Never Fade

FOUR

“HOW COULD YOU?” Cate’s shrill voice rang out. “She hasn’t slept for the past two days, and you put her through this?”

I kept my eyes fixed on a small garden statue of a prancing boy, half hidden by the American flag hanging from Alban’s desk. I was on the floor, flat on my back, but I had no memory of getting there.

“She is not a trained puppy who will perform tricks for you at the drop of a hat!” Cate had a way of yelling without ever raising her voice. “She is a child. Please do not solicit her services, as you so eloquently put it, without checking with me first!”

“I think,” came Alban’s thin reply, “that’s about all the lecturing I can stand to take from you today, Agent Conner. This child is of an age now to make her own decisions, and while she may report to you, you report to me and I do not—ever—need to ‘check’ with you or vet my decisions with you, and I will ask you now, very kindly, to leave this office before you say something that you will regret.”

I forced myself off the ground and back into the chair. Cate lunged forward to help me, but I was already there, brushing her off. It looked like she hadn’t sleep, either—her hair was matted and stringy, her face as ashen as I’d ever seen it. She had burst in here like a tornado five minutes ago and hadn’t stopped to even take a breath. I don’t know who tipped her off—Rob, maybe—but the only thing she had accomplished in that time was making me feel like a humiliated five-year-old.

“I’m fine,” I told her, but she didn’t look convinced.

“I’ll wait outside,” she said.

“Then you’ll be waiting for some time. We have a guest downstairs that I’d like Ruby to meet.”

Of course. Why would I get a day off from “entertaining” the guests?

“Oh?” Cole’s gaze shifted among the three of us. “Am I invited to this party?”

Alban stood, finally, and came around to the front of his desk, standing between Cole’s and my chairs. He lowered himself back down on the edge of the desk with care, and it was the first time I had ever been close enough to him to realize he smelled like the mildew that we could never fully scrub from the showers.

“I’ll see you at senior staff meeting, Agent Conner.” Then, in a lower voice, “Come prepared. Agent Meadows is bringing his proposal to vote again.”

Cate whirled on her heel, her hands half raised, like she could shove the thought of it back at him. She was still shaking when Frog Lips escorted her out.

Alban didn’t so much as flinch when she slammed the door shut behind her. “So, you found our little missing treasure, did you?”

Cate’s interruption had broken into my haze of fury, but just like that, I was free-falling back into it, twisting my hands under the desk to keep from wrapping them around Cole’s neck.

In the end, it hadn’t mattered a single bit that I had managed to get the League to cut Liam loose. His brother, apparently, had found some way to drag him back into the thick of things. I didn’t really understand what I had seen, which was not, as Alban believed, the flash drive itself, but it was clear enough to me that Liam had somehow been involved.

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Alban said. “We need to get protection to the informant as soon as possible.”

Or you need to send someone to kill him for it.

“I just think—” Cole began.

The one thing, the single, solitary gift that Thurmond had given me was the ability to lie, and with a straight, unflinching face.

“I didn’t recognize them,” I said, “so I can’t give you a name. Maybe if I described them, Agent Stewart will be able to give you one?”

“Maybe,” Cole managed to croak. Then, after clearing his throat, he added, “I worked with a lot of people in Philly, though.…”

Alban gave me an impatient wave, his dark muddy eyes on mine.

“It was a woman,” I explained. “I could see her standing near the PSFs’ van. She looked nervous and kept glancing around, until she saw something on the sidewalk—then she must have found it. Late into her forties, a bit heavyset. She had long, dark hair and glasses with green frames. Her nose was slightly crooked at the end.”

And she was also my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Rosen.

Alban nodded with each and every small bit of description, then turned to Cole. “That ring any bells?”

“Yeah,” Cole said, his fingers drumming on the armrest. “I can work with that. I’ll write up the full report for you.”

Alban nodded. “Have it on my desk by eight tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” Cole said, struggling back up to his feet. I was afraid if I looked at him, I’d give myself away. He lingered for a second by the door until Frog Lips ushered him out, too.

Alban stood, making his way over to the row of dull, mismatched filing cabinets behind his desk. He slid a ring of keys out of his shirt’s front pocket, giving me a small wink. I almost couldn’t believe it—every single time I’d come to his office, I’d stared at those ugly things, wondering what was inside, and now, he was actually opening one?

He tapped his finger against the nearest drawer. “The advisers think it’s archaic and backward for me to keep these, considering we’re in the height of our digital game. Isn’t that right, Peters?”

The adviser gave a tight-lipped smile.

Whatever they really thought, to me, it was Alban’s one “old school” trick that actually did what it was supposed to. The records or files or whatever he kept in there were only ever going to be seen by one person: him. There was no chance someone would hack into them or install some kind of backdoor program and download their contents. He’d insisted on installing both a retinal scanner and digital keypad lock on his office door—the two most expensive pieces of tech at all of HQ. If someone wanted in those files, they needed his permission or to be very creative.

He slid a red folder out of the dented black cabinet at the far right, pushing the drawer shut with his hip as he turned back toward me. “I just had a thought, Ruby—I haven’t had a chance to thank you for the excellent work you did pulling this information together about the camps. I know you gave it to me a few months ago, but I’ve only had a few minutes to glance through. I can tell that a lot of effort and thought went into it, which I admire.”

I don’t know that he’d ever actually surprised me before that moment. I’d given up weeks ago on that folder ever catching his attention, when I’d seen only the smallest sliver of a corner sticking out beneath a stack of papers on his desk that was as tall as I was. That was my last hope, I remembered thinking, and it is being crushed.

Why name an organization the Children’s League if you were only going to pretend to help kids? The question stayed with me every day, through every class, through every Op. I felt its teeth tighten around the back of my neck each time I was dismissed without a second look; it had locked its jaws and wouldn’t let me or my conscience go. Most of the agents, especially the ex-military guys, couldn’t have cared less about the camps. They hated Gray, hated the draft, hated having their service orders change, and this was the only organization that was visible and actually trying to accomplish something aside from sending out vaguely threatening messages every few months. Trying to get them to do anything to help other kids was like shouting in a room where everyone was already screaming. No one wanted to listen because they had their own plans, their own priorities.

From the first night at HQ, I knew that the only way I’d be able to face myself in the future was if I tried, as hard as I could, to redirect the League’s resources into freeing the kids still in camps. Over the past months, I planned, sketched, and wrote down everything I remembered about Thurmond, from the way the PSFs patrolled, to when they rotated, to two camera blind spots we’d discovered.

It became an addiction in a way; every time I sat down, it was like being around the fire pit at East River, listening to Liam talk passionately about how we needed to be the ones to help ourselves and one another, that no organization would ever get past its own needs or image to help us. He was right, of course—that had become more than apparent to me over the last six months.

I believed him. Believed in him. But I had also thrown him off this path when we separated, and now I needed to be the one to continue down it.

“I understand, sir.”

“I’ve had copies made,” he said. “We’ll discuss it later at our senior staff meeting. I can’t make any promises, but after all of the hard work you’ve done for us these past few months, you—”

I had no idea where that sentence was headed, and I never would. Without bothering to knock, another one of the advisers, Horse Teeth, stuck his head of silver hair in and opened his mouth—only to close it again when he saw me sitting there. Frog Lips pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against and said simply, “Snowfall?”

Horse Teeth shook his head. “It’s what we were afraid of.”

“Damn,” Alban swore, standing again. “Is Professor alive?”

“Yes, but her work—”

All three sets of eyes were suddenly turned toward me, and I realized I should have left thirty seconds ago.

“I’ll be in the atrium,” I murmured, “if you still need me.”

Alban was the one to wave me off, but it was Frog Lips’s voice that followed me out of the office, carrying through the door as it shut behind me. “I never thought this was a good idea. We warned her!”

Curiosity kept me standing there, waiting for some kind of hint as to what they were talking about. The man was practically spitting with anger, the words pouring over his oversize lips in a torrent. I tried to remember the last time I had seen one of them so worked up, and couldn’t—Jude always joked they were part robot, programmed to do their tasks with the least amount of heart possible.

“She took precautions; it’s not all lost,” Alban said calmly. “Let it never be said that woman lets herself be blinded by love. Walk with me—Jarvin will be back and I need to loop him in. He might have to take a team to Georgia to salvage the mess there—”

I only needed to hear the footsteps approaching from the other side of the door to know I’d gotten what little information they’d be giving. I turned as a cluster of kids passed by me on their way to the atrium, letting myself be drawn toward the back of the crowd.

When I glanced back, Alban stood outside his office door, letting the advisers work their whispers into a buzz around his ears. He didn’t acknowledge me, but I felt his eyes follow me the whole way, like he couldn’t quite let me out of his sight.

A few hours later, I was still in the atrium. Still waiting for a convenient slot in Alban’s schedule for me to scramble someone’s brain. Nico had shown up a few minutes before and brought a sandwich over to me, but between the two of us, I’m not sure who was less interested in their dinner.

Snowfall. The League was careful to give code names to every agent and every Op. At this point, I knew HQ’s roster well enough to know that we didn’t have a “Professor” working out of Los Angeles. But Snowfall… My brain was turning the phrase over the way it would sound out a foreign word. Slowly. Methodically. I’d had access to names of classified missions and projects well above my security clearance in the League just by virtue of the dirty work I was doing for them downstairs, but that wasn’t one of them.

“Hey,” I said, glancing over to where Nico was staring at his laptop screen. “If I were to give you an Op name, would you be able to search the servers for it?”

“The classified servers?” he asked. Anything less secure was a waste of the Greens’ time and talents. “Sure. What’s the name?”

“Snowfall. I think the agent in charge is called Professor—it sounds like a woman who might have been working out of the Georgia headquarters.”

Nico looked like I had picked up my plastic tray and slammed it into his face.

“What?” I asked. “Have you heard of it?”

The agents sitting nearby had gotten up and left when I sat down, giving me my own private section of the round hall. I had glared at the loud table of Blues nearby until they left, too. So it was quiet enough for me to actually hear him swallow as he looked back down at his keyboard and then back up at me.

It also meant it was quiet enough to hear Jude’s panting as he came bursting through the atrium’s doors.

He bypassed the other tables of agents and kids and came straight toward us. Ignoring him wasn’t going to make him disappear—he was the rash that kept coming back, even after six different kinds of silent treatment.

“Hey,” Nico said, “what are you—”

I kept my eyes on my untouched sandwich, only looking up when he grabbed both of our arms and started to pull us out of our seats.

“Come with me,” he said in a tight voice. “Now.”

“I’m busy,” I muttered. “Go find Vida.”

“You have to come—” His voice was hard, low. I barely recognized it. “Right. Now.”

“Why?” I asked, refusing to look up.

“Blake Howard came back from his Op.”

“And I care because…?”

His fingers seemed to burn my skin. “He came back in a body bag.”

By the time we arrived at the entrance hall, the small crowd of spectators, senior agents, Alban, and his advisers were flocking down one level to the infirmary in a long line of drawn faces and furious whispered questions.

“You’re sure?” I asked Jude as we tailed the crowd. “Positive that’s what you saw?”

He gulped back a deep breath. This close, I saw the red rimming his eyelids, and I wondered if he had cried himself raw before coming to get me.

Jude’s hand floated up to grip the small, nearly flat silver compass that he wore around his neck with a string. Alban had given it to him out of his personal collection of junk, along with the personal prophecy that Jude would turn into “a great explorer” and “a traveler of the first order.” The kid never took it off, even though his abilities rendered the small device mostly useless. As a Yellow, Jude’s touch always carried a faint electrical charge that messed with the magnet inside. It meant the colored arm always pointed toward Jude and not to the actual direction he was headed.

“I saw them come in, then Cate made me leave. But I heard Alban asking Agent Jarvin how it could have happened, and Rob said it had been an accident.” Jude glanced around us, peering over my head to make sure no one was close enough to hear. “Roo, I don’t think it was an accident.”

When we reached the second-level landing, Nico blew right past us, heading down to the third, lowest level.

“Hey!” Jude called. “Nico—”

“Let him go,” I said, half wishing I could follow him and avoid this mess altogether.

The infirmary was directly beneath the atrium, occupying the large circular space on the second level, with the computer lab directly beneath it on the third. Despite its size, it was almost always clogged with machines, beds, and the few nurses and doctors the League kept on staff for emergencies and training accidents. I’d had to go in more than once to get patched up and hadn’t missed the fact that they wore special, thicker rubber gloves to touch me.

Now they wore the usual clear ones as they moved Jarvin and his other teammates in to be examined. Jude tried to go inside, his breath hitching as he reached for the door handle. I dragged him away to the observation window, where a few other agents were crowded, watching as a gurney was navigated through the beds and medical carts toward the screen at the back of the room. On top of it was a black body bag, occupied.

I squeezed up to the front of the window with Jude in time to see them unzip the bag and lift Blake Howard onto a flat metal table. A white sneaker dangled from his right foot, and the blood soaking his clothes was visible from where we were—and then nothing. Alban stepped through with Jarvin and Cate and Rob, and the screen was drawn back in place, leaving us with only shaded silhouettes.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Jude was whispering, his hands fisting in his reddish-brown curls. “It was him; it was really him—”

I reached out to steady his elbow as he swayed. I hadn’t really known Blake at all. I didn’t know any of the kids who weren’t on my team aside from their names, and my winning personality guaranteed they would never know me. But Jude and Blake had been as thick as thieves; the two of them and Nico spent most of their downtime together goofing off in the computer lab or playing some kind of game. The only time I had ever seen a smile crack Nico’s face was when Blake had been with him, green eyes flashing, hands waving, telling some story that had Jude practically sobbing with laughter.

“We should go find… We should go find Nico, I think. I think he went to check on something,” Jude finally managed to get out. I guided him away from the door and down the hall toward the stairs. We had to squeeze past the agents jogging down the hall to confirm the rumors that I’m sure were blazing through HQ.

“I have to tell you something,” he whispered as we reached the stairs. “You have to see that…that I don’t think it was an accident. I think—I think I did this.”

“This had nothing to do with you.” I sounded so much calmer than I felt. “Accidents happen all the time. The only one to blame is Jarvin. He’s the one who picked someone who didn’t have the full field training.”

Jude didn’t give me a chance to bail. He seized my wrist and dragged me after him all the way down the stairs to the third level. I watched the sharp angles of his shoulders move beneath his ratty old Bruce Springsteen shirt, and I noticed for the first time that he’d worn a hole through the collar. He knew exactly where Nico had gone.

It was several hours past our allotted training time in the computer room, but I was still surprised to find it so empty. Usually there was any number of Greens haunting the room, typing away at whatever computer program or virus they were perfecting. If it hadn’t been a dinner hour, Nico’s expression alone probably could have cleared the joint out.

“I found it,” he said.

“And?” The word trembled as it left Jude’s mouth.

“It wasn’t an accident.”

Nico was prone to ugly feelings that he chose to deal with inwardly, in what I’m sure were ugly ways. But he never inflicted those bitter, venomous thoughts on the rest of us. Not until now.

“Found what?” I asked. “One of you needs to explain what’s going on right now.”

“You said it was nothing,” Nico said. “You thought it was a coincidence. You should have believed us.”

His voice was acid on my already exposed nerves. I kept my eyes on the screen as he clicked on a video file. The player popped up, expanding to fit the black-and-white footage. Tiny human-shaped figures milled around a room full of long machines. I had seen enough of them to be able to identify it with a single look—a server room.

“What am I looking at?” I asked. “Please tell me you weren’t stupid enough to download the security footage from the company Blake and Jarvin’s team broke into.…”

“And give Jarvin or one of his friends the chance to remotely delete the evidence?” Nico fired back.

It was a thirty-second clip; that was all he needed. I wanted to tell him that he had taken a horrible risk in downloading it—that the computer corporation could trace it back to us—but Nico wasn’t careless.

Thirty seconds. But it happened in less than fifteen.

Blake had gone into the server room, dressed in the usual black Op attire, and located the machine straight off. The sudden appearance of the guard made me jump; a nightly patrol that whoever planned the mission had been too careless to look into. Blake dodged behind the server tower, ducking around that aisle and into the next one to avoid being seen. The guard might not have noticed anything was wrong at all if Jarvin and another member of the tact team hadn’t burst into the room, guns blazing.

I leaned forward toward the screen, marveling at how sharp the footage was. How we could see the two agents take cover, the careful way Jarvin moved his gun from the security guard to Blake’s exposed back. The burst of light as he aimed at the kid and fired.

Jude spun away, pressing his face into his hands to avoid seeing.

Shit, I thought, shit, shit, shit.

Nico had clearly watched it before we arrived, but he pressed play again, and again, and again, until I had to be the one to click out of the window. He said nothing; there was no expression on his face at all. His eyelids were hooded, and I could almost feel the way he was slipping back, away, into that place that was his alone.

“This…I can’t…” Jude cut in, his voice rising with every word, his palm pressed flat against his compass. “It’s just these guys—they’re the bad ones. The other people here care about us, and once they find out what happened, they’ll punish them. They’ll stand up for us. This isn’t the League; this isn’t—this isn’t—”

“Do not,” I said, “tell anyone about this. Do you hear me? No one.”

“But, Roo.” Jude looked horrified. “We can’t just let him get away with this! We have to tell Cate, or Alban, or—or someone! They can fix this!”

“Cate won’t be able to do anything if you’re already dead,” I said. “I mean it. Not a single damn word. And you never go anywhere alone—you stay with me, or Vida, or Nico, or Cate. Promise me that. If you see one of them coming, you have to turn back and head the other way. Promise.”

Jude was still shaking his head, his fingers fussing with his compass. I tried to think of something comforting to say to him. And it was so strange how torn I felt between wanting to protect them from the truth of what the League really was and the kind of vicious cruelty it took to be an active agent, and the small satisfaction that came with knowing I had been right about them all along. This was not a safe place. Maybe it had once been for kids like us—but now the foundations were cracking, and a misstep could bring all of HQ crumbling down on top of us.

Rob and Jarvin weren’t patient souls. They always finished their Ops on schedule. This would be no different, I was sure of it. Cate and a few other agents might be sympathetic toward us kids, but for how long? If we became liabilities, if it looked like we were nothing more than messes to be cleaned up, would they still stand with us?

Again and again, my mind kept turning back to the grenade, the way it had exploded directly under our feet. The way Rob had ordered us to stand exactly there.

I had the power to fix this; I knew I did. It was just a matter of getting close enough to Rob and all of his friends to do it. And, unfortunately, that was going to be the hardest part.

“Not a word,” I said, turning to go. “I’ll take care of this.”

And I would. I was Leader. Any thought I had been entertaining about escaping once I had word on Liam and the others fled like a dream in the morning.

Jude was alive, and Nico was alive, and I was alive—and, for now, I needed to focus every ounce of my energy on keeping it that way.