The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)(18)

I sat straight up and almost hanged myself on the gray seat belt.

We weren’t in the Jeep anymore.

The night came back like a deep breath, complete and overwhelming all at once. The glow of the green dashboard lit the scrubs I wore, and that was enough to flood my mind with the reality of what had happened.

Smears of trees and undergrowth lined a road that was completely dark, save for the small car’s weak yellow headlights. For the first time in years, I could see the stars that Thurmond’s monstrous lights had faded into nonexistence. They were so bright, so clear that they couldn’t have been real. I didn’t know what was more shocking—the endless stretch of road or the sky. Tears pricked at the back of my eyes.

“Don’t forget to breathe, Ruby,” came the voice beside me.

I pulled the surgical mask down from over my mouth as I looked over. Dr. Begbie’s blond hair was around her face, sweeping against her shoulders. In the time it had taken us to get from Thurmond to…wherever we were, she had stripped off her scrubs and changed into a black T-shirt and jeans. The night stained the skin under her eyes like bruises. I hadn’t noticed the sharp angles that made up her nose and chin.

“You haven’t been in a car for some time, huh?” She laughed, but she was right. I was more aware of the forward lurch of the car than I was of my own heartbeat.

“Dr. Begbie—”

“Call me Cate,” she interrupted, a bit harsher than before. I don’t know if I reacted to the abrupt change of tone or not, but she immediately followed with, “I’m sorry, it’s been a very long night and I could use a cup of coffee.”

According to the dashboard, it was 4:30 a.m. I had only had two hours of sleep, but I felt more alert than I had all day. All week. All my life.

Cate waited until the Rolling Stones had finished out their song before turning down the radio. “All they play are oldies now. I thought it was a joke at first, or something Washington wanted, but apparently that’s all that gets requested these days.” She snuck a look at me out of the corner of her eye. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Dr.—Cate,” I said. Even my voice was stronger. “Where are we? What’s going on?”

Before she could answer, there was a cough from the backseat. I twisted around despite the pain in my neck and chest. Curled up there in a protective little ball was another kid, about my age, or maybe a year younger. That other kid. Max—Matthew—whatever—from the Infirmary, and he was looking far better than I felt as he slept on.

“We just left Harvey, West Virginia,” Cate said. “That’s where we met with some friends that helped me switch cars and remove Martin back there from the medical trunk we had to smuggle him out in.”

“Wait…”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Cate said quickly. “We made sure it had air holes.”

Like that was my biggest concern?

“They just let you take it out to the car?” I asked. “Without even checking it?”

She glanced at me again, and I was proud of the look of surprise there. “The doctors at Thurmond use those trunks to transport medical waste. The camp controllers started forcing the doctors to dump the waste themselves when the budget got cut. Sarah and I had duty for this week.”

“Sarah?” I interrupted. “Dr. Rogers?”

She hesitated a split second before nodding.

“Why did you tie her up—why did she—why are you helping us?”

She answered my question with one of her own.

“Have you ever heard of the Children’s League?”

“Bits and pieces,” I said. And only in whispers. If the rumors were true, they were an antigovernment group. They were the ones the younger kids—the later arrivals to Thurmond—claimed were trying to take down the camp system. The ones that supposedly hid kids so they couldn’t be taken. I had always assumed they were our generation’s version of a fairy tale. Nothing that good could ever be true.

“We,” Cate said, letting that word sink in before continuing, “are an organization dedicated to helping children affected by the government’s new laws. John Alban—have you heard of him? He was formerly an intelligence adviser to Gray.”

“He started the Children’s League?”

She nodded. “After his daughter died and he realized what was going to happen to the kids who survived, he left D.C. and tried to expose all of the testing that was happening at the camps. The New York Times, the Post, you name it—none of them would run the story, because, by then, things were bad enough that Gray had them under his thumb for ‘national security’ reasons, and the smaller papers folded along with the economy.”

“So…” I was trying to wrap my mind around this, wondering if I had misheard her. “So he created the Children’s League to…help us?”

Cate’s face lit up in a smile. “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

Then why did you help only me?

The question sprung up like a lone weed; ugly, and deeply rooted. I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to clear the rumblings in my brain, but I couldn’t tear it out. There was a strange feeling rising in my chest that followed—like something heavy was trying to work its way up from my center. It might have been a scream.