Sparks Rise (The Darkest Minds #2.5)(23)

“Your assignments for the day are as follows,” the camp controller begins. I listen only long enough to hear that I’m the medical escort, not assigned to Sammy’s cabin block. A lick of defeat hits me right at my center. I’m babysitting a whole bunch of kids who aren’t her, and, worse, they haven’t rotated me to any of the Blue cabin blocks to confirm for myself that Mia isn’t here.

We follow the camp controller out of the barracks, heading our separate ways. The world around us is still damp and dripping, with the promise of another storm. I’m handed a clipboard with a single sheet of paper listing the names, locations, and times to pick the kids up and walk them over to the Infirmary. At the end of my day, I have an allotted two hours to “assist medical staff” before dinner rotations.

Whatever that means for them, it means something else entirely for me. There are computers in the Infirmary. If I can find one, it’s just a matter of finding a room not under camera surveillance to run a simple search in their system—I’ll know, for better or worse, exactly where Mia is.

I let that thought carry me forward to the Mess Hall for first meal, arms swinging in time with the others’. I feel in control of myself now, enough not to fly off into a rage when I see Tildon smirking from where he’s posted at the door, holding it open for the kids who are filing inside.

My feet carry me over to our small table as my eyes scan the room again. Sam’s cabin is included in the first meal rotation, and there—I can see them across the way, over hundreds of heads bent over their Styrofoam bowls. The girl with dark, curly hair, the one I saw crying yesterday, looks like she’s been dusted with chalk, she’s so pale. Her eyes dart to the blank space next to her as the PSF patrolling the aisle behind her leans down and whispers something in her ear. A thick finger runs along the shell-pink curve of her ear and I know, even before he looks up and catches me staring, that it’s Tildon.

That empty space is Sam’s. My stomach turns to stone and I barely manage to swallow the food already in my mouth. They still have her locked up, then. She is still in that goddamn cage.

The tables vacate one by one, faces and numbers assembling into orderly lines, two by two. We do the same, and I’m surprised to find that I’m actually eager to get moving today. Work means the hours will pass faster, and I’ll see Sam when our schedules collide one last time at the final meal rotation. I pick up my clipboard from the table and tuck it under my arm, ignoring the terror on the faces of the Green boys who have assembled to our right.

F14 turns toward them, her eyes as dull and flat as sandstone. If it weren’t for the PSF standing nearby, I think the kids still would have scattered like mice. The proximity of us is wearing down their nerves.

The kid listed as 5552 on my list turns out to be a teenage girl, who knows to wait at her table, even after the other girls in her cabin have stood up and shuffled their way out for the day’s work. I press the clipboard to my chest as I walk around the rows of long tables to stand behind her. She glances back, then looks again. She remembers herself just as quickly, and her dark eyes fall back to the table. Her body is as rigid as the icicles that have frozen like teeth along the edge of the Mess’s roof. Shame sweeps through me when I take her by the arm and haul her to feet. The minute my glove touches her arm, it’s like I’ve stabbed her there. She couldn’t have jumped higher if I had been a live wire.

When it’s our turn to head to the double doors, I finally notice that Tildon has repositioned himself at the exit, still wearing the look of a cat contentedly grooming itself after a kill. My unease spikes into real, living fear as he catches my arm and holds up the line behind us.

“It’s just too bad,” he says, tilting his head toward mine. His voice is light and airy. “It’s just too damn bad you weren’t there this time.”

I am three steps away when the words register, dissolving like static in my brain. I start to turn back, but can’t—I know I can’t. It would confirm it for him. An alarm is screaming in my head and I have to hold my breath to keep from releasing the flame building up inside me. He knows, or at least he thinks he knows, that I care about Sam. Why else would he say it? Calling in to the camp controllers yesterday was a gamble, but I thought it had paid off. The only thing I’d cared about in that moment was getting him away from her.

This ass**le—he’s a tried and true predator. Whatever he wants out of you, it’s in his nature to detect a whisper of weakness, exploit every small crack in your wall. He picks at wounds just as they start to heal, he touches, knowing you can’t touch back, he takes from people who aren’t in a position to give.

I’d been stupid enough to assume he was too much of a chickenshit to try to turn around and hunt me. I should have known better—I got between him and his chosen prey.

Sam. My heart is like thunder rolling through my ears. I’m convinced that the girl can hear it, too, it’s so damn loud. Tildon must be lying—testing me. He wants to see if it’ll affect me, slide like pins beneath my fingernails and drive me crazy. I saw the look on his face, how closely he watched me as I passed. He suspects. He must.

And, well, it’s working. The dark wood structure behind the Mess has become the center of my universe, and my whole body is so attuned to it, it’s the fight of my life to not look back over my shoulder more than once.

I can’t stop seeing it, what he could have done to her. How he must have touched her. Disgust turns my blood to acid and the girl cringes as I feel myself go hot—too hot. My left arm jerks hard enough that it knocks her forward a step.