The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)(134)

She didn’t do anything stupid until we were outside, though. I jogged down the steps, heading for the waiting FedEx van and the dark-haired man sitting in the driver’s seat. I was already at the door when I realized she wasn’t behind me. The girl was frozen at the top of the marble steps, her eyes wide and her face as pale as the stone beneath her feet.

She was going to run back into the building to warn them about the explosive, to warn them. Weak. The words shot through my mind, as crisp as if they had been drilled there. Ditch and die. Double-cross the League and die.

I took the handgun from under my seat and leaned out the open window. But I never got a shot off. Upstairs, high on the seventeenth floor of the building, an explosion blew out a shower of glass and concrete, and she had disappeared under their weight.

Martin’s hand stayed at my side, and he stopped moving. This is what it means to be one of them, I thought. This is what they will turn us into. I had slipped into his mind to confirm my suspicions, but even I was surprised at how easy it had been. Weeks ago, when we first got out, I hadn’t been able to fend him off. Now, all he had to do was brush by me and I overpowered him. With a single touch.

Clancy had taught me well.

I looked at Martin again, feeling a strange sort of pity for him. Not because of what I was about to do, or the way I would be using him, but because he thought he knew what it meant to be powerful and in control. He honestly still thought he was stronger than me.

I put a finger on the back of his hand, just one.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

The reaction from him was priceless. There wasn’t an ounce of color left in his cheeks, and his lips began to smack against one another, trying to form the word, trying to call up a memory that was no longer there.

“Where are you from?”

I could see the panic now; it caused his eyes to bulge. But I still wasn’t finished.

“Do you know where you are now?”

I almost felt guilty—almost—when I saw the moisture began to gather at the corner of his eyes. But I also remembered how helpless and afraid he had made me feel, and I regretted not having done more. A plan was forming at the back of my mind, and it was almost too terrible to acknowledge as my own.

“I don’t—” He gasped the words out. “I don’t—”

“Then maybe you should leave,” I said in a cold voice.

I barely had to push the image of him doing it. He bolted from the room, slamming the door behind him. Running from the scary monster.

Cate stared after him, an unreadable expression on her face. “Impressive.”

“I thought he could do with an attitude adjustment,” I said. I kept my voice cold and flat, just the way I thought she’d want it. I had seen enough to know the viciousness these people demanded, and I needed them to want me. “Since it seems we’ll be spending a lot of time together now.”

Her pale blond hair fell over her shoulders as she bowed her head, but Cate didn’t deny it. We were trapped here. She had accepted Liam’s deal.

“I guess it was never really a choice to begin with,” I continued. “Eventually, you were going to have to bring me in.”

“You are a valuable asset to the resistance.” Cate lifted her hand toward me, only to drop it before it could touch my face. Smart lady. She knew what I could do. “I hoped you would come to see that on your own terms.”

“What about Lee?”

“He’s a security risk now that he’s seen this safe house and the agents here. He’s safer with us, Ruby. The president wants him dead. I’m sure he’d come to see that…eventually.”

My hands twisted against the pale bed sheets. A weapon. Liam as a weapon. Liam, who could barely lose his temper without feeling guilty. He had fought so hard to escape this violence, and I’d turned him right back toward it. They’d put their hands on him and press him into their mold, and he’d come out the other end of it as the same dark creature he had struggled to avoid becoming.

I was breathing hard now, though inwardly I was as calm as the waters on East River’s lake. All at once, the final piece clicked into place, and I knew what I was going to do.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll stay and I won’t fight you or manipulate you. But if you want me to do as you say…if you want to use my abilities, or do testing on me, I have one condition. You have to let Lee go.”

“Ruby,” she began, shaking her head, “it’s too dangerous, for everyone involved.”

“He’s a Blue. You don’t need him. He won’t ever be a fighter, not like you want.”

And if he stays here, you will kill him.

You will kill every good part of him.

“I can do so much now,” I told her, “but you won’t see another hint of it until you let him go. Until you swear you will never chase him down.”

Cate watched me for a moment, a hand pressed to her mouth. I could see the indecision in her face. I had used Martin to show her exactly what I could offer them, and he, apparently, had already proven to them how valuable an Orange could be. These were not, however, the terms she would have chosen.

“All right,” she said, finally. “All right. He can go.”

“How do I know you’ll keep your promise?” I asked.

Cate stood and reached again into her pocket. The silver Calm Control device, the only thing keeping me out of her head, was still warm when she pressed it into my palm. My fingers closed around hers.