In The Afterlight

At the corner of the intersection, they’d walked right up to the smashed-in facade of some kind of hardware store and stepped over the busted windows and into the building. I heard a laugh, voices—and my blood slowed to a crawl in my veins.

They weren’t soldiers.

I moved up the street toward the store, running a hand along the side of the building until I reached the windows and dropped down into a crouch.

“—where did you find this?”

“Good shit, man!”

More laughter.

“Oh, God, I never thought I’d be so damn happy to see bagels—”

I looked over the ledge. Inside, three of our agents—Ferguson, Gates, and Sen—were hunkered down, a small spread of food in front of them. Gates, a former Navy SEAL, tore into a bag of potato chips so hard he nearly split it in half.

They have food. I couldn’t get my head around it. They’re eating food here. The disbelief was so numbing I had to work it through one thought at a time.

They aren’t bringing the food back for the rest of us.

Was this what was happening each time a group went out? The agents had been so insistent on going to scout for supplies themselves; I’d assumed it was because they were afraid if any of the kids got picked up, they’d immediately rat out the group’s current location. But was this the real reason? So they’d get first dibs on whatever they turned up?

A cold, icy fury turned my fingers into claws. My broken nails cut into my palms; the sting of pain only added to the churning in my stomach.

“God, that’s good,” Sen said. She was a beast of a woman—tall, with muscles packed under taut, leathery skin. There was always this expression on her face like...like she knew where all the bodies were buried because she’d put them there herself. When she deigned to speak to any of us kids, it was to bark at us to shut up.

I waited through the silence that followed, anger flaring with each second.

“We should get back,” Ferguson said, starting to rise.

“They’re fine. Even if Stewart beats us back, Reynolds is there to make sure he’s not shooting his mouth off again.”

“I’m more worried about...”

“The leech?” Gates supplied, with a belly laugh. “She’ll be the last one in. If she even makes it back.”

My brows went right up at that. Leech. Me. That was a new one. I’d been called so many worse things, the only part I found offensive was the idea that I couldn’t handle a trip back and forth across the city without getting caught.

“She’s far more valuable than the others,” Ferguson argued, “it’s just a matter of—”

“It’s not a matter of anything. She doesn’t obey us, and it makes her a liability.”

Liability. I pressed a fist against my mouth to keep the bile down. I knew how the League handled “liabilities.” I also knew how I would handle any agent who tried.

Sen leaned back, bracing her hands on the tile. “The plan stays the same regardless.”

“Good.” Gates balled up the bag of chips he’d just demolished. “How much of this are we bringing back? I could go for another bagel...”

A tub of pretzel sticks and a bag of hot dog buns. That’s what they were bringing back for seventeen kids and the handful of agents that had been stuck behind babysitting while the others went out to collect food and intel.

When they started to climb back onto their feet, I flattened myself against the building, waiting for them to step through the window and glance each way down the intersection. My hands were still clenched when I stood and started trailing them, keeping a good half block between us until the warehouse finally came into view.

Before they crossed that final street, Sen held a lighter up above her head, a single flame that the agent posted on the roof could see. There was a faint whistle in response—the signal to approach.

I ran, closing the last bit of distance before the woman could start climbing up the fire escape after the others.

“Agent Sen!” My voice was a harsh whisper.

The woman’s head swung around, one hand on the ladder, the other reaching for the handgun tucked into the holster of her combat gear. It took me a moment to realize I’d had my own hand clenched around the gun in my jacket pocket the whole time I’d been stalking them down the street.

“What?” she snapped, waving to Gates and Ferguson to continue up the fire escape.

Not happy to see me, are you?

“I have to tell you something....It’s...” I hoped she’d think the trembling quality in my voice was fear, not anger on the verge of exploding. “I don’t trust Cole with this.”

That had her interested. Her teeth flashed in the dark.

“What is it?” she asked.

This time, I smiled. And when I slammed into her mind, I didn’t care if it broke apart. I ripped through memories of bunks, training, HQ, agents, tossing the images aside faster than they could solidify in my mind. I felt her jerk, tremble under the force of my attack.

I knew when I had what I was looking for. She had imagined it so vividly, plotted it all out with a malicious efficiency that even I’d underestimated. Everything about the idea had an unnatural luster to it, like warmed wax. Cars dripped into the scene, faces I recognized as belonging to the kids upstairs were half-hidden by gags. Dust-colored military fatigues. Black uniforms. A trade.

I was gasping for air by the time I surfaced, unable to get oxygen into my chest deeply enough. I had just enough thought to twist her memory, to plant a false one in the place of the last few minutes. I didn’t wait for her to recover, pushing past her to get to the ladder.