In The Afterlight

Breathe.

I went to that place deep inside, the one Zu had asked me about. I retreated as far as I could as the first beam of light slashed through the hallway’s darkness. Fear couldn’t touch me there, not even as I was hauled up by my hair and shoulder, a device flashing in my face. The dark spots in my vision blotted out the soldier’s face, and I couldn’t hear anything over my own steady heartbeat. When the grip on me tightened and something cold and metal pressed against the base of my skull, I knew they’d identified me.

Clancy was hidden by a circle of men in dark fatigues as Dr. Gray was dragged off to the side, clawing at the soldier who separated her from her son. One of them, a medic, stepped away long enough for me to see them lower a white plastic muzzle down over his face.

Radios buzzed, a swarm of voices flying over my head, and I heard none of it. Both of my hands were secured, the zip ties unbearable as the soldier holding me yanked them tight and flipped me over onto my back. Something jabbed into the side of my neck and I felt the pressure of the injection being forced into my bloodstream.

They are going to kill me. I wasn’t even going to make it out of the building, never mind the state, if this didn’t work. I should have practiced. I should have found a way to try it on a group when my life didn’t rely on someone’s trigger finger.

The drug they’d given me turned my limbs to powder. I felt light enough to be blown away, but it couldn’t touch my mind, not yet. I fought against the drag of my eyelids, the weight that settled over them. I had one...I had one more thing to do...

I’d spent months carefully winding my gift into a tight spool, only letting it out by inches, and only when I needed it. The strain of keeping it bound up had been a steady, constant reminder that I had to work to keep the life I’d built for myself out here. It was a muscle I’d carefully toned to withstand nearly any pressure.

Letting it all go felt like shaking a bottle of soda and ripping off the cap. It fizzed and flooded and swept out of me, searching for the connections waiting to be made. I didn’t guide it, and I didn’t stop it—I don’t know if I could have if I tried. I was the burning center of a galaxy of faces, memories, loves, heartbreaks, disappointments, and dreams. It was like living dozens of different lives. I was lifted and shattered by it, how strangely beautiful it was to feel their minds linked with my own.

The spinning inside my head slowed with the movement around me. I felt time hovering nearby, waiting to resume its usual tempo. The darkness slid into the edges of my vision, seeping through my mind like a drop of ink in water. But I was in control of the moment, and there was one last thing that I needed to say to them, one last idea to imprint in their minds.

“I’m Green.”

I woke to cold water and a woman’s soft voice.

The smell of bleach.

The aftertaste of vomit.

Dry throat.

Cracked, tight lips.

The metallic banging and clattering of an old radiator in the instant before it let out a warm breath of air.

“—need to run the test while subject is conscious—”

Wake up, I commanded myself, wake up, Ruby, wake up—

“Good. There cannot be any confusion on this, do you understand?”

I dragged myself up and out of a haze of pain and grogginess. My eyes were crusted with sleep. I tried lifting a hand up to wipe it away, to ease the tingling at the tips of my fingers. The Velcro restraint jerked but held firm, cutting into my bare wrists with a vicious bite as I tried to rise up off the freezing metal examination table.

The cold water hadn’t been water at all, but sweat. It dripped down into the white plastic muzzle trapping each labored, heated breath. The black spots floating in my vision cleared, adjusting to the room’s harsh artificial light. The pieces began to make sense. The poster on the wall, the one with the color chart outlining each of the abilities, Red to Green—Psi Classification System, my lips formed the words on top.

High up in the corner of the room, a lidless camera eye was blinking like a heartbeat.

Calm down, Ruby. The rational part of my brain was still firing, at least. Calm down. You’re alive. Calm down....

It was sheer will and nothing else that finally brought my pulse back down. I breathed in my through my nose, out between my teeth. This was Thurmond—the Infirmary. I recognized the lemon-scented terror of it and the sounds of kids crying nearby, the rattling of carts, heavy booted footsteps, and still some part of it felt unreal to me, even as the last moments at the Ranch slammed back into me. The flash drive—my boots were still on, they hadn’t taken them, thank God. I tried twisting my foot around the restraints, but I couldn’t feel it against my ankle bone. I flexed and then pointed my toes, nearly crying in relief when I felt the sharp plastic corners under my heel. It must have slipped down.

You came here for a reason, I reminded myself. The others need you to finish this. You have to finish this.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the images that poured in from the darkest corner of my imagination. They wouldn’t have brought you here if they were just going to kill you. I saw the image of Ashley’s pale, gray face. The way her stiff hand had fallen onto the ground, dangling into the ditch they would lower her into. Maybe this was about having an official record of where my body was buried.

And suddenly, it didn’t matter what I was and what I had been through. I was ten years old all over again, waiting in terrible silence for someone to wake me back up from the nightmare I’d let myself get caught in. Help me, I thought, someone help me—