a statement saying one of the PSFs stationed there snuck a cell phone into the camp and snapped the photos. Ruby...I think—I don’t want to believe this, but it seems like too much of a coincidence that this happened and they’re closing the camp. There are over three thousand kids there and the other camps are small and crowded. Is it possible they’re trying to reduce the population of kids before the move?”

“They’ve killed kids before,” I said. “The ones who tried to escape...the Oranges. Reds who wouldn’t let themselves be controlled. If this has happened once, it’ll happen again. They’re going to keep doing this. We’re sitting around, waiting to get one useful piece of information, and they’re dying. This can’t just be about evidence. Not for Thurmond. We need to get those kids out now.”

I saw the future with sharp clarity and it wasn’t a road, it wasn’t a sky, it wasn’t anything that beautiful. It was electricity singing through metal chain-link and bars. It was mud and rain and a thousand days bleeding into a stream of black.

Cole must have sensed it, seen it reflected in my face, because he leaned back and finally let me go.

“We’re going to need actual fighters for the Thurmond hit,” I said. “Trained soldiers to go in first.”

“Agreed,” Cole said, looking away. “Harry...Harry offered to help us fight. I wasn’t going to say yes. I hate the idea of owing him anything, but we don’t have any time to waste now. Nico is right. The only way to shut down the camp’s defenses is by attacking them from within. I’ll see if I can try to bribe one of the PSFs—someone has to know someone there—”

“No,” I said, my voice calm. “It has to be me. I have to be the one who goes back. A PSF can flip, take a bribe, tip the camp controllers off to what we’re doing. If it has to be done, I’m going to do it myself.”

“The others will never agree to it,” Cole said quietly, but he didn’t disagree. He didn’t want to stop me.

“I know,” I said, “that’s why we aren’t going to tell them until we have to.”

Over the next week, the face of the Ranch seemed to change.

Kylie and the other driver who had gone out looking for tribes returned victorious, even as Liam set out to find Olivia twice and came back empty-handed both times. If he was frustrated by the wasted time and gas, he didn’t show it—a part of me wondered if he used the time to get away from all of this for a few hours, taking Lovely Rita in the direction of the rising sun and returning in time for the sun to set.

The new recruits were willing enough; the group of five Blues that had come back—Isabelle, Maria, Adam, Colin, and Gav—had all served on East River’s watch and, in theory, knew how to use weapons. The issue was, after months spent in the wilds of Utah looking like they’d survived a meteor apocalypse, they only took orders from Gav—who didn’t particularly enjoy taking orders from anyone, least of all an “adult shithead” like Cole. He complained about the cramped sleeping conditions, the plain, basic food we ate, the smell of the shampoo—like he was some kind of connoisseur of floral notes in fragrance. Gav was stocky, had a ruddy complexion, and seemed mean enough to want to fight, but only if we begged him.

The Saga of Gav the Asshole ended when Cole hauled him up by the arm from dinner, dragged him into the shooting range, and locked the door behind them. Five minutes and a muffled gunshot later, Gav came out a team player, and Cole looking far less like he wanted to set the kid’s hair on fire.

The other tribe was a group of Greens, who spent days circling the various computers that the resident Greens now seemed chained to night and day, if only to keep the new hands from tampering with their settings. Only one of the girls, Mila, offered to join the tactical team, but I had to work with her each morning to get her to understand what each hand signal meant so she’d be able to follow my commands.

The third group that arrived, two days after Mila’s, found us. And we knew them.

Nico had spotted the three teens looking around Smiley’s, clearly drawn to the crescent moon that we’d painted on the now-defunct bar’s door. Kylie and Liam had all but run for the tunnel door to greet them. It wasn’t until I saw their interaction on the computer screen, the way Liam pounded the back of one of the guys with shaggy dark hair and tan skin, that I recognized him.

“Friends of yours?” Cole asked, coming out of the office as the five them came up through the tunnel laughing, practically talking over each other to get answers.

“You remember Mike,” Liam said, gesturing to the kid in the Cubs baseball hat. He was thinner than I remembered—a good ten pounds lighter from stress and the strain of the road, likely—but I knew him by the wary look he cast in my direction. The kid gave me a stiff nod, then turned to accept a bear hug from Lucy.