Never Fade

FIVE

INSTEAD OF HEADING BACK TO THE ATRIUM, I hit the stairs and went up a level, following the second floor’s curve to the locker room to shower and change. HQ was cold and dingy as always, but every inch of me felt sticky and hot, like I was on the edge of a fever. A few minutes under freezing cold water would help me clear my head. I could use the rare quiet to try to put together some kind of plan to make sure one of us was with Jude at all times.

The lights were already on when I stepped inside. They had automatic motion sensors, meaning someone had either just come in or just left. I stayed completely still, my back flush against the door, listening to the steady drip of a faucet somewhere across the room. No one was in the showers; all of the yellow curtains had been thrown open, and I didn’t hear the squeak of faucets or the usual explosion of pressurized water.

What I did hear was quiet—almost undetectable under the drip. A steady tapping, like a boot against cement, and a rustling, like a page turning…

I took the long way around the lockers, crossing one foot over the other as I ducked around the corner and stepped into the other long row of gleaming silver metal.

Cole didn’t look up from where he was sitting on the bench, a folder in his hands. I caught a glimpse of the familiar sketch of Thurmond’s electric fence as he turned the page.

“…was Caledonia a lot like this, do you think?”

Every muscle in my back tensed, forcing me to stand up straight when the sight of him was enough to make me want to sink into the ground. I flexed my hands into fists at my sides and took a deep breath.

“No,” I said. “Caledonia was smaller. They remodeled an old elementary school. But some of the details are the same.”

He nodded absently.

“Thurmond, man,” he said, dropping a finger on it. “I saw some rudimentary sketches of it a few years back, but nothing this detailed. The agents we had there didn’t get to see half of this stuff—not even Conner.”

I stayed exactly where I was by the lockers, waiting for him to leave.

“Alban passed these handy copies out at our senior staff meeting tonight,” Cole said. “Cate got up to excuse herself halfway through. Any idea why?”

I said nothing. In truth, I did have an idea. Cate had been trying to drive me off this track for months. I had to slip the folder to Alban when she wasn’t around.

“And here I thought you were a mind reader,” he said with a faint laugh.

Cole’s muscles were still stiff, and it was obvious he was in a great deal of pain as he stood. He tilted his head toward the showers.

I followed him into one of the shower stalls. The curtain rings screamed as he pulled the cheap plastic shut behind us, making me jump and press my back against the cement wall. It was tight quarters, and I was already feeling uncomfortable when he leaned around me, bruised face a few inches away from mine, to turn the shower on at full blast.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, trying to push my way past him. He grabbed my shoulder and held me next to him under the stream. We were drenched before Cole began to speak.

“The showers are the only place in HQ that aren’t recorded. I don’t want to take a chance that the other cameras in the room can pick up our little chat.”

“I have absolutely nothing to say to you,” I said, pulling myself free.

“And yet I have so much to say to you.” Cole put both arms out to block me and nearly lost his balance. Unsteady on his feet, not performing up to maximum strength, tired—an easy target. I rammed my shoulder into him, but I must have telegraphed my plan. He caught one of my arms and twisted until my muscles screamed and my joints felt like they would pop. His skin was hot, like he was trying to spread the fire burning in his blood to mine.

He’s one of them, he’s one of them, he’s one of them—

“Calm down!” he barked, giving me a hard shake. “Get a grip! I’m not gonna hurt you! I want to talk about Liam!”

Cole released his iron grip on my arm, then took a step back, holding up his hands. I was still breathing hard as I turned. The water served as a nice barrier that neither of us was willing to cross. Steam curled up around my soaking sneakers, then my knees, and then I was breathing the hot damp air into my tight chest.

“Liam who?” I said, when I got a grip on myself.

Cole gave me an exasperated look, and I knew the game was up.

“You brought him back in,” I said, an edge to my voice. “I did everything to make sure he’d be safe.”

“Safe?” Cole laughed without a hint of humor. “You think sending the idiot out into the world to be captured or killed was a kindness? He’s lucky I still check for our contact procedure, otherwise the skip tracer on his ass would have happily delivered him to camp.”

I couldn’t help it; my fists clenched. “How did you force him to help you?”

“Why do you assume I forced him to do anything, darlin’?”

“Don’t,” I gritted out, “call me that.”

Cole’s light brows rose. “I guess that answers my question about why you lied to Alban. Care to explain how you even know my brother?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Cate didn’t tell you?”

“I have my suspicions, but there wasn’t any mention of him in your file.” Cole cocked his head to the side, a gesture that was Liam to a T. The second and third fingers on his left hand tapped against his leg—a nervous tic, maybe. “Alban seems to have some idea, but the others don’t.”

He leaned out of the stream, resting against the stall for support. Still suffering, but coasting on a wave of pride that kept him from showing it. Classic Stewart move. “Look, he wasn’t working with me at all. That night—the one you saw—was the first time I had seen him since he split from the League years ago. We set up a contact procedure for emergencies, and he used it. I thought it was a life-or-death situation, otherwise I never would have told him how to find me.”

“Because you were on a deep cover Op?” I asked. “What the hell is on that flash drive? I’ve never seen Alban so worked up.”

Cole kept a steady gaze on my face, and, I think—because I was so furious—I was finally able to match it. “Tell me.”

He blew out a long sigh, rubbing the top of his head with bandaged fingers. They’d broken every single one on his left hand to try to get information out of him. Alban had told me as much, with no small amount of satisfaction.

“I’m guessing your Op, whatever it was, ended up being compromised and that’s why they stormed your apartment?”

Cole looked insulted at the suggestion. “Hell, no. My cover was impeccable. I could have stayed there forever and they wouldn’t have suspected a damn thing. I only got hauled in because the skip tracer trailing Lee saw him go into my apartment and called me in for aiding a fugitive Psi kid. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t shown up—I was three hours away from being extracted!”

“Fine, but you still haven’t told me what the hell you were doing in Philadelphia. I want to know what was on that flash drive and why you couldn’t find it at the end. That’s what you were looking for, right?”

“Yeah,” he said finally. “That’s what I was looking for. The dumbass took it without even realizing it.”

I balked at that. “What?”

“I was deep cover at Leda Corp, working as a lab tech on their Psi research that Gray commissioned. You heard about that program, right?” He waited until I nodded before continuing. “My original objective was just to keep an eye on how things were going. Alban wanted to know what kinds of tests they were running and if they had figured anything out, but I was also supposed to report back if I thought it was possible to extract any kids from the program.”

“You did,” I said, making the link so suddenly it surprised even me. “Nico—that was the testing program he was in.”

Cole hunched his shoulders against the stream of water. “He was the only subject that was…strong enough to be taken out. The others were just…I can’t describe it to you without it sounding like a horror show.”

“How did you get him out?”

“Simulated cardiac arrest and death,” he said. “The ‘disposal service’ the lab used was called, but the League picked him up first.”

My brain was firing at a rapid pace, drumming up one horrible possibility after another. “So the intel on that flash drive—it was research that you stole?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Something like that?” I repeated in disbelief. “I don’t even get to know what’s on the stupid thing?”

He hesitated long enough that I was sure he wouldn’t actually tell me. “Think about it—what’s the one thing every parent of a dead kid wants to know? The one thing scientists have been after for years?”

The cause of the Psi disease.

“Are you—” No. He wasn’t kidding. Not about this.

“I can’t give you details. I didn’t have time to look through the research before I downloaded everything, but I heard the talk in the lab that afternoon when they concluded their experiments. They had proof the government is responsible for all of this.” Cole clenched his hands into tight fists. “Though the fact that they shuttered the lab and permanently silenced all of the scientists the day after I got picked up by PSFs should be proof enough for most people.”

“Did you tell Alban?” I asked. No wonder he was so desperate.

“Not until I got back and I had to think up some excuse for why my cover was blown. I told him I downloaded it, but it set off some silent security system. I’m sure my pride will recover from that in about a thousand years.” Cole sighed. “I was afraid if I told him what I had, the agents here would already have figured out how to use it before I even got back with it.”

Cole’s fingers tapped at his side. “I couldn’t tell him before and risk the news getting ahead of me. As disconnected from HQ as I was, I saw things were changing here. People I knew and trusted were being shuffled out to the other bases, and people I didn’t like all of a sudden had Alban’s ear. It was enough to make a guy a little uncomfortable, you know?”

I nodded.

“I knew if I had something real to offer Alban,” Cole continued, “there’d be a good chance we could outmaneuver the agents trying to change the League. But if word got around here what it was, they’d be able to start planning ways to use it. That intel is the currency we need to buy this joint back from the bad seeds, to convince Alban to stick with us. It’s the only way to outgun them at the staff table when their plan starts looking like the only real option we have.”

Random bursts of Rob and Alban’s argument were blasting in my ears. Big statement. Children. Camps.

“If this intel is so important, how did you get it out of Leda in the first place?”

“Sewed the damn flash drive into the lining of my jacket. I walked right out of the building with it, because I was on the security team, and my buddies there didn’t feel the need to frisk me. I knew someone would be alerted I downloaded the files, but I used one of the scientists’ network IDs,” he said. “Easiest damn thing I’d ever done. By the time they figured out she was innocent, I was going to be long gone. Until my precious little brother saw the PSFs coming toward my apartment while I was out getting us food. He bailed and grabbed my jacket instead of his by mistake.”

If Cole hadn’t looked so angry about it, I’m not sure I would have believed him. I was torn between laughing and beating his head into the concrete wall behind us.

“How could you have been so stupid?” I asked. “How could you make such a dumb mistake? You’ve put his life in danger—”

“The important thing is that we can still get the intel back.”

“The most important—” I was almost too outraged to string a sentence together. “Liam’s life is more important than that stupid flash drive!”

“My, my.” A feral grin spread across Cole’s face. “Little brother must be a good kisser.”

The rage flared up in me so fast, so strong, that I actually forgot to slap him.

“Go to hell,” I said, and tried to charge past him. Cole caught me again and pushed me back, chuckling. My hand twitched at my side. Let’s see who’d be laughing when I fried every single thought out of his brain.

The same idea must have crossed his mind, because Cole released me and took a step back.

“Have you at least been able to establish contact with him since you got back?” I asked.

“He’s dropped off the radar,” Cole said, crossing his arms over his wide chest. The fingers on his left hand tapped against his right arm. “Funny thing about him not realizing the payload he’s carrying: I can’t predict where he might take it or try going. It means it’s next to impossible to track the little jerkass, other than to assume he’s still trying to find our mom and stepdad. Chaos theory at its finest.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re the only one who can do something about it.” The steam overtook his shape and he disappeared into it. “No, listen to me. I’ve been made. The League won’t let me out of HQ. I won’t even be able to run Ops, never mind search the eastern seaboard for a fugitive. Once they realize our little fictional informant isn’t real, they’re going to start going through the other options. They’re going to ask themselves, Who’s the only person these two strangers both know? They’re going to ask, Who would this girl do anything to protect?”

I bristled, crossing my arms. Cole’s eyes flicked down from my face to where my shirt clung to my chest, and I raised my arms that much higher. He let out a thoughtful hum, an absentminded smile stealing back over his face. “Have to say, you’re not really his type. Mine, on the other hand…”

“You know what I think?” I said, taking a step closer.

“Not really, darlin’, but I have a feeling I’m going to hear it anyway.”

“You’re actually a lot more worried about Liam than you are about this intel. You want me to find him to make sure he’s okay. That’s the real reason you’re asking me instead of someone else.”

Cole scoffed. His shirt had wilted against his skin with the steam, and it was impossible not to look at the strong lines of his shoulders as he set them. “Sure, fine. Run with that theory, but can you stop thinking about my brother’s dreamy eyes for two damn seconds and put your head on straight? This isn’t about him or me—it’s a matter of making sure that we control the intel so we can bring it to Alban and shut the door on Meadows and all of his little buddies. You have no idea what kind of shit they want the organization to start pulling—what they’d do to you kids if they got their way. And they will if we don’t figure out a way to outplay them.”

You think we can keep this up without making a big statement? Rob’s words echoed back to me. “What are they planning? Something to do with us and the camps?”

The water sputtered between us; the timer they’d installed to limit the use of hot water clicked off. The water was still flowing, but it was cooling off to its usual frigid temperature. And neither of us moved.

“His big idea,” Cole began, his voice brittle, “is to use some of the ‘nonessential’ kids here and the information you provided about the camps. You know, the ones too young to be activated, some of the Greens.”

“To do what?” I demanded.

“You said in your report that they don’t search or pat down the kids who are supposedly pre-sorted as Green, right?” He waited until I nodded before continuing. “That was backed up by one of the other kids we pulled from a smaller camp. Meadows thinks that their intake security procedures have become lax over the past year—since there are so few kids left outside of the camps, they’re usually only bringing a few in at a time. That, and the PSFs are stretched too thin at the bigger camps.”

“That’s true,” I said. I’d noticed the number of soldiers decrease over the years at Thurmond as the camp reached maximum capacity and they closed it off to new arrivals. But decreasing the bodies present only translated to them increasing the weapons present and the willingness to hit us with White Noise anytime anyone so much as looked on the verge of acting out.

“He thinks—” Cole cleared his throat, pressing his good hand against it. “Meadows wants to strap explosives to the kids. Turn them over to the PSFs, then set the bombs off as they’re being driven into camps. He thinks it’ll stir enough fear and discontent among the PSFs to get them to ditch their required service.”

I didn’t hear the last part, not fully. There was a static in my ears that burned and burned and burned away every thought, every sound, everything outside of my racing thoughts.

“If you think you’re going to faint, sit your ass down,” Cole ordered. “I told you this because you’re a big girl and I need your help. I know you didn’t mean for this to happen, but you’re in it. Knee deep. You’re as responsible for righting this as the rest of us.”

I didn’t sit, but the dark blotches in my vision were growing, expanding, swallowing his face. “The other agents…they want to do this?”

“Not everyone,” he said, “but enough that if Alban weren’t here, it wouldn’t even be a question. Read between the lines there.”

Oh my God. “Cate knows about this, but…she’s still with him? Why would she stay with someone who could even think about something like that?”

“Conner is a smart woman. If she’s with him, it’s for a reason, and probably not the one you think. We’ve both seen how Meadows handles things.”

“Then you know that Jarvin ‘handled’ Blake Howard?” I asked. “The kid he shot in the back on the Op last night?”

“You know that for sure?” he demanded. “You have some kind of proof?”

“Security camera footage,” I said. “It was downloaded before anyone could wipe it remotely from here.”

“Keep it to yourself for now. When you bring the intel back, we’ll take that to Alban, too. Nail Meadows and the others into their coffins.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

“You’re killin’ me, kid,” he said, rolling his eyes again. “You’ll go and find Liam. You’ll bring the intel back. There’s never been any doubt in my mind about it. Because, Gem,” Cole said, smiling when I rolled my eyes at the new nickname, “I know that you don’t want Alban to figure out what really happened and that Liam’s involved, and I know you don’t want to give him any reason to invest in Meadows’s plan. And I’ll make sure Alban does turn his attention to freeing the camps—the right way, the one you suggested in your report. That’s what you’ve been after all this time, right? The reason you put together that whole packet of info for him? I know it wasn’t to give Meadows a way to turn it against you.”

You can find him. Want was overpowering the cooler, quieter, rational part of my brain. You can see him again. You can make sure he gets home this time. And you can help all of those kids. All of them.

“If I agree to this,” I started, “you have to guarantee I won’t be reprimanded when I get back for taking this little joyride. And you have to swear on the terms, because if you go back on your word, I will tear every thought out of your head until you’re nothing but a drooling puddle of snot. Got it?”

“Atta girl,” Cole said. “That’s my Gem. I’ll see if I can’t get you on the next Op back east. You’ll have to get creative in how you ditch the Minder they send with you, but I think you’re up for the challenge. Address is 1222 West Bucket Road, Wilmington, North Carolina. Can you remember that? Start there. Lee’s a creature of habit; he’ll try heading home to see if our stepdad left a clue about where they were headed.”

I took a deep breath. My body was completely still, but everything inside me seemed to be galloping—my heart, my thoughts, my nerves.

“You can do this,” Cole said quietly. “I know you can. I’ll have your back the whole way.”

“I don’t need your protection,” I said, “but Jude does.”

“The beanpole? Sure. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“And Vida and Nico.”

“Your wish is my command.” Cole gave a small little bow as he backed out of the curtain. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the familiar tilt of his smile and the way it made my chest feel like it would explode. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Hey,” I said suddenly. If anyone might know, it would be another deep cover agent. “Have you heard of an Op they’re calling Snowfall? An agent called Professor?”

“I think I’ve heard of Snowfall, but only that it was a project they were running in Georgia. Why? Want me to look into it for you?”

I shrugged. “If you have time.”

“I have all the time in the world for you, Gem. Trust me on that.”

I was still standing there when the locker room door slammed shut and the last of the water drained at my feet.

Two long, torturous weeks passed before I found the red folder in my locker. I felt each day tick by, went through the carefully structured routine of training, food, training, food, bed. I kept my head down but my thoughts moving. I was too afraid to look anyone in the face on the off chance that he or she would see the guilt or what I was planning. I almost cried, half in relief, half in panic, when I saw the Op folder balanced on my small stack of books.

The locker room was roaring with speculation around me, one voice bleeding into another. Someone had been brave—or stupid—enough during our lesson for the day to ask Instructor Johnson what they had done with Blake’s body and whether we’d have any kind of service for him. Nico had gone green around the gills, but Johnson had only waved the question off.

Team Two’s Leader, a Blue named Erica, was loudly airing her opinion that he was still down in the infirmary being studied, but another, a Green named Jillian, insisted she had seen them take a body bag out through the Tube a few days before.

“They obviously buried him,” she was saying.

I stood by my locker, reading the folder behind the cover of the door. I could hear Vida a few feet away, laughing loudly at something another Blue had suggested. When I turned, I craned my neck around, trying to look into her locker. Good. Nothing but the messy heap of shirts she had shoved in there. She would be here. I could tell Jude and Nico to stay close to her—no one would try anything with her there, not even Jarvin. There was too much sting in that honeybee.

I opened the folder again, letting my eyes skim down each line. Please be East Coast, I thought, please be back east.… I could get to North Carolina so much easier from Connecticut than I could from Texas or northern California.

OP ID: 349022-A

TOD: 15 Dec 13:00

Location: Boston, MA

Massachusetts. I could work with that. Some of the train lines were still running.

Objective: Pull Dr. P.T. Fishburn, Director of Administration Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases Harvard School of Public Health; disable lab.

I felt my stomach clench—“Pull,” meaning I would interrogate him there in Boston at a League safe house, or, if he proved to be uncooperative, we would bring him back to the nearest base. My job. “Disable,” meaning fry, destroy, demolish. The tactical team’s job.

Tact Team: Beta Group

Psi: Tangerine, Sunshine

Minder: TBD

“Oh,” I whispered, feeling leaving my hands completely. “Hell no.”

I left the folder in my locker and slammed it shut, twisted my wet hair back into a loose bun. I was out before anyone could notice I was gone. It was three in the afternoon—if Cate wasn’t in a meeting, she would be in her room, most likely, or in the atrium.

A drip of water fell from my hair onto my cheek and I swiped angrily at it, plowing through the hanging strips of plastic that were, in theory, supposed to help insulate what little warmth we had in HQ. I glanced up at the low ceilings to avoid making eye contact with yet another cluster of agents, stepping off to the side to allow them to pass.

The hair on the back of my neck rose with each step that echoed behind me, keeping pace with my own.

There was someone behind me. There had been since I stepped out of the locker room.

The heavy steps and the throaty gulps of air made me think it was a man. I glanced up as I passed one of the steel beams overhead, but whoever was following me was doing it at the exact right pace. I couldn’t see his reflection, but I could feel him behind me. Feel every ounce of his disgust for me cutting through the hallway’s damp chill, gripping the column of my spine.

Don’t look, I thought, clenching my jaw, just keep going. It was nothing; my mind was playing tricks, like it loved to do. It’s nothing. It’s no one.

But I could feel him hovering behind me, like his fingers were trying to smooth down the goose bumps on my skin. There was no stopping the sudden upswing of my heartbeat. I knew what I could do and that I had enough training to fight someone off, but all I could think about was Blake Howard’s shoe dangling off his pale, stiff toes in the infirmary.

I found the double doors I’d been looking for and burst into the atrium, half out of breath.

They were in the middle of setting the round tables and folding chairs again, returning the space to its usual use as a rec room. Here and there, I saw agents dressed in their finest League sweats, dolling out playing cards, watching the news on the TV screens, or even playing with a mismatched chess set.

Cate came in through the opposite set of doors, cutting a sharp image in her unusually polished navy skirt suit. Her blond hair was twisted back into a tight bun. She absently bumped into an agent sitting at a nearby table, murmuring a faint apology. I didn’t realize she was looking for someone until her eyes landed on my face.

“There you are,” she said, jogging over the best she could in her heels. I opened my mouth, but she held up a hand to quiet me. “I know. I’m sorry. I did everything I could to change Alban’s mind, but he insisted.”

“He’s not sixteen yet!” I said. “He isn’t ready—you know that; we all do! Are you trying to turn him into the next Blake Howard?”

I might as well have socked her in the face. Cate reared back, a look of horror filtering through her usual mask of calm. “I fought to get him off this, Ruby. I assigned Vida to go with you, but someone convinced Alban that Jude should be activated early. They need a Yellow for the security system, and Alban said it didn’t make sense to bring in two different teams on a simple Op.”

We were attracting a few stray glances. Cate took my arm and steered me over to an empty table, forcing me to sit down.

“You have to try harder,” I insisted.

Our little Sunshine didn’t perform well in high-pressure situations, and he had the tendency to wander off to explore shiny things when he needed to be conducting surveillance. The only thing he knew about using a firearm was that the end with the hole needed to be pointed away from his face.

“He’ll be fifteen in a few weeks.” Cate kept one hand on mine. “I’m sure—I’m sure it’ll be fine. This is a good, straightforward Op to let him dip his toes in the water.”

“I could do it by myself. If this involves sabotaging some kind of electrical equipment, I can—”

“My hands are tied, Ruby. I can’t keep pushing back against Alban, or he’ll start seeing me as a problem. And—” She took a deep breath, absently smoothing first her hair, then her skirt. Her voice sounded stronger when she spoke again, but she wasn’t looking at me now. “The only comfort I have in all of this is knowing that he’ll be with you and that you’ll look after him. Can you do that?”

Her skin was hollow beneath her high cheekbones, like she had just recovered from a long illness. I leaned forward, noticing now the way her makeup had collected in the new, fine lines around her eyes—how dark the circles were that rimmed her eyes. She was only twenty-eight and was already starting to look older than my mother had when I left her.

Sometimes it felt like this was where I found the real Cate—in the pauses. I wouldn’t describe our relationship as “good,” because it was built on a lie, and a pretty cruel one at that. She could say one thing and mean something else entirely. But right then, surrendered to the quiet, her face told me everything. I saw the struggle in the lines of her face and knew whatever words came next were more for the agents around us than they were for me.

“I have to go up north,” she said in an even voice, “for an assignment.”

“Up north,” meaning the surface streets of Los Angeles. Meaning it probably had something to do with the Federal Coalition. Cate was a senior agent now. She’d earned her wings. If they were sending her up there, it was to do something important for Alban.

“So you won’t be coming with us?” I asked.

Cate glanced behind me and waved at whomever she saw standing there. I felt something cold drip down the back of my neck, though my hair was nearly dry.

“There you are,” Cate said. “I was just about to tell Ruby that she’ll be in good hands on the Op. You’ll keep a careful eye on my girl, won’t you?”

Rob had never, not since the first day I met him, willingly touched me. He, like the others, knew better. Still, I watched his hands where they hung at his sides, dark hair curling on the backs of his knuckles. My throat tightened.

“Don’t I always?” Rob said with a faint chuckle.

Cate stood, her moon-pale face glowing in the artificial light. “See you later, gator.”

It was her stupid, childish send-off, the same one she always gave us when she left. The others wouldn’t have hesitated to finish her little rhyme; Jude had thought up the little good-bye as a play off her call sign. Now, I could barely choke the words out.

“In an hour, sunflower.”

As soon as they walked away, I saw Cole sitting at the other end of the room, an open book on the table in front of him. By the dark look on his face, it was more than clear he’d heard the entire conversation.

You said you would protect him. Was there really no one in the entire League I could trust? These people couldn’t be counted on for anything. All of their promises bled into lies.

Cole shook his head, turning his palms face up on the table. It was a weak, silent apology, but at least he understood. Shifting this one single piece on the board was enough to change the whole game.