In The Afterlight

The White Noise came on, louder, higher, a bullet that slammed through my temples. I couldn’t keep the cry in. Sweat streamed down my back, my chest. It became a pattern—on agony, off pain, on agony, off pain. I couldn’t catch my breath. I had to fight to keep the sweet nothing of unconsciousness away. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t leave this moment. They would kill me. I wouldn’t be able to...I wouldn’t be able to...

“Who sent you?”

“Fuck you!” I shouted right back in his face.

I braced myself as he swung his arm back, but it did nothing—nothing—to prepare me for the explosion of white-hot agony that rocketed through me as his baton struck my exposed shin. I screamed, jerking against the restraints. I heard the crack, felt it inside of my head like it was my skull splitting apart. The PSF behind the camp controller only watched impassively as O’Ryan struck the broken bone again, smiling as I vomited onto the floor.

He swung again, stopping just short of my leg, a mocking smile on his face. He gave a silent wave of his hand toward the PSF, who reached for the White Noise device again.

“Not the Children’s League,” O’Ryan said over the hurricane of sound shredding my overloaded nerves. “It couldn’t be them. So who?”

I heard the echo of it even when it switched off, white spots sparking behind my eyelids.

“Answer me, three-two-eight-five.” He leaned over my face, thrusting the mangled flash drive in front of it. “What was on this? Tell me, and I promise that you’ll live.”

I want to live.

O’Ryan gripped my chin in his hand. “Three-two-eight-five, you should know I have no qualms about putting your kind down.”

My kind.

Orange. I sucked in a sharp breath, licking the blood that had run from my nose over my busted lip. Orange.

He turned back toward the PSF, motioning him forward. My leg was demanding my attention, burning up my concentration, but my eyes slid over to the younger man and I reached...I reached...

O’Ryan held up the White Noise device in one hand, his service pistol in the other.

“Which would you prefer?”

I have to walk out of here.

The gun came up in his hand, sliding up my throat, under my chin. The White Noise device rubbed along the edge of my ear.

“It would give me no greater pleasure than to see your brains scrambled and leaking from your ears. Splattered against this floor. Tell me why you’re here, three-two-eight-five, and I’ll stop this. It’ll all be over.”

I want to live.

The building shook, throwing him back a step and rattling both the nearby table and the simple light fixture hanging over us. The pop and snarl of distant gunfire. A strange, sweet symphony of hope.

Footsteps pounded down the hall, heading out toward the exit. O’Ryan shoved himself away from me and went to the one-way window lining the wall, cupping his hands against it to try to see through it. He knocked against the mirrored surface, waiting. My line of sight was shrinking again, heading into black. The door in the corner, the one we’d come in through, had no handle. It could only be opened from the outside.

I closed my eyes, tightening my fists against a second wave of nausea.

I want to live.

I want to live.

I have to live.

“Ruby,” I croaked out.

O’Ryan turned slowly. “What was that, three-two-eight-five? You ready to talk now?”

“My name,” I said between clenched teeth, “is Ruby.”

I overturned my chair, knocking myself over onto the ground, and an aftershock of pain lanced up my leg. I played the scene out in my mind, and heard the reality on a half-second delay. The PSF in the corner of the room lifted his gun and fired three times, missing O’Ryan on the first shot and shattering a section of the glass behind him, but hitting his mark on the second and third attempt. Chest. Head.

O’Ryan got one shot off, hitting the PSF’s throat before slumping down against the wall beneath the one-way window.

I must have passed out—for a few seconds, maybe minutes. The Control Tower was eerily silent, and the only sound I heard as I surfaced back to reality was my own heart’s slow, steady beat.

Move, I ordered myself. Move, Ruby, move.

My progress across the floor to O’Ryan’s body was slow and agonizing. I needed the knife on his belt to cut the ties on my feet and hands, but it meant dragging the chair through the puddle of congealing blood beneath him. I sawed frantically, nicking my palms as I worked the knife blindly behind me.

I sucked in a harsh breath and looked down; the strange, tented skin on my shin made me gag, the sight reminding my body all over again that it was in pain. I hopped and hobbled over to the door, but I’d been right—there was no handle, and the hinges were on the other side.

I picked up O’Ryan’s pistol and positioned myself against the opposite wall, using it as a brace for the gun’s recoil. The reverberations raced up my arms and shoulders as the glass shards fell in waves. I switched the safety back on and went to work knocking the remaining pieces out of the window frame. Bracing my hands on the ledge, I dragged myself up and over it. The jagged teeth caught and tore at my arms and legs as I collapsed into the hallway.

The gun flew out of my hands. I reached for it through the halo of glass around me. My fingers closed around the grip, just as the squeak of rubber against tile reached my ears.

I rolled onto my back, lifting my torso up just enough to aim at the dark figure running toward me. I fumbled with the safety, switching it off. The barrage of gunfire outside heated my blood, focusing me in the moment. I saw the black uniform and my finger curled around the trigger. I was getting out of here—I was getting out—