Never Fade (The Darkest Minds #2)(98)

“Roo!” Jude was shouting. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Get the door!” Chubs ordered. “No, not you, idiot—you stay in the car!”

“Is she okay? Chubs?”

Liam… That was Liam, wasn’t it? It sounded like him, the old him, at the other end of a tunnel. How was that possible? The medicine?

The back door opened and Chubs crawled in first, dragging me across the seat after him. I clenched my teeth against the pain, my vision blurring at the sight of Jude jumping in, sliding under my stretched-out legs. I tried to lift a hand to drag my hair out of my eyes, but I couldn’t feel anything below my shoulders.

My vision flashed white again. Pain was alive, screaming, drowning out the guilt, the devastation, even the fear. And I knew I was going, I was gone, because it sounded like Liam was screaming, too.

“Chubs!” I turned my head, watching as a white hand smashed against the metal grating. Liam’s pleading voice was as agonizing to hear as the rough coughing that followed. “Stop it, you’re hurting her!”

“Oh, hell no you are not opening that door!” Vida yelled. “Sit your ass down, blondie, or I’ll tranq it!”

“Where?” Chubs was asking, his hands smoothing the hair off my back and neck.

I didn’t understand what he meant until Jude said, “In the back—I don’t know how bad it is, but he got her.”

The car zipped back, bouncing until it hit the smooth surface of the highway, and then we were flying forward with a startled protest from Chubs.

“Is she okay? Is she hurt? Jesus, Chubs—just tell me!”

Chubs shoved my sweater and shirt up, exposing my back to the warm air blowing out of the vents. There was a surprised hiss, but I wasn’t sure if it had come from him or me. His fingers felt like ice as they pressed down at the beating center of the pain.

“Oh my God,” Jude cried. He was holding my legs across his lap, hugging them to his chest. “Roo, I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

“What?” Liam begged. “Is she okay?”

Chubs didn’t lie—or at least, when he did, they were important lies, usually to protect one or all of us. But we were Team Reality, the two of us, and we generally didn’t sugarcoat things. It must have been bad, then, because he decided not to answer at all.

“What about the guy?” he asked. Whatever he put against my back was freezing, and then, without warning, began to sting. Cleaning the wound, I thought, my vision swimming.

“He won’t be causing problems,” Vida said thickly. “Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Chubs demanded.

“Jackson Pollock don’t got nothing on that windshield,” she said simply.

“You didn’t…” Jude began.

“No,” she said, and I could hear the regret in her voice, “the trees and steering wheel get credit for that masterpiece.”

“You know Jackson Pollock?” Chubs’s hands actually stilled, just for that instant.

“Surprise, ass**le,” she said, “I can f**king read.”

“Chubs!” It sounded like the word had been ripped raw from Liam’s throat. It was naked with fear, and my heart actually lurched at the sound of it. “Tell me she’s okay!”

“O…kay,” I rasped out.

I felt myself drifting, gliding out on a wave of numbing ice that stole the feeling from my hands, my legs, my spine. All it took was Chubs pressing the tip of the needle to my skin for the pain to reach up and drag me back down into the dark.

TWENTY-TWO

IT FELT FAMILIAR AND WRONG ALL AT ONCE, waking up. Like one memory had become tangled up in another, and both were struggling under the strange weight of déjà vu. Solid, flat, cold—I was on the ground. Hard, solid earth. It was all damp earth and something uniquely human that filled my nose, not the fake lemon smell from Black Betty’s past life as a cleaning service’s van. It wasn’t the drone of a radio host reporting the day’s horrible news drifting to my ears, but the steady, deep breathing of four others fixed fast into sleep.

Finding consciousness was like hauling myself up from the bottom of a thick-slimed swamp. It was only when I broke the surface that the pain hit me. It started in my lower back and shot up and down my right side, tightening every muscle and tendon to the point of snapping along the way. All at once, the ground, the blankets, the dark became too much. I felt the phantom grip of the leather band around my head, tasted the bitter tang of metal in my mouth. I realized then it was possible to choke on a memory, to feel it close tight and fast around your throat. Leather. All I could smell was leather.

Chubs’s tent, I realized. It had been real. They had found me.

Jude, Vida… I pushed myself up, ignoring the protest of stiff muscles and the wailing pain in my back. There they were, sleeping lengthwise over our heads, practically on top of one another. Chubs. Liam.

A freezing wind blew up the back of my shirt, but it felt refreshing compared to the stale, warm air inside the tent. I had the dim thought that I needed to find my boots, but it didn’t seem half as important as just getting away. Finding a place to be alone, to release the scream working itself up from my core. Just ahead were the smoldering remains of the campfire at the center of the clearing—an old, public campsite, maybe—and a clothesline scattered with shirts and sweatshirts that were strung up and frozen into stiff clumps.