Never Fade (The Darkest Minds #2)(28)

“He’s not sixteen yet!” I said. “He isn’t ready—you know that; we all do! Are you trying to turn him into the next Blake Howard?”

I might as well have socked her in the face. Cate reared back, a look of horror filtering through her usual mask of calm. “I fought to get him off this, Ruby. I assigned Vida to go with you, but someone convinced Alban that Jude should be activated early. They need a Yellow for the security system, and Alban said it didn’t make sense to bring in two different teams on a simple Op.”

We were attracting a few stray glances. Cate took my arm and steered me over to an empty table, forcing me to sit down.

“You have to try harder,” I insisted.

Our little Sunshine didn’t perform well in high-pressure situations, and he had the tendency to wander off to explore shiny things when he needed to be conducting surveillance. The only thing he knew about using a firearm was that the end with the hole needed to be pointed away from his face.

“He’ll be fifteen in a few weeks.” Cate kept one hand on mine. “I’m sure—I’m sure it’ll be fine. This is a good, straightforward Op to let him dip his toes in the water.”

“I could do it by myself. If this involves sabotaging some kind of electrical equipment, I can—”

“My hands are tied, Ruby. I can’t keep pushing back against Alban, or he’ll start seeing me as a problem. And—” She took a deep breath, absently smoothing first her hair, then her skirt. Her voice sounded stronger when she spoke again, but she wasn’t looking at me now. “The only comfort I have in all of this is knowing that he’ll be with you and that you’ll look after him. Can you do that?”

Her skin was hollow beneath her high cheekbones, like she had just recovered from a long illness. I leaned forward, noticing now the way her makeup had collected in the new, fine lines around her eyes—how dark the circles were that rimmed her eyes. She was only twenty-eight and was already starting to look older than my mother had when I left her.

Sometimes it felt like this was where I found the real Cate—in the pauses. I wouldn’t describe our relationship as “good,” because it was built on a lie, and a pretty cruel one at that. She could say one thing and mean something else entirely. But right then, surrendered to the quiet, her face told me everything. I saw the struggle in the lines of her face and knew whatever words came next were more for the agents around us than they were for me.

“I have to go up north,” she said in an even voice, “for an assignment.”

“Up north,” meaning the surface streets of Los Angeles. Meaning it probably had something to do with the Federal Coalition. Cate was a senior agent now. She’d earned her wings. If they were sending her up there, it was to do something important for Alban.

“So you won’t be coming with us?” I asked.

Cate glanced behind me and waved at whomever she saw standing there. I felt something cold drip down the back of my neck, though my hair was nearly dry.

“There you are,” Cate said. “I was just about to tell Ruby that she’ll be in good hands on the Op. You’ll keep a careful eye on my girl, won’t you?”

Rob had never, not since the first day I met him, willingly touched me. He, like the others, knew better. Still, I watched his hands where they hung at his sides, dark hair curling on the backs of his knuckles. My throat tightened.

“Don’t I always?” Rob said with a faint chuckle.

Cate stood, her moon-pale face glowing in the artificial light. “See you later, gator.”

It was her stupid, childish send-off, the same one she always gave us when she left. The others wouldn’t have hesitated to finish her little rhyme; Jude had thought up the little good-bye as a play off her call sign. Now, I could barely choke the words out.

“In an hour, sunflower.”

As soon as they walked away, I saw Cole sitting at the other end of the room, an open book on the table in front of him. By the dark look on his face, it was more than clear he’d heard the entire conversation.

You said you would protect him. Was there really no one in the entire League I could trust? These people couldn’t be counted on for anything. All of their promises bled into lies.

Cole shook his head, turning his palms face up on the table. It was a weak, silent apology, but at least he understood. Shifting this one single piece on the board was enough to change the whole game.

SIX

THEY SMUGGLED JUDE AND ME into Boston in broad daylight, riding in the jump seats of a fat-bellied cargo plane. It was an older model than the one we’d used to fly back from Philadelphia, and its smell lent some possibility to Jude’s theory it had once been used to move dead meat.

I watched the enormous crates in front of us, trying to ignore the way they creaked under the strain of the straps holding them in place. All of them were marked with Leda Corporation’s elegant golden swan, which felt like some kind of horrible wink from the universe. The rational part of me knew it didn’t mean anything—that it wasn’t some bad omen. We flew on Leda Corp’s planes all the time. They’d realized the benefit of playing nice with both Gray and the Federal Coalition, which meant they had special “privileges” to travel to and from California to move their product. As uncooperative as always, Gray had the brilliant idea to try to starve the Federal Coalition out of California by forbidding imports into the state and exports out of it—unfortunately for the rest of the country, California was where most of the fresh produce was, and they had easy access to the oil they were drilling in Alaska.