“Reinforcements?” Liam repeated, practically growling.
Cole raised his brows.
“Oh, you bastard,” Liam snapped. “Harry? You’re asking Harry to fight?”
“He volunteered. He and his unit of forty ex-military guys and gals are eager to do their part.” Cole turned to address the kids. “Contrary to what he’s been telling you, I would never have asked someone to fight who didn’t want to.”
“How many times do we have to drill it into your skull before you grasp the reality of this?” Alice asked. “The kids don’t want any fight.”
“Oh, they want a fight,” Cole said, rounding the circle to stand directly in front of her, “but they don’t want to have to wage it themselves.”
“No, we want to coordinate a media blitz with the truth,” Liam said. “To release the locations of camps we know about, along with the lists of the kids there. We let the American people rise up and go after them. It’ll cause some chaos, but now that we have the information that IAAN isn’t contagious, it increases the likelihood that foreign powers will come in as a peacekeeping force. Isn’t that right, Senator Cruz?”
“It’s not a guarantee...” she said. “But I could try to work with that.”
“You’re overestimating how much people care,” I said, shaking my head, noting with some satisfaction that the others actually stopped to listen. “I’ve seen too many times that the only way we’ll ever get what we want—the only way we’ll ever be able to get our freedom from this—is if we get it ourselves. The camps have sophisticated security systems, and Gray has shown time and time again he’ll do anything to cover his ass. What’s to say the minute you release the camp information, he doesn’t take it out on the kids? Use them as hostages, move them, kill them to bury the evidence?”
If they’d thought about that in all of their planning, it didn’t show on their faces. And the fact that Dr. Gray didn’t try to refute me seemed to lend some credence to the possibility.
“You absolutely cannot just release the information about Agent Ambrosia, I’m sorry, but no,” she said. “You are severely underestimating the widespread panic it’ll induce in the population.”
“True,” Senator Cruz said. “I’d rather not see people start tearing each other apart to get to natural water supplies. But I agree with Alice that we need evidence; not for the public, but for our foreign allies.”
The buzz that moved through the room was palpable—kids were already shifting around, assigning themselves to groups to drive out to the water treatment facilities. And there was Cole, watching it all. His hand gave a painful jerk as he lifted it to rub the back of his neck, and I wondered if he felt it, too, the slow unraveling. The train that had been so clearly under our care had jumped the tracks entirely. When he looked at me, there was a silent plea in it, a desperation I had never seen in him before.
I couldn’t stand it—it pushed me past furious. He’d done everything in his power to help us. To make the hard decisions. And now they were trying to push him out as leader? He was being mocked by the looks Liam and Alice exchanged? In that moment he could have backed out of the room and I wasn’t sure anyone but me would have noticed.
“Well,” he said finally, “I have some intel for you, if you’d like it.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you do.”
“You say you want to give the world a sense of who these kids are, but you’re really just setting them up to be pitied.” Cole tucked his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, his voice growing louder as the din around him faded. “What motivates people, even more than anger, is fear. Go ahead and release all that intel on Ambrosia, see where that lands this country when people start rioting over the last few fresh, untainted water sources. Or, you can show them Gray’s trump card—that he’s been building an army of Reds.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice demanded.
“You all saw what happened at Kansas HQ today,” Cole said. “But what the news didn’t tell you is that there are reports that it was Reds, not a military unit, that attacked them.”
“Oh, convenient—reports with nothing to back them up.” Alice waved him off.
But, if nothing else, Cole now had the reins of the conversation back in his hand. He was guiding the conversation now, not letting it happen around him. “My trusted source says that there’s a camp of Reds not too far from here, in a place called Sawtooth. I’d like to go and document evidence of them—their training, the camp’s existence—and I’d like to give it to you for Amplify, on the condition it’s used in conjunction with the actual camp hit.”
“Where did this information come from?” Liam asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“A trusted source,” he repeated.
His brother rolled his eyes. Alice, though—Cole had read her right. It was like a cat that had spotted a mouse creeping along the floorboards. She wanted this story, and she wasn’t going to run the risk of someone else getting it first.
“Okay, what about this,” she began. “We send out five teams to the water treatment facilities, and you can take a small group out to assess the situation there. Snap some photos.”
“I only need one other person,” he said, glancing at me.
“I’ll go,” Liam said, before I could. He set his jaw, daring his brother to refuse. Cole crossed his arms over his chest, eyes darting over to me, looking for a lifeline.
He doesn’t want Liam to go. And it had nothing to do with how Liam may or may not have been able to handle himself, or if he trusted him. I saw that now.
“I’d still like to go,” I said. “I think—”
“He just said two would be enough,” Liam pressed, turning back to his brother. “Unless you think I’m going to screw everything up on your precious little mission?”
Cole snorted, his lips twisting up in a rueful smile. “All right, it’s settled. Now...someone talk to me about our car situation. What’s the gasoline level at now?”
Dr. Gray returned to her seat, finally, eyes fixed on her hands in her lap as Senator Cruz asked her something. The meeting came to a natural end as five teams formed to go out to the water treatment facilities, Alice taking the lead, dividing them up by state and choosing which one she wanted to go with.
I didn’t stay around to watch the stiff conversation between Cole and Liam. I turned on my heel, vaguely aware of Chubs saying something to me as I made my way back into the tunnel, through the Ranch, back to the empty computer room. I sat back down at Nico’s computer station and switched on the news livestream.
“—obviously this is terrible if it’s true and the president will have a considerable amount of explaining to do—” This was the last one still running; the others had been switched off, one by one. A pattern had formed: a news station would show the kids’ interviews, the conversation between the talking heads would swing dangerously toward the this is true camp, and the feed would go dark. This station seemed to be avoiding the censors by casting the guest commentator as a devil’s advocate instead of a so-called expert. “—but what if these children haven’t been coached, and this isn’t some ploy for attention or notoriety from parents? If they have been removed from their rehabilitation program, then aren’t their lives in danger? Our focus should be on returning them to their camps before it’s too late.”
The host of the program arched a gray, bushy eyebrow and said, his voice deep and penetrating, “Did you actually watch the interviews? They claim that there is no program. Based on the fact that it’s been nearly a decade and we’ve had little to no news or progress in finding a cure, I’m inclined to agree. I don’t think these children would risk exposing themselves without—”
The video window jumped to static.
That’s the end of that, I thought, rubbing my face. The room was warm, the machines humming a low song perfectly in tune with one another. The longer I listened to it, eyes shut, the easier it was to process the tidal wave of information that had come crashing down over our heads earlier in the evening; the easier it was to let the quiet anger roll through me.
What was the point of trying to keep it inside now—my fury over decisions that had been made almost twenty years ago?
And this “cure”—what a joke. Surrendering yourself to an invasive procedure that might or might not work was patching the problem over, not fixing it. I felt strangely betrayed by my own hope; I thought I’d trained myself not to bank on things that were completely out of my control. But...still. Still, it hurt.
What’s the point in getting anyone out now if they don’t have a future? My throat ached with the thought. At least in the camps they’re protected from what they’d have to deal with out here. How many people would really be welcoming to “freaks” out walking the streets? I fought the instinct to walk over to the satellite image of Thurmond, to tear it down off the wall and rip it between my hands, just shred it into a thousand fluttering pieces to match the way I was shattering inside. Why not just let those kids be taken out of the camp, let the PSFs and military raze the buildings without leaving so much as a scar on the earth?
Because if the kids are in the camps, they could be forced to get the procedure, whether they want it or not.
Because they deserve to have a choice about how they want to live their lives.
Because they haven’t seen their families in years.
Because it’s what’s right.
I stood up and stretched my stiff limbs as I moved toward the satellite image of the camp, smoothing out a corner that was becoming unstuck from the wall. The notations I made were all still there, and I saw new ones—arrows that Cole had made, outlining the flow of the assault. He wanted us to enter through the front gate using military vehicles. We would pose, I had a feeling, as either units helping with the move or additional forces. The first drive was split between the Infirmary and the Control Tower, with smaller pairings of fighters in twos and threes moving through the rings of cabins.
I backed up to get the full scope of it all, taking a seat on one of the empty desks.
It’s the right thing to do. It would just be a matter of convincing everyone else.
The door to the computer room swung open, and I turned, saying, “How did it—?”
But it wasn’t Cole. It was Liam. Jaw set, blue eyes stormy. Even if I hadn’t been able to feel the anger pouring off him, he was shaking with the clear effort it took to walk in and shut the door with some semblance of calm.
My whole world tilted toward him. There were so many empty spaces inside of me now, and I don’t know if I’d even have recognized that until he was there to fill them. The longing turned to a dull ache; it played games with my mind. It made me think I saw it in his eyes, too, as he watched me. His anger met my desperation and the sparks from the collision crystallized, trapping us in this moment of charged silence forever.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I know it’s too late now, but I’m sorry.”
Liam cleared his throat. His voice was low. “How long have you known?”
There was no point in lying, trying to gloss over the truth. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t have this guilt under my skin, cutting me to the bone each time I withheld, with each little lie. Cole had asked me to keep his secret and I had, because I felt it was his right to come to grips with his abilities on his own terms and in his own time. But I should never have let this charade go on for so long, not when it did more to tear things apart than it did to bring everyone together.
And at this point, I wasn’t sure it was possible for Liam to hate me any more than he already did.
“At HQ,” I said, “when he and the other agents came in to retake it, he saved my life. I saw it then.”
Liam drew in a sharp breath and, in a blur of furious movement, slammed his fist into the wall next to the door, hard enough to crack the plaster.
“Ow—shit!” He jumped back, cradling his hand. “Christ—why did she say that would make me feel better?”
I was on my feet, reaching for him, before I remembered myself.
“Who—Alice?” I guessed, hating that I could hear the bitterness in my own voice.
“Yeah, ’cause some reporter is the first person I’m gonna tell after finding out my brother is a Red,” he shot back. “Vida. When I asked her where you were.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” I said. I hadn’t realized until that moment, hearing those two words leave my mouth, how carefully I’d managed to balance on the tip of a needle. But it was like every ounce of strength I’d had left just...slipped away. I felt myself take another step, and my knees went out from under me as I dropped to the ground. I couldn’t find the words I needed, couldn’t put them together. I pressed my hands against my face, crying, beyond caring. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”
I heard him come toward me, saw between my fingers as he lowered himself to the ground a short distance away and leaned back against the table. He rested his arms over his knees, letting his swollen right hand hang out in the air. He didn’t say anything at all, waiting for me to finish, or waiting for something in himself; I didn’t know.
“He said he made you swear on your life not to tell me,” he said, his voice hoarse. “That I should blame him, not you.”
“Yeah, but I could have told you anyway,” I said quietly.
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t.”
He let out a sound of frustration, running his hands back through his hair. “Ruby...can you at least help me understand why? I’m...I want to understand. This is killing me. I don’t get why no one...why neither of you even tried.”
“It’s because...I know what it feels like to...” I struggled for the right words, but every time it felt like I had a grip on them, they slipped away. “It’s different for us—for him and me. The dangerous ones. I know you don’t want to hear that, I’m sorry, but it’s true. I saw it in the way the PSFs treated the Orange and Red kids at Thurmond, I saw it in how hard Zu struggled to learn to control her abilities, and I see it in the face of every kid I talk to. So I knew exactly why Cole didn’t tell you or your parents. I lived with the fear of being found out, and so did he. First with your family, and then with the League.”
“No one in the League had any idea?” Liam asked in disbelief.
“Three people knew,” I said. “Alban, Cate, me. That’s it.”
He released a harsh breath, shaking his head.