The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)(109)

“Okay,” I said. “I think I’m ready.”

Clancy didn’t look so sure. But I was. This particular fantasy had been creeping up on my dreams for weeks, invading the slips of time when I wasn’t holed up practicing my abilities.

It came to me in the middle of our third night at East River, right at the hour that separated day from night. I startled awake in bed, confused as I listened to Chubs snore and Zu toss and turn. Every inch of my skin had tingled as I tried to process what I had just seen, if any of it had actually happened—if any of it might actually happen.

This was a dream I could never share, one I carried deep inside my heart, tucked so far down that I hadn’t even realized it was there until it sprang out of me, fully formed.

I must have dreamed we were in spring. The cherry blossom trees at the end of my parents’ street in Salem were in full bloom. We drove past them in Black Betty—Liam and I, sitting up front together, listening to a Led Zeppelin song that might not have even been real. Outside of my parents’ house were white balloons, tied off on either side of the white fence’s gate, floating arrows that pointed us up to the open front door. Liam took my hand, wearing exactly what he had worn the day I had met him, and together we walked straight down the house’s main hallway, through the pale yellow kitchen, until we found the door to the backyard and everyone outside waiting.

Everyone. My parents. Grams. Zu. Chubs. Sam. All sitting around a blanket my parents had spread out over the grass, eating whatever it was my dad was grilling. Mom was running around, tying up more balloons, her hands still stained with dark dirt after planting all of the new, pale flowers that flooded over what once had been a yard of plain grass. We said hello to everyone, I hugged Sam, I pointed out the birds up in the trees to Zu, and introduced Chubs to my mother.

And then, Liam bent down and kissed me, and there were no words to describe that.

Clancy’s intrusion came like all the others had before, first with a tingle, then with a roar. I had been so lost in thinking about the dream that I hadn’t even felt him take my hand to start that trial run.

I liked Clancy a lot. More than I ever expected. But he didn’t have a place in this dream. There was nothing there I wanted to share with him.

I clenched his hand back, hard, and threw everything I had into sending my other set of hands out from inside me, like a shove.

His curtain strategy hadn’t worked for me, but this one? Using offense as defense? This one was maybe a little too effective. Even before I opened my eyes, I felt Clancy jerk back, sucking in a hiss of what sounded like pain.

“Oh my God,” I said, when I finally shook the haze from my mind. “I’m so sorry!”

But when Clancy looked up, he was smiling. “Told you,” he said. “Told you that you’d figure it out.”

“Can we do it again?” I asked. “I want to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.”

Clancy rubbed at his forehead. “Can we give it a rest for a little while? I feel like you just tackled my brain.”

But Clancy didn’t get a rest. Almost as soon as the words had left his mouth, we both heard a very different kind of warning. There was a shrill wail from the other side of the room, one I had never heard before, almost like a car alarm. He winced, tucking his head down to escape the noise, even as he jumped up from the bed.

He made his way to his desk, flipping open his laptop lid. His fingers flew as he typed in his password, the blue-white screen of the laptop illuminating his pale face. I came to stand behind him just as he clicked open a new program.

“What’s happening?” I asked. “Clance?”

He didn’t look up. “One of the camp’s perimeter alarms was triggered. Don’t worry—it might be nothing. We’ve had animals step a little too close to the wires before.”

It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. Four different color videos, one in each corner of the screen; four different viewpoints of the camp boundaries. Clancy leaned forward, bracing his hands on either side of his laptop.

He reached across me to get to the wireless black radio sitting on the other side of his desk. He never once took his eyes off the screen.

“Hayes, do you read me?”

There was a moment of silence before Hayes’s gruff, “Yeah, what’s up?” came crackling through the speaker.

“The southeast perimeter alarm was triggered. I’m watching the feed now, but—” I think what he was going to say was, I don’t see anyone or anything, but his next words had me ducking under his arm to take a look at the screen myself. “Yeah, I see a man and a woman. Both in camo—unfriendlies, by the look of it.”

And there they were. They looked well into middle age, but it was hard to be sure. Both were wearing what could only be described as hunting attire, head-to-toe camouflage. Even their faces appeared to have been painted brown.

“Got it. I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks…get them to back off, will you?” Clancy said carefully, then turned the volume of the radio all the way down.

Southeast perimeter—good, not Liam’s area. I let out a grateful sigh.

My eyes were still on the screen when Clancy shut the laptop lid. “Let’s get back to work. Sorry for the distraction.”

I could feel my surprise betray me. “Don’t you need to go out there?” I asked. “What’s Hayes going to do to them?”