In The Afterlight

“I suppose Miss Wells told you about my request, then?”

Miss Wells...oh. Alice. I cut the sandwich in half and turned to walk the knife over to the sink. She was still there, watching me expectantly, when I walked back over. “Yes, she did. I’m surprised you even asked.”

“Why?”

“Do I really have to remind you about what happened the last time he saw you?” I asked. “You’re lucky you walked away with your life.”

Finally, a crack appeared. “Clancy would never kill me. He’s not capable of it. I realize how deeply troubled he is, but it’s because he was never able to get the emotional help he needed after he left that camp.”

“Plenty of us went into those camps,” I said. “Not all of us turned out like him.”

Dr. Gray held my gaze a second too long for it to feel comfortable. “Is that so?”

I felt myself straighten to my full height, ignoring the familiar stab of guilt.

“Yes,” I said coldly. She doesn’t believe me. At all.

“You should know that I have always disagreed with the rehabilitation camp program, even before it turned into what it is today,” Dr. Gray said. “I have never liked my husband’s foreign policy, nor can I comprehend the extreme action he took in California. But if he were to give me the facility and materials I need to perform the procedure on my son, it wouldn’t even be a decision. I would go back to him in a heartbeat. I would do that, for Clancy.”

I almost felt sorry for her. The simple truth was that the camps didn’t damage us all in the same way. If you spent your time there feeling small and terrified, once you stepped outside of the electric fence, you didn’t just stand up tall one day and resume your old life, forgetting the desperation you’d had to make yourself invisible. If you spent your time there simmering in your own anger and helplessness, that rage carried over; you took it with you into your new life.

It was disturbing to me how clearly I could see Clancy’s point now. His mother really had no idea what they had done to him at Thurmond. How could someone who participated in, or at least viewed, the research conducted on the Psi kids have no conception of the kind of pain or humiliation he went through?

“You realize that giving him the procedure won’t fix him, right?” I asked. “Not in the way that really matters to you.”

“He won’t be able to influence anyone,” she insisted. “He’ll come back to himself.”

The idea was too ridiculous to even laugh at.

“Taking away his ability wouldn’t take away his desire to try to control others,” I said. And it sure as hell wouldn’t cure him of being an ass**le. “It’s just going to make him angrier than he already is.” And hate you that much more.

“I know what’s best for him,” she said. “He needs the treatment, Ruby—and, more than that, he needs his family. I just want to make sure that he’s okay. It’s not enough for me to hear he is—I need to see it. Please. Just for a moment. I gave you everything that you wanted last night, didn’t I? Can’t this be a show of good faith?”

I was willing to give her that—so far she had taken us at our word, and she had given us far more than even I’d expected. Alban, the sole person in the Children’s League she’d known and trusted, wasn’t around to tell her that it was okay to put her faith in us.

Nico’s voice floated up to the back of my mind. They broke something in him. Something fundamental. Maybe she needed to see it to understand it.

“If I were to take you to see him,” I began, “you couldn’t give him any indication that you were there. Not a word. You’d have to do exactly what I tell you to. If he knows you’re here, he’ll stop cooperating and likely start figuring out how to escape. And you need to answer all of Alice’s questions—for real this time.”

“I can do that,” she said. “I just want to see him, that he’s been treated well and is strong enough to undergo the procedure. I don’t need to touch him, just...”

Is it the mother or the scientist in you who wants to see him? I wondered, unsure which was preferable.

“All right,” I said, gathering his food and a water bottle up in my arms. “Not a single word. And you stay exactly where I position you.”

It didn’t make sense to her until we reached the inner hallway that led to the room with the small cells. I shook my head, cutting off whatever question she was about to ask, and showed her where to stand to look through the door without Clancy being able to spot her through the small window there.

For the first time in nearly a week, Clancy Gray looked up and met my gaze as I came in. The book he’d been reading remained limp in his lap until I walked the food over to the locked metal flap on the door and held it out, waiting for him to take it. He stood, taking care to stretch his shoulders before crossing the small cell. His dark hair was nearly long enough to be tied back with a rubber band, but he kept it neatly combed and parted.

Clancy had three pairs of sweats he rotated through, and today clearly was a washing day, because he silently bent and picked up the other two sets of clothing and passed them to me through the open hatch.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” he said casually enough. “Did he go to Sawtooth, then?”

Did he really expect me to answer that?

No. Obviously not. “How does it feel?” he asked, placing a hand flat against the glass. “To be on that side of things? To control the flow of information?”