Never Fade (The Darkest Minds #2)(122)

Clancy’s eyes flicked over to Vida again, and I heard a whimper.

“I’m telling you the truth!” I said. “Do you think I’d willingly let him get tangled up in this mess? He’s gone. Gone.”

He stared at me, his eyes tracing the lines of my face with faint amusement and more than a little annoyance.

The restaurant’s side glass door shattered, blown out by some force I didn’t see. Clancy’s full attention whipped from me to Vida, anger flashing in his dark eyes. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder who was breaking in—my body was way ahead of my brain. I dove for Vida’s legs, knocking her to the ground and wrestling the gun out of her hand before Clancy could do anything.

I rolled onto my back, aiming both guns at him from the floor. Vida was cursing, raging in confusion as she came up from Clancy’s fog, but my eyes were fixed on Clancy—and his were fixed on the boys who came charging in with such force that they slid across the piles of shattered glass. No! I thought. No, not here!

“He’s gone,” Clancy muttered, his voice high in a weak imitation of mine. “Gone.”

Liam’s gaze traveled from where I was on the ground to where Clancy still sat in the booth, rolling his eyes to high heaven in exasperation. Then Liam was moving, coming at him with a mask of pure, unflinching fury stretched tight over his features. I saw his decision there, read it in the way his fist was coming up for blood. So did Clancy.

“Don’t—!” I shouted. Liam jerked to a stop, every muscle in his body seizing up, as Clancy sunk deep into his mind. I watched him slump to the ground with no way of catching himself.

I scrambled onto my feet as the president’s son looked down on Liam, crossing his arms over his chest. The blood from his wound dripped down onto Liam’s leather coat. Liam’s face changed from a wince, to a grimace, to a red mess of agony, and I knew it was different than before; Clancy’s cool smile as he looked down on him was so much more terrifying than it had been at East River.

“Stop it!” I said, forcing myself between them. I pushed Clancy back, one gun tucked up under his chin. “Let him go—Clancy!”

I’m not sure why he backed off then, releasing his grip. I let my eyes tell him everything I was willing to do to him. And Clancy, he’d come to realize, just as I had, that I wouldn’t kill him to protect myself, but I would to save the people I cared about. And if he couldn’t invade my mind anymore, then he had no way of controlling me outside of them. The anger darkened his eyes as he stepped back, jaw clenched.

I forced him into the booth, making sure he heard the safety switching off. My hands shook, not with fear but from the sudden spike in my pulse. The power I felt watching him shrink back, without even a word between us, was intoxicating. I would do it—if he tried to compel any of my friends again, I’d kill him, and the last thing he’d see was the smile on my face. We needed to get out of there. While we still had the flash drive and the upper hand.

I saw the thought flash behind Clancy’s eyes, the way his whole body seemed to relax as he figured out the exact right thing to say to keep himself alive. “If you shoot me now, you’ll never know what’ll happen to your friends back in California. Not before they die, too.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

IT WAS JUDE WHO FOUND HIS VOICE FIRST, weak as it was. I watched his hand fly up, pressing the compass against his chest. “What are you talking about?”

I drew the barrel of the gun closer to Clancy’s face. “Answer him.”

In that moment it became just as clear to me as it was to Clancy that he had never been in a situation like this before—one he couldn’t wriggle out of, let alone control. Reluctance and frustration burned an ugly expression on his face. “I have a source in the League who says that they’re going forward with their plans to blow those kids to hell. You kill me, and you have no idea about when or how it happens.”

I shook my head, but inwardly, my stomach clenched. “Who’s the source? You could have pulled those plans off a computer network for all we know.”

The smirk on his face was enough to make me want to pull the trigger. He drew the name out, twisting the vowels. “Our mutual acquaintance. Nico.”

“No!” Jude cried. “No! Roo, he’s lying—”

“Nico and I go way back,” Clancy interrupted, glancing over to where Liam was struggling back onto his feet, coughing.

“Do you ever tell the truth?” I asked. “You would never have had access to Nico. He was in Leda’s testing program until the League got him out, and he hasn’t left HQ since.”

Clancy looked at me like he couldn’t quite believe I hadn’t put it all together by now. “Ruby. Think. Where was he before that? Or do you all honestly not know?”

“I know I’m going to shred the skin off your face and turn it into hair ribbons,” Vida snarled from the floor, still visibly struggling to get her legs under her. She sneered at him, pulling her fury around her like armor.

“That’s the spirit,” Chubs murmured, waiting for her to finally accept his help up—which, of course, she did not.

“What?” Jude was saying, coming up behind me. “What’s he talking about?”

I felt sick—faint enough that I almost sat down again. “Nico was in Thurmond? While you were there?”