Never Fade (The Darkest Minds #2)(35)

“Jude!” I called, my guilt nearly cutting me down at the knees. “Jude!”

The first can of tear gas released with a sinister hiss, but it wasn’t enough to shift the crowd. They only launched themselves toward the officers at a run. I felt someone try to grab my arm and haul me back around to face it with him, but I yanked myself free.

Bad plan, I thought, choking on the poisoned air. Bad, bad, bad plan, Ruby.

It was dumb luck I even saw him then; I had started turning the other way, only to catch a glimpse of a curly head of hair out of the very corner of my eye.

The blue EMT jacket was flapping in the wind, one sleeve torn with a ragged edge. Jude was standing on his toes, one hand on the nearest streetlight to keep himself upright, the other curled around his mouth as he shouted, “Ruby! Roo!” over and over again.

I saw now the way that fear fed anxiety and turned it into chaos. Jude’s shape went out of sight, tucked into a cloud of tear gas, hidden behind the sudden stampede of bodies trying to get away from the guns, from the smoke, from the bridge. People were screaming and the gunfire hadn’t stopped. There were new noises, too—a helicopter hovering above us, casting a light down over us. The whirring of its blades drove some of the smoke away, clearing the way for the National Guardsmen to rush toward us. For the first time, I noticed more than one black uniform in the mix.

If it had been a clear night, if my eyes weren’t streaming with tears, if I could have heard anything other than the thrumming thunder of my own heart, I would have noticed it sooner. The air seemed to vibrate against my skin, and I caught the whiff of ozone a second too late to do something about it.

“Jude, don’t!”

The line of streetlights along the stretch of road began to buzz, their orange lights bleaching to a molten white a second before they blew out together, sending a shower of glass and sparks down on the already terrified protesters.

I’m not sure anyone recognized what Jude was, not until the lights from the nearby buildings switched on after months or years of darkness.

I reached him half a second before the National Guardsman and his gun did, throwing my shoulder into his chest and driving us both to the ground. The impact blew the air from my lungs, but I scrambled up, shielding him from the butt of the soldier’s rifle. With one blow, it cracked against my skull and sent me spinning into darkness.

SEVEN

THE GROUND GRUMBLED beneath my cheek, a low clattering that underscored the dull pain in my brain. Feeling was slow to come back to my limbs. I took a deep breath, trying to swallow the taste of iron and salt from my dry tongue. Matted hair stuck to my neck in clumps. I tried to reach up and brush it away only to realize that my hands were trapped behind me, something sharp digging into the skin there.

My shoulders ached as I twisted to readjust myself on the van’s grimy floor. It was dark in the back, but every now and then a flash of light would come through the metal grating separating the front seats from the rest of the vehicle. Just enough for me to see that the uniformed driver and the man sitting in the passenger seat were dressed in black.

Damn. My heartbeat was in my ears, but I didn’t feel afraid, not until I saw Jude sitting pin-straight on one of the benches, his hands bound and his mouth gagged.

While the PSFs had bound my hands, for whatever reason—probably because I was already unconscious—they hadn’t used a gag on me, and I was grateful. Bile rose, burning the back of my throat, and the only way to make the whole thing worse would have been to choke on my own vomit. I could feel the anxiety in me building to a slow and steady beat of Not again, not again, I can’t go back there, not again.

Calm down, I ordered myself. You’re no good like this. Get a grip.

I couldn’t get my jaw to move, to say something to get Jude’s attention. It took several precious moments for him to notice that I was even awake, and when he did, his body gave a huge jerk of surprise. He tried in vain to rub the cloth out of his mouth with his shoulder. I shook my head. If we were going to do something, it would have to be quietly.

Jude’s fear was an actual, living thing. It hovered over his shoulders, black, thunderous. He began to shake violently. He tossed his head, trying to draw desperate gulps of air into his lungs.

He’s having a panic attack. The thought was a quiet, sure one, and I was surprised by how much resolve it flooded into my veins.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, hoping the guys in front wouldn’t hear me over the chatter of their radios. “Jude, look at me. You have to calm down.”

He was shaking his head, and I could read his thoughts clear as if I had actually been inside it. I can’t, not here, not now, oh God, oh God.

“I’m here with you,” I said, bringing my knees up close to my chest. It was painful, but I managed to drag my arms up around my legs, so my bound hands were in front of me.

“Take a breath through your nose, a deep one,” I said. “Let it out. You’re all right. We’ll be fine. You just need to calm down.”

And he needed to do it sooner rather than later. My mind was going in circles trying to think of where the nearest camp was—upstate New York? Wasn’t there one in Delaware, out near a whole town of abandoned farmland? Where were we now?

I held Jude’s gaze with mine. “Calm down,” I said. “I need you to focus. You have to stop the car. Do you remember Saratoga?”