The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)(133)

“Is this real?” I whispered.

Cate sat at the edge of my bed, the exact same way she had at Thurmond, only now she wasn’t smiling. Behind her, Martin leaned against the wall in camo pants and boots. He looked like a completely different person to me. I hadn’t fully recognized him at first glance. The roundness in his face had thinned out, sinking his eyes further into his skull. Someone had been dumb enough to give him a gun.

“We’re in a safe house outside of Maryland,” she said.

“Lee?”

“Safe here, too.”

Not safe, I thought; never safe with you.

I felt the urge to run rise up deep from my bones; it was instinct now. Exhaustion and pain had stripped every other sensation away from me. My eyes scanned the room—two windows, the only other exit aside from the door. I could break the glass. I force Cate back with a single brush of my mind, get Liam, and we could be gone before anyone noticed. It could work.

“Don’t even try,” Cate said, following my eyes. She slipped a small silver object from the back pocket of her jeans and held it out to me, the rough pattern of the speaker face up. “Even if you could get past me, every single one of the agents downstairs is carrying one of these on them. Judging by your last hit of Calm Control, you’re not going to be of much use to Liam when they take him out and shoot him for your insubordination.”

I jerked away. “They wouldn’t—” But I saw the truth of it in her eyes. They would. They risked everything to break me out of Thurmond. They fought off skip tracers to get me back. I had already seen in Rob’s mind that despite what they claimed their mission was, they didn’t have any qualms about offing a few kids if it meant getting the ones they wanted.

“How could you even think about it?” Martin hissed. “Do you know how much time she wasted looking for you?”

Cate waved him off. When she leaned toward me again, I saw there were splatters of blood across the front of her shirt. Dark. Dried.

The memory came into painfully sharp focus. “Chubs—what happened to Chubs?”

Cate looked down at her hands, and something in me clenched.

“Honestly,” she said, “I’m not sure. We haven’t been able to contact the group of agents that took him, but I know they reached the hospital.” Cate reached for my hands, but I wouldn’t let her take them. The thought turned my stomach. “He’s safe. They’ll make sure he’s taken care of.”

“You don’t know that,” I said. “You said it yourself.”

“But I believe it,” Cate said.

I wanted to tell her that her beliefs weren’t worth a damn thing when she spoke again. “I’ve spent the last month looking for you. I stayed in this area, hoping you’d eventually show up, but Ruby, where were you? Where did you go? You look like—like—”

“East River,” I said.

Cate sucked in a sharp breath. So the League had heard about what happened.

“Oh, that’s perfect,” Martin said, pushing himself up off the wall. He slid the strap of his rifle over his shoulder and stalked toward me. “Sitting around on your ass for weeks doing nothing? Figures. I’ve been actually making a difference. I’ve been part of something.”

He made as if to touch my leg, but I grabbed his wrist tight in my hand. I wanted to see what he had gone through for myself—the training, the screaming instructors. I latched on to the strongest of his memories and spread it open in my mind. I wanted to glimpse our future.

Martin’s memory bubbled up like hot tar, forming and shaping itself until I was standing where he had stood. The package that had been in his hands was now heavy in mine. I felt the weight of it cramp my fingers, but my eyes were focused only on the climbing numbers on the elevator’s display: 11, 12, 13… The bell dinged as it passed each floor, heading to 17.

I cast a sly look to the girl standing next to me, dressed in a skirt suit, her young face caked with enough makeup to age her well beyond her years. She clutched her leather tote bag to her side like a shield, and it was only when she released it that I noticed her hands were shaking.

I was wearing a FedEx uniform; I could see myself through Martin’s eyes, reflected in the elevator’s silver doors as they slid open.

We were in an office building of some kind. It was dark out, but there were still men and women working, tucked away in their cubicles, their eyes glued to their computer screens. I didn’t stop, though, and neither did the girl at my side. Her face had broken out in a sweat, heavy enough to smear her makeup, and I felt a stab of irritation go through me at the sight of it.

The largest office was located at the far back corner of the building, and that was where I was headed. The girl all but let out a sigh as I left her by the drinking fountains. She was there for backup. This was my mission.

The door to the office was closed, but I could see someone’s shape behind the frosted glass. He’s still here. And so, thankfully, was his executive assistant. She looked confused at the sight of the package, but all it took was a single stroke at the back of her hand. Her eyes went glassy, unfocused, and I knew I had her. The elderly woman got up from her chair and turned toward the office door. I left the package right on her desk.

Free of that weight, I hustled back through the maze of cubicles, catching the eye of the girl by the fountain. When I jerked my head toward the elevators, she followed, looking back and forth between the elevator bank and the office floor, her lip caught between her teeth.