In The Afterlight

I pressed a fist against my chest, gasping for breath. Clancy still had his arms up over his head when Cole lifted him onto his feet, dragged his hands behind his back, and fastened a new zip tie. He jammed an old pillowcase we’d been using as a hood down over him next, knotting it to ensure it’d stay on.

Without another word, he dragged me over to the door, anger drawing deep lines in his face. “I need you focused,” he hissed. “We’re going to be driving for hours and he’ll be in the car with us the whole time. If he tries something, you have to be the one to shut it down.”

I stared at Clancy, taking in the way he angled his head toward us. Who’s to say he wasn’t “trying something” right now on Cole? He’d controlled far more people in far worse circumstances—this would be nothing for him. I’d just assumed that physically separating him from the others would be enough to protect them, but what if it wasn’t?

“So we’re going for a car ride?” he called over.

I searched Cole’s face for a hint of Clancy’s influence, pushing down the bubble of fear in my chest. His eyes were sharp, not glassy, and there wasn’t that blank quality to him. In fact, he was smirking.

“Isn’t there a way to knock him out?” I murmured. It would be safer. For all of us.

“Only by force, and I’d rather not run the risk of accidentally giving him a traumatic brain injury.” Then, louder, he added, “He’ll be riding in the trunk. Tied up, gagged, helpless. Just the way I like him.”

Clancy’s head snapped in our direction. And if I didn’t know him as well as I did, I could have sworn there was an edge of desperation to his voice. “Oh, there’s no need for any of that...”

“You’re not riding in the backseat,” Cole said. “It’s too risky. What if someone sees you, or you try to escape?”

Clancy scoffed. “And separate myself from the Project Snowfall research before I can get rid of it?”

Cole shot me a look, tongue caught between his teeth as he grinned. An unexpected bonus of showing it to the Greens—Clancy had no idea we’d taken the precaution of backing the research up, so to speak.

“Ah, now that does sound reasonable, doesn’t it, Gem?”

I pulled him farther into the hallway, shutting the door behind us. “Maybe taking him with us is a bad idea. If he gets loose in the Ranch, he could ruin everything.” I clenched my hands at my sides, trying to work through the revulsion, the memory of how stupid I had been to ever think I’d had Clancy under my control.

Some people came into the world and never once looked up to see the lives around them—they were so focused on what they wanted, what they needed. No one else mattered to them. They disconnected from sympathy and pity and guilt. Some people came into the world as monsters. I understood that now.

“Hey,” Cole said quietly. “You think I don’t want to strangle the life right out of him, too?”

“He has more faces than a pair of dice,” I warned. “If something doesn’t benefit him directly he won’t play along. And if it threatens him—”

“He’s no match for you, Gem.”

“I wish that were the case.” I shook my head.

“Let’s focus on what he has to offer if we can get him in a place where he wants to work with us,” Cole said. “The intel, the insight into how his father thinks, even his value as a potential trade.”

“He’s too unpredictable.” Even if we turned him over to his father, there was still a good chance he could escape and cause even more havoc. Was it better that he came with us, if only so we could keep an eye on him?

“You keep forgetting that, in the end, we want the same thing he does,” Cole said, clearly fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “We all want his father out of office.”

“No,” I said, glancing back in at the figure kneeling on the floor. “He wants his father ruined. There’s a difference. The only question is if you’re willing to risk being part of the fallout when he figures out how to do it.”

I realized a second too late that re-securing Clancy’s hands with a zip tie meant having to feed him myself. He glared and spat at me like a cat furious at having its claws clipped. My skin crawled. All in all, a thoroughly unpleasant experience for everyone.

Liam greeted my return to the other room with a sympathetic look and a bag of potato chips, patting the ground next to him. Half of the room looked dazed by the excessively early hour; the other half was pacing in anxious circles. The wind had picked up outside, screaming as it whipped around the edges of the warehouse and passed through the cracks in the roof. It made for an eerily appropriate soundtrack to the morning.

“Okay, I’ll make this quick,” Cole began. “We’ll be splitting into teams and dividing ourselves between the three exit points. If the location you’re assigned is compromised in any way—soldiers present, shady-looking folks hanging around, anything—head to the next-closest.”

Just to the side of him, Sen wore a smug little smile as she surveyed the kids sitting on the floor. I almost smiled myself, a small thrill of control trickling through me. Good riddance, I thought.

“Once you have your assignment,” Cole continued, “check it against the map for your car locations and the routes listed next to them. Team A is me, Ruby, Liam, Vida, Nico, our guest, and what’s-his-face—the one in the prissy button-down.”