Brett raised his hand. “It’s a couple miles west of here, I think—ten at the most.”
“Okay,” Olivia said. Her jeans hung loose off her hips, half hidden by the jacket she fished out of the supply pile for herself. “That’s doable.”
“No,” Michael snarled, “it’s a trap. And anyone who agrees to participate in this shit show deserves what he or she gets.”
The kids in white—the hunters—began to shift, their teeth on edge. My mind stirred in response. I had just turned my gaze on him when Olivia spoke again.
“Look, if this is going to work—and it can, and it will—things have got to change around here. We can’t just be a tribe of Blues. No—no, listen to me!” Olivia raised her voice over the startled protests. “This isn’t about colors. It should never have been. This has to be a place where we don’t separate out by colors. This has to be a place of respect. If you can’t respect one another and your abilities, if you aren’t willing to help one another understand, then this won’t be the place for you.”
“And you get to decide this, why?” Michael pressed. “Who are you exactly to try to step up here? We had a system that worked pretty damn fine before. You want us to go soft? There’s a reason we only ran with other Blues—the rest of you are so goddamn pathetic you can’t do anything, not even protect yourselves.”
Olivia hesitated; her own doubts about herself had been simmering below the surface of her scarred skin. The doubt radiated off her, infecting everyone standing nearby. She seemed to wilt in front of me. I felt a small jolt of panic rush through me, like a second, unwanted heartbeat. We weren’t done yet. I needed her help—I needed her to be strong.
“Black is the color.”
I fought through the press of memory, letting those same words wash over me. Hearing them curled softly by Liam’s Southern accent, exactly as they had when he’d first said it all those months ago. “Black is still the color.”
She got it. I didn’t need pretty words to explain and, really, there were no words to describe what that place had been to us. We had been there together, had worked together, lived together, survived together. East River hadn’t just been a camp—it was an idea, a signal fire. A belief. Clancy might have been the Slip Kid, but so was every other kid who dodged the system. Who didn’t go quietly. Who wasn’t ashamed or afraid of what he or she was.
“Being smart doesn’t mean being soft,” I continued. “You can stay or you can go, but just remember—if you run, you run alone. And trust me, it’s a long, lonely road.”
“That’s right,” Olivia said finally. “If you want to go, now’s the time. Just know, though, that from this day on you will never stop running, not until they catch you. Never.”
“This is stupid!” Michael shouted. “It’s not how it’s supposed to work. If you think any of my guys are gonna support this—”
“Then, beat it,” Olivia said. “If you don’t like it, go. This only works if you want to be here. Take whatever you need and hit the road.”
I pushed myself off the small stage and walked right up to him. Michael was all razor edges and steel skin when I had been farther away from him, but I could see the way he was shaking now. He stood a full head over me, outweighed me by dozens of pounds, was armed…and none of it mattered. I didn’t have to pry inside his head to know that he was replaying last night. That his thoughts were looping on what I’d done to Knox.
What I can’t do to him.
The knowing hit me square in the teeth, stopping me dead in my tracks. I could influence him, that wasn’t even a question. But he’d been so outspoken and openly hostile that if I flipped him now, his miraculously sudden change of heart would raise suspicions. They would all know that I could and would do the same to them. They’d still be just as afraid of me, only then they’d be motivated enough to do something about it.
Michael stared at me, breathing heavily. Olivia was at my back in an instant, arms crossed over her chest. He licked his lips and started forward, the old hunting rifle at his side clattering with the force of his step.
“No man, come on,” another kid in white said, gripping him by the shoulder. “We don’t got to stay.”
Michael shrugged, throwing the other boy’s grip off him. He started toward the loading dock door, then spun toward Brett. “You too, huh?”
“When things go bad, you gotta fix them,” Brett said quietly.
Only five of the eight kids in Michael’s hunting party followed him out, not saying a single damn word, not taking anything from the pile of supplies, not acknowledging the waves of hands that reached out in silent good-byes. And only one of them turned back to look at me.
I saw the plan unfold in his mind as if he had opened a book and was turning the pages for me. Coming back to camp in the night, turn, sneaking back into the warehouse, turn, unloading every round in their guns on the kids sleeping in small huddles of blankets, turn, the five of them carrying out all of the supplies we’d be bringing back.
My spine stiffened from bone to granite to steel. I shook my head and blasted the plan clear out of his skull.
“Anyone else?” Olivia asked, surveying the huddled masses in front of her. “No? All right. Let’s get to work, then.”
The former occupants of the White Tent had been laid out beside the supplies, kept in a circle of warmth by the ring of blazing trash cans around them. Chubs glanced up from where he was hunched over Vida’s shoulders as I squeezed through the ring, the smell of smoke dragging up one black memory after another. I took a deep breath, pressing a hand against my mouth until Mason’s face had cleared from behind my eyes, and stepped over the sleeping kids. He had set them up in two lines again, this time not piled on top of one another.
“You suck at this!” Vida snarled. “What, did you forget your rake in the car? Pour some water on it and leave it the hell alone!”
She was sitting cross-legged in front of Chubs, her elbows resting on her knees and her face pressed firmly into her hands. It was a shock every time I looked at her now, an ugly little reminder of the previous night. When we returned to the warehouse, it had been obvious to all of us that most of Vida’s long hair couldn’t be saved. She managed to put out the fire before it reached her scalp, thankfully, but the blue ends had been charred and left in uneven patches. With one single, fierce look, she had pulled the small knife Jude had smuggled from the storage room and cut it off herself. Her wavy hair now curled around her ears and chin.
“A rake would make this go faster,” Chubs muttered. “I’m assuming you enjoy the luxury of having skin on your back, though.”
He licked away the sweat from his upper lip. The painstaking process of removing the charred pieces of her shirt from the burn on her shoulders had begun more than an hour ago, and we were all in agony listening to him try to disinfect the area.
“Scoot back!” she hissed. “You smell like unwashed ass.”
“How’s it going?” I asked, crouching down beside him.
“Could be better,” he muttered, “could be worse.”
“I am going to straight up murder you,” Vida said, her voice trembling with the intensity of the pain, “right in the face.”
The tweezers in Chubs’s hand stilled, just for an instant. He cleared his throat, but when he spoke again, the heat had evaporated from his voice. “Please. If it means getting away from you for five minutes, I’d gladly let you do it.”
“Could be much worse,” I amended, looking around again. “I have the list of all the meds you gave to Jude, but was there anything else you wanted me to look for?”
He set the rag back in the water. “Sterile gauze for Vida’s burns, any kind of disinfectant like alcohol pads…any complete first-aid kits if they have them, really.”