In The Afterlight

“And me—” The words were only just out of my mouth when there was a bang at the other end of the room. I turned around in time to see Nico stumble backward and trip over the chair he’d been sitting in. He pressed both hands against his mouth as his knees gave out under him. The noise that escaped him was a high, keening moan.

I was up and moving toward him before I could stop myself, gripping his arms to steady him and stop his rocking. “What? What is it?”

By then, Cole and the rest of the room had already surrounded the laptop, blocking my view of whatever was on the screen.

“Cate,” Nico cried, “Cate. Ruby, they took her—they took Cate.”

Gasps flew up around me like a flock of birds. I released my grip on Nico and pushed to the front of the kids, who folded against each other to create a path for me. Vida was gripping the laptop, had lifted it off the desk, and it was only because Chubs was there to grab her arms that she didn’t get to slam it down against the hard surface.

“You son of a bitch!” she spat at Cole. “This is on you, ass**le! God dammit—dammit—” Chubs wrapped both arms over her chest, pinning her arms to her side as she lashed out with her feet, not caring who she kicked. She thrashed around, trying to headbutt him off, and only succeeding in knocking his glasses off his face. Zu rushed to pick them up before they could be trampled.

The video on the screen was looping on the homepage of a news site, fuzzy and shaky, as if it had been shot from a distance. A long line of men and women with black hoods and bound hands and legs were lying on the side of a highway, with smoking car wreckage nearby. They were loaded onto the back of a military truck one at a time, overseen by soldiers armed with assault rifles that reflected the late afternoon light. The headline running beneath the pictures was Children’s League Agents Captured in Colorado.

My head throbbed as I watched it play through again, searching for her, trying to see what made Vida and Nico certain. Nearly all of the prisoners were dressed in black sweats or Op gear, the same things they had left the Ranch in—some were easy enough to identify. Sen’s long braid. Instructor Johnson’s imposing height.

Maybe she hadn’t reached the other agents in time to try to turn them back—maybe she was the one who had recorded the video, and was safely on her way back to us—maybe she—

Cole paused the video on a shot of the prisoners lining up at the truck, and pointed to a smaller figure at the end. I leaned forward, bringing my face close to the screen. When he moved his finger, I saw the traces of white-blond hair escaping from beneath the hood. The figure was standing calmly despite the awkward angle at which they’d bound her arms. The other agents bucked and bumped the soldiers, hassling them even on their way into imprisonment. Cole unpaused the video and she walked forward, head down, not so much as shrugging off the touch of the soldiers who lifted her into the back of the truck.

No.

I felt a painful crack down my center. The shapes and faces around me seemed to blur as I stepped back, wrapping my arms around myself. Blood pounded through my veins, making my legs feel light, my head lighter. I couldn’t calm the sensation, couldn’t get the jitters out of my nerves long enough to think a whole, coherent thought. Cate.

She left.

I let her go.

They’ll kill her, they’ll execute her as a traitor, I let her go, and now they have her—they have Cate—I heard Nico’s crying and felt the pressure build behind my own eyes, a pain that spread to cover my whole face.

“What does the AMP watermark mean?” Liam was asking. “It’s in the upper right-hand corner of the video.”

“That’s short for Amplify,” Senator Cruz answered. “They’re an underground news outlet. Gray must be livid. They’ve shown he hasn’t successfully stamped out the League in the Los Angeles attacks like he promised.”

“Do they collect information? How do they distribute it?” Liam pressed. “Do you have any contacts there?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“But it doesn’t matter, Lee,” Cole cut in.

“Look at this,” Liam said, gesturing toward the laptop. “They got the video to a major online news outlet. They convinced them to run it, knowing that Gray could come after this company, too. This is what we should be focused on, not fighting.” Kids were nodding now, whispering. “We don’t need guns, we need to get people information—information about camp locations, what the conditions are like there. Amplify could help us get the word out, and then the parents will want to do something to help the kids themselves. They’ll go to the camps, stage protests-—”

“Liam!” Cole barked. “Pay attention to what’s important here. New organizations cannot be trusted, no matter how underground they claim to be. They’ll sell you out in a second if it means attaching their name to a good story. You want to know why I won’t contact them? Because I don’t want to risk the lives of everyone here by accidentally or intentionally revealing our location. We can do this ourselves. End of discussion.”

Liam stood his ground, color washing up from his throat to his face as his temper rose. Cole squared off against him, looking as furious as I’d ever seen him.

“We have to go after them,” Vida was saying. “Where is the nearest prison bunker to where they were picked up? Would they fly them east? They’d have to keep them alive, they’d want to interrogate them, right? We can put our ear to the ground, stage an Op—”