“Tildon,” the PSF who’d been watching called out, “Status?”
“Shit—” The man’s face burned pink as he covered himself, seemingly torn between staying as he was or excusing himself to take care of the situation. Kids were sneaking glances at him, at each other. He seemed to realize it too, and rose on unsteady feet. I had just enough of a grip left on his mind to slide my right leg out to the side, and listen as his own leg mirrored the response and sent him crashing to his knees just before he reached the gate. The PSF—Tildon—he’d think he had tripped over someone. The image was the last one I planted before gently peeling back from his mind, refusing to watch as he walked briskly in the direction of the Control Tower.
Too much, I chastised myself—next time I’d have to go for something subtler. But this one, this one I wouldn’t regret, no matter what. I rose unsteadily onto my feet to help Sam back onto hers, guiding her back over to our places. She was shaking, staring at me as if she knew what had really happened.
“Fix it,” she whispered, “whatever you did to me. Please. I need to know.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look at her, knowing what sort of expression I’d see there. It had been like this with Liam, hadn’t it? All of the feelings, none of the memories—that’s what I’d left her with. No wonder she had seemed so confused and hostile after I’d wiped her memory. It must have been overwhelming. If she’d felt half as close to me as I did to her, the strange sense that something was wrong must have torn at her each day.
I met her pleading eyes with a plea of my own. And just like always, she understood. A spark of the old Sam surfaced. Her eyebrows drew together and she pursed her lips. This was the silent language we’d developed over the years.
The PSF who’d been gazing in our direction, hand shading his eyes to make out Tildon’s distant form growing smaller and smaller, stepped over the mounds into our row. I tensed, waiting to feel his shadow cast over me. Try it, I thought, try it with any of these kids, and see where it gets you.
Instead he walked away, continuing the watch that Tildon had been forced to abandon. I held my breath and slid my hand over, under the loose dirt, to grip Sam’s.
We worked through the morning into the afternoon, with only a small break to eat the apples and sandwiches they distributed for lunch. I devoured mine with dirt-stained hands, watching the changing colors of the sky.
And that night, as I lay in the bunk beneath her, I slipped into Sam’s mind as soft as a breeze.
I thought of that morning I’d stepped up beside her in the Infirmary, the way her coat’s tag had flipped up against her neck. The exact moment I’d taken her memories of me by mistake, the heaviness in my chest still unbearable as the moment played through.
The images were in her mind now, too, perfectly matched with mine. I was swept along with them, falling through the white, fluttering images around me. Her memories were almost too bright to watch, the wisps too thin to grasp. But I knew what I was looking for when I saw it. The black knot buried deep beneath the others. I reached out, touching it, increasing the pressure until it unraveled.
If each memory that drifted up were a star, I was standing at the center of a galaxy. Beneath vast constellations of lost smiles and quiet laughter. Whole, endless days of gray and brown and black that we’d spent with only each other to hold on to.
I’d assumed she’d been asleep the whole time; her mind had been so calm and still under my touch. But a pale arm came down over the side of the bunk, stretching down toward me. The familiar gesture stole the air from my chest, and I had to press my lips together to keep back the tears that came dangerously close to the surface. I reached up, meeting her halfway, locking my fingers around hers. A secret. A promise.
MY PLAN CAME TO ME in pieces over the next two days. I assembled it hastily while I worked in the Garden, ignoring the blisters on the palm of my hand, and in those minutes before I passed out in exhausted sleep each night. Knowing that it would be over soon, in a matter of hours, made me feel reckless in a way I hadn’t expected. Somehow it was too much time, and yet still not enough; I couldn’t shake the fear that the others had changed their timing from the original plan that Cole, Nico and I had outlined. I’d told them March first, but what if it was impossible to get here in time?
What if they’re not coming at all?
I shoved the thought away before it could plant itself too deeply in my heart.
At six o’clock that evening, I lay in my bunk, hands folded on my stomach. Sam’s mattress shifted as she rolled onto her side, distorting the shapes I had made in the plastic. I reached up, taking a small piece of the curling plastic cover between my broken fingernails. Tugging gently, I pulled the strip off, carefully working it around, around, until it formed an even circle.
“—so the girl, after the robbers decided to take her away, she managed to steal one of their daggers and cut the rope off her hands...” Rachel was leading the story today, filling in the hour before we were called to dinner. Tonight, she wove the tale of yet another nameless girl, in yet another perilous situation. I closed my eyes, a faint smile on my lips. The stories hadn’t gotten any better or any more original—they all followed the same plot: girl is wronged, girl struggles, girl escapes. The ultimate fantasy at Thurmond.
Physical exhaustion kept me still. As much as I had trained at the Ranch, these hours of endless work with no break, on limited food and water, were designed to drain us of the energy we’d need to muster to escape or push back. My body was a mess of quivering muscles, but I felt oddly calm, even though I knew what would happen if I made one misstep, or they figured out what I was before I could complete what I’d come here to do.
I have to walk out of here.
“Ruby?” Ellie called from her bunk at the center of the room. “It’s your turn.”
I shifted onto my elbows, scooting back to swing my legs off the cramped bunk. I worked out the kinks in my lower back as I thought about how I was going to finish this story. “The girl...” When I was younger, I would have passed it on to Sam after adding only a few words, but I could use this. I wasn’t sure they would understand, but I hoped some part of them would recognize the warning when the time came.
“The girl cut herself loose from the rope and knocked the bandit off the horse in front of her. She took the reins and turned the horse around the road, heading back in the direction they had come from—back toward the castle.”
There was a murmur at that. Vanessa had spent the better part of fifteen minutes describing the battle raging outside of its walls. It had provided the distraction the bandits needed to take the girl in the first place.
“She used the darkness,” I explained. “She left her horse in the nearby forest and crept toward a passage she knew was hidden in the far stone wall. The fighting had stopped once the knights in black had taken the castle. They locked the white knights out, and they were unable to help the families trapped inside. But no one noticed a small, plain girl coming through the back door. She looked like a helpless servant girl, bringing a basket of food into the kitchen. For days, she stayed in the castle, watching. Waiting for the right moment. And then it came. She slipped back outside and made her way through the shadows of night, unlocking the gate for the white knights to come pouring back in.”
“Why would she come back? Why didn’t she just escape—hide?” Sam asked, her voice small. I blew out a soft breath, glad that, if nothing else, she understood.
“Because,” I said finally, “in the end, she couldn’t leave her family behind.”
The girls shifted silently in their bunks, looking at each other as if wondering the same thing. No one asked the question—I don’t know how many of them actually dared to hope. But three short minutes later, the electronic lock on the cabin’s door popped open. The door swung in and a PSF stepped inside.
“Line up,” she barked.
We hastily assembled in alphabetical order, staring straight ahead as she counted us off. She motioned for the girls at the front of the line to start moving.
I couldn’t help myself. A step before we reached the door, I glanced back behind me. No matter what happened, it would be the last time I ever saw Cabin 27.
But when we walked through the door of the Mess Hall that evening, I already had to revisit a key component of my plan. Because, set up against the wall opposite of us, to the left of the window where we lined up to receive our food, was a large white screen. O’Ryan stood in front of it, his arms crossed over his chest, the blue light from a digital projector washing over him. Sam threw a nervous look my way as our PSF escort pushed her toward our table.
The last time we’d seen them use this screen had been our first week here. The camp controllers had set up the projector to scroll through the list of camp rules. No talking during work duties. No talking after lights out. Do not speak to a Psi Special Forces officer unless spoken to first. On and on and on.
Rather than have us line up to get food, the PSFs signaled for us to sit down and remain seated. The energy in the room was unsettling; I couldn’t get a read on any of the camp controllers or PSFs.
“There have been some recent developments,” O’Ryan said, his natural voice loud enough to carry through the building, “regarding your situation. Pay attention. You will only be shown this once.”
The move, I thought. They were finally going to tell them about closing the camp.
O’Ryan stepped back as the lights were dimmed slightly. A computer was hooked up to the projector, giving us a glimpse of a desktop before the video window expanded and the PSF hit play.
The video wasn’t about the move.
Next to me, Sam actually recoiled, her hand reaching for mine. I blinked in horrified disbelief.
It was a sight I hadn’t seen in eight years: President Gray standing at a podium in front of the crest of the White House. He smiled so generously that dimples appeared on his cheeks. He waved—beckoned—to someone out of the camera’s frame and, this time, the room full of reporters and cameras in front of him burst into sound as a pale-haired woman stepped up beside him, dressed in an immaculate suit. Dr. Lillian Gray.
“I’ve never been one to bury the lede, have I?” President Gray laughed. The First Lady disappeared into the fevered flashing of the cameras; the furious clicking of camera shutters would have put any machine gun to shame.
“It’s good to be home in Washington again, to be back in this room with all of you, and with my beautiful wife. She’s alive and well, contrary to wild speculation.”
Nervous laughter in response.
“Her appearance here means that, at long last, I can tell you that our prayers have been answered and we now have a safe treatment that will rid American children of the psionic disorder forever,” he said.