“Cole says that now, and the agents might be playing nice for once,” Liam said. “But how long before they’re back to their own agendas?”
I tried not to wince. Sooner than you think. “This isn’t the League anymore.”
“Exactly. It could be worse.”
“Not if we’re here to keep it from becoming that,” I said. “Can we at least give it a little while? See what happens? If things head south we can get out, I promise. If nothing else...I have to see if Cate and the others made it. If they did, they’ll be waiting for us. She has the flash drive of Leda Corp’s research on the cause of IAAN. If we can put that information together with the cure—we won’t just be helping ourselves, we’ll be helping every kid that comes after us.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to make you feel like it was all for nothing, but what if there isn’t anything useful in the pages you fished out of the fire? For all the sense we can make of them, we could shred them tonight and it still wouldn’t make a difference to our lives. I don’t want us to just...attach ourselves to the idea of them in the hope that one day down the road it’ll make sense.”
Objectively, I knew that what he was saying was true—but the words sparked such a fierce denial and fury in me, I almost pushed him away. I didn’t need reality right now. I needed hope that I’d be able to look at the singed pages and see beyond the familiar words: Project Snowfall. IAAN. The Professor.
Giving up that last bit of hope would mean the fleeting moment of besting Clancy hadn’t been a small moment of victory at all. It would mean, in the end, he had still won. He’d survived HQ’s destruction, and the information he’d fought so hard to bury from us would be useless.
We needed this. I needed this. My family’s faces bloomed in my mind, the sun at their backs. Just as quickly, the image was gone, replaced by another: Sam, the shadows of Cabin 27 hollowing her cheeks as she faded like a ghost. It became an endless parade of all of their faces—the ones I’d left behind the electric fence at Thurmond.
My fingers dug into the top of my thighs, twisting the fabric there until I was sure it would rip. The awful truth was, no matter how much I denied it to myself, there was crucial information missing. And the only person in possession of it was the one person Clancy had ensured we’d never find: his mother, Lillian Gray.
“I’m not giving up,” Liam said, a fierceness in his voice. “If this doesn’t work out, we’ll find something that does.”
I reached up to brush my fingers along his cheek, stroking the rough stubble growing in. He sighed but didn’t argue.
“I don’t want to fight,” I said quietly. “I never want to fight with you.”
“Then don’t. It’s that simple, darlin’.” He leaned his forehead against mine. “But we have to decide these things together. The important stuff. Promise me.”
“Promise,” I whispered. “But we’re going to the Ranch. We have to.”
Before HQ was constructed, the League had operated out of Northern California, at a base that had been affectionately codenamed the Ranch. The location itself was fiercely guarded now—appropriate, given its status as a “last resort” base to fall back to in the event of an emergency. Only the senior agents—Cole included—had been around during that time, and actually knew how to find it.
If Cate had made it out, she’d be waiting there. I could see her in my mind, pacing along an empty hallway, as if expecting us to walk through the door at any moment. She wouldn’t go against protocol. By now, she’d be out of her head with worry.
One thought slipped in, chasing out every hopeful one. I’ll have to tell her.
Oh, God, why hadn’t I thought about that? She wouldn’t know—couldn’t. She trusted me. She told me to take care of him. She had no idea that Jude...
I closed my eyes, focusing on the way Liam’s hand was softly stroking up and down my spine.
“—the hell is this?” Sen’s voice whipped out of the room, down the hall, slapping against our private bubble. “Stewart, you’ve done a lot of stupid shit—and I mean a lot—but this is—this is—”
“A stroke of genius?” Cole said, and I could practically hear the grin in his voice. “You’re welcome.”
I was on my feet before Liam could shoot me an exasperated look.
“Come on,” I said, “something’s going on.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Liam said, putting a hand against my lower back and steering me toward the room. “When is there not something going on with him?”
The agents had circled around the window so tightly, all I could see was Cole’s black knit cap behind their heads. I glanced over to the kids, most of whom were standing, trying to see what was happening.
“Roo?”
My back straightened, and something gripped low in my stomach at the name. I turned toward the direction of Nico’s voice.
“Yeah?”
“Is everything...” he looked at the agents. “Is everything okay?”
“What do you think?” I snapped. Nico flinched at my tone, which somehow only made me angrier. I didn’t have an ounce of sympathy left for him. Sad, scared, traitorous Nico.
The Greens didn’t know what to do with themselves once they realized there was no bringing back any of the electronics, and there was no way for the two Yellows we had left to spark them back to life. Nico spent most of his time sleeping, only acknowledging me and Vida with a few words here and there.
The pity I’d felt about the way Clancy had manipulated him had evaporated at the simple realization that if Nico had never fed Clancy the information about Project Snowfall and his mother’s location—if he hadn’t been stupid enough to ask the president’s son to track us down—we would never have been in this situation. Jude would be alive, and we wouldn’t be trapped in the hellhole that was Los Angeles.
“Ruby—” Liam started, his voice disapproving. I didn’t care. I wasn’t here to comfort the kid.
I held up my hand as Chubs and Vida cut through the agents between us, coming to stand next to us, but Chubs still let out a demanding, “Are you okay? Were you hurt?”
“No, Gran, she’s dying. She’s bleeding out at your feet.” Vida rolled her eyes. “Did you get what you needed?”
“Yes—”
“Excuse me for showing concern for my friend,” Chubs growled, whirling back on her. “I realize that’s bound to be a foreign concept to any psychopath—”
“This psychopath sleeps less than three feet away from you,” Vida reminded him, her voice all sweetness and light.
“Wow, we have such nice friends,” Liam murmured. I’d already disengaged from the conversation. Cole glanced over, his brows raised in a silent question. I nodded, and he turned to look down—to the woman standing beside him.
She was middle-aged, olive-toned skin sagging with wrinkles and obvious strain. What must have once been an expensive navy dress had torn at the skirt seam, and her hair hung loosely from a bun, whole sections of it gray with either cement dust or age. Wide, dark eyes scanned the room, catching at the sight of the kids.
“Do you know who this is?” Cole demanded.
“A civilian who can now identify all of us and report back to the military,” Sen shot back.
“My name is Anabel Cruz,” the woman said, with a surprising amount of dignity for someone limping around in broken high heels.
“Christ, you meatheads,” Cole said when he was greeted with blank looks. “One of California’s senators? The Federal Coalition’s international liaison? She worked on establishing contacts and negotiating possible support from other nations.”
Sen didn’t look impressed. She turned on Cole again, her hands on her hips. “Did you even bother trying to confirm her identity? If she was with the FC, why isn’t she in one of the detainment camps?”
“I can speak to that myself,” Senator Cruz said, eyes flashing. “When the attacks began, I was meeting with Amplify outside of our headquarters.”
“The underground news org?” Gates asked.
Liam turned to look at me, confused. I explained quietly, in as few words as I could. The group had been around for two years, maybe three. My take was that it was mostly a collection of reporters and editors who had landed on Gray’s shit list for covering “dangerous” topics like riots and protests, and then had to go into hiding.
He opened his mouth, a spark of something in his eyes.
“Which, yes—” Cole looked at the other agents. “I realize it says something about her common sense, but—”
“Excuse me?” The senator crossed her arms over her chest.
“He means Amplify doesn’t have a good track record of making their stories stick. They get seconds of glory here and there before Gray shuts them down,” Sen said, assessing the woman again. “Online, on the social media sites that haven’t been blocked yet, quick-and-dirty pamphlets. Their reach is too small. They’re getting jack shit done.”
This was clearly the one thing Cole and Sen were in agreement on.
“The reporter got trapped with her in the city,” Cole told the others. “I was out doing the usual sweeps and heard the military storming a building nearby. They were tracking him, not her. Shot him on the spot, and probably would have done the same to her if she hadn’t identified herself.”
“So you swept in, saving the day.” Sen rolled her eyes. The hatred I felt for the woman was starting to overwhelm my better judgment. I felt myself take another step forward. “And all you succeeded in doing was bringing in another mouth to feed.”
“Speaking of—” Cole slid the stuffed backpack off his shoulder and tossed it to one of the Greens. “Found one of those juice shops with some decent produce still in their refrigerators. It’s not a lot, but better than the crap we’ve been eating.”
The girl looked like he’d just handed her a birthday cake he’d personally baked and frosted. Chubs was over there and unzipping it so quickly, I think he must have teleported. The others fell in behind him, thanking Cole, trying to pass a whole apple back to him.