Sparks Rise
Author: Alexandra Bracken
Date: 2014-09-03T07:00:00+00:00

Copyright © 2014 by Alexandra Bracken

Cover design by Sammy Yuen

Excerpt from In the Afterlight text copyright © 2014 by Alexandra Bracken.

All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

ISBN 978-1-4847-2420-0

Visit www.un-requiredreading.com

Contents

1. Title Page
2. Copyright
3. One
4. Two
5. Three
6. Four
7. Five
8. Six
9. Seven
10. Preview of In the Afterlight
11. About the Author

ONE

SAM

I DON’T forget faces.

I don’t forget anything my eyes have landed on—not the smallest detail of the white flowering wallpaper in our neighbors’ house, not the cursive letters written on my classroom’s whiteboard, not the numbers that flashed on the screen as the man in the white coat adjusted my position under the machine’s metal halo, the signs on the towering fence as our bus pulled in for the first time. DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, NOT A LOADING ZONE, STAY ALERT.

Its smells and sounds have gone hazy; I think, sometimes, that I can remember what it was like to lay out in the freshly mown grass in our backyard. I think it smelled sweet. I think I can just about remember how silky Scout, our golden retriever, was, lying in a patch of sunshine. There was laughter, too, from the Orfeo kids trying to climb over the wall between our houses, half tumbling into the bushes. What I remember most is the cloudless powder-blue sky. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I haven’t seen one like it since.

This place has reduced my world to gray, black, brown.

Everything gets filed away inside my head, neat and tidy, until I need it. Somehow, without trying, I pull the right card out of the deck each time. I test myself all the time; that same white coat, the one who’d been all freezing fingers and sneered words, told me not to—that using my freak catchall of a memory would somehow overload it, and I’d be as dead and stiff as the kids already buried. They tried that lie on all of us, I’m sure.

For the first two years, I’d catch myself doing it, drawing out those memories, and close my eyes, throat swelling with thick panic. Stop it, you’ll die, you’ll die, Sam—

For the next three, it was like a dare. Each success was a small pop of bright exhilaration to pepper forever sunless days. Every time I did it and nothing happened, I’d get that same feeling I had each time I snuck over to the Orfeos’ house on the Fourth of July, and they’d secretly save me one of their sparklers to run around with before my parents could even realize I was gone. I’d think of Dad preaching from Job, Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

Now...I just don’t care. A few months turned into years and now those years are morphing into forever, and there’s no getting out. It used to be enough to live inside the gray, to accept the things I couldn’t change even if that meant everything. They’ve been holding these warnings about a possible second wave of deaths, like an axe over our heads, as long as I’ve been here. Using our abilities will trigger it. Acting out will trigger it. Speaking or reading or thinking too hard about anything will trigger it. Only, they’ve done such a good job of making this place hell that I wouldn’t be surprised if the real one turned out to be a much nicer place.

Salvation will be found in obedience. Dad’s parting piece of advice when he walked me to the school bus that morning. I’ve dismantled the phrase a thousand times in my head and tried to reassemble it into something I read in the Bible. He spoke in parables and proverbs, and when he realized what I was, he barely spoke at all. Some part of me still thinks he would have loved me more if I’d died, because it’d mean I was saved.

Mom only wanted whatever Dad wanted.

I thought that was what I wanted, too, until I saw my bunkmate actually die in front of me. In this cabin, almost a year ago, as hard as it is to believe now. And it was nothing like those men in suits with the dead-eyed smiles promised—that it’d be as simple as going to sleep and never waking up. But that night, I’d stood over her and watched death come and electrify her from the inside out—I remember thinking, stupid and stunned and exhausted, This can’t be right, because IAAN wasn’t supposed to make your body thrash, wasn’t supposed to make you scream loud enough that not even clenched teeth could contain the sound. I thought it would be quiet, and authoritative—like a steady, warm hand reaching through the darkness to lift you out of this world.

Dad always spoke of God with more fear than reverence—always conscious of how angry He was with us, always disappointed as we fell short of His plan. In Sunday school, every lesson and teaching had been softened for us. He wasn’t an angry God, but a loving God. He was there for us when no one else was. We could lean on Him for strength.

Now I think that Dad was right all along. There’s no mercy, not in life, not even in death.

I’m already awake when the morning alarm starts clanging through the speaker in the far corner of the room. I stay on my back a moment longer, rubbing my hands over my face, before sitting up and sliding over the side of the bunk bed. My bare toes land on the edge of the wooden frame beneath me, and I use it to stretch over my mattress and straighten out my sheets. My shoes and sweatshirt are under the bottom bunk, but the space next to them is empty and has been since they took Ruby away.

No one is talking this morning, but the cabin is filled with small sounds of life. The old bunks creak and groan as the girls sleeping up top jump to the ground. Yawns stretch tired faces wide open. Joints crack as stiffness is worked out. I slip my shoes on, running my fingers along the fading number scrawled there in black permanent marker, 3284, to brush the dirt away. I can’t bring myself to look at the empty bed again, the bare mattress where she used to sleep.

I need to stop obsessing over this, but I can’t help it. Climbing up, climbing down, I can’t avoid the empty space; it sucks the air out of my chest, makes my head ache. I don’t understand how someone I barely knew can bring tears to the surface faster than thinking about my parents, my cousins, the other girls I’ve lived with for the last seven years. It’s like sitting in front of a nearly complete puzzle that’s missing only one piece—but that piece, the one that completes the image, is just...gone. Not in the box.

Somehow, I lost it.

I know I must have, because Vanessa, Ashley, all of them gave me these looks when the dark-haired girl first showed up a few years ago.

“Whatever you fought about, it’s not worth it,” Ashley had whispered to me. The older girls were braver about talking in the morning. “I hate to see you guys like this. She doesn’t even talk now.”

This swell of hurt and fear and something that felt too close to panic had tackled me from behind. The air was coming in and out of me in sharp bursts. There was no explanation for it, other than I was...something was wrong with me. My head. I didn’t forget faces. I didn’t forget anything. And yet everyone was acting like she’d been with us from the beginning. They were making me dizzy with these looks of confusion and pity and curiosity. I broke into a cold sweat at Ashley’s words. The pieces of me that were already barely holding together after the punishment I’d taken a few days before began to drift apart.

Is this the second wave? I remember thinking. Do we slowly lose what we can do? Were our minds just going to one day blink out?

But all the other cards were in place. I tested it every morning, every night. Address numbers on my block. Mia Orfeo’s bookshelves. Pages of the Bible. Patterns of Christmas tree ornaments. No Ruby, never any Ruby before that moment. She’d come right over to me, small and pale—face smeared with grime like she’d been working in the Factory all day with us. And she’d gripped me like I was going to be able to drag her out from whatever she was drowning under. Green eyes, shining with pain. The PSF that day had pounded me into the ground with his baton before locking me in the cage for hours. I must have said something to him to make him punish me. A wrong look, something I muttered. But that was hazy, too. They must have brought Ruby in while I was gone.

That was the only word she ever said to me: Ruby. I asked when she’d come in, what her name was, and the only thing she’d managed to choke out was her own name.

The truth is, she lived like a shadow. Silent, always trying to make herself as small and quick as she possibly could. The PSFs, they never picked on her, they never noticed her, and it was hard not to be resentful when I could barely make it one day without—

I shook my head, smoothing my hair back into a ponytail.

How can I remember each day from the moment they brought me through the damn gate until that evening, but she’s just not there? She’s dissolved like smoke.

How can you miss something, feel so awful about it, when you’re not sure you had it in the first place?

From the next bunk over, Vanessa clucks her tongue in warning—a hurry the heck up. I can tell we have a day of rain ahead of us by the way the mildew stench seems particularly strong. If we’re getting rain, it means it’s too warm for snow, and that is always, always, always a blessing.

The winter uniforms are nothing more than forest-green sweats. There are no coats, unless you’re working in the Garden. The Laundry, Factory, and Kitchen are all, in theory, heated. At the end of each Garden shift, you pass the woolen gray monstrosities back in; I can’t tell if it’s because they just aren’t willing to pony up and pay for coats for the whole camp, or if they’re afraid we’d try to stash something inside of them. Hiding sharp-tipped trowels and hand pruners, smuggling strawberries, I don’t know.

I take another deep breath and hold it in my chest until I can’t resist the burn. Falling into my spot in line, the earthy dampness of the cabin finally fades under the familiar smells of plain detergent, shampoo, and sleep-warmed skin. The overhead lights that snapped on at the alarm wash everyone’s skin out to a chalky ash.

The electronic door locks click one, two, and three before the heavy metal swings open and a PSF steps inside, her eyes sweeping over our lopsided lines. With Ruby gone at my right, Vanessa has had to step up into her space, leaving Elizabeth alone at the back to walk with the stare of the PSF burning into her neck.

The steel-gray light from the overcast sky creeps into the cabin like a delicate fog. I blink my eyes against it, fighting the urge to hold up a hand to shield them as the PSF inspects first our uniforms and, next, the general state of the cabin.

Rather than say a word, the woman, blond hair twisted into a tight, low bun beneath her black cap, whistled and waved us forward, the way she would have called a dog to her side. It set my teeth on edge and spun my exhaustion into annoyance. There’s something about her smirk today I don’t like. Her eyes keep darting back and forth between whatever is standing out along the soggy trail and us.

I square my shoulders as Vanessa and I pass by her, a halfhearted attempt to brace myself for the freezing January air; the sting of it turns our skin pink and our breath white. I was wrong about it not being cold enough to snow; in a West Virginia winter, what’s rain one moment turns to icy sleet in the next, and then, just as you settle into that misery, suddenly there are large, fluffy snowflakes drifting down around you like feathers.

I’m so distracted by the effort it takes to not give in to the clench of my shoulders and arms, to concentrate on not showing them how badly my body wants to shiver, I don’t even see them until the lines have filed out behind me. Cabins are opened and emptied by number, a careful sequence that involves stopping, going, stopping again as everyone is led out onto their right trail, wherever it is they’re supposed to be going—wash houses, Mess Hall, or straight to work until lunch. It’s timed down to the second, and half of the time I think it only works because everyone’s too tired and cold to try to resist being dragged into the pattern. What’s the point, anyway?

But because every day is exactly the same, it should have been the first thing I noticed—the very first, given the bright red vests they’re wearing. The uniforms beneath them are dark, smoky gray—not the black of the PSFs. The pads of my fingers sting just looking at them—it’d been so hard to get the plastic needle through the thick fabric I’d pricked myself enough times to draw blood. Three months ago, we’d sewn buttons on them, as well as patches of numbers across the breast pockets. I’d thought nothing of it at the time. We’d dyed and stenciled any number of prison uniforms, so I’d just assumed...I just thought we’d never see them again.

Beside me, Vanessa manages to cut off her gasp but can’t get her body’s instinctive response under control. To our PSF’s satisfaction, she flinches and looks away quickly, like the sight of the Red alone could burn her.

I don’t need to look around me to know that at least half of our cabin has already figured out what’s happening. Those same girls have already moved on to drawing further conclusions that will take me another week to puzzle out. For all our differences, our Green minds really only function in two ways—my way, the storage locker, or their way—the ability to connect multiple dots of a situation or problem as easily and quickly as breathing. I get the impression we bore them every time we try to talk to them, like they always know what we’re about to say next. In a fraction of a second, they can look at Vanessa’s reaction, see how young the new people are, assess the color of the vest, recognize the uniforms we helped stitch together, and recognize now, in context, that the frustrating number patches were really Psi identification numbers. I can practically feel their minds churning behind me, whipping up a frenzied series of thoughts. Reds.

If I know them, those girls will be thinking ahead, their conclusions slanting toward the future. Why are they here? How will it affect me? When will they leave? But I’m trapped in the past. Do the other girls remember, the way I do, the faces under the caps they wear? They’re blank, so completely vacant that it looks like their features have been painted on their skin.

My stomach begins to turn over itself, the burning taste of sick rising in my throat like acid. How? How did they do this to these kids? I know the first face that we pass along the way to the Mess Hall; I know that girl because she was at this camp. She was here for almost two years before they took the Reds and Oranges out that night. I don’t forget faces, and even though I’d tried cutting the memories up and storing them in a dark, locked place, I can feel them bubbling back up, trying to merge together again. Fires in the cabins. Fires in the Mess Hall. Fires in the wash houses. The sky stained black with smoke. The boy who tried running from the Garden, who fried himself against the fence when his fire couldn’t melt the metal fast enough. That winter, that whole winter, we’d gone without real vegetables and fruit because the only things he’d set on fire that day were our food and himself.

The thing about the Reds was this: no matter how still they were, watching them was like having eyes on a pot of water set to simmer. A small uptick in temperature could set them to boil—it could happen that fast, in a second of carelessness. They were the monsters of our stories, ones who couldn’t bring themselves to lurk in the shadows. And as terrifying as they were, as little as they cared about the rest of us, I never felt so defeated as I did when the camp controllers removed them. Because even if the rest of us were pathetic and too scared to even make eye contact, they were always pushing back, they were always fighting, they never fell into the pattern.

I thought they’d killed them. We all did.

My feet get sucked down into Thurmond’s dark mud; I can’t even feel the cold anymore; panic heats my blood and makes my hands jitter at my side uselessly.

They hold no weapons that I can see—no guns, or knives, or even the handheld White Noise machines. I guess that makes sense. They’re the weapons themselves.

What have they done to them? How easy would it be for them to do it to the rest of us?

I count twenty along the way to the Mess Hall, spaced out evenly, filling in the gaps where there used to be PSFs. Where there are black uniforms, they’re hanging back off the trails, watching us pass by in clusters, talking to each other and smiling, actually smiling about it, the sickos.

It feels like a challenge—like they want to see us shrivel up just that little bit more when we see how helpless we really are. Just when you become numb to the cold running bony fingers up and down your bare skin, when your muscles become too used to the punishing schedule of go, go, go, go, work, work, work, work, when you realize it’s possible to turn a deaf ear on hateful words—that’s when the men up in their Tower know they need to change the rules of whatever game they’re playing with us.

Vanessa keeps trying to catch my attention; I see her nodding toward each Red we pass, as if I could somehow miss that they’re there. The sleet has turned back into rain, and before we get within a hundred feet of the Mess, we’re all drenched, the icy water slicing through our clothes and skin, down to our bones. I can’t give the PSFs the pleasure of seeing me look at each of the Reds. I try to watch them out of the corner of my eye, assessing each face. I recognize about half of them; that makes sense. There just weren’t that many Reds at Thurmond to begin with, and even back then, they tried to keep boys and girls separate at meals and the different work rotations. It was harder to cross paths with them, and it takes me a little longer to dig around for the right memories, but I have them. My eyes shift again, assessing what’s ahead as we come up on the Mess Hall. And then—

I think I’ve been shot.

It happens that fast; the pain slices clean through me, and I imagine the bullet hits my heart at an angle. There are snipers on the roof of the Control Tower. They are always watching, always adjusting their aim. It’s intolerable. The hurt takes away my breath. Sinks my feet in place.

But I’m not bleeding. I touch a hand to my chest, just to be sure.

Sammy. I can hear him say it even now. I’ve fought so hard to keep the sound of his voice from disappearing. Sammy Sunshine.

I’m not dying. Hallucinating, maybe. Because I think I just—I think I just saw—

Vanessa is the one that ultimately moves me forward again, driving her knee into the back of mine. The sting of it eases as I convince myself I imagined it. My fingers curl and uncurl into and out of fists and I feel like I’m somehow running inside of my own skin. I can’t settle myself. I’m going to scream. The only way I can keep it from escaping is to press a fist against my mouth.

By the time we’re inside the cloud of warm air drifting out from the open Mess Hall doors, the urge to look again is like a rubber band snapping and snapping and snapping against my skin. I wish I had resisted, not looked up at the boy posted at the door, his hands clasped in front of him, his stance steady and strong. Our eyes meet and dart away, and I hear his stiff black gloves creak as his fingers tighten around each other. The Mess is heated, yes, but it feels only lukewarm compared to the heat that’s coming off him. A twinge of dread-stained recognition creeps down my spine, bone by bone, until I think my legs will dissolve under me. I recognize him the way you know the feel of sun on your skin after spending too long in the shade.

My mind doesn’t let me forget faces. Sometimes it feels like a tiny miracle. A blessing. Others, a curse, some kind of punishment for all those times I disobeyed my parents and ran wild around the neighborhood. Good kids go to heaven; bad kids need to be rehabilitated. Now I know that must be true; I know that someone, whether they’re up in paradise or down here in this little slice of hell, is trying to break me. I am being tested.

The years between us have thinned out his round face, made good on the promise of inheriting his father’s chiseled features. Dark eyes sit below dark brows, thick dark hair. The rest of us are so drained of life after a sunless winter, we may as well blend into the snow, but he is lit from within. He is the best thing I have ever seen in my life. The worst thing.

I can’t—I swallow the bile, try to shove away the last image my mind’s preserved of him. Ten years old, calling up the singsong password to get into our imaginary castle in Greenwood—that secret kingdom he invented in the thick cluster of trees behind our houses. His hair shines like a raven’s wing as he climbs up the rope to the tree platform his father had helped us build, takes his seat on the pillow we stole from one of their couches, and starts to read the story of the lost prince of Greenwood and a young knight—me—setting out to find him. He’d spent all day in school writing it; it made my chest tight to picture it, one arm wrapped around the notebook, protecting it from the cruel eyes of the boys sitting around us.

If I could, I’d spend my days locked inside the fantasy of our stolen time there, but I’d never been able to disappear so completely into my imagination the way he could. It was stupid to be so hung up on it now. Even then, we should have been too old for play like that, or at least old and clever enough to name our magic land after something other than our neighborhood street. But it hadn’t mattered then, and it didn’t matter now, and what surprised me, more than almost anything, was how badly it hurt to realize by our own rules I would be denied access to Greenwood, anyway—the requirements were kindness and goodness in your heart, and I barely know what those words mean anymore. I think of them and I see him. So how did they do this—to the boy who’d struggled not to cry when we found the overturned nest of eggs in Greenwood? They didn’t even have a chance, he’d said.

I want to cry, I want to cry so badly, but the helpless fury that’s been threatening to choke me for years has finally burnt through the last soft part of me. I want to give up.

Even in another life—another world—where everything was good and sweetly normal, seven years would never have been enough time to forget the face that belonged to Lucas Orfeo.

We won’t be fed again until dinner, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat a bite of the soggy mashed potatoes or the vegetable stew. We’ve been eating the same tasteless crap for weeks, so it wasn’t like I was missing much. I just didn’t trust my stomach not to send it sailing right back up as soon as I managed to swallow it down.

Fear followed us into the Mess Hall, coating the silence, expanding until I thought it would eventually push the walls out of alignment. It multiplied faster than the weeds in the Garden. This is what makes it so hard—well, one of the many things that puts this place at the corner of bleak and misery. There’s never an explanation. Not for the way we’re supposed to behave, not for why they do the things they do. When they first began work on the Factory, Ruby said—

No. That wasn’t right. Ruby wasn’t here when they began turning the dark dirt over, burrowing down into earth. She hadn’t been the one to wager the guess that the camp controllers were finally going to take care of the problem of us—permanently. Put us where no one would ever be able to find us.

I braced my forehead against my hands, trying to rub away the throb of pain behind my temples. I blinked again, and the image of a little dark-haired girl was gone, replaced by a panicked kind of anger. It grated on my nerves. Sent my heart galloping for no reason at all.

I was thankful for it, though, because the anger was the only thing strong enough to distract me from watching Lucas. The Reds, the five we’d seen before, had entered the Mess Hall and had made steady passes up and down the rows of silent wooden tables and benches. I wondered if they’d sensed as clearly as the rest of us had, that they were still being watched, even as they’d been clearly elevated to watch us. The PSFs clustered in the corners of the large room, heads bending toward each other as they picked and tore apart the firestarters’ every stiff movement. Part of me wondered if they were more afraid of the Reds than we were.

Lucas passed by our table twice, once behind me, once in front of me. Each time I looked away before he could catch me watching him, taking in every inch of his appearance, searching for my friend in him. Trying to convince myself I wasn’t drowning myself in some kind of desperate delusion. It was like not realizing you were starving until a feast was laid out in front of you.

Older, taller, harder Lucas. Lucas with the dimple in his chin.

Red.

The word ran circles around my mind as we walked over to the Factory, a single word that somehow encompassed a whole dark cloud of thoughts. Red, Red, Red, Red.

I’d thought about it, you know, wondered if the two of them were still alive, if they were in a camp like mine. My first few weeks here, I’d daydream about seeing them from across the Mess Hall or Garden, get hit with the false high of warm recognition despite it all being in my head. I clung to the possibility of it, even as the years marched on. Lucas would be Green, like me. I just wouldn’t see him because they kept the boys and girls separate. Mia would be Blue, which would also explain why I hadn’t seen her. They didn’t let the colors mix unless we were in the Garden. I nursed that little hope for years, shielding it, keeping it close to me like a candle in a rainstorm.

And maybe some part of me remembered that story—Sir Sammy, fair knight, off to find and rescue Prince Lucas from the outcropping of rocks that doubled as a dungeon and fortress depending on the day. I’d sing, and he’d answer with a shout, I’d sing and he’d answer again, over and over until we were tired of the game or were called in for dinner. I always found him where I knew he’d be. It was the searching that was the important part.

Eventually, you grow up and you stop pretending. This place beats every last dream out of you. It clears your head of such stupid things. The truth was simple, not a glossy fairy tale. Lucas was a year older than me and three years older than his sister, Mia, but neither had been hit with IAAN in the time I’d known them. They moved away a few months before I realized I’d already been affected by...the virus, the disease, whatever it was. Their parents had both lost their jobs and headed a ways north to try to find work in a bigger city.

Bedford was a small town made even smaller by the economic crash and the bottomed-out markets that the people on TV couldn’t shut up about. My parents hadn’t let me say good-bye to the Orfeos—they’d never liked their “influence.” They’d whisper that word like it was the devil’s own name. Influence. They didn’t like how I acted when I finally came home, zipping through the rooms, trying to recreate the carefree way we’d run around their house and outside in Greenwood, smacking each other with plastic swords. They didn’t like it when I told them about Mrs. Orfeo giving us snacks, or when I repeated something she had said. It took me a while to understand that when you don’t like someone, nothing they can say or do will ever seem right. Something as harmless as giving a kid a cookie becomes something aggressive, a challenge to their authority.

So I’d watched them drive off from my bedroom window, crying my stupid eyes out, hating everyone and everything. I didn’t stop until I found the bundle of sparklers he’d left for me in the tree fort. The notebook of stories he’d spent three years writing. I kept them there so my parents wouldn’t find them and take them away. I wonder all the time if they’re still there. If Greenwood exists anywhere outside of my head.

My family only got to stay because we lived off the charity of the Church. I don’t know if my parents are in the old house, or if they picked up and moved as far from the memories of their unblessed freak child as they could. I wish I didn’t care.

Lucas and one other Red, a girl with cropped blond hair, served as our escorts. I had to force myself to stare at the back of Ashley’s head to keep from looking at him when he suddenly matched my pace. I swear, he was warm enough that the snow melted before it touched him—that he kept me warm that whole miserable trek through the mud and sleet. But that would have been crazy.

Where had he been sent, if it hadn’t been to Thurmond? Where was Mia? Was she like him, or me, or was she one of the other colors?

The metal Factory doors always sound like they are belching as they are dragged open by the PSFs waiting inside. My hands are useless, cramped and stiff from the cold, but I try squeezing the water from my hair and sweatshirt anyway. We leave a trail of smeared mud and water behind us that the Green cabins on cleanup rotation are going to have to mop up after last meal.

Ice still clouds the skylights—not that there’s any real sun to filter through the clouds of dirt this morning. Winters stretch on forever in this place, dragging out each dark hour until it becomes almost unbearable. There’s one thing I can’t remember: what it feels like to be truly warm.

The building is large enough to swallow several hundred kids whole. The main level is nothing but stretches of work tables and plastic bins. The metal rafters above are usually crowded with figures in black uniforms clutching their large guns, but today there’s only a dozen, maybe less. About that many on the ground, too. A thought begins to solidify at the back of my mind, but I push it away before it can take shape. I need to focus. I need to get through today, and maybe tomorrow will feel easier. It always gets easier as you get used to it.

I see one of the PSFs throw an arm out, pointing to where Lucas needs to stand against the far wall. When he stares at him blankly, the black uniform lets out an explosive cuss and maneuvers him there by force. We see, at the same exact moment the PSFs do, that the Reds need to be shown exactly what to do. And somehow, this scares me more than thinking that these kids have been turned against us, that they might want to voluntarily hurt us. It means that they are nothing more than weapons. Guns. Point, ready. Point, aim. Point, fire. They are like the old metal toy soldiers Lucas was given by his grandpa. Unable to act on their own, but shaped with edges sharp enough to cut your fingers if you’re not careful.

I don’t care what he is. I don’t care what he could do to me—I care about what they’ve done to my Lucas. I’ve seen enough Red kids to know what the ability does to them, how hot they burn inside their own heads. We thought that they took these kids out to kill them, and now I see they’ve done something much worse. They’ve taken the soul out of the body.

Is this the cure? Is this what they’ve been working on?

After all these years, this is what we have to look forward to? Blank faces, blank minds. And their eyes...My stomach clenched. The Reds hadn’t particularly cared who got in the way of their abilities, but when another kid got hurt, it was more often than not an accident. With each escape attempt, each fight they sparked, we knew that when it came down to it, they would be on our side.

I move stiffly into place, fitting into my usual spot at our table. It’s only when they shut the doors that I begin to feel sensation coming back into me, and even then, it’s only because Vanessa and Ava are crammed next to me, shoulder to shoulder. Can’t talk, but at least we can share the heat that comes off our skin as we start moving.

A plastic bin on the table is filled with what looks like an assortment of old cell phones. There are no instructions given, only three separate bins in front of that one, each a different color. In the Factory, you assemble, sort, or disassemble. They want each phone broken down into three parts—I watch Vanessa take apart the first one to see if her suspicions match mine. Battery in one bin, the storage card in another one, the plastic casing in the third.

The work we do here isn’t important. They can’t give us anything sharp, or anything we may be tempted to take and use later as a weapon—against our soft skin, or theirs. No scissors, even. It’s all just work to tire us out. Make us easier to shuffle around and be prodded into our places. After standing on your feet for six hours each day for weeks on end, there’s not enough fight left in you to resist the pull of sleep at night. Not enough thoughts left in your head to wonder where the uniforms you’ve sewn or phones you’ve dismantled are going.

My fingers seem to be as jumbled and clumsy as my mind today. I can’t get it together—keep it together. I drop the phone case in my hand before I can even pop the battery out, sending it crashing against the concrete floor. Ava stiffens beside me, shrinking away so that any PSF who may be watching will know that it wasn’t her. I drop down onto my knees, quickly patting around blindly under the table until my fingers close around it.

Get it together, Sam. My head feels light enough to drift away from my neck like a balloon. I try to stand up, and my vision flashes white black white. When Vanessa takes my arm, I let her help me back onto my feet. But the grip doesn’t ease up, even after I’m steady.

I feel the approach from behind like a cold wind blowing up the back of my shirt, exposing me. This is what a bird feels like, I think, when they feel a storm coming in the distance. I know my breath is coming out in light gasps, and I hate myself for it. I hate the way I want to crawl under the table and fold myself smaller and smaller until I disappear completely.

I do not know what, in the end, makes a person who they are. If we’re all born one way, or if we only arrive there after a series of choices. The Bible claims that the wicked act on their own desires and impulses, because God is good, only good, and He would never compel a soul to wickedness. That I’m supposed to count on justice in the next life, even if I can’t have it in this one. My father would say that the Devil works us all to his own ends and that we must constantly be on guard to protect ourselves from him. It helps, sometimes, to think of the man behind me as the Devil himself; it’s easier to become the lion I need to be. I can pretend I know his tricks, that he’s not an unpredictable human with a temper he carefully cultivates like a rose with razor thorns.

It helps. Sometimes.

He doesn’t say anything at first, but his breath is hot on the back of my neck, and his smell—oil, cigarette smoke, vinegar, and sweat—wraps around me like an embrace, trapping me where I am. My movements become painfully careful. The sweat that comes to my palm makes holding on to each case a challenge, but I won’t let my hands shake. I refuse to give him the pleasure of knowing that he affects me any more than the other PSFs.

He’s one of the few that still wears a full PSF uniform; all black and menace, with the embroidered red Psi symbol over his heart under the stitched name Tildon.

I keep my eyes on the bins in front of me, but I wonder, I wonder all the time, if he or any of them would do these things if we were allowed to meet them eye to eye. Would they feel as free to hurt someone as human as they are? Maybe they just wouldn’t care.

I should know better; he’s not someone who likes to be ignored. The PSF lets out a disgruntled sound that seems to rip through my eardrums. He takes a step back and I’m just about to release the breath I’d held when I feel a hand slip under my sweatshirt. Under my shirt. A thumb rubs down my spine.

It’s me.

I see the thought reflected in the relieved faces of the girls around me. This is the third day in a row since the rotation began that he’s zeroed in on me, come sauntering over like a hunter picking up a bird he’s shot out of the sky. I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe that it’s me.

My muscles lock first. My head buzzes, emptied of every thought. The sudden shift from badgering bully to—to this actually tilts my world. It’s a soft, delicate touch, and so vile I think my skin is actually crawling to get away from it. I don’t know what to do—I know what I want to do. Scream, shove him away, give in to the burn of bile in my throat. I’ve been hit so many times it’s never occurred to me that this kind of touch could be that much worse than the pain. The hand slides around my hip, down—

I straighten, turning my head to the side. Vanessa’s face disappears as she turns away, letting a cloud of curling dark hair protect her. What does she have to be afraid of? It has taken years for us to see the pattern of his interest, the careful process of his selection. Last month, when we overlapped cleaning duty with another Green cabin, a girl whispered to us about what happened to her bunkmate. While I am in the room, there will be no one else to him. Only, the attention from the past two days has focused, sharpened from mocking cruelty to something...something like this.

“Work faster.” His voice makes me think of the way condensation collected on walls of my parents’ unfinished basement. The stones are so dark and the lighting is so bad, you don’t feel the cold drip until it’s already on your skin. You can’t avoid it.

I see his reflection in the screen of the next phone I pick up. His body is hot and damp and it repulses me more than even the sight of his face. How can someone who looks so normal, like the man who’d delivered our mail each afternoon, be this way? I want to know what hole he crawled out of, and how I can send him straight back into it.

There are others watching this happen, from above, from around me. I feel their eyes, can sense the attention in the room shifting the longer he stands there, smelling my hair, pressing against me. Even as the hatred boils over in me, shame is right on its heels. It’s the stupidest thing in the world, I know it is, but I am ashamed of what he is doing to me and that others are seeing it.

When I still don’t react, he grabs my wrist, wrenching it back up into the air. “Search!” he calls out, clearly delighting in the word. “Assistance!”

It was quiet in the Factory before, but now I can actually hear the rain bleeding through the cracks in the ceiling. Rain and sleet slash against the walls and glass overhead, washing against them like waves. I think I am drowning; I am actually choking trying to get air to my chest. Before today, I would have stood there and just taken it, but I know now that there’s something he’s looking for. Something he wants to see.

He’d lie about me stealing something from the bin just to strip off every last layer of clothing and shred of defense I have left in front of everyone. When we were kids, this was nothing. A female PSF would lead us to the far corner of the room and stand over us as we took off our uniform to prove that we weren’t hiding anything. I’m not a kid anymore, and none of the women seem to be coming forward. I see one in the rafters, older, thick at the waist, and she’s watching this all play out with a pinched look on her face. She isn’t walking toward the stairs. None of them are.

But they don’t look surprised.

So he starts the process for them, tugging my shirt the rest of the way out of my shorts. I hear Vanessa let out a startled gasp, swinging around and bumping the table.

I push my elbow back, trying to dislodge him.

“Careful,” he warns.

Hot shame washes through me. I’m furious at myself for showing these other girls I won’t fight back. Ava is watching me with eyes that are pools of helpless horror, and I realize, with sudden clarity, that if it were any one of them, any of the girls in my cabin, I would have done something immediately, said anything to have made it stop. I need to do the same for myself.

Because I know where this is heading. Before the Green girl told us, we’d heard whispers in the wash houses and out in the Garden. I know what language his touch is trying to speak, and I feel old Sam, the lion, roaring through my blood again. No one gets to believe that I won’t fight.

I know that pride is a sin, but I would rather be dead than let him—any of them—think for one more second he’s allowed to do this to me.

When I feel him lean forward again, I don’t hesitate. I drive both elbows back into his gut, catching him off guard. I know it doesn’t hurt him—that’s why I throw my head back and make sure to nail him in the face, too.

And I feel like I’m spinning, spinning, spinning, reckless with delight in the small power I’ve managed to take back.

Vanessa and Ava both scream. Out of the corner of my vision, I see a blur of red coming toward us and I realize that my vision is hazy because my eyes are watering from the blow. My blood is thrumming in my skull, but I can’t feel any pain. I barely hear Tildon when he starts cussing and spitting out one vile word after another. A PSF stands a short distance away with bugged-out eyes, looking between us and a soldier talking into his radio, saying, No, and, Calm Control, and Handled—

I swing around to face Tildon as he gasps out, “Little...bitch!”

He’s clutching his nose, the words muffled by fingers and blood. He fumbles for the small White Noise machine at his side and I lash out with my foot, kicking it away. I feel a thousand feet high, like I could land another hit on him before the soldiers in black reach me. So, I do. I haul my hand back and slap him as hard as I can across his face, curling my fingers at the last second. The nails I’ve broken working day after day in this Factory cut into the slick, fleshy part of his cheek. The breath goes out of him like a blown-out tire; the blood dribbling down his lips sprays out, sending a fine mist of it onto my sweatshirt.

He is scarlet with rage as he stumbles toward me, swinging his free arm to try to club me with his meaty fist. The girls around me have crawled under the tables; I’m dimly aware of the voices and wait for the White Noise, the gunshot, the end to my story. It’s been so long since any of us tried this that I wonder if they’ve forgotten what they’re supposed to do.

They come out of the stunned haze soon enough. The swing of a nearby baton registers as a change in the flow of the air around me. It whistles as it swings down. By the time it’s there to connect with my skull, I’m already falling forward. The weight that’s slammed into me from behind drops me to the floor. My chin connects with the concrete and I taste blood. There is not a single part of me that isn’t throbbing in pain, but somehow I’m not done yet. The figure on top of me is feeding the fire. I kick back, trying to catch him—he can’t have me, I won’t let Tildon do this.

My hands are wrenched from under me and pinned with difficulty against my back. The hand that closes around them is large enough to capture both wrists at once and secure them with plastic binding. I toss my head back, rearing up like a bucking horse, and the warmth at my back shifts, leaning closer to my ear. He breathes out one word.

“Sammy.”

TWO

LUCAS

HE IS going to kill her.

You spend time living inside anger, you start recognizing its varying violent shades. He huffs and puffs like the Big Bad Wolf, and he’s so slow to recover from that first blow to his chest, he can’t avoid the back of her skull as she sends it sailing straight into his face. Between the blood that’s rushed to his face, and the blood that’s come rushing out of his crooked nose, the PSF’s skin looks blistered by his own rage. This is the kind of anger that cracks bones. Crushes windpipes.

It’s not until she turns around and claws him across the face that the realization sinks my heart like a stone. The trickle of recognition turns into a roar as the girl turns back in my direction, breathing hard, harsh lines turning a beautiful face defiant. She looks like some kind of warrior with her thick, honey-blond hair falling out of its tie, her face flushed with grim satisfaction. This is the face of a girl who once jumped out of our tree and broke her arm, just to prove to me she wasn’t scared like I was.

This is Samantha Dahl.

You fucking idiot, I think savagely, my hands pressing tight against my legs to keep from curling into fists. Shit, shit, shit. I’ve seen her before as she was walking toward the Factory—well. Before that. I saw her this morning going into the Mess. I saw her inside the Mess. I saw her every step of the walk over here, feeling every bit as creepy as I must have looked hovering nearby. My eyes kept skipping back to her, drawn to her face like a lone candle flame in the dark. I’m so damn stupid that even when I saw the faint scar above her lip, curved toward her nose, I thought, She must have had a cleft lip like Sammy. I was so damn busy looking around, searching for one particular face, that I missed the one right here.

He touched her. I watched him do it. Draping himself over her like that—I thought he wanted to intimidate her, push her around like they do with all the kids here. But the look on his face was like a snake’s—eyes glassy, mouth in a permanent, smug smirk, skin gleaming under the milky lights. He looked drunk on the feeling, turning his face toward her ear. I had to concentrate on controlling my breathing. Up in the rafters, the PSFs hovered like hawks, unsure whether or not to intervene with the hunt happening below. I don’t know what they thought when they looked at each other, but I do know they didn’t do one damn thing to stop it when he got a hell of a lot bolder. Useless pricks. I know what “search” means. He was going to strip her right here, in front of everyone. Use it as an excuse to demean her. Control her totally.

And Sammy—she was never going to let that fly. I see it in her face. She knows exactly what’s going to happen to her, and she just doesn’t care. She is a fighter against the ropes, ready to go down swinging.

I can’t do a damn thing.

They haven’t given me the order to move. To restrain her. To do anything other than stand here like a scarecrow, trying to keep the fluttering kids at bay with nothing other than their own fear. To the camp controllers and PSFs, our minds have been drained of will, of impulse, of that fluid connection between the head and the heart that lets you make decisions. The Trainers know the fire in us is bottomless. They took care to beat the flames out early into the program, leaving us little piles of embers that respond only to their hands adding fuel to turn sparks into a blaze.

The PSFs need to think I don’t feel a thing as I watch the scene play out like a car crash in front of me. I’ve survived this long under the government’s “care” because I have followed the only rule I have: Don’t react. I must stand as blank-faced as the others even as the temperature spikes to a thousand degrees in the center of my chest, and I sweat with the effort it takes to control myself to be still. I can’t throw years of work away in an instant, let them drag me out back and put me down like a dog—the way they did to the other kids who didn’t take to their training methods. The ones who burnt themselves out, too hot, too volatile for even the most skilled Trainers to approach. Some resisted the training for weeks—months. I could see the light moving in their eyes when everyone else was checked out, vacant, scratching at their lives like dull pencils until the Trainers handed them a sharpener. I am the last one. I know it. The others are standing right in front of me, but they’re gone.

I protect my fire the only way I know how.

There’s a place deep inside of me that no one can reach. I keep the things there I won’t let the Trainers take, locked up tight where no knife can cut them out, no lash can slice them, and no shock of electricity can void them. When I was a kid, a little one, it was a place where stories took shape—where Greenwood really existed. In class, I’d be listening to the drone of our teacher one minute and, the next, fighting giants with Sammy, running from wizards, defending our tree from monster rats. If Mrs. Brown called on me, forget it. I was gone. When I snapped out of it, either because someone kicked my chair, the other kids were laughing at me, or the bell went off, I still left the room smelling the damp dirt in the forest, feeling scratchy bark on my palms. My heart would still be slamming against my ribs.

There’s that phrase: getting lost in your own thoughts. Well, I disappeared. Mom gave me the dumb, horrible nickname Turtle because of it. She’d catch me sitting at the kitchen table staring at my notebook, not moving, just playing some crazy idea through, watching a full-on film of imagination play behind my eyes, and have to physically shake me back into reality. Same with reading. I lost so many hours to books with the world blanked out around me. Maybe different parents would have tried to break the habit, but mine let me slide into my shell when I needed to. I was the one that stopped letting myself go. When things got...when they got bad, I had to grow up. Stop dreaming.

But damn if the first time the Trainers had me down, hands tied, feet tied, I was scared so shitless I just instinctively went to that headspace. It was like jumping into the deep end of the pool, letting myself sink to the bottom as they hammered away the surface of the water. I was deaf to their voices, even as they screamed in my ear. I felt the echo of the pain they gave me later, when my skin stained itself with bruises and I tried to knit the open pieces back together. They pulverized us early on, turned us to raw meat. Easier to shape that way. It was a cycle. Show fear, get pain. Show anger, get pain. Show humor, pain. Happy, pain. Sadness, pain. Want, pain. In the spaces between eating and pain, they drugged us. Sweet, black nothing.

That’s what’s left in the others. Nothing. Their armor wasn’t as strong as mine. They couldn’t get lost in a maze of memory the way I could. I write myself different pasts. I write myself different futures. The scenes feel real enough that I let myself stay locked inside my head for hours as the Trainers drill me with threats, rake poison words down my back.

Whenever they eased off, gave me food, water, medicine for the hurt, I didn’t think thank you, thank you, thank you, I will listen to you now I will never let you down again I need you thank you thank you the way I heard the other kids sobbing until they were silenced with more pain. I didn’t even notice. I was safe inside memories of Mom and Dad dancing as they cooked dinner together, forcing us to sing with them. Mia making me watch her perform a play she’d written about unicorns and fairies. Sammy. Sammy in the sunlight, laughing. Sammy racing me to the top of the tree, then again to let me win once. Sammy insisting I press my lips against hers just once as we sat up in our tree. Ten and eleven, three days before the move, my heart beating so hard, so fast I thought she could hear it, too. She wanted to know what was so great about kissing, and I couldn’t ever say no to her when she turned those determined dark eyes on me.

Seven years I’ve been coaching myself for a moment exactly like this. I knew that I would find Mia in a place like this, and I’d need to be able to keep a lid on my anger until I figured out how to get us out. Laying on my cot at our facility, I imagined her shivering, pale, starving. I imagined them hitting her for one of her signature comebacks. I practiced the mask of apathy that came to the others so easily, killed my heart just enough to play the game.

It was pointless. I should have known my weak-ass heart better than that. Right now, I feel like I’m about to detonate. The heat under my skin is hot enough to melt my bones. My left arm gives a sharp jerk, and the humiliation of losing control over my body’s horrible tic only makes the burn worse. I can’t make it seem like I’m helping her, I can’t lose this chance to find Mia and be sent back to the facility. But he can’t do this to Sammy.

He called for assistance, I think, mind scrambling to put together the logic. I hear the camp controllers’ voices chirping in my ear, asking for a status. And even though I can hear one of the PSFs, a woman, reply, no one up in the rafters is moving to give the man any sort of assistance. The command hangs in the air, waiting for someone to accept it. The Trainers told us our primary purpose here was to keep the other kids from acting out. Save fire, we were allowed to use force when necessary to meet that goal.

Good enough.

My body lurches forward. I jump over the tables between us, sending the girls working there flying back like a startled flock of pigeons. By the time I reach her, the PSF has the baton in the air, swinging down toward her, and the others are finally moving, taking aim. I slam into her from behind, too hard to really brace herself from the impact of hitting the ground, but I try to maneuver one of my arms beneath her. The PSF’s baton catches the side of my skull and pain explodes behind my eyes.

Sam’s body goes limp with shock and then, even after everything, she starts to fight again. It’s the last gasp of energy from an animal that knows it’s pointless, but still won’t surrender. Not easily, not willingly. I admire the hell out of her for it.

“Restrain her!” I hear one of the PSFs shout.

Glad to, asshole. She’s trying to buck me off, and the movement is enough to hide how bad my hands are shaking. I manage to get her arms behind her and reach for one of the zip ties in the pouch of my belt. Even the rain outside disappears under the PSF’s hollering to the others, his wild gesturing, as the woman I saw before, her stance and face rigid, listens with one hand on his shoulder. The girls, the poor kids, are braced on the ground with their hands over their ears, like they’re waiting for a bomb to drop. If they weren’t scared of the Reds invading their hellhole, they are now.

I know it’s a risk, but I have to try—if she keeps thrashing and struggling to knock me off of her, someone will take my place. And that someone won’t care whether she walks out of this building in one piece.

I lean down, pressing a hand harder against her bound wrists. When did Sammy get to be so much smaller than me? Her wrists are like flower stems. I feel how easy it would be to break them.

Damn. I don’t know if God still listens to me when I try talking to him. I don’t know if he really knows the thoughts inside our heads or hears silent prayers. But please—please let this work. Let me get Sam out of here.

“Sammy.” It’s one word, spoken so quickly, so quietly near her ear, I don’t know that you could count it as a whisper.

But she hears me. Her long body relaxes under where I’ve straddled her, and I pull back just as the woman PSF comes forward. Psi Special Forces Officer Olsen. Her dark skin is taut against the bones of her face as she cuts off Tildon’s path toward us and looks between my carefully arranged face and where Sam’s is pressed against the filthy floor. There are two horns that come over the speakers, one long, one short, and the two girls next to us each suck in a shuddering breath.

My head jerks up. I scan the room for the other Reds and see them reaching into the pouches on their belts—earplugs. Dammit. I was right. I release my grip on Sam long enough to pull mine out, jam them into my ears as far as they can go, and brace myself for impact.

A hit of Calm Control is like taking an icy cold bath where the water’s been spiked with razors. The Trainers used it on us in the beginning, on and off and on and off for hours, but stopped a year in, when they realized daily use was making too many kids crack. And, let me tell you, you can reset broken bones and stitch up too-deep cuts, but you can’t piece a mind back together after it shatters into a thousand, flaming, furious pieces.

I remember those first days though. They’d keep the floodlights in our white cells on all day and all night, watch for the moments it seemed like you were about to finally pass out and sleep and then...the explosion of blinding hurt. No matter how deep I was in my own head, I could hear it muffled, the way I do now—growling static broken up by piercing screams that knock the breath out of you.

I hurt all over, a dull ache that turns into a chill rippling up and down my spine, but Sam—she’s convulsing. Her breath rips in and out of her in sobs. It’s the same for the other girls. The Factory fills with these horrible, breathy moans of pain; some of them sound like they’re being eaten alive by it.

Olsen nods at me, signaling that I need to get up and move. I can’t. For a second, it feels like my knees and feet have been cemented to the ground; it feels like if I don’t keep a hold on Sam’s wrists, her fingers, she’s going to blow apart.

Get up, I command myself. Don’t look at her. They would know—that I wasn’t in their grip, that there was something between me and this girl. I keep my eyes focused on the PSF as I return to my full, stiff-backed height. For a moment, she studies the letter and numbers stitched over my uniform’s pocket: M27.

“Situation under control.” Olsen speaks into her comm unit; I can hear it in the one in my ear with a half-second delay. “Disable Calm Control.”

Don’t look at her. It is almost impossible. Panic sends my pulse through the roof. The PSFs swarm where Sam is on the ground, locking her inside a ring of black. I yank out my earplugs as the kids around me start to stir.

“You know what’s supposed to happen, goddammit!” Tildon is shouting. “She assaulted me! It’s my job—”

Olsen’s gaze is so cold, it freezes the words in his throat. She knows, I think. She saw what happened, and for the first time I wonder if all of this has happened before, if the resignation in her eyes means she knows it’ll happen again. And again. And again. But what can she do? There are tiers of punishments in this place—the Trainers made us memorize them. Additional work, missed meals, exposure, isolation, corporal punishment. They could pick and choose from the list, combine them, if that’s what gets them off. What Sam has done is so far beyond being forced to skip dinner, I’m actually terrified I did the wrong thing in saving her.

Four minutes pass. No one moves. I breathe in. I breathe out. I try to dispel the heat trapped inside of my head. I’m afraid if I take a single step, I’m going to borrow the heat from the electricity powering the lights and send showers of sparks down over everyone’s heads. Control. Nothing. Numb. Control. Nothing. Numb. I can’t get a grip on my heart. It just wants to gallop. I have to slip inside my head, just to get away from this moment. But even my brain doesn’t cut me any slack—the first memory that stirs up, meeting me, is Sammy, age eight, informing me she doesn’t want to be a princess of Greenwood, she wants to be a knight, thank you very much. I laughed. She cracked a wooden sword against my head.

My fingers relax, as do the muscles in my shoulder and arm. Sam always quiets me; she finds me and leads me out of these dark places. The tic is still there, but less noticeable if I slide my hand into the pocket of my uniform trousers. The Trainers would have told the PSFs and camp controllers the tic—that involuntary spasm of muscle and joints—is a Red’s calling card, and when it comes around, it means we’re heating up. We’re thinking, dreaming, tasting fire. Fine if it comes hand in hand with an order to attack, not so fine if it appears out of the blue. Mine has always been less pronounced than some of the others’. Disappears completely as long as I’m mostly calm. Thank God. I’d seen too many other kids get “treated” by a month’s worth of daily, repeated ice-water submersions if they so much as flinched at the wrong moment.

Finally, the doors to the Factory are dragged open, and a dripping, dark figure jogs inside. He brings the frigid air in with him, cooling my temper, freezing me at my core. He’s in what almost looks like civilian clothes—a black poncho, black slacks, boots. Under the heavy, rain-slick fabric, I see the lumps and bumps of a utility belt with a holstered gun. The man wipes the rain off his face as he pushes his hood back. The dark, graying stubble on his face gives it shadows that aren’t really there. He strides toward us, every movement strong, brisk, efficient. He isn’t military, but like the Trainers, he probably used to be.

I remember him. This is O’Ryan. He’s the one that gave us our “orientation” the night before, when we were brought in. He assessed us as we passed by, the way my mom used to examine the cuts of meat in the grocery store, then waved us on to collect our uniforms and our red vests.

camp controller. Shit. The camp controller. Something sticks inside my throat, sealing it off from the air I need to think.

Tildon shoots to his side, his face covered in grime and blood. Next to O’Ryan, who is as steady and silent as a mountain, he looks like an idiot as he flails and moves into the next phase of his tantrum. O’Ryan crosses his arms over his chest, listening but not listening, his eyes glancing between Sam and the PSF. Olsen speaks up toward the end, explaining how I was the one to finally restrain her, that I acted quickly and behaved exactly as I should have.

O’Ryan’s pleased expression turns my stomach. I hide my clenched fist behind me and give him a salute when he says, “Well done, M27.” And every second his eyes are on me, I have to wrestle with the anger all over again. I have to think of Mia’s face when my fingers rub against each other, ready to snap a flame into the air. Hurting him helps no one. It wouldn’t get me closer to finding my sister, it wouldn’t do a single thing to help Sam—but I have a feeling it would be pretty gratifying to set the asshole on fire. I want so badly for all of them to experience the kind of hurt they’ve inflicted on us.

But more than that, I want to cover Sam. I want to cover her so none of these people can see her like this, too weak to even lift her head. The other kids are only just coming out of their daze, waking back up to this nightmare. They stay in the positions they’ve been taught to assume, though—face down on the floor, hands on the back of their heads. Drip, drip, drip goes the rain through the holes in the roof, splattering over them, into their plastic bins. The room smells like damp animal and urine and cigarette smoke. The lights flicker as the wind picks up.

“Fine, then put her in isolation. Two weeks,” O’Ryan finally interrupts.

“Isolation,” Tildon sneers. “She attacked me! The little bitch deserves at least twenty-five strikes! And I want her in the cages, not the Infirmary.”

It’s the first time Sam shows any reaction since the Calm Control. Her hands claw at the ground at that word cages. Where the hell is that? The blood is draining out of my head. They said they sometimes tie them to the fences outside of the Garden, but isolation is the upper level of the Infirmary. Little padded, lightless cells. The kids there are broken, or need to be broken. Every hair on my body seems to prick and stand at attention.

“Fine. A night in the cages and ten strikes.” I don’t know if he saw Tildon’s face light up, but O’Ryan quickly adds, “Delivered by Olsen.”

Her posture relaxes as she swings around, away from Tildon’s sputtering.

One last look from O’Ryan silences him for good. “Go clean yourself up,” he says quietly, layering his voice with just enough of a threat to make Tildon straighten, “and report to my office immediately after.”

He let a kid get the best of him—there’ll be some kind of disciplinary action, at least. He deserves to be smeared against the ground like the shit stain he is. It won’t be enough to balance out what he did to Sam, but it’ll be something.

Olsen flicks her hand toward Sam, staring at me. These PSFs are all the same, aren’t they? They resent the fact they brought us in to fill in the gaps in their security, but they love the power they wield in outranking us. We aren’t human to them, even now that we’re supposedly on the same side. We don’t get eye contact or words. It makes me feel like a damn dog, staring at a master shouting a command in a language I don’t understand.

It takes me a moment to translate what she wants, and, just as quickly, the horror slams right back into me. They’re going to do it right here—they’re going to hit her right here, and they want me to hold her up while they do it.

Fuck.

Them.

Olsen stares at me expectantly. The moment crashes down around me, and I feel something inside of me strain to its ultimate limit. I want to cry—I want to sob like a baby, Don’t make me do this, not to her, not to Sammy. Why did I have to volunteer for this place? Why did I have to come here and find her? I wanted Thurmond because that’s where they were supposed to take Mia. All I want is to find her. Mom and Dad are gone now. I’m all Mia has left. I’m her only chance to get out. I can’t blow this and show them I’m not what I’m supposed to be. But I can’t do this to Sammy. I would rather cut out my own heart.

My left arm twitches so hard, it’s actually painful. I grab Sam under the armpits like she’s one of Mia’s dolls and try to prop her onto her feet, turning her around to face me when Olsen gives a little twirl of a finger. Her knees won’t lock, and with her hands tied behind her, I can’t hold her up as gently as I would have liked. I can’t turn my back on the black uniforms and shield her from this, take the hits meant for her. There’s a voice at the back of my head telling me to take her and run, to set the building on fire and just go, but I can’t—I can’t—my need to live, to find Mia, is a rope around my neck. I’m hanging us both with it.

Her lashes flutter and I know she’s coming back to herself, which makes it that much more horrifying. She’s going to think I want this. She’s going to hate me. The thoughts are there, even as the more rational part of me thinks, She doesn’t even recognize you. I feel sick enough supporting her full weight, watching her head loll to the side. I don’t know how it’s possible to feel worse when Olsen shakes her head and motions for me to clear the bins and lay her over her work table.

The girl with dark curling hair is openly crying beside my right foot. She gets a kick from one of the PSFs, who, apparently, is offended by the small whimpering sounds. I give up Sam’s soft weight to the table, arranging her carefully so the hard wood supports her chest. I’ve barely stepped back when Olsen pushes forward, her baton in the air. In the space of one heartbeat to the next, she’s already hit Sam twice, once across her shoulder blades, the other across her bottom, she alternates with each strike, and I know they’re getting harder because Sam starts grunting at the impact of each one. Her eyes are open, devoid of light. I think she’s looking at my empty, shaking hand, but then I realize she’s not looking at anything at all. The pain and anger and hatred play out over her features, and I think, She’s got a fire in her, I think, I can’t let it go out, I think, Please, God, please make this stop, I’ll do anything—

And then it does. Olsen is finished and looks back at Tildon, who is faintly smiling as he tries to smear the rest of the blood off his chin with the back of his hand. “The cages,” he reminds her.

I don’t know what they are, or where they are, but when Olsen says, “Follow me and bring her,” I know that I’ll at least be able to follow her into their hell. There’s that, at least.

There’s that.

I have to carry her over my shoulder, pinning her legs against me with one arm. Several times, I completely lose track of Olsen as she stomps through the rain and mud, arms swinging under her poncho. There’s no way to shield us from the downpour, and I remind myself that I am supposed to be an unfeeling drone. I can’t be cold or furious or even snap back at the PSF when she turns back to shout over the wind, “Keep up!”

Instead, I focus on Sammy’s breathing. Feeling it go in and out in its light, but steady rhythm, calms the pounding pain in my head and the dizzying wave of nausea. I try to think of us in our tree fort, using slingshots and pebbles to defend our turf from those jackasses down the street, the Strider boys, but I send the memory sailing back to the farthest corner of my mind. Those thoughts are like grains of sugar in the salt of my life, and I don’t want any part of them to be polluted by this moment.

I can’t even give myself the pleasure of what I’d like to do to Tildon—I’d give my anger away in a heartbeat. So I focus on Sam’s soft weight the whole walk over to a small wooden shack attached to the back of the Mess. It wasn’t included in our debriefing. When they walked us through the camp this morning, I’d assumed it was storage for the Mess’s kitchen.

Olsen stops outside of the metal door and taps her ID card against it, shielding the black pad from the rain. Sam is silent, but her teeth chatter as she shivers. My grip on her tightens as the door swings open, and I realize the shaking might be a mixture of terror and cold.

The room is small, the walls lined with stacked individual metal crates. The air in here is damp and frigid. There’s a dark, wet crack in the ceiling. The moisture collected there is dripping down, catching the rust coating the cages’ thin bars and falling to the ground like drops of blood. I know they must have kept dogs here at one point; the smell doesn’t reach my nose so much as assault it. There are still sacks of unused dog food stacked beside the door. Collars and leashes hang useless and forgotten on hooks.

There are windows lining the top of the back wall, but only a faint gray-blue light manages to escape in. Olsen fusses with the light switch. Almost as if they’d been watching the struggle from the monitors in the Control Tower, a voice filters through our comm units: “All units—we’ve lost the primary generator, back up is at 50 percent. Visuals are down. Return all Psi to their cabins and engage the locks manually. Status update in five.”

“Shit,” I hear her grumble, swiping at her face in irritation. “Falling apart—”

Falling apart is one way to describe what’s happening to this place. Falling to fucking shambles is probably more accurate. The last inspection deemed it unlivable, which also feels like a massive understatement. “You will participate in the relocation of the Psi at Thurmond to nearby rehabilitation facilities,” the Trainers had told us on the flight over. “You will assist them in monitoring the Psi as the Psi Special Forces officers and camp controllers make the arrangements, remove the materials held there, and dissemble the structures.”

When I first got here, I panicked at how little time there was to find Mia and get her out, but the swift guilt that came with the thought of having to leave the others boiled the contents of my stomach. But, now that I’m here, I am so damn elated that these kids are getting out, no matter the circumstances. Nowhere in the world is worse than this camp. No place as damp, cold, and filthy. I think the sun has forgotten this place exists.

“Put her down,” Olsen says sharply. I can’t drop her, but I can’t set her down with the care I want to. Sam slumps forward on her hands and knees at the center of the old kennel. Olsen cuts the restraints on her wrist. I’m actually stupid enough to think, This could be worse.

“You know where to go.” It takes a second to realize that she’s talking to Sammy, not me. She tries to get up onto her feet, but pitches forward, off-balance. My body instinctively moves toward her. Olsen holds out an arm, blocking me—she watches, her face void of anything resembling emotion as Sam crawls toward the cage at the center of the bottom row. I don’t want her so close to it—the pile looks unstable, one small knock away from crashing down. The movements are stiff and agonizingly slow as she struggles forward. She doesn’t stop.

She hesitates a moment, then pulls the door open.

She crawls inside.

I am in shock.

I am...

Fire is calling my name. It is whispering words of encouragement, sweet things. It wants out, for me to fan the heat until it’s a vortex that can’t and won’t be stopped. Olsen’s back is to me, and there’s no power feeding the camera in the upper corner of the room. It becomes an option, a real one, to turn her, this place, to ash. I think I can overpower even the storm outside.

“You deserve this for provoking him. He—” Olsen catches herself before another word can slip out. She hooks a padlock through the crate’s door. Sam inches back, along the metal interior. The crate is just big enough for her to sit up with her back hunched over her knees. It’s as far as she can get from this woman, her dirty lies and accusations. “Don’t come into the Factory with your face clean. I will find you a larger uniform. Don’t look at him, don’t act like you want it. He will leave you alone if you stop tempting him.”

This has happened before. Maybe not to Sam—maybe to a different girl. Many different girls? I’m surprised I’m not glowing in the dark. The pain in my head, in my chest, makes me sway.

“He likes your hair, I think,” Olsen says, almost more to herself than to Sam. “That’s easy enough to take care of.”

Sam doesn’t look up. Just nods. What choice does she have? This is a place that turns beautiful things into shadows. They’ll cut off her hair and the traces of sunshine in it. They’ll rough her up, make her harder, uglier, skinnier, instead of solving the real problem.

Olsen stands up, kicks at the door one last time to test it, and then turns back to me and inclines her head toward the exit. I set my jaw and follow, pressing my arms against my sides to hide the involuntary jerk my left shoulder gives. Shit. Twice in a single day. I need to cool it.

Just as I think she’s going to force me to leave with her, she turns her back toward the crates and murmurs, “Stay here until notified by Control that surveillance is operational, then return to your assigned posting.”

I don’t have to leave her here alone. I don’t know who to thank for tossing me this life ring of mercy, so I settle on God. Olsen waits for my curt nod before opening the door and ducking out into the storm, letting the door slam shut behind her.

For the first time in seven years, there is no one watching me. There is a camera in the corner of the room, but if the power is out in this craphole, what are the chances it’s feeding out to Control Tower? The weight bearing down on me from all sides pulls back, and I feel boneless as I lean forward against the door and press my hands against my face. I don’t want her to see me on the verge of losing it.

Minutes pass before a soft sound reaches my ears. I spin on my heel, mistaking it for moans of pain. But it’s...there’s a melody. It’s raw, carried out on uneven breaths, but she’s humming. The words come to me, rising up through bleak memories. I know this. He’s got the whole world in His hands, He’s got the whole world in his hands, He’s got the whole world in his hands. How many times did we sing this in Sunday school while kicking each other under our table?

I step closer and see her shaking, her whole body. From the cold, from exhaustion, from pain, it doesn’t matter. She tries to smother it by curling up tight, but her breath hitches and I know she’s trying as hard as she can not to cry. She’s fighting fear itself with both hands tied behind her back.

I know it’s not actually meant for me when I shuffle forward again, and the song dies on her lips. She looks up just as I crouch down, dark eyes flashing uncertainly. I brace myself for this. If she doesn’t remember, then—I shake my head.

“This little light of mine,” I sing softly into the silence. “I’m gonna let it shine...”

Her breath catches again, but the look on her face hardens and her words come out in a snarl. “If you’re making fun of me, you can go to hell with the rest of them.”

She doesn’t remember. It’s pathetic how my heart gives a painful jerk. I force a small smile on my face, which only deepens her scowl. “The last time I made fun of Sammy Dahl, she beaned me with a sword and almost knocked me out of a tree.”

It takes her a moment to process what I’ve said. I can actually see the light come back into her brown eyes. The air leaves her chest in a shuddering, disbelieving laugh. “You remember. You remember me.”

My relief is mirrored on her face as she crawls toward me. A laugh or sob bubbles up in my chest at the irony of both of us afraid of the same impossible thing. It takes a sharp blade, a huge effort to separate one half of a coin from the other. It would take something a hell of a lot stronger and sharper to separate me from her.

“Lucas,” she whispers.

It feels so damn good to hear my name and not a number. To hear it from her. My mom and dad used to tease me so much about her—puppy love, they called it. I guess I must have been leashed, because I followed her around like one. I would have followed Sammy anywhere, led her out of any trouble she got herself tangled in. She made my little eleven-year-old heart actually flutter. She turned me dumb and shy with a single smile. Even this morning, before I made the connection, she had my full attention. Whatever it had been before, the feeling solidified, took root, blossomed. Having her on the other side of the metal bars, only inches away, suddenly feels too far. I didn’t appreciate it enough when I was holding her before. I didn’t recognize the miracle of it. She’s real, she’s here.

It’s a mess inside me. She has cracked me, left me open and exposed. I’m suddenly terrified of how fast it can and will all disappear. I can’t stop trembling. The feelings that come roaring out are trying to wash me away from the moment. It’s been so long since I’ve let myself really—really—feel something other than anger that I’m not sure I can even remember the names of half of these emotions, only that they eat me up, they devour me whole, and I have never been so grateful as I am in this moment that I am capable of the simple act of feeling. I understand now, maybe in a way I didn’t before, what the other Reds have lost to the Trainers. They will never have this, will they? They might not ever know the feeling of cozying up to a lightning bolt, what it feels like to look at someone’s face and see your heart there.

The peace inside my head, the murmurs of happy memories, they’re pale compared to how it feels to live inside a real moment like this. I let my heart tune itself like a radio jumping between stations; I can’t move, but it feels like I’m careening around the room. I am bursting with that same breathless excitement I had whenever Sam and me would run through Greenwood. When I’d get myself lost and wait for her to come. She is singing a song that only I can understand, and I call back, I call back. She finds me where I’ve been hiding all along.

You are the biggest sap in the universe, Orfeo.

We’re not supposed to care about others. The Trainers want to leave nothing in our hearts but them. I focus on her face again, tired, pale, bruised, and think of sunlight, grass, golden hair, the feel of rough bark on my palms as we climbed up and up and up into the tree fort. The singe of sparks on the Fourth of July as they rose and showered down around us. I don’t speak until the bad feelings clear and my mind is blue skies again.

“Hey, Sunshine,” I whisper. My parents’ nickname for her, Sammy Sunshine. The word stuck in my throat, left it raw. “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry—I wanted to kill them, all of them—”

“You couldn’t,” she says, resting her forehead against the bars. I want to melt the hinges off the door, pry it open and scoop her out. Sam must read it in my face because she adds, quickly, “You can’t.”

Her soft breath fans across my face. I breathe in the smell of soap and detergent and rainwater.

“Are you in pain?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

“I’m okay,” she says, bravely. “I’ve had worse.” I shudder, because of course she has.

Her hands are small enough that she can slide one through the gap in the crate’s bars. She reaches for me and I seize it like I’m drowning and she is the only thing that can pull me clear. My other hand hooks on the door and, within an instant, she’s covered my fingers with her own. It’s not enough.

“You’re warm,” she whispers, a strange note in her voice.

“Red,” I say, trying to hide the flush of shame. “Comes with the territory. Megafreak.”

Sam pulls her face back, her eyes hard. “Who called you that?”

“No one. Everyone.” I smile, recognizing her indignation all too well. “What are you gonna do about it, Sammy?”

She looks down, her own small smile touched with sadness. “Let the air out of their bike tires. Set off fireworks under their window. Hit them with snowballs walking home from school.”

“My champion,” I say. “My hero.” I’d seen her do all that and more when some of the guys at school picked on me for no reason other than my best friend was a girl. Kids can be real dicks, even without the freak abilities.

Sam seems to remember where we are suddenly, breaking from her own daze. She tries to pull her hand back through the bars, but I won’t let her.

“The power is out,” I remind her, “the camera isn’t on. It’s just you and me.”

Her face is so flustered that I know it’s more than that. Sam has her pride. She doesn’t want me to see her like this, despite everything. This may be the one chance I have to talk to her; she has to know that the only thing I care about is that she’s safe and alive and that I hate that I can’t hold her and touch her and...

I almost can’t believe it, that it’s the first reaction I have, that it’s still there after everything that’s happened this morning.

It’s because you’ve been alone, it’s because everyone is gone and you can’t admit to yourself you’re scared, and because it feels like home, it’ll feel like nothing ever changed. I know all of it is true, but I also know, on a very basic, human level, hers is the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. They must have created art specifically for people like her, to try and fail forever to capture these small looks, all her various angles and the colors of her moods.

The urge is overwhelming, and I wonder...I wonder if she’s thinking about the same thing, because her eyes keep flicking down to my lips before finding my eyes again. It doesn’t make sense. She’s in pain, we are in actual hell, and none of it seems to matter.

But isn’t this how it always was with us? When we were together, the world shrank around us. Nothing else existed outside of that space between us. We took Greenwood with us wherever the two of us were together.

“Lucas,” she says again, “it’s...this isn’t...were you here? Before?”

I shake my head. “No—I don’t know where the Facility is, but I was never here. Mia, though—I overheard the PSFs say they’d bring her here.” I almost can’t ask. “Have you seen her?”

“No. What color is she? Do you know?”

For a moment, I can’t speak at all. I want to look at Sam’s face, the curve of her cheek, her eyes, until the blistering pain leaves. Sometimes I am suffocated by the memory of how helpless I was then, when I tried to get her away from the PSFs. I had fire, but they had Calm Control trapped in a little device. “I don’t know. They took her before she...before she changed. I had already gone through it, but they wanted to take her as a precaution. They kept saying that. Precaution. I overheard one of them say she would be taken here, but—” It’s the first time I’ve admitted this out loud, and it feels just as horrible and bitter as I knew it would. “I don’t know if she lived through the change. When it happened. What she is.”

Sam gives me a sharp look. “No. She survived. She would have. Mia was strong.”

“Strong doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

Still, she continues on, undaunted, and I love her for it. “She’s not Green. I would have seen her by now. There’s a chance she could be Blue. There are so many of them, and unless we have the same shift in the Garden. If she was Yellow—”

I don’t like the catch in her voice. “If she’s Yellow, what? There aren’t any Yellows here.”

“They took them out a little bit after the Orange and Red kids,” she says. “She might have been here and then taken out—moved. I don’t think they would have killed them. If they didn’t do it to the Reds—”

“Right. If the Red monsters get to live, then everyone else should be fine.”

“Stop it,” Sam says, and this time succeeds in pulling away from me. “Lucas, look at me. Look at me.” As helpless against her as always, I do. “The Reds who were here were...very broken. I don’t think it was their fault. But they were the only ones brave enough to try to do something. Fight back. I didn’t hate them then, and I don’t hate them now. I’m not afraid.”

“You aren’t afraid of anything,” I say.

“She could be here. I’ll help you look. We’ll find her,” she says. “Is that why you came here? Did you have a choice?”

I nod. They gave us the illusion we were choosing our assignments, thinking, I guess, that it would help us commit if we felt like we were making the choice of our own volition. All they did was open a door for me I’d been waiting to look through for seven years.

The rain and wind beat against the building, filling the silence. I finally see why the concrete under me is so wet—there’s a gap between the wall and foundation in the back corner of the room. I look back at the bags of wasted dog food and start to rise, thinking I can at least stop the hole up.

“No—” Sam says sharply. “Wait—Lucas, don’t—” Her voice falters. “Don’t go.”

I lower myself back to the ground. “I wasn’t leaving. I won’t leave you.”

She’s shaking again, watching me out of the corner of her eye. My heart gives a painful lurch.

“When—?”

“The change? A few weeks after we left Bedford—”

“That soon? Are you—”

“The same old Lucas?” I have to joke about this, I’m that desperate for one small part of this to feel normal. Normal-ish. Not soul-crushingly awful. “Unfortunately. Only now, I’m slightly more flammable.”

She doesn’t look amused, but my smile encourages hers, just a little bit. Her frantic plea fades from the room as if the rain were carrying it away. “Fortunately.”

I try not to beam.

She studies me as openly as I study her. I feel caught somewhere between a memory and a dream, because everything about her is the same but just that tiny bit different. The roundness to her face has thinned out, and damn if what my mom said was true all those years ago—she looks a lot like her own mother. The difference is, Mrs. Dahl had this...frigid quality to her, like a doll whose sole purpose was to have her hair brushed and her clothes changed before being placed on the shelf again to be admired. Never played with. Sammy seems almost feral in comparison, adapted to her situation here the way a lost dog has to relearn how to live outside in the wild. She’s never, ever going to be trained; she’s always going to bite and bark and run away.

He knows that, too, I think. Tildon knows that she’s a challenge and he won’t be satisfied until he’s broken her. Pulled out all of her teeth and claws.

Finally, Sam asks the question she’s been hovering around, unsure if she can approach it. “You’re...not like the others, are you?”

As if on cue, a voice in my ear buzzes, “Still on auxiliary power. All PSF units, report in.” I listen as twenty voices chirp in alphabetical order. “Cabin one secure.” “Cabin two secure.” Mess Hall, Infirmary, all of it, locked down. I sag against the crate. I have more time. It might not seem like much, but, to me, it’s everything.

“Lucas?”

I glance at her concerned face, remembering her question. “I’m different. I didn’t break.”

She starts to slide her fingers through the bars again, but catches herself before she can reach me. I bow my head toward her, heaving in a deep, tired sigh. I don’t know what to say. My mind is bending itself into knots of knots, trying to figure a way out of this, how I can help her, how the two of us can leave and find Mia together. It doesn’t stop, the ache in my skull doesn’t disappear, not until Sam tries again—reaching out to brush the dark, wet hair off my face. Her fingers are like ice, but I’m overheating, I’m burning.

“Don’t go near the others, Sam,” I whisper. “Don’t look at them. Don’t try to talk to them. There’s nothing...human left inside. They’ll hurt you. It’s what they were trained to do.”

“But not you?”

“I’m not...I’m not totally right inside,” I try to clarify. “I’ve felt what they want me to feel.” The sweet nothing that comes from pushing through the pain, leaving your mind empty. “But I have...ways of dealing.”

I see her digesting this, the moment her eyes light with understanding. There’s a faint smile on her face. “Turtle.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and nod. Mom’s nickname scorches my heart.

“It helps me cope. If I’m lost in my head, I can’t hear them. I don’t feel them. They can’t break me, but they can’t know they haven’t. So I have to...I have to do the things they ask. Bend. Follow orders.”

“Sometimes we have to bend,” she says, “to survive.”

“Is that what you call this morning?” I ask. “Bending? Looked more like snapping to me.”

Sam lets her hand fall away, turning her gaze away from mine. Her jaw sets stubbornly, jutting out slightly. It’s so Sammy, I have the irrational urge to laugh, but I’m not sure I really remember how. This is the girl who never wanted to play princess.

“Was that the first time he did that?” I say. “How long has he...”

“How long have I been tempting him?” She spits the word out. I see the lion coming back into her. Her nails curl against the floor like claws. “Since the rotation started a few days ago. He was just assigned to our cabin block. Some of the girls in another cabin...Look, it’ll be okay. I’ll figure out a way for him to lose interest.”

God. It’s exactly what I thought, isn’t it? He’s fixated on her. He’s fixated on other girls in the past. And instead of dealing with the actual issue, the camp controllers keep moving him around. Not even moving him to a block of boy cabins.

Unless they already tried that, too, and it didn’t matter to the piece of shit. I feel like I’m going to be sick. There’s smoke in my lungs, filling my chest.

“It’s him, not you.” I say the words fiercely. “You’ve done nothing wrong. If he tries it again, I’ll—”

“Do nothing,” she says. “You can’t. No, listen to me. You have to find Mia and figure out...You have to get out of here. Promise me.”

“I won’t promise,” I say. “If he touches you again, he’s ashes.”

“You can’t do anything, Lucas. You can’t. That’s the point of this place.”

And that’s just it, isn’t it? They’ve taken everything away from us, including the right we have to protect ourselves. This is what it means to be powerless—we are dependent on them for everything, even common decency. We have to trust that they’ll behave like actual humans.

“Run. As soon as you get a chance. Get out of here and find your parents and—” Sam leans forward again, cutting herself off. Her brows draw together. I can’t hide my expression from her, and I know how it must look. I don’t want to have to hide the pain anymore. I can’t hide anything from her, anyway.

“Oh...oh, Lucas, no,” she whispers. The missing years stretch out between us, and I hate that I have to fill them, that I have to tell her this. I hate all of the what-ifs. What if we’d just stayed where we were and tried to fight through it? What if I’d come to Thurmond with Sam and Mia and I’d known, at least, where I could find them? “What happened?”

I try to shrug off the ache that pierces my chest. “We—we went up to Pennsylvania, to live with Grammy and Pops. You remember?”

“Of course.”

“We couldn’t stay with them after they started making those announcements about Collections. I’d already changed. It was too dangerous and people knew where we were. So we left and went a few towns over.” We lived out of our car in an abandoned parking garage, but I couldn’t tell her that, not when her face was already so shattered. It wasn’t even that bad, you know? We put up sheets in the window during the day, when Dad went out to look for work, and Mom and Mia would try to outdo each other with their stories. Sometimes I think about being small enough to lay across the backseat, my cheek against the fabric, just listening to Mom as she voiced each of her characters. Dad would come back with food and a smile, lean across the way and kiss her. I miss the days that were boring, hot, and long, because those were the days when I felt safe.

“It was just...it started as a carjacking. The two guys were out of their heads on something. It turned into something else when they realized me and Mia were there. My parents weren’t going to let us go. Mom reached for the money we’d been keeping in the glove box. They panicked, thinking she had a gun, too. Dad tried to cover her. It was over so fast.”

“Are you sure they’re dead?”

The stench of blood and smoke fills my senses, and the rumbling of pain starts at the back of my head, carrying forward like a rattling drum. I focus on the rain’s pattering so I don’t have to hear Mia’s screaming.

“God,” she said, “of course you are. I’m sorry. You can’t...you...” She’s blinking hard, trying to clear her throat until she gives up, and I see the first tears collecting on her lashes.

“Your folks?” I ask.

I didn’t like the Dahls. At all. Sammy was the best thing about them, and they never once recognized it. I don’t know how someone like her could survive in a house that’s just so...stiff. Stiff words, stiff hugs, stiff dinners. Mom felt so sorry for her, liked to tease out Sam’s devious, wicked streak with her own. Anything she lacked at home, we would have given her. We were always overflowing with the good stuff. My house in Bedford was loud and messy and so sweet, so bright the memories almost hurt to look at.

Sam shrugs. “Dad walked me to school. That was the last I saw or heard from them.”

I don’t know what to say to that that wouldn’t be horrible and offensive to the people who raised her. I can’t do anything, but lean against the crate. Sam does the same, and I try to imagine what it would be like if there wasn’t that barrier between us, if we’d lived our lives the way they were supposed to pan out. The missed things—games, dances, studying—those things just leave me hollow. But I know Sam is there. I know she is.

“Do you still see Greenwood?” Sam asks softly.

“Not like I used to,” I say. “There are other things I need to focus on. Remember.” I wish I still had the kind of heart to come up with the stories I used to. They were so pure and simple. And because we were making the rules, I always got to be the hero.

But there’s no room left for play or pretend in our lives. Even these minutes we’ve had are being stolen for reality. I need my shell, but I can’t lose my focus on the future because I’m letting myself get lost in the sweet glow of the past.

“I think about them all the time,” Sam said. “There was this one—Mia was the sorceress and she took over the fort and held you captive. I can’t remember why she was pelting me with her stuffed animals, though.”

I have to smile. Mia had a flair for the dramatic. She was happiest as a sorceress, an evil queen, or monster—and even happier if Mom let her raid her makeup to complete the look. “She could control the animals of the forest, remember? They were defending her.” Including her stuffed Tiger, Ty-Ty, because, of course, why couldn’t there be large predator cats in Greenwood?

“And she’d turned you into a beast, too! How could I forget?” Sam’s laugh is so faint I think I’ve imagined it. “Her weakness was water. I broke your Super Soaker.”

“But then you realized you could sing her to sleep,” I say. “Sammy saved the day again. How did that one go? I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart...”

“And I’m so happy, so very happy...” Her voice drifts off as she swallows hard. “I missed you. Is this even real? I can’t...Is this really happening?”

“I’m gonna bet I missed you more,” I say with a heat that has nothing to do with what I am, but who I am, who I want to be. “It feels the same.” You never left me.

Sam sits back, her lips parting, but if she means to say something, I’ll never know. The lights overhead suddenly snap on and I rocket to my feet, straightening out. The drug-like daze rips away from my mind and I slam back into reality. Sam scrambles back against the metal bottom of the crate. In the second before she disappears from my line of sight, I see the desperation on her face, and I’m cut in half by the kind of pain that’s worse than any baton, any shock, any blade. My ear is buzzing with updates, the Control Tower coming through with a firm “Power at full capacity, return to schedule.”

I force myself to walk toward the door, back toward the wall of crates, then toward the door again, trying to play off my indecision as pacing. My mind is looping. Olsen said to leave when notified that surveillance was operational—technically I haven’t been notified of that, only that the power is on. That’s an excuse they’ll buy, I think, that I took her words literally. They think our heads are vacant, waiting for them to pour in whatever thoughts or orders they want us to have. I can play dumb forever if it means not having to leave Sam alone. Shit.

This is going to be a problem—I’m not going to be able to concentrate on what I came here to do, on playing the part of perfect toy soldier. I’m not going to be able to think of anything but Sammy.

She’s humming again, picking up that same song about joy and happiness, and it stops me in my tracks. It settles my mind.

The door swings open behind me, letting in a spray of rain on a strong gust of wind. I set my legs apart in a strong stance, like I could be the wall that keeps it from reaching her. I turn my head around, fumbling for some kind of excuse to give to Olsen for why I’m still here.

But it’s not her standing there, filling out the doorframe.

It’s Tildon.

THREE

SAM

SOMETHING’S WRONG.

Lucas has stopped pacing, slowing turning himself inside out with each stride, but the agitation that electrifies the air has billowed out to become something far more dangerous. The temperature in the room ramps up, until I’m sure it’s not just the heat coming back on through the overhead vents. I strain against the side of the cage, trying to see, fighting the urge to kick and kick and kick until I smash it into pieces. I want out.

The door shuts again, muffling the wind’s howling.

“Dismissed.”

One word. A bolt of dread shoots through my heart. Stops it dead in my chest.

I press my back against the far corner of the crate. There’s a lock between us. A cage. I’m safe in the cage.

Unless he has a key.

Would they have given him a key?

Could he have taken it from Olsen? Where was she? Why didn’t she—

His boots squish as the water leaves them. He takes three short steps forward, but I still can’t see him or Lucas. I press a hand to my face, my back alive with throbbing pain, my head still aching from the White Noise. My throat burns with the things I should have said to him in the few minutes we had.

Don’t do it, I think. Lucas, it’s not worth it.

He has to get out of here. He has to find Mia. I don’t know what these Reds are supposed to be, what role they’re meant to serve here, but I can guess insubordination is not going to play well with any of the PSFs.

Lucas’s heart is too soft for this place. He has the most beautiful mind of anyone I’ve ever known. I shouldn’t have let him...I shouldn’t have talked to him. The realization is like swallowing boiling water. I got so wrapped up in him and the feeling of having him close again. He’s different, in so many ways. His voice is deeper but still has the usual hint of a smile in it, no matter how much it’s dimmed. And where he used to be short, skinnier than me, Lucas has shot up to his dad’s height and he’s filled out. They have shaped him into someone who fills a room just by standing in it.

I don’t know how he’s doing it, how he’s strong enough to bury his heart that deep inside him, the surface never once betraying how he feels. It’s only because I knew him—know him—so well that I see the pain that’s in his eyes and I can recognize it for what it is. How long has it been since he’s been able to even talk about his parents? How did he survive all of these years, locked inside of his own head?

This morning I’d felt the power boiling under his skin, and I’d just assumed that his heart had hardened over the years as much as mine. It’s not true at all. He is still good, sweet Lucas. I know how deeply he feels everything, and I can’t imagine the inhuman strength it’s taken to be able to move on from losing two of the people he loved most in the world when just the thought of their loss has actually shattered my heart. When we were kids, he was the crier. Things didn’t upset him, they devastated him, and it just made me want to fight every single kid who gave him trouble for it.

He can hide it from them, but he can’t hide it from me.

“Dumb or just deaf?” Tildon snorts. “Get out.”

I hear a step, and then another, lighter step that mirrors it. Something clicks—the baton coming off its hook. I recognize the sound now. It’s a bruise on my memory, one that’ll never fully heal.

Someone is breathing hard, and it’s not me. I don’t think it’s Lucas, either.

“There are plenty of cages here. Are you looking to join the little princess? You’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?”

Lucas says nothing. Tildon does nothing. I can hear him squeezing the baton in his fist, but he doesn’t hit Lucas. I try to imagine what he must look like, facing a Red, knowing what he’d done to torment the Reds in the past, knowing that some of them must remember it.

Go, Lucas! My mind is screaming the words. If only I could see his face. He would know it’s okay to go. He can’t stay here for me. It’s not worth it.

Lucas takes a halting step toward the door as Tildon walks around him, careful to keep an arm’s length of distance between them. Suddenly it’s needles and knives pumping through my veins, not blood. Tildon’s boots are the first thing I see, his mud-splattered boots. I can’t breathe. I realize it suddenly, the truth sinking deep inside of me. This is never going to be over. This is my life now, until the camp controllers step in and move him again, make him another girl’s problem. I hate that the thought actually gives me relief. I hate how selfish I have to be just to survive.

He crouches down, tapping the lock with his baton. I do feel like an animal then. Caught in a trap, waiting for the knife. “Hi, sweetie. We didn’t finish our conversation earlier.”

I won’t look at him. I won’t. I can feel his eyes rake over me, the way my wet sweats cling to me, the tangled mess that is my hair. I wish Olsen had just cut it all off before she left. I see what she does, now, the intensity of his gaze as it locks on the place where strands of my hair brush my collarbone.

Tildon tugs on the lock to test it, laughs at the way I cringe as he drags his baton over the front of the crate, up and down, his eyes never once leaving me. I want to crawl out of my skin and disappear in the shadows. I want to dissolve the way Ruby did. I can’t be here anymore. I can’t.

The entire cage shifts as the baton smashes against it. I’m rattled from the top of my head to my feet so hard I bite my tongue and the taste of blood explodes in my mouth. Tildon laughs again as I cover my face with my arms. The thin metal has warped where he struck it. The gap between the bars has expanded, bent and twisting inward unnaturally. He wedges the baton into the bottom corner of the door and starts to bend that, too, pulling the corner toward him, creating a hole large enough to stick a hand through. I twist around again, tucking my legs up against my chest, my left side against the back of the cage to avoid his touch.

“Sweetie,” he calls, “sweetie—come here!” He punctuates the last two words with the baton. He can’t get to me while I’m in here. I’m safe in the cage—

Tildon stands suddenly and seizes the front of the kennel and hauls it toward him, the center of the small room. The scream that leaves my throat is drowned out by the screech of the metal against the cement, the thunder of the empty cages above it filling in the empty space, crashing to the ground. He drops the weight with a satisfied grunt, a smile that’s all teeth. I can’t get away from him now. He stands over me, looking down through the bars, considering. I have to force myself not to look at Lucas, still facing away from us in the corner.

He can’t help you—you have to get out of this—think, Sam, think—

“This is M27 requesting permission to leave the cages to return to my post,” I hear Lucas say. His voice has a halting quality to it now, each word clipped. “Officer Tildon is here to relieve me.”

Tildon’s breath whistles as it’s sucked in between his teeth. He twists around, pinning Lucas with a look of such undisguised malice, I can’t imagine how both of them will walk out of here alive.

The instinctive panic smooths out to horrified understanding. He’s telling them Tildon is here in a way that makes it seem like he’s only asking permission to act. But he doesn’t get it. The power is on. The camera is operational. The Control Tower must know he’s here. They just don’t care.

Don’t! I want to scream it. Don’t put a target on yourself. Just get out!

He tried, though. He tried. My throat is thick with the need to cry, I’m so grateful.

Neither of them has moved, and I’m too much of a coward to make a sound and break the tense silence. Tildon is still, frozen, his hand still dangling inches above my head. Someone in the Control Tower must be talking in his ear. For the first time, I wonder if maybe they didn’t know—if someone hadn’t been watching this room from the moment the power came back on.

Lucas turns around slowly, crossing the short distance to the door. He pops it open and holds it; the room seems to gasp, sucking in the cold air. Doesn’t say a word, just waits. His eyes never once leave Tildon.

“You stupid little shit,” the PSF seethes. “Don’t think I’ll forget—”

“Our orders,” Lucas says without an ounce of warmth in his voice. “Sir.”

He is good. It’s almost terrifying—like there are two different boys trapped in his body. The last traces of fizzing brightness I’d felt with him fade and die completely.

Tildon looks down at me and, before I can turn away, spits in my face. The smile he gives me is somehow worse than anything else he’s done to me here; it’s a promise. I duck down, folding myself inside the cramped space to wipe every last trace of him away with my sleeve. The smell of him hangs over me like a cloud of poison, and I feel myself gag again and again until he finally crosses the room and switches off the lights.

The door swings shut and locks behind them.

And when there is nothing and no one but the walls around me to hear, I begin to hum again. I lift the pitch higher and higher until the ache in my throat clears and the wind begins to answer back.

It seems impossible, but I sleep.

It’s the shallow kind, one that I dip in and out of until I finally feel more exhausted than I did at the start. The day has cut me open and exposed every last nerve in my body. As night comes, early as always, the leftover haze of light from the storm is stained a deep violet. My back is stiff no matter how I bend and twist around, and I have to imagine my skin is turning the same color as the sky. I grit my teeth and close my eyes, drifting back out of reality.

By the time my eyes open again, the light has gone out of my world completely. The metal grating on the side of the cage digs into my back, groans as I shift again. There’s no way for my eyes to adjust, and there’s nothing to see save for a prick of red light on the door where the electronic lock is. Instead, every other sense sharpens to fill in the gaps. The smell of wet fur is slowly easing out of the small room, but what replaces it is the stench of soggy dog food. My belly cramps with hunger and my throat is dry, but it won’t be unbearable until the morning. How long did they say I have in here? This morning feels like it happened in another life.

Did I imagine Lucas? The fear takes hold of my throat and squeezes tight. It wouldn’t have been the first time. He is always there when I need him, waiting for me to pluck him out of my memory box. There are new images now, tucked behind the old ones. I close my eyes and imagine him sitting there again. I remember every curve and dimple so clearly, I think I could paint him into the air, back into existence. I wish I could have trapped the sound of his singing in my head.

I draw in another breath. Real. I can’t tell if this has all been a dream or a nightmare. It seems so out of line with my life to be given this one small thing. My mind is trying its best to quickly burn the fire out in my heart; it’s actually thinking this through, dragging me back down into this reality.

The odds are I will never have the opportunity to speak with him again as long as we’re both here. So many different moments of chance had to line up to bring him to this camp, for us to recognize each other, for him to step in, for the power to go out—my hands shake with how frantic I feel at the thought. I didn’t appreciate it enough while he was here. If I could go back and live those few minutes again, I’d have paid closer attention to his smell, the details of the scars on the right side of his chin, the way the warmth of his voice shrank and broadened depending on what he was talking about.

He’ll go, and you’ll stay, and you’ll live through that, too.

Will I?

Do I not get a choice in anything? He walked back into my heart as a conclusion, not a question. Maybe that’s the whole point—life showing me how good it could be, letting me have it just long enough to want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything else, only to rip it away. When you have nothing for so long, you forget the terror of having something to lose.

The rustling starts like a foot dragging against the concrete. I lift my head up, trying to squint into the darkness. There are all kinds of rodents in this camp. I’ve had to kill more than one mouse, not to mention an assortment of roaches and spiders, with nothing more than the heel of my flimsy slip-on sneaker. The sacks of dog food must be heaven for them, the easiest pickings for miles around.

But I know what mice sound like as they scrabble against the concrete and through the walls. That is not a mouse.

Someone exhales between their teeth. I don’t hear it so much as feel it near my ankle.

“Who’s there?” My voice sounds unnaturally loud to my ears, even at a whisper. How long had I been sleeping? I would have heard someone coming in; the creak of the door alone would have jolted me out of the deepest layer of sleep.

I start to draw my legs back from where I’ve stretched them out. But that small movement sparks another one—warm, smooth muscle glides along my skin, up my calf with silent intent. And I think, He’s back, I think, He’s here, he’s got the lock off. I can’t see a damn thing, I can’t get out of this damn cage, this room, this life; the darkness has taken on weight, and I can’t get out from under it. I can’t get out. I am never getting out.

It’s not until after I frantically kick that I can hear my mind whisper, Snake.

The hiss sounds like I’ve tried to throw a bucket of ice water onto a fire, it sounds like my heart, the frantic pulse of it just before it stops completely. My numb, frozen body is alive with feeling, overwhelmingly aware of the weight stretched out along my hip, down my leg. By then, it’s too late.

The metal sheet beneath me pops as weight suddenly shifts. I can’t go still, limp, anything I know I’m supposed to do, I just want out, I want out of here. There’s a moment’s grace as it coils before the lunge. I feel it spring forward, and, God, do I feel it when its fangs punch through my skin and strike the ankle bone.

I scream in pain and shock and it only—it hurts—

It hurts—

It electrifies my brain. I can see colors and lights that aren’t there. I feel the devil in this room as surely as if he’d guided the snake in.

Stop. Moving.

It whips out of the cage so fast, I think it’s flying. It leaves the way that it must have come in, through the gap Tildon made trying to pry the door off. I choke on my next breath as its scale-slick body rubs against the first bite the last time. If it’s leaving, it won’t bite again. It’s as scared of you as you are of it.

I stay still for as long as I can bear it, until the trembling starts. Reaching down as best as I can, I rub my fingers along the punctures, already swollen and tender. They come away slick and warm—warmer than any other part of my body. I can almost imagine how it happened, how the snake was washed out of its deep hole by this winter’s rain and made a shelter of this place, and then a home when he realized how many mice risked running wild to get to the dog food. I wasn’t anything more than a heater to it. It stretched out to try soaking in what warmth I had to offer. To—

Waves of nausea churn in my stomach. I was a Girl Scout for all of two years before the change, and they taught us to identify the poisonous ones, how to avoid them on hikes, what to do if you can’t. But I can’t remember any of it. There’s nothing in the box. My mind is scrambling back through the years, but none of it matters because it happened before I went through the change. I can’t remember how to tell one snake apart from the other, and, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. It’s too dark to see anything. The only thing I know is that I don’t feel right.

I can’t pretend it didn’t happen, and, for the first time in years, I don’t want to lay here and let luck roll the dice on whether I have to hang around, or if I’m finally getting off this ride. I see now that there’s something for me at the end of all of this. When I get out, no matter how many years it may be from now, I know there is someone who’ll care. If Lucas can’t escape this demented program they’ve set up for Reds, then he’ll need me to find him. I will help him find Mia, and even though I have no idea what to do or where to go from there, none of it matters because we’ll be speeding away, the darkness disappearing into the dust the wheels will kick up. I will outrun this place and protect them both from ever feeling the pain of loss again.

I shift onto my knees, mind and leg throbbing with my pulse. I need to get someone’s attention—in our cabins, if anything were to happen, we had an emergency button to push. That’s how they knew to come and get Ruby. I don’t have that luxury, and I haven’t understood that it is a luxury until this moment when every single part of me is shaking and panic is making it hard to focus on anything. I gasp in a deep breath, feeling my leg again. My fingers don’t even brush the bite, but my leg feels waxy to me, and aside from the shooting pain, there’s barely any sensation outside of the feeling of sand pouring into my bones.

What I have is a dark room, and one lone camera somewhere on the wall behind me.

I stick my hand through the opening that Tildon created in the metal bars. Each time my mind brings up the image of a snake, I stubbornly turn it back to Lucas’s face. No one is coming becomes He’ll come, he’ll come, he’ll come to get me. I don’t want to be a realist. I don’t want to pretend like I’m okay living in this gray numbness anymore. I want to get out of here. I want to live. I want to feel every ounce of pain and happiness life can serve up, because it’ll mean I’ve survived. It’ll mean I’m alive.

I fit my arm as far through as it’ll go and wave it up and down. Minutes tick down, second by second, until I can’t ignore the way the metal is cutting into my arm and that nothing has happened. I tug on the lock but my hands are shaking too hard to keep my grip. Shuffling back along the metal bottom of the kennel, I pull off my shirt and expose my skin to the cold. It feels good, actually. There’s something boiling just under my skin; I feel it bubbling in my stomach, too, until it starts to cramp. The shirt is pushed out the hole first, and I reach down to grip it, hoping beyond hope that they’ll be able to see the color moving in the dark better than my arm. I wave it frantically up and down.

Nothing happens, and no one comes, and the longer it takes for me to realize it, the worse I feel. It’s too dark here. Unless the cameras can see in the dark, they have no idea anything is wrong. I could try to scoot the crate back, get close enough to the stacked crates to try to send them crashing to the ground, but it wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t see it.

I have to get to the lights.

At this point, the punishment I know will come stops mattering and I flip myself around again, scraping my back against the top of the kennel. I can’t make out anything in front of my face, it’s all feeling fingers and desperate hands. Still, I lay on my back and I kick. One leg, the one that feels like it’s actually on fire, I can’t so much as move. I grit my teeth and use my other to kick against what I think are the crate’s hinges—they can break, can’t they? Anything can break if you hit it hard enough. Aren’t we all proof of that?

I hear a snap; the reverberation of the hit races up my leg. One more. Please, just one more—

The door flies off and clatters against the cement. I don’t waste a second in twisting myself around so I can use my arms to drag myself out. The contents of my head are swinging around. I can’t get a bearing on the ground with my feet under me. It’s farther to fall, anyway, than if I go on hands and knees.

I move through the dark, scraping my skin, feeling the loose pieces of concrete dig into my skin. The hand out in front of me bumps the wall and I reach up, feeling along the wall for the switch. My fingers fumble, slick and clumsy. I force myself farther up until I hear a click, and the light that floods the room burns tears into my eyes. I shield my face and look to the door. It would lock from the outside, wouldn’t it? I could try. I need to try.

But that’s just it. Strength seeps out of me, beading on my skin as sweat. I’m shaking and I can’t stop. My head isn’t in control of anything below my mouth.

“Help!” The word tears out of me. I squint up toward the dark blur in the upper corner of the room. “Help me! Please!”

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die like this.

“Help me! Help—”

It hits me so fast, I barely have time to turn my head before the contents of my stomach come rocketing up and out of me. In between heaves, I can’t release a breath, let alone another word. I’m gasping and it doesn’t stop. Even when there’s nothing left, I’m heaving and cramping and crying because it hurts, it hurts—

The dark swallows me up and spits me back out; there’s no way to measure how long I drown before my body drags me up from the depths again. My hair clings to my face, my neck, my shoulders as the world goes fizzy and foggy around me. The dreams that emerge from the dark are disjointed and bold, colors like vivid sunsets.

My father’s voice trumpets through the night, Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you. I see him standing at the altar, wings with purple and gold feathers expanding behind him, casting shadows over pews. My mother’s perfect, icy face melts off and falls into her lap. Lucas, older Lucas, is above me, climbing up and up and up through the branches of a tree. When he turns to look down, I see a crown of stars around his dark hair. The sparks drift down around me as I reach up for his hand.

I’m on the bus in the pouring rain. The kids around me are silently crying, turning their faces down so the men and women standing in the aisles can’t see. It plays in black and white, an old movie my brain has filed away. But in the row ahead on the opposite side, there’s a little girl with dark hair. I see her in color—green eyes that flash toward me, blue-and-yellow Batman pajamas. I remember this—the gunshot, the Orange. The blood on the bus windows that the rain resignedly washes away. That girl walks next to me the whole way to the big brick building until we’re dripping on the black-and-white checkered tile inside. I hold her hand. I remember holding her hand.

It’s Ruby. I know it is. Ruby, who slipped away, Ruby who disappeared. Is this what she felt like? All those nights I used to wonder, Where did she go? If there’s a Heaven, will they let any of us in? Where do we go? If there’s no place for us outside the fences, where do we go when we die?

The girl crumbles into a pile of ash. I try to scoop her up, mold her back into her shape, but she’s gone, it’s all gone—I hear scratching, a metallic whine, and turn toward the other end of the hallway where a pale blue light glows. The kids around me fade to shadows. A voice like a gunshot cracks through the silence.

“—gency—require—immediate—transportation to—”

The world rocks and rattles, shaking me out of the black and into the blue. I blink against the foggy light around me and try to turn my head to see what dark shape is moving near my feet, but my body is locked up tight. My tongue is swollen and it tastes like bile in my mouth. I can’t feel anything anymore. All that’s left of my heartbeat is a soft, tentative knocking in my chest. A Stay awake, a Fight harder, a You can’t go.

It’s too hard to keep my eyes open for long. When I come back, there’s a face I don’t recognize above me, saying things I can’t hear. One of his careful hands is on my throat, the other on my leg. Gone, back, gone—I’m moved, lifted up on something stiff and unbending. The cold air can’t touch me, but the smell, the smell of clean air, the last traces of rain, it makes me want to cry. I glide under a sky so blue, so purple, so golden I fight as hard as anything to keep my eyes open, because I want to remember it forever, however long that lasts.

Because I know it’ll be the last thing I ever see.

FOUR

LUCAS

WE WAKE UP about a half hour before the rest of the camp does, not with the piercing alarms over the loudspeakers, but the clang of a PSF dragging their baton along the barred barracks window. When you’ve trained your body and mind to rest without ever falling into a real, deep sleep, it’s enough to send you shooting straight up out of your bunk to kick-start the morning routine of wash up-pull on uniform-make bed-stand at attention-wait for instructions. I seem to do all five in one quick motion.

The barracks are silent save for the shuffle of feet and the running of water. The building is old but well heated and decently maintained. We have windows and tiled floors and painted walls, which makes the whole thing almost seem homey in comparison to what I saw of the cabins yesterday. And where they kept Sammy overnight.

Up until last week, it housed PSFs about to hit the end of their mandatory service. We only had to slide neatly into their vacated place, set our uniforms and toiletries in the small chests at the end of the bunks that used to house theirs. There were no decorations on the wall, but they do have a few sun-faded posters up—one with the camp’s posted schedule, which apparently hasn’t changed in seven years, others with charts of the color classifications. The angry slash of red at the top of the chart is labeled FIRE, HIGHLY DANGEROUS.

My breath comes out as a harsh snort.

F13 falls into place beside me, smoothing a braid back over her shoulder. In my head, I’ve always called her Rose, because of the color of her hair. I’ve imagined a whole fake life for her, for all of them, always something silly to counteract the harsh reality. For Rose, I pretend that her parents are zookeepers, and growing up she had a pet armadillo named Fernando and monkeys that hung out in her backyard. I pretend her voice sounds as soft as falling petals, because I’ve only ever heard her scream. The Trainers stripped these kids down to a letter and a number, sapped every feeling and thought that belonged to them. I want to see them as humans. I will dream for them, if I have to.

She’s finished wrapping the sheets over her bed with the pointless military precision drilled into us, and takes a moment to straighten out her uniform and make sure that her shirt is properly tucked in. I do the same, smoothing out a wrinkle that’s not there; I’m bursting with the need to move, to rock back and forth on my heels until it’s time to head out and start the day.

Instead, I picture someone pouring plaster under my skin, letting it dry, keeping me trapped in that same stiff pose. It helps. A little. But I’ve been waiting hours to check on Sam. I kept looking toward Olsen during the dinner rotations, ready to be sent to bring her food, to check on her, to be posted there overnight. I tried to do the math in my head of how long I could disappear from my post and go out around back of the building before anyone would notice.

But Olsen never said a word to me, neither did the camp controller who dismissed us for the night and sent us back here. I didn’t exactly expect them to, but I wanted some kind of hint that she’d at least been brought a blanket or water. What happens when she has to go to the bathroom? Do they let her get up and move around for a few minutes at any point during the night? The questions kept my brain from shutting down. I couldn’t escape them, and a part of me felt like I didn’t deserve to.

The only thing I’d been able to do was watch Tildon to make sure he didn’t disappear at any point, but after the dinner rotations? There was no way to know for sure. He could have gone back, slipping out when he should have been returning to his own barracks.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath to steady myself against the flood of violence and flame that filters through my mind.

The door at the far end of the room swings open, and a camp controller strides in, her gaze sweeping over us. I straighten as a PSF moves between the beds, inspecting the cotton for wrinkles and untucked corners. Satisfied, he nods toward her.

“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 asshole—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.

Sorry. The word is so damn worthless. I’m sorry, I’m sorry—

He’s lying. He couldn’t have hurt her. I would have heard it broadcast over the wireless.

Not if you were still sleeping...

The words work through me like poison, eating away at my faith.

The Infirmary is the one building I’ve yet to step inside. The camp controllers didn’t have time to include it on their initial walk-through, and, from what I can tell, I didn’t miss much. The smell of it is like every dentist’s and doctor’s office—rubber, antiseptic, fake lemon. The ground floor’s checkered tile is half hidden by the stacks of boxes, plastic crates, and piles of what almost look like curtain rods. It’s not anything alarming, but the girl beside me stops dead and stiffens as she takes it all in.

They don’t know they’re leaving here, I think. Of course not. They’ll just be woken up in the middle of the night and marched out. They won’t even be told they’re never coming back, I’ll bet. They’ll always fear the possibility.

Still, I have orders. I turn toward the staircase as the sheet on my clipboard instructs. She drags her feet at first, pulling back against my grip before she remembers. She’s staring up at the second floor, but we’re going to the basement and she doesn’t ease up on the resistance until she realizes that fact for herself. I look between her and the first few steps leading up, and wonder what the hell is up there to provoke that immediate, unconscious response—to turn her so inside out with dread she’d be willing to challenge a Red, even for a second.

I tug her forward, down the steps, feeling like the uncaring asshole she must think I am. The closer we get to the small landing, the easier my ears can detect the voices whispering there. We take the two of them by surprise—and then I’m caught by the same thing. Olsen is standing in the corner with a younger guy, no more than thirty, decked out in gray scrubs. His ID badge is swinging from where it’s pinned on his pocket as he gestures harshly toward the PSF, his face marred with angry lines. “—is not going to make it if you don’t help me—”

Olsen holds out her hand, silencing him as we come fully into view. I wait for her permission, a nod, to squeeze past them with the girl, but my ears are straining the whole time, trying to catch her words when she speaks again. “Handle this...best you can...it’ll be okay...again...”

The basement of the building mirrors the structure of the first level: it’s T-shaped, one long hall running horizontally—this one packed with expensive-looking medical machines—the other, with a series of doors, intersecting it. The sheet tells me to bring each kid to office number twelve, which seems to be at the other end of the hall. Small gift. It lets me glance inside the rooms that have been left open, assess what’s still left inside. Shelves, filing cabinets, more than one computer.

I bump shoulders with a PSF hauling a stack of boxes in his arms, but he’s concentrating too hard on not dropping them to level me with a cutting remark or hit. I draw the girl over to the side to make way for more uniforms and boxes, and we narrowly avoid colliding with two women in gray scrubs. Nurses, I think. They’re weaving in and out of all of us, shouting, “Coming through!” with what looks like bags of blood in their hands.

I glance back, alarmed, just as the first door on the right opens and two men step out, allowing the nurses inside the room. One is O’Ryan, rubbing his buzzed hair, the other is in a white coat. We reach office twelve before their words can carry down the echoing hallway, but I feel unsettled as I guide the girl inside and kick the stool over so she can climb up onto the metal examination table. Two sharp, dark thoughts try to connect to one another, and then a third, but I force them out. I need to be focused on finding a way back into the kennel today. I have to make sure she’s okay.

I position myself by the door, near the small counter with its jars of cotton balls and ear swabs. I let my hand rest on the flat surface, fingers inching over to the computer’s mouse. At the smallest touch, the dark screen erupts with light. It’s on, I think, but the screen it brings up is locked and the only thing on it is a space for entering a password.

The door swings open behind me and I straighten, shifting to allow the person in. Gray scrubs, reddish-brown hair—it’s the guy from the landing, the one who’d been arguing with Olsen. When he turns to shut the door, he takes a moment to collect himself and clear the anger clouding his expression. When he faces the girl again, he’s not smiling, but he no longer looks like he wants to rip someone’s head off.

The nurse steps past me to get to the computer. My eyes dart down to the keyboard as he types his password: Martin09! I track his progress as he clicks through several different programs and screens to bring up the girl’s file. Chelsea. Her name is Chelsea.

“How are you feeling? The cold giving you any trouble?” he asks, and, to my surprise, there’s no malice or irony coating the questions. The girl relaxed the moment she saw him and is no longer trying to wring her hands raw. She shakes her head, keeping her eyes on the toes of her shoes.

Right. No eye contact.

The nurse reaches up into the cabinet on the wall and unlocks it. Inside are rows upon rows of bottles and jars. I shift my gaze back to the ceiling as he turns around and fills a paper cup with water from the sink. Chelsea accepts it along with two pills.

He takes a long, thin piece of latex and ties it around the girl’s arm. A tourniquet. He’s drawing blood. Only, even when he gets a grip on her arm, she’s trembling so hard he’s struggling to get the needle in.

“You have to stop shaking,” he says.

Her gaze slides over to me before jerking back to the nurse’s face. Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth, bloodless with how hard she’s biting it. A look of understanding breaks across the man’s face. The way the girl clutches the examination table makes me feel like I’m wearing a disgusting Halloween mask I can never take off.

Oh, I think.

“Oh,” he says. To his credit, it only takes him a second to steel his nerves and turn toward me with that same calm face. For the first time I see the name on his ID tag: R. Dunn. “Step out for a moment.”

I don’t release the breath I’m holding until I’m in the hall again, and the door is shut behind me. The rumble of his voice starts up again. I press my hands flat against the wall behind me, turning my face away. I don’t want to hear it. For some reason, it feels like a rejection—it feels like I’ve been stung, and I’m swelling with toxic resentment.

The day marches on with half my thoughts on the wooden structure behind the Mess, and the other half on monitoring the Infirmary’s hallway. I’m barely listening to a sound track of status updates in my earpiece and nearly miss a request aimed at me.

Sam isn’t in the Factory when I go to pull one of the girls there so she can get a hit from her asthma inhaler. She isn’t in the Mess during the midday meal. If it hadn’t been for Tildon, I would have assumed that they’d just forgotten about her, or stretched her punishment out another night to drive home their point with a wrecking ball instead of a hammer. Has she eaten anything? Did they bring her water, at least? I come up with a thousand different ways I can ask Olsen about her without actually asking, but none of them work. They all make me seem like I have a heart.

Focus. Computer. Then Sam. I just have to be fast.

I bring each kid I go to collect for their treatment down to the nurse in that same room, counting the minutes it takes for him to finish with them. In those minutes, I look for cameras. In the hallway. Through the doors that swing open. In the room directly across from where I’m standing I have seen not one, but two separate pairings of female nurse and male PSF disappear inside of it. I have heard the door lock behind them. And I have pretended not to notice how winded they always seem when they come out again a short time later. Whatever happens in that room is not being monitored, clearly.

I bring the last kid, 2231, a Green boy, in, open the examination room door, and practically push him inside to where the nurse is waiting. I take two seconds to look both ways down the empty hall and duck through the door opposite me. Fast, I think, just be fast.

My heart slams against my rib cage as I lurch toward the dark computer. The room is a mirror of the one across the hall, with one exception: the PC isn’t already on. I waste two full minutes waiting for it to boot up, my ears straining at every muffled sound bleeding in through the walls. Sure enough, the camera in the upper corner has been all but torn off the wall and has been left dangling there by its rainbow wires.

There. Finally. The log-in screen glides into place and, before I can second-guess myself, I’m typing in the username and password I’d seen Dunn use. The system seems to load pixel by pixel, and it seems like each second is being shaved down to fractions of their former selves. I can’t explain the rush of power I feel when the database finally loads and a blinking cursor appears in the search field.

I type Orfeo and hit Enter.

No results.

I have to look again, because that can’t be possible.

No results.

I go hollow at the core. Pure, helpless anguish rushes in to fill the empty space where hope used to be. She’s not in the system at all? That means—it’s not possible, I won’t—Mia—Mia—

The door slams open behind me, hits the wall, and slams shut again.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit, heartless son of a bitch!”

I’m up and on my feet, whirling around, reaching for a weapon I don’t have. He’s so busy cursing and tearing his hands back through his chestnut hair that he doesn’t even notice me until the stool I’d been sitting on rocks back against the counter and clatters to the floor.

There’s a second where neither of us moves.

“What—oh.” It’s Nurse Dunn.

I can actually feel my heart stop on the next beat. I know what the others feel now, because my head has gone completely dark. I don’t have a thought inside, save for a single word: shit.

How is he already done treating the kid I just brought in?

He’s breathing hard, his pale face flooded with furious color. And just when I need it most, my brain just walks off and abandons me. My body has to rely on instinct to protect it, and instinct is telling it to pick up one of the jars from the counter and—

“Easy—easy—it’s okay,” Dunn says, balking at the way I raise my arm to reach for the glass jar. He seems to remember what I am suddenly and puts his hands out in front of him. “Pal, it’s okay. You just...I didn’t see you in here. What’s—”

His eyes flick between the computer screen and my face. A roar of blood moves between my ears, and I can’t speak, I can’t think of an excuse fast enough. Why did I come in here without thinking of one? Damn, I’m so stupid I didn’t even think to try locking the door.

“Did someone tell you to come in here?” he asks. I can’t read his expression now. His words sound strained. He thinks I’ll hurt him, kill him, burn him—

Maybe I’ll have to.

No. I can’t. Not without setting the room on fire. People with flames racing along their skin don’t just stand still and calmly let their bodies be burned to cinder and bone. He’ll take the whole place down with him. It’s a gruesome thought, one that brings the sickening smell of burnt flesh to mind. My stomach flips over. In what scenario are both of us getting out of this room?

“Okay,” Dunn says when I don’t answer.

My heart is slamming against my ribs. He doesn’t know it wasn’t an order for me to come in here. Not yet. Maybe he won’t think to radio in and ask someone.

Can I scare him into silence? I think so—I take a step forward and he takes a generous one back. The Trainers taught us to fight with fists as well as fire. They wanted strength in body, not strength in mind. But he would know, wouldn’t he? That we aren’t supposed to do anything without orders, that my will has supposedly been crippled. Two issues with that: he can’t be as scared of me as I think, but when he finds out the rules don’t apply to me, he will tell someone. There’s no way he won’t. These adults are all on the same side.

Think, Lucas—Christ, do something, say anything, get the hell out of here—

Killing him won’t help me and Sam get out of here. It won’t help me find Mia who—a wave of nausea passes through me—might not be findable. I can break the jar, use the shards to cut him deep where the Trainers showed us to, but how long before the Control Tower puts together who did it?

“It’s...hey,” the man says, his voice strained, “everyone needs to take a break, get away, right?” He starts to lower his hands. “It’s fine. Go get the kid you brought in and take him—”

His eyes have latched on to the computer screen. He squints at it and my pulse starts beating behind my temple.

“Orfeo?”

The name cuts me like a knife through my spinal cord. I didn’t clear the search field. I shouldn’t have done this, I should have made a plan, a real one, but—I need to get out of here. I need to get Sam out of here. I need to find Mia. My uniform is drenched in hot, clammy sweat and the collar of my vest has me like a hand wrapped around my throat.

The nurse steps closer to it, giving me a wary look as he reaches past my arm. I can’t speak. And not just because I’m supposed to be playing a role.

“Did you search for this?”

Can’t. Breathe.

I want to disappear into my head so badly. The silence that stretches between us is unbearable. I look down. He must take it as a nod.

“There’s no one here by that name,” he continues, leaning over the desk to move and click the mouse around. Another field appears on the screen, and the whole thing refreshes. “But there’s a Natalie Orfeo who’s listed as being in Belle Plain. That’s in Texas, apparently.”

I hadn’t searched right? I catch myself before I can spin toward him. He’s baiting you. He wants to catch you. He’ll turn you back over to the Trainers.

But...if I hadn’t searched right, that meant that there were listings I didn’t see. It meant—

“No? What about a Mia?”

My body reacts before my brain can stop it. My whole body surges toward the computer. Dunn jumps back, both arms up, but I don’t care about anything other than what’s on the screen. Joy crashes into relief. My knees might give out on me if I don’t hold on to the table.

There’s a photo of her next to a profile—her hair is longer than I remember, dark and curling over her shoulder the way Mom’s used to. My throat burns. Weight, height—classified as Blue. God. Thank you, God. She’s alive. She’s not like me. Something brittle in my chest snaps, and I have to keep swallowing back the urge to cry.

Black Rock. That’s her camp. Where is it? I keep scrolling, but it doesn’t say.

“Is that...your sister? A cousin?” Dunn is edging back toward me but stops when I turn and pin him with a glare.

They’re all the same. The Trainers, the PSFs, even these nurses. They are not on our side and they’ll never be. He is going to take so much pleasure in taking me down for this. Was this worth it? I know she’s alive and where she is, but I’m done. Done. I won’t even get to say good-bye to Sam, or somehow tell her that they’re taking me out, back to the Facility, back to be worked over again and again until they figure out a way to turn my head into an empty husk. The thought of the building with its bleach-white walls makes me feel almost manically desperate.

Mia is alive. She’s alive. Any happiness at the thought is smashed into pieces under the weight of knowing that, yeah, she’s alive, but she’s in a place like this. I’ll never be assigned there once the Trainers are told about this. They’ll keep me for months, trying to break me. Would they hurt her in order to hurt me? That would work. God—oh my God. There would be no place safe for that kind of pain.

Dunn leans against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. “They would never ask any of you to look something up in the system, so I have to believe that this was important enough to you to risk getting caught. I’d ask whose log-in you used, but it doesn’t matter. I admire your balls, but if you’re going to try this again, you have to be more careful. Anyone could have walked in.”

I rise to my full height, clenching a fist and drawing it up in front of me like I’m about to...do something. I have enough control over the fire to spark a flame with a small snap.

Dunn flinches. His voice goes tight and high as he waves his hands in front of him, saying, “Wait—wait.”

For some reason, I do. I wait as he turns back to the computer to type something else into the program. When he’s finished, he turns the screen toward me so I can see the profile he’s brought up.

The photo attached to it is a young boy with reddish-brown hair like Dunn’s and a wide, round face. He’s staring at the camera dead-on, with a look of open hatred.

“This is Martin,” Dunn says. “He’s the reason I’m here, and if you really think I’m going to turn around and report you for caring about someone enough to risk your neck then...you can tell the camp controllers that. We’re forbidden from serving anywhere we have a family relation.”

I don’t move. My brain has disconnected from the rest of my body.

“The draft caught up to me just as I was coming out of college and applying for medical schools. I served my four years at a camp in the Midwest, but I re-enlisted. You know why? Because this posting opened, and I’d been able to search our network and see they’d brought my brother here. I also knew that he’d gone into the system with our stepfather’s last name, and I’d kept our father’s—so I applied and, sure enough, they didn’t catch it. I wanted to be a good brother...I thought, if I can’t get him out, I can at least watch over him. It turns out I’m just as powerless now to help him as I am to help everyone else here.”

“Why?” The word is out before I can swallow it back down my throat.

The lines on Dunn’s face ease, but the shadows in his eyes are still there. “I’m limited in what I can do to help the kids. We can’t give them crutches when they sprain an ankle because they could be turned into weapons. We don’t allow them to stay overnight for treatment unless there’s a real chance they might die without being monitored. I can barely keep the medicine I need stocked. And the doctor doesn’t care. He won’t even come in to check on this poor girl we’re treating for a snakebite until the end of the week. Family time.” He makes a sound of disgust. “It’s all been for nothing. Martin isn’t here. Someone managed to break him out.”

I can’t keep shock from breaking through. “How?”

“Ironically, it was two nurses. Or, I guess, they weren’t real nurses after all. They put him in one of the large bio-waste bins we use to dispose medical trash. Just loaded it in their car and drove away. Business as usual, just going to dump it with all the rest. I have no idea where he is, but I’m stuck here, twiddling my thumbs, waiting my term out to start looking.”

Something sour rises in my throat. I swallow hard and shake my head to hide how desperate I am to find out more. It can happen. I can get myself out of here—more importantly, I can get Sam out, too. The way he described won’t work. They would have immediately changed that protocol. It’s more that it’s proof that this place isn’t necessarily the maximum-security prison they want the kids to think it is. The equipment and buildings are run down and practically painted with rust, patched over too many times. The PSFs and camp controllers are spread too thin, and because of it, they’ve let the blade dull in their hands. There have to be other gaps we can slip through.

“What’s your name?” Dunn asks.

“M27.”

“Your real name,” he says. “You’re not a number. Don’t let them make you think that.”

I think of all those kids I brought in with me today. How they spent the whole walk over to the Infirmary all knotted up with fear and anxiety. They didn’t relax until they were with him. He called them by names, not by numbers. I want to believe—I want to believe there’s no game here.

And, anyway, it’s in my file. I might not show up in the computer system, but I’m sure he’d have access to the information if he asked. “Lucas.”

“Lucas. I’m Pat.” The nurse’s smile is weak, uncertain, like there’s a thundercloud hanging over us about to burst. “I think we both have to get back to work.”

We do. My ten minutes were up two minutes ago. Dunn steps out into the hall first, which gives me a minute to wrap the shell of stony detachment back around me. It’s only the small, dark, curly-haired nurse waiting for us, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. The miserable look on her face is so at odds with the calm, sweet expression she’d been wearing with the kids.

“Sorry,” Dunn is saying, “I had to borrow him—”

“It’s fine. I sent the boy back to his cabin with one of the PSFs,” Nurse Kore says quickly, “but you need to come now. The swelling’s gotten worse and the fever’s back.”

Nurse Dunn goes rigid, his skin pulling back as he grimaces. He pushes past us both, all but running down the hall. The floor has emptied out almost entirely, but I see one PSF stick his head out of an office he’s packing up. Kore waves the soldier off, right on Dunn’s heels as he enters the first room—the one I’d seen O’Ryan and the doctor come out of earlier.

I follow them down the hallway, at a slight loss as to what to do. After taking the last kid back, I was supposed to return here and assist the staff until the last meal rotations began. I want to keep an eye on Dunn, though, see if he shows any inclination on going back on his word.

Nurse Kore is blocking the doorway as I pass, but I can see well enough over her head that Dunn is throwing open cabinets and drawers. He fires off a series of questions. “What did you give her last? When did the symptoms begin? Shit—she’s wheezing—we need epinephrine. Where is it? Can you look next door?”

It’s only then, when Kore brushes past me to burst through the door of the next examination room, that I see the kid on the table.

Pieces of the room start to disappear. The wires. The bandages. The beeping machines. The IV drips. The adults. What I see is a pale face, tense with pain, dirty, limp blond hair fanned out around it. Something wet tracks down her cheeks, but I can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears.

No. The word pierces through me like a flaming bullet.

It’s just too damn bad you weren’t there this time.

What the hell—what the hell is wrong with this world? The temperature under my skin rises like the desert sun. This girl apparently can’t suffer enough. There’s no limit to what she’ll be subjected to here. Sammy is good and this happens. This.

And what? We’re supposed to take comfort in the fact that one day she’ll be rewarded for her struggle? I can still hear her father preaching eternal life, how the meek will inherit. The singsong Sunday school lessons. He’s got the whole world in His hands...

My feet carry me into the room as Dunn leans over her, adjusting an oxygen mask. I see the leg they’ve pulled over the thin blanket for the first time. It’s swollen to twice the size of the other and there’s a bubble of purple and black skin right around her ankle. My gag reflex makes me choke on the next breath.

People die from snakebites. How long was it before anyone found her? How long was she alone in the darkness?

I should have gone. I should have figured out a way. I shouldn’t have left.

What choice did I have? What choice do any of us have?

Kore jostles me as she comes in, holding out a syringe to Dunn. “Was it the antivenom we tried? The only other thing I gave her was morphine for the pain.”

I jerk out of my daze. “She’s allergic to morphine.”

They give her the shot. I’m not sure either of them heard me. So I repeat myself. I have to. They cannot give her morphine. The last time they tried was when she broke her arm and she was stuck in the hospital for an extra two days, she had such a bad reaction.

Dunn and Kore finally look up, turning first toward each other, then toward me.

“It’s the morphine,” I say again. I’ve already damned us both, haven’t I? But they have to know so they don’t make the mistake again. They have to help her.

“Lucas...”

My vision tunnels. For a second, I think I heard her voice in my head, but Nurse Kore is talking now, she’s telling Dunn, “She’s been saying the name all day. I’ve only been able to get a few other words out of her.”

“Samantha,” Dunn says. “Samantha, can you hear me? I need you to open your eyes. It’s Nurse Dunn. I need to check to make sure you’re all right.”

She’s not all right. Sammy is not all right. She’s never going to be, not ever again. I can’t—I can’t—

“...door is...Lucas...the door...dark...Lucas...”

My armor doesn’t crack. It shatters. It falls to ash. My vision blurs and fear wrings every bit of caution and worry out of my head. The last thing I see is Nurse Dunn turning toward me, saying something. Static pours into my ears. I press my hands over my face to try to hide it, but it’s too late. I’m crying.

I’m weeping like the kid who was pelted with rocks walking home every day from school by older kids. I’m weeping like the kid told he has to leave his best and only friend behind. I’m weeping like the kid who watched both parents bleed out in front of him, who watched the men in uniforms break his sister’s hand because she wouldn’t let go of his.

I sink against the wall until I feel the cold tile under me. I’m breathing so hard I can’t catch my breath. I understand now. I can’t help anyone. I can’t even help myself.

“What’s—?”

“Get the door,” Nurse Dunn says sharply. There’s movement at my left as the door clicks shut.

“You—” I can barely get the words out. “You have to sing to her. She’ll wake up if you sing, she loves music—she can’t—she can’t die like this—the silence—”

“Lucas. Do you know Samantha?” Dunn’s voice has a strained quality to it. I force myself to look up, eyes and throat aching. Dunn is kneeling in front of me now. Kore is pressed flat against the door, looking up at the ceiling, shaking her head.

“Sam,” I say, correcting him. “Best friend. Sammy.”

The curse that follows blisters my ears. I breathe deep, trying to suck enough air into my chest to keep the crushing feeling out.

“How is he...?” Kore starts to ask, then actually looks at me. “You remember things? They said you all wouldn’t. They made us think—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dunn says, cutting her off. “Her condition is very, very serious, but she’s alive. Do you remember what I was saying before, though, about how things work here?”

I nod.

“I don’t think it was a timber rattlesnake, otherwise she wouldn’t still be here...maybe a copperhead. The problem is, we have no stock of antivenom left, and the camp controllers won’t grant my request to leave camp premises to acquire more. They think it’s a security breach. But by the time it’s ordered and delivered through the military transport...”

“She’s going to die,” I finish.

“Lucas, listen to me. A lot of people aren’t treated with the antivenom and survive. We’re worried, though, because her symptoms haven’t gotten any better and there’s always the risk of infection. I just don’t have enough experience with snakebites to tell you anything with certainty.”

Sammy is a fighter, I want to say, but who can fight this? Who survives this? “Her leg?”

“We cut away the necrotic...the dead tissue. There might be nerve damage—a limp. I can’t lie to you, she might not be able to walk normally again if she doesn’t get proper medical treatment.”

“She won’t be able to run.”

“No one can run here,” Kore says, pressing a hand to her forehead.

“From him.” I spit the words out. “Tildon.”

Kore and Dunn exchange looks that are easy enough to read.

“What did he do to the other girls?” I ask. “The other kids?”

“I’ve only heard rumors,” Dunn says slowly. “The doctor always treats them. I saw one of the boys once, though, and he...” He shakes his head. “Are you saying that Tildon has something to do with this?”

I somehow manage to tell them what happened yesterday without giving into the compulsion to run out, find the man, and watch him burn from the shoes up. I’m angry all over again; I don’t even care that my arm is spasming. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t put the snake in the building with her. She never should have been there in the first place.

I can’t stop seeing it. I can’t stop seeing Sam alone in that cage. I left her in the dark.

“Jesus...” Kore breathes out. She turns to the other nurse. “They won’t do anything about it until he escalates. That’s been the case for all of the others, right?”

“I asked one of the camp controllers after I saw the boy. They need physical evidence of abuse and improper behavior,” Dunn says, rubbing his face, “before they can transfer him to another cabin block. They don’t take preventative action. They only respond.”

“What about discharging him?” I demand. “How many strikes does this guy get?”

They seem unnerved by the heat coating the words. It takes Dunn a moment to say, “There are so few PSFs willing to re-up their service and stay. He’s one of them. With the camp closing and the kids being sent to other camps, they...I have a feeling they’re just going to let it fall between the cracks. They have bigger messes to clean up.”

“We have to...” Kore can’t seem to figure out what she wants to say, so she starts pacing instead, working out her thoughts that way. “We have to try talking to O’Ryan again. Make him understand how serious this is. I can’t let her die. We can’t let her die. Dammit, it’s a snakebite. It should be treatable. This shouldn’t be happening.”

“O’Ryan won’t do anything. It’s easier to explain away a dead kid than bring her to a hospital that can actually treat her. Too many questions. Too much attention.”

“Why do they have to wait for the military to bring in the medicine?” Desperation stains my voice, makes it sound different to my own ears. “Won’t it be faster coming from a civilian supply?”

“It’ll ‘compromise the camp’s secure location’ to bring someone in,” he says with no short supply of bitterness. “Even if we could get someone past the gate, they won’t have enough time to treat her before someone notices. The only way to help her is to take her out.”

“Stop!” This is clearly a conversation they’ve had before, because Kore knows exactly where it’s headed. “Dammit, Pat, stop!”

“Do you really want this on your conscience?” he asks, on his feet now. “We’ll walk out of here in a few weeks, but what about her? Say she pulls through fine—great, we’ve just saved Tildon’s latest victim. Do you really want this shadowing you your whole life? Lissa...we promised we’d do whatever it’d take to help these kids. I have a plan. I just need to adapt it to her.”

Oh my God. I can’t stop looking between them. Seconds stretch into minutes, punctuated by the steady beep beep beep of one of the machines.

“You think I don’t know that?” Her voice cracks as it drops to a whisper. “You heard what they did to the woman they caught. She only helped and they did that. They called it treason. If you get caught, there’s no coming back from it.”

“I’ll do it,” I hear myself saying. “Whatever you were planning, I’ll do it.”

It has to be me. I will take care of Sam, and I will find Mia. I can’t do it from within the camp, and I can’t ask the only two people in this camp who seem to give a shit about the kids to leave.

“You’re upset,” Kore says. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“How would you do it?” I ask, refusing to be dismissed.

“The plan was originally meant for my brother and involved getting him out with the materials leaving the Factory. I just need to tweak it. We’ll take advantage of the move,” Dunn explains. “Get her into one of the crates we’ve been using to pack the machines. They’re moving a bunch out today, while the kids are in the Mess for the first dinner rotation. You’ll be in there with her. They’ll move both of you out without realizing it. I’ll find you a crowbar to get the top off. Do you think you can time two hours in your head? I’d wait that long before getting out. Off the truck. You’ll have to fight. There’s going to be an escort of PSFs with it.”

“I can take care of it,” I say. If they try to stop me, they won’t have a chance.

“This is crazy,” Kore hisses. “Listen to yourself!”

Crazy is only crazy until it works.

“I’m going to give you a cell phone that has one number programmed into it—my Uncle Jeff. He’s the one who helped me figure this out. I’ll give him a heads-up, so he knows to expect you. He’ll bring you back to Ohio with him. Aunt Carol is a doctor. She’ll be able to treat her. You’ll be safe there until she recovers.”

“How do you expect him to get out of the locked truck?” Kore demands.

“I can melt the latch,” I say, ignoring her startled look. That’s going to be one of the least complicated parts of this.

“It has to be soon—before your last two-hour shift here is up. You can’t be missing for more than fifteen minutes without someone realizing you’re gone. I’ll cover for you as long as I can.”

“Understood.”

“Lissa—” Dunn draws her into the corner of the room and lowers his head so I can’t hear what they’re saying. Kore looks like she has one toe over the edge of hysterics and needs just one nudge to fall into it. I’m not used to seeing adults look like that—like they have something to lose. Everything to lose.

I move toward the bed for the first time, keeping my eyes on Sam’s face. Someone cared enough to clean the grime and mud off it, but even clean, there are shadows. Her cheeks are sunken, and with her eyes shut, I can’t help thinking, She looks like she’s already gone. I run a knuckle along the curve of her nose, the way Dad used to do to Mom and, before I can question it, I lean over to kiss her cheek. A part of me feels like it’ll be the greatest act of rebellion I ever do. Because I let myself feel how soft her skin is, I imagine taking her face between my hands, and it feels like I’ve set off a firework inside of my chest. No wonder they turn us hollow. I’ve always thought the danger in experiencing these emotions lay solely in being caught, but living them makes me danger itself. There is nothing I will not do to get her out of here.

I kneel down near her head, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, studying the familiar shape of it. It makes me think of all the summers in the tree fort, when the wet heat hung low from the sky and we didn’t have the energy to do anything other than just lay under the canopy. I can’t bring myself to sing. It hurts too damn bad. So I hum, low enough that I think it’ll be for her ears only. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...

Sam shifts suddenly, her head rolling toward mine. I have the vague sense that the nurses have stopped talking and they are staring, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t have anything to be embarrassed or ashamed about. I keep humming.

“Lucas...?” Her voice is a faint rasp. It sounds like some part of her is still asleep, but I hear the tinge of annoyance. “Hate...that song.”

A faint laugh bubbles up inside of me as I reach down and take her hand. She gives a light squeeze back. “I know, Sammy. But how else was I supposed to get your attention?”

Someone gasps at the sound of her voice. When I look up, I see that Kore has pressed both hands to her mouth.

“Sparks...”

Her voice draws me back to her, the way it always does. “The sparklers from the Fourth of July? You remember those? I bet that would have gotten your attention.”

She gives a tight nod, her jaw clenched. “Hurts...Lucas...”

“I know, I know—I’m going to get you out of here, okay? Get you real medicine. You’ll be back on your feet in no time.”

“Mia...medicine...”

“No, medicine, then Mia. You have to get back on your feet first.”

“Mia, medicine,” she says, with a bit more heat this time. Her eyes flutter open against the bright lights. I recognize the look she gives me.

“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” I say. Looking up again, I see Dunn rubbing the top of his head, a far-off expression on his face. He turns to Kore, who’s been staring at our linked hands the whole time. I don’t breathe easy again until, finally, she nods.

“All right...okay,” Dunn says, suddenly pale at the abstract idea becoming actual reality. My own heart is speeding out of control, and I have to look at Sam again to calm down.

Don’t do anything stupid, her expression says.

Too late.

FIVE

SAM

I HEAR the song like the birds high up in the branches of our tree in Greenwood. I turn toward the sound, trying to imagine it’s a cool blanket, one that’ll put out the simmering heat trapped inside my head and leg. I’m not surprised, not in the least, when I open my eyes and see Lucas.

Just...muddled.

I think I’m in the Infirmary. I know these are nurses, I recognize their calm, kind voices, but it doesn’t—it doesn’t make sense, the things he’s saying. They’re all talking so fast. Medicine, Mia, sparks, out...I try to watch his lips move, read the expression on his face, but he’s wearing that mask again. The Lucas I know disappears behind it as I lose my grip on his hand and he rises to his feet, shucking off his crimson vest, his uniform. The female nurse hands him a pair of gray scrubs as the man starts unhooking the machines. Fever and pain have turned my vision glassy at the edges, and the things hanging near me, things that have only been blurs up until now, are set on my stomach. I have to strain my ears, fight the black water rushing over me, to stay at the surface and listen to their low conversation.

“—bring one of the crates over—”

“—be fast—”

Footsteps, doors opening, doors shutting, doors opening, problems—

“—too small, can’t do both of you—”

Lucas sounds the strongest, the calmest. “Then I need a PSF uniform. I’ll pose as one of the escorts. It might even be easier that way.”

“They don’t have those just laying around!”

“I can get one,” Lucas says. “Do you have any zip ties? I’ll need one of you to lock an office after I’m done...”

They go away long enough that I drift back down into the haze of pain and don’t surface again until I feel hands on me.

“No, this isn’t—stop...” I try to get my lips around the words but they come out sounding slurred, blending together. When I open my eyes again, I see a black uniform, red Psi stitched over the heart, and try to twist away.

“It’s me.” It’s Lucas above me, blocking out the lights overhead. I can’t see his face. I want to see his face. “You’re okay, Sammy.”

He eases his arms under my shoulders and legs. He’s so warm that I forget. I can’t think of what this means until he says, quietly, “We’re getting out.”

No.

NO.

He doesn’t know. He hasn’t been here long enough to have seen it—they kill kids who escape. They shoot them. I remember every single shot, the way the single crack of thunder would roll through an otherwise silent camp and we would all just know.

“No—Lucas—”

No matter how gently he lowers me into...the crate, I think, it still jars my leg and sends a stabbing pain racing up through it. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, Sammy,” he’s breathing the words out, carefully arranging me so I’m flat on my back, my entire right side throbbing. I don’t want to think it let alone say it, but it’s shaped long and shallow, like a coffin. They’ve put down some kind of padding, but the wood is cheap and I can feel it splintering as it rubs against my back. The sawdust smell makes me think of old, gone things. The town fair. The horse stables Lucas and I walked by every day to get to school.

Before he can pull away, I force myself to reach up and grab the front of his uniform coat. I want to shake him, but I can barely tighten my fingers enough to pull him in closer. Lucas’s horrible blank mask cracks enough for a small smile to come through. He leans over and takes my face between his big, warm hands. I barely feel the tremble in them as he presses his lips softly against mine.

“You can hit me later, okay?”

“Again,” I demand, turning my face up. I feel dizzy. A good dizzy. My headache evaporates.

“Later,” he promises. “Love you, Sammy. Don’t be scared. I’ll be with you the whole time.”

His words stay in my ears, even as the lid is lowered and snapped into place.

The male nurse is still nearby. I hear him say something to Lucas, and Lucas’s low, rumbling response. “Whatever happens, keep walking out. Look like you know what you’re doing. You might get separated, but don’t try to hover over the crate. Don’t turn back.”

“Thank you...”

“Just...be careful...okay? Wait inside the office until the PSFs are down to pick it up.”

And that’s it. That’s all there is left for us—waiting. I close my eyes, focusing on making the sound of my breathing as quiet as I can manage, but it still sounds like a wet windstorm in my ears. It’s dark, so dark and tight and cold. And without anything else to focus on, there’s only the raw, blistering pain left in my leg.

The boots the PSFs wear are heavy enough that you can always hear them coming. They’re the sound of strength; they trample over everything. I crane my neck back, peering through a crack in the wood joints.

A door creaks open as the black boots come closer, closer, closer.

“Is this one going out?” comes a gruff voice.

“Yeah. It needs to be on the truck with the MRI.” It’s Lucas’s voice, sounding as easygoing and natural as I’ve ever heard it. “The nurses said it’s delicate.”

“Yeah, yeah...You one of the drivers?”

“Yes.” That’s how he’ll try to get away with this insanity. He knew they wouldn’t recognize his face. All of the PSFs here have been working together for years.

I hold in a yelp of surprise as the crate is heaved up and off the floor with twin grunts. It rocks wildly—one of them is either stronger, or has a better grip. I feel myself sliding back, my head connecting with the side of the crate.

“Careful!” Lucas growls.

One of the PSFs mutters something filthy under his breath, and the whole crate sways again with their first few steps until they work out their rhythm. When I look through the split in the wood again, I see Lucas’s broad shoulders, the scrubs stretched out over them. He’s walking stiffly, keeping ahead of us as we start up the stairs. The moment the crate tips up, I slide again, this time toward the base of it. My right leg already feels raw and shattered; having it rub against the side of the crate makes white spots flash in my eyes. I shove my fist up against my mouth to keep from crying. I try to imagine that I’m a spark, rising up through the dark. Up, and up, and up, out of the cold, black stillness.

Please, God, please lead us out of this, please don’t abandon us, give me the strength to be delivered from this fear—they’re fragments of prayers I can’t fully remember. My throat aches with the need to speak the words out loud.

“—shitty weather, make the drive out to New York rough, but it should be okay once we’re in Jersey—”

“—can’t believe we got stuck with this shit. Our luck, right?”

“Here, here, careful, last step up—”

The crate evens out again, and I have to twist around more fully to see through the crack again. Lucas is still there, still with his back to me. I recognize the first floor of the Infirmary, even without the beds and curtains hung up. There are more black-uniformed soldiers moving around us with boxes and crates of their own. It sends a trill of panic through me when Lucas disappears again and again, forced to weave through them to get to the door.

Please help us, please let this work, I’ll never ask for anything else again...please, God. I know He doesn’t grant wishes, I know that’s not His role, but just once, just this once, I want to believe that I was right, and not my father. I want to believe that He will be there like a guiding hand. I squeeze my eyes shut again, trying to clear the haze that’s crowding in on my line of sight. My head is feeling too light; I know this. I’m disconnecting again. There are hands at my back, trying to drag me back under, back...

When my eyes open again, it’s to faint pattering on the lid of the crate. The sudden cold is a shock to the system, like I’ve jumped into a freezing pond, and every muscle in my body contracts, pulling in to protect what little warmth is left. Water drips through the gaps in the wood, landing on my face, my chest, my feet.

Lucas’s rain poncho is plastered to him, his ink-black hair flat against his skull. He keeps his head down, looking at the mud. In front of him, no more than a hundred yards away, is the gate. It’s wide open, and a semitruck, the kind I used to see all the time when people moved in and out of our neighborhood, is parked there. Crates are being walked up the platform, but it seems like the PSFs are struggling with the thick black mud sucking at their feet. I see several in ponchos that look like little more than trash bags with holes cut for the arms. They’re like shadows moving against a dreamy gray mist.

The PSFs grunt as they lower me down onto something. The crate goes sailing back, bumps against something, and rocks forward again. Someone voices the cuss word that screams through my head as my leg is jarred. My breath comes out in small, uneven bursts. Then, the crate is tilted again and we’re moving—it’s rolling smoothly. I peer through the crack again, searching for Lucas’s form. He is walking away, around to the front of the truck.

Please, I think. Please let him get on without any problems...Let the driver think he’s someone from Thurmond. Let the Thurmond PSFs think he came with the driver.

There’s a horrible creak as the crate is lifted and dumped off the roller. My teeth catch the inside of my lip and I can’t keep the hiss of pain from slipping between them. The truck rumbles to life and the door clatters as it’s pulled down like a shade, cutting the soft steel-toned light to a sliver. It’s secured with a deafening bang that rattles around inside of my head. After a minute, the driving rain drowns it out.

It’s several terrified heartbeats later that I realize the truck is moving.

Slowly.

Rolling.

Working.

I close my eyes, drawing my hands up to my face. The engine revs as the truck picks up speed. We must be through the gate, or getting close. I wish I could see it. I want to know what the camp looks like as it disappears into the horizon like a fading memory. It’s like Greenwood in that way, I think. A secret place that exists outside of the world’s reality.

The progress is halting. The truck jerks now and then, and I hear the engine rev again as we rock forward, then back. There’s a horrible metallic roar as it lurches forward, rocks violently from side to side. I think, for a second, that something’s slammed into us from behind. The force of the movement sends me crashing forward. There’s banging, the sound of wood splintering—something smashes onto the lid of my crate and cracks it down the middle. I scream, bringing my hands up in front of my face. The spray of splinters. Sawdust in my lungs.

The truck doesn’t move.

I hear the engine rev again.

Voices—shouts of alarm. Slamming doors. The sound is almost lost to the storm.

The back door rolls open like it’s in a rage.

“—busted up everything!”

“Christ, what a mess—”

“—have to dig the tires out—”

We’re stuck, then. The truck is trapped in the same mud that’s constantly trying to suck us down. With the light, I can peer up through the crack in the lid of my crate. See the damage of everything that’s been knocked loose. Rain pours down the open door like a sheet. Like the waterfall Lucas dreamt up for Greenwood. It hides something valuable. Something waiting to be found.

It’s like I can feel him before I see him. A dark shape appears, passing through the rain as he hauls himself up. Lucas stumbles as he comes closer. He’s lost his hat. Dark hair is plastered to his pale, panic-stricken face. His eyes meet mine and he gulps down a shuddering breath. His whole body sags with relief as he pulls off the crate that’s crashed onto mine.

What are you doing? I want to scream. Why didn’t you stay in the truck? You weren’t supposed to turn around.

Someone yells. I can’t make out her words, but Lucas does—he goes rigid again, whirling back. I see his fist clench at his side. The smell of smoke fills my nose, and, for a second, I think I can see it rising off him.

What are you doing?

His eyes are blazing. He still thinks he can get us out of here.

What are you doing?

“No—” I choke out.

“Stop!” A woman screams the word. “Red—M27!”

I see him make the decision. I see how fast fear turns to fury as he raises both hands. Lucas, no, Lucas, please, just—He can’t run, he can’t do anything, they’ll kill him, they’re going to kill him for this.

Fire coats his hands, races up his arms. I’m caught in its glow. I bang on the crate in horror. Why did he get out? Why did he—“Lucas!”

I am still screaming, still beating on the crate’s lid, trying to break out, when the tint of the sky warms to a horrifying red-gold, and the panicked outrage outside turns deadly.

“No!” It was working—it was working—we were getting out—the mud—the rain—

If it had been clear skies—

There are never clear skies here.

The world explodes with White Noise. It spikes into my temple like a ratchet, and for the first time, I’m able to ignore the pain in my leg because everywhere else hurts that much worse. There are shadows closing over me. I can’t keep my eyes open. I turn my face against the crate as the monsters in black rip the lid off the crate and iron hands clench my arms, dragging me out. Freezing rain slaps my skin, my eyes burn with tears at the intensity of the White Noise and the overcast light. I smell burnt skin. There are PSFs on the ground, screaming, rolling in the mud. There are more pouring out of the gate—the gate—God, we were almost through, the rear of the truck only needed to move a foot more, and we would have been past it. The truck sits low in the mud, half the wheels hidden by the black, grasping earth.

I’m dropped into the watery earth like a bundle of dead limbs. I force my eyes open, searching, but my vision is splitting in too many ways.

“Sam!” The sound of his voice tears at my heart. It’s ragged, lanced with the same desperation that’s pumping through me. “Sammy!” At first I think there are ten PSFs surrounding Lucas, but they seem to duplicate the longer I search for him.

I have to get him out of here. I have to save Lucas. He can’t die here. He can’t die for me.

He’s on the ground at their feet, his hands pressed against his skull as though they’re the only things to keep it from splitting in two. I recognize one of the PSFs—the woman who must have recognized him, shouted for him. She’s the one that put me in the cage. Who hit me over and over again in the Factory, in front of everyone. Cut my hair. Don’t act like I want it. There’s a White Noise device in her hands, pointing down toward Lucas, and of everything she’s done or said until now, nothing makes me hate her more.

“Sam!” He is still calling for me, still fighting against the sound blistering his mind, even as they drag him away.

This can’t be it. This can’t be the last time I see him. Hear his voice. Not Lucas, please, God, not him.

I try to push myself up out of the mud. Water is collecting in the deep wells feet have left behind. I’m going to drown in an inch of water. I try to reach for him, but it’s too far, he’s too far away, and everything, every last hope burns out inside of me. Under the carriage of the truck, I can see the road we would have taken, the wild, open road ahead of us, I can see Lucas smiling as he takes my hand, and all of these things, all of these precious pieces of dreams become as insubstantial and cold as the air I’m trying to grasp in my palm.

SIX

LUCAS

THERE is no gunshot.

There are no hands around my throat.

There are restraints that cut deep into my wrists and ankles.

There is darkness. Sleep. Nightmares. Blood, hot blood, a pale face—Sam.

There are four white walls where there once were electric fences and trees and cabins.

There are printouts of my parents’ old IDs, the names blacked out. Who are they? The answer becomes razor and agony.

There are the hands that throw me down, the hands that haul me up, the hands that strike—strike-strike-strike—

There are lights that never go out, voices that never stop, screaming obedience is the key, you are wrong, tell me you are wrong so we can fix you—I try to slip away, wrap myself in layers of memories and stories and songs, but every time I try to go, the Trainer is there, and he cuts at each one with his blade. He drags me out. He digs into my skin. I feel electricity snapping between my teeth. Drills screech. It does not stop hurting until I stop trying. Until I can’t remember where I was going to begin with.

There is hunger—

Thirst—

Pain—

The door opens, but it is not the man in black who comes in. It is a piece of bread. They show me photos, a smiling man, smiling woman, but I can’t remember their names and it hurts too bad to think. Another piece of bread. Yes, they are no one. A warm cup of water. You are no one.

I am a shadow. I am weak. They will fix me.

There is a girl with sunshine hair who turns my world to shreds. She burns my eyes, breaks my thoughts to pieces. There is a glow around her like the sky at noon, but it narrows, the image, it shrinks, and the pain eases its grip into numb nothing. It shrinks and shrinks again until it becomes a pinprick of light in the dark.

A spark that fades to nothing at all.

SEVEN

SAM

AFTER WEEKS of rain and darkness, he’s there at the edge of the Garden one morning.

Just...there.

The morning fog curls around his crimson vest as he stands as still as a statue, like he has always only ever been there. The color is gone from his skin, his face shaded by shadows and new scars. My memory of him alters sharply, a new snapshot to add to the box, another one I can’t touch in case one day it cuts too deep and takes me to a place I can’t recover from. Every part of me is shaking as I limp forward through the white fence.

I have been in the Infirmary for weeks, my fingers curled around the edge of a cliff I know we only fall over once, unwilling to let go. They knew the real punishment would be living. That’s the only reason I could think of why they gave the female nurse the medicine, even after they made the male one disappear. The harder I tried to give up, the tighter they strapped me down to this place. They fed me with tubes when I would not eat. They made me sleep. My leg will never be the same; they treated it, I’m sure, because they know it will hurt me the rest of my life. It will be a reminder of what happens when you try to run.

And this is what happens to boys who dream.

There’s a fist around my throat. I know I shouldn’t look, but I can’t help it, I have to see if it’s like before. Even with his mask on, I saw the soul beneath the stone.

He turns as I slow.

He looks at me. Through me. There is nothing, not even a flicker of life in his face. My knees buckle and I’m falling forward, stumbling through the gate into the black, soft dirt. The wind carries the last traces of mist away as Lucas turns back toward the camp spreading open in front of him. And I know.

He has gone to a place I cannot find him.

I cannot sing him home.

PROLOGUE

BLACK is the color that is no color at all.

Black is the color of a child’s still, empty bedroom. The heaviest hour of night—the one that traps you in your bunk, suffocating in another nightmare. It is a uniform stretched over the broad shoulders of an angry young man. Black is the mud, the lidless eye watching your every breath, the low vibrations of the fence that stretches up to tear at the sky.

It is a road. A forgotten night sky broken up by faded stars.

It is the barrel of a new gun, leveled at your heart.

The color of Chubs’s hair, Liam’s bruises, Zu’s eyes.

Black is a promise of tomorrow, bled dry from lies and hate.

Betrayal.

I see it in the face of a broken compass, feel it in the numbing grip of grief.

I run, but it is my shadow. Chasing, devouring, polluting. It is the button that should never have been pushed, the door that shouldn’t have opened, the dried blood that couldn’t be washed away. It is the charred remains of buildings. The car hidden in the forest, waiting. It is the smoke.

It is the fire.

The spark.

Black is the color of memory.

It is our color.

The only one they’ll use to tell our story.

ONE

THE SHADOWS grew longer the farther I walked from the center of the city. I headed west, toward the sinking sun that set the remainder of the day on fire. I hated that about winter—night seemed to reach earlier and earlier into the afternoon. Los Angeles’s smog-stained sky was painted with dark strokes of violet and ash.

Under normal circumstances, I would have been grateful for the additional cover as I navigated the easy grid of surface streets back to our current base. But with the debris from the attack, the installation of military stations and detainment camps, and the congestion of now-useless, abandoned cars fried by the electromagnetic pulse, the face of the city had been altered so dramatically that to go even a half mile through the wreckage was enough to become completely lost. Without the city’s light pollution casting its usual foggy glow, if any of us scouted at night, we had to rely on distant lights from military convoys.

I cast a quick glance around, pressing a hand against my jacket pocket to make sure the flashlight and service pistol were still there; both were courtesy of one Private Morales, and would only be used in absolute emergency. I wasn’t letting anyone pick me up, spot me running through the dark. I had to get back to base.

An hour ago, Private Morales had had the unfortunate luck to cross into my path, coming off her patrol of the freeway alone. I’d been there since before sunrise, positioned behind an overturned car, watching the elevated roadway shimmering like an electric current under a constant flood of artificial light. Every hour, I’d counted the number of tiny uniformed figures moving along the section nearest to me, weaving in and out of the trucks and Humvees lined up bumper to bumper like a secondary barrier. My muscles cramped, but I fought the urge to wait it out somewhere else.

It had been more than worth it. One soldier had been enough to arm me not only with the tools I needed to return to base safely, but also with the knowledge of how we could finally—finally—get the hell out of this damn city.

I looked back and forth twice before climbing over the fallen heap of brick that had once been the face of a bank branch, and let out a hiss of pain between my teeth as the side of my hand scraped on something jagged. I kicked the object—a metal C that had fallen from its logo—in irritation, and immediately regretted it. The clattering and grating noise bounced off the nearby buildings, almost masking the faint voices and shuffling steps.

I threw myself into what was left of the building’s interior, dropping down into a crouch behind the nearest stable wall.

“Clear!”

“Clear—”

Twisting around, I watched the progress of the soldiers moving along the other side of the street. I counted helmets—twelve—as they broke off to investigate the different smashed-glass entryways of office buildings and stores. Cover? I looked around, quickly taking stock of the overturned, singed furniture, my body moving toward one of the dark wood desks and sliding beneath it. The scrape of loose debris against the outside sidewalk overpowered the sound of my own ragged breathing.

I stayed where I was, nose burning with the smell of smoke and ash and gasoline, tracking the voices until they faded. Anxiety kept a grip on my stomach as I edged my way out from under the desk and along the floor toward the entrance. I could still see the patrol unit weaving through the wreckage halfway down the avenue, but I couldn’t wait, not even a few minutes longer.

When I’d dug through the soldier’s memories, stitched together the information I needed, it felt like a block of cement had finally rolled off my chest. She’d shown me the gaps in the freeway’s defenses as surely as if she’d handed me a map and marked them in thick, black strokes. After that, it had just been a matter of washing myself out of her memory.

I knew the former Children’s League agents would be pissed that this had actually worked. Nothing they tried themselves had succeeded, and in the meantime, the hauls from their food scouting had dwindled. Cole had pushed and pushed them to let me try, but the other agents only agreed on the condition that I go alone—to avoid any additional “risks” of capture. We’d already lost two agents who’d been careless while walking out in the city.

I wasn’t careless, but I was getting desperate. It was time to make a move now, or the military would starve us out of hiding.

The U.S. Army and National Guard had created a virtual barrier around downtown Los Angeles using the elaborate freeway system. The snaking cement monsters formed a tight circle around the inner city, choking us off from the outside world. The 101 was to the north and east, the I-10 to the south, and the 110 to the west. We might have had a chance of escaping if we’d left immediately after climbing back up to the surface from the wreckage of HQ, but...there was that word that Chubs always used: shell-shocked. He said it was amazing any of us were capable of movement at all.

I should have. I should have forced us to go, instead of falling apart at the seams. I should have—if I hadn’t been thinking about his face trapped down in the dark. I pressed the back of my hand against my eyes, steeling myself against the nausea and stabbing pain in my skull. Think about anything else. Anything. These headaches were unbearable; so much worse than the ones I used to have after trying to control my abilities.

I couldn’t stop. I pushed through the hollow feeling in my legs to a steady jog. I felt the ache of exhaustion at the back of my throat, the heaviness of my eyelids, but adrenaline kept me moving, even as parts of me felt like they were on the verge of shutting down. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fallen into a deep enough sleep to escape the waking nightmare around us.

The roads were blistered with peeling asphalt, strewn with piles of cement the army had yet to clear. Here and there I passed bright dots of color—a red high heel, a purse, someone’s bike, all dropped and forgotten. Some objects had blown out of nearby windows; the heat from the nearby blasts had charred them black. The wastefulness of the destruction was sickening.

As I ran across the next intersection, I stole a look up Olive Street, my eyes drawn to the glowing field of light that was Pershing Square three avenues over. The former park had been transformed into an internment camp; hastily thrown together, while the rubble of the city still smoldered. The poor people inside its fences had been working in the nearby buildings when President Gray launched his attack against the Children’s League and the Federal Coalition, the small band of former politicians united against him. He’d supposedly retaliated because one or both parties had played a role in his most recent assassination attempt. We’d kept watch on each of these camps, searching for Cate and the others, watching as the numbers inside swelled as more and more civilians were picked up and held against their will.

But no Cate. If she and the agents who left HQ before the attack hadn’t made it out of the city, they were hiding themselves so well that we couldn’t find them—not even with our emergency contact procedures.

Another small military convoy—the buzz of radios and growling tires tipped me off two blocks in advance. I bit back a noise of frustration as I took cover behind the shell of an SUV until the soldiers passed me by, their boots kicking up a cloud of chalky gray dust. I stood up, brushed myself off, and started running.

We—the League, or whatever was left of us—moved locations every few days, never staying in one warehouse long. When we ventured out to find food and water, or went to watch the camps, if there was even a hint of suspicion someone could have followed us back—we moved. It was smart, there was no denying that, but I was starting to lose track of where we were at any given time.

The silence, thicker now that I had crossed into the eastern half of the city, was so much more unnerving than the symphony of machine-gun fire and weapons discharging that had filled the air close to Pershing Square. My hand clenched around my flashlight, but I still couldn’t bring myself to take it out, even as my elbow scraped against the stucco wall I stumbled into. I glanced up at the sky. New moon. Of course.

A feeling of unease, the same one that had been perched on my shoulder whispering dark things in my ear for weeks, became a burning knife in my chest—sinking slowly, tearing everything in its path. I cleared my throat, trying to get the poisonous air out of my lungs. At the next intersection I forced myself to stop, and ducked into an old ATM alcove.

Take a breath, I ordered myself. A real one. I tried shaking out my arms and hands, but the heaviness remained. Closing my eyes, I listened to a distant helicopter slice through the air, moving at a furious pace. Instinct—insistent, baiting instinct—was nudging me to swing an early right on Bay Street, not stay on Alameda Street until I hit its intersection with Seventh Street. The latter was a more-direct route to our current base on Jesse Street and Santa Fe Avenue; the quickest way to give the others the details, form a plan, and get out.

But if someone were watching or tracking me, I’d be able to lose them on Seventh Street. My feet took charge and pushed me east toward the Los Angeles River.

I got a block and a half before I saw the shadows moving up Mateo Street toward Seventh Street. My punishing pace came to an abrupt stop—my hands flew out to catch myself against a mailbox before I spilled out into the middle of the street.

A sharp breath blew out of me. Too close. This is what happened when I didn’t take the time to slow down and actually make sure the street was clear. I felt the echo of my racing pulse behind my temples and reached up to rub them. Something warm and sticky smeared against my forehead, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care.

I kept my head and body low as I moved, trying to see which direction the troops were headed in now. They were already way too close to our base—if I doubled back, I might be able to outrun them to the warehouse and warn the others to bail.

But they had just...stopped.

At the corner of the intersection, they’d walked right up to the smashed-in facade of some kind of hardware store and stepped over the busted windows and into the building. I heard a laugh, voices—and my blood slowed to a crawl in my veins.

They weren’t soldiers.

I moved up the street toward the store, running a hand along the side of the building until I reached the windows and dropped down into a crouch.

“—where did you find this?”

“Good shit, man!”

More laughter.

“Oh, God, I never thought I’d be so damn happy to see bagels—”

I looked over the ledge. Inside, three of our agents—Ferguson, Gates, and Sen—were hunkered down, a small spread of food in front of them. Gates, a former Navy SEAL, tore into a bag of potato chips so hard he nearly split it in half.

They have food. I couldn’t get my head around it. They’re eating food here. The disbelief was so numbing I had to work it through one thought at a time.

They aren’t bringing the food back for the rest of us.

Was this what was happening each time a group went out? The agents had been so insistent on going to scout for supplies themselves; I’d assumed it was because they were afraid if any of the kids got picked up, they’d immediately rat out the group’s current location. But was this the real reason? So they’d get first dibs on whatever they turned up?

A cold, icy fury turned my fingers into claws. My broken nails cut into my palms; the sting of pain only added to the churning in my stomach.

“God, that’s good,” Sen said. She was a beast of a woman—tall, with muscles packed under taut, leathery skin. There was always this expression on her face like...like she knew where all the bodies were buried because she’d put them there herself. When she deigned to speak to any of us kids, it was to bark at us to shut up.

I waited through the silence that followed, anger flaring with each second.

“We should get back,” Ferguson said, starting to rise.

“They’re fine. Even if Stewart beats us back, Reynolds is there to make sure he’s not shooting his mouth off again.”

“I’m more worried about...”

“The leech?” Gates supplied, with a belly laugh. “She’ll be the last one in. If she even makes it back.”

My brows went right up at that. Leech. Me. That was a new one. I’d been called so many worse things, the only part I found offensive was the idea that I couldn’t handle a trip back and forth across the city without getting caught.

“She’s far more valuable than the others,” Ferguson argued, “it’s just a matter of—”

“It’s not a matter of anything. She doesn’t obey us, and it makes her a liability.”

Liability. I pressed a fist against my mouth to keep the bile down. I knew how the League handled “liabilities.” I also knew how I would handle any agent who tried.

Sen leaned back, bracing her hands on the tile. “The plan stays the same regardless.”

“Good.” Gates balled up the bag of chips he’d just demolished. “How much of this are we bringing back? I could go for another bagel...”

A tub of pretzel sticks and a bag of hot dog buns. That’s what they were bringing back for seventeen kids and the handful of agents that had been stuck behind babysitting while the others went out to collect food and intel.

When they started to climb back onto their feet, I flattened myself against the building, waiting for them to step through the window and glance each way down the intersection. My hands were still clenched when I stood and started trailing them, keeping a good half block between us until the warehouse finally came into view.

Before they crossed that final street, Sen held a lighter up above her head, a single flame that the agent posted on the roof could see. There was a faint whistle in response—the signal to approach.

I ran, closing the last bit of distance before the woman could start climbing up the fire escape after the others.

“Agent Sen!” My voice was a harsh whisper.

The woman’s head swung around, one hand on the ladder, the other reaching for the handgun tucked into the holster of her combat gear. It took me a moment to realize I’d had my own hand clenched around the gun in my jacket pocket the whole time I’d been stalking them down the street.

“What?” she snapped, waving to Gates and Ferguson to continue up the fire escape.

Not happy to see me, are you?

“I have to tell you something.... It’s...” I hoped she’d think the trembling quality in my voice was fear, not anger on the verge of exploding. “I don’t trust Cole with this.”

That had her interested. Her teeth flashed in the dark.

“What is it?” she asked.

This time, I smiled. And when I slammed into her mind, I didn’t care if it broke apart. I ripped through memories of bunks, training, HQ, agents, tossing the images aside faster than they could solidify in my mind. I felt her jerk, tremble under the force of my attack.

I knew when I had what I was looking for. She had imagined it so vividly, plotted it all out with a malicious efficiency that even I’d underestimated. Everything about the idea had an unnatural luster to it, like warmed wax. Cars dripped into the scene, faces I recognized as belonging to the kids upstairs were half-hidden by gags. Dust-colored military fatigues. Black uniforms. A trade.

I was gasping for air by the time I surfaced, unable to get oxygen into my chest deeply enough. I had just enough thought to twist her memory, to plant a false one in the place of the last few minutes. I didn’t wait for her to recover, pushing past her to get to the ladder.

Cole—my mind was firing too fast, black fading into my vision. I have to tell Cole.

And I had to get away from the agent before I gave in to the terrifyingly real temptation to put a bullet in her right here and right now.

Because it wasn’t enough for her to withhold food, to levy threats about leaving us behind if we weren’t quieter, didn’t move faster, didn’t keep up with the rest of them. She wanted to be done with us once and for all—to hand our leashes off to the one group she thought could actually control us.

And she wanted the reward money we’d bring in to fund her next strike.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALEXANDRA BRACKEN was born and raised in Arizona, but moved east to study at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. She recently relocated to New York City, where she works in publishing and lives in a charming apartment overflowing with books. You can visit her online at www.alexandrabracken.com or on Twitter (@alexbracken).