Never Fade (11 page)

The same idea must have crossed his mind, because Cole released me and took a step back.

“Have you at least been able to establish contact with him since you got back?” I asked.

“He’s dropped off the radar,” Cole said, crossing his arms over his wide chest. The fingers on his left hand tapped against his right arm. “Funny thing about him not realizing the payload he’s carrying: I can’t predict where he might take it or try going. It means it’s next to impossible to track the little jerkass, other than to assume he’s still trying to find our mom and stepdad. Chaos theory at its finest.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re the only one who can do something about it.” The steam overtook his shape and he disappeared into it. “No, listen to me. I’ve been made. The League won’t let me out of HQ. I won’t even be able to run Ops, never mind search the eastern seaboard for a fugitive. Once they realize our little fictional informant isn’t real, they’re going to start going through the other options. They’re going to ask themselves, Who’s the only person these two strangers both know? They’re going to ask, Who would this girl do anything to protect?”

I bristled, crossing my arms. Cole’s eyes flicked down from my face to where my shirt clung to my chest, and I raised my arms that much higher. He let out a thoughtful hum, an absentminded smile stealing back over his face. “Have to say, you’re not really his type. Mine, on the other hand…”

“You know what I think?” I said, taking a step closer.

“Not really, darlin’, but I have a feeling I’m going to hear it anyway.”

“You’re actually a lot more worried about Liam than you are about this intel. You want me to find him to make sure he’s okay. That’s the real reason you’re asking me instead of someone else.”

Cole scoffed. His shirt had wilted against his skin with the steam, and it was impossible not to look at the strong lines of his shoulders as he set them. “Sure, fine. Run with that theory, but can you stop thinking about my brother’s dreamy eyes for two damn seconds and put your head on straight? This isn’t about him or me—it’s a matter of making sure that
we
control the intel so
we
can bring it to Alban and shut the door on Meadows and all of his little buddies. You have no idea what kind of shit they want the organization to start pulling—what they’d do to you kids if they got their way. And they
will
if we don’t figure out a way to outplay them.”

You think we can keep this up without making a big statement?
Rob’s words echoed back to me. “What are they planning? Something to do with us and the camps?”

The water sputtered between us; the timer they’d installed to limit the use of hot water clicked off. The water was still flowing, but it was cooling off to its usual frigid temperature. And neither of us moved.

“His big idea,” Cole began, his voice brittle, “is to use some of the ‘nonessential’ kids here and the information you provided about the camps. You know, the ones too young to be activated, some of the Greens.”

“To do what?” I demanded.

“You said in your report that they don’t search or pat down the kids who are supposedly pre-sorted as Green, right?” He waited until I nodded before continuing. “That was backed up by one of the other kids we pulled from a smaller camp. Meadows thinks that their intake security procedures have become lax over the past year—since there are so few kids left outside of the camps, they’re usually only bringing a few in at a time. That, and the PSFs are stretched too thin at the bigger camps.”

“That’s true,” I said. I’d noticed the number of soldiers decrease over the years at Thurmond as the camp reached maximum capacity and they closed it off to new arrivals. But decreasing the bodies present only translated to them increasing the weapons present and the willingness to hit us with White Noise anytime anyone so much as looked on the verge of acting out.

“He thinks—” Cole cleared his throat, pressing his good hand against it. “Meadows wants to strap explosives to the kids. Turn them over to the PSFs, then set the bombs off as they’re being driven into camps. He thinks it’ll stir enough fear and discontent among the PSFs to get them to ditch their required service.”

I didn’t hear the last part, not fully. There was a static in my ears that burned and burned and burned away every thought, every sound, everything outside of my racing thoughts.

“If you think you’re going to faint, sit your ass down,” Cole ordered. “I told you this because you’re a big girl and I need your help. I know you didn’t mean for this to happen, but you’re in it. Knee deep. You’re as responsible for righting this as the rest of us.”

I didn’t sit, but the dark blotches in my vision were growing, expanding, swallowing his face. “The other agents…they want to do this?”

“Not everyone,” he said, “but enough that if Alban weren’t here, it wouldn’t even be a question. Read between the lines there.”

Oh my God.
“Cate knows about this, but…she’s still with him? Why would she stay with someone who could even
think
about something like that?”

“Conner is a smart woman. If she’s with him, it’s for a reason, and probably not the one you think. We’ve both seen how Meadows handles things.”

“Then you know that Jarvin ‘handled’ Blake Howard?” I asked. “The kid he shot in the back on the Op last night?”

“You know that for sure?” he demanded. “You have some kind of proof?”

“Security camera footage,” I said. “It was downloaded before anyone could wipe it remotely from here.”

“Keep it to yourself for now. When you bring the intel back, we’ll take that to Alban, too. Nail Meadows and the others into their coffins.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

“You’re killin’ me, kid,” he said, rolling his eyes again. “You’ll go and find Liam. You’ll bring the intel back. There’s never been any doubt in my mind about it. Because, Gem,” Cole said, smiling when I rolled my eyes at the new nickname, “I know that you don’t want Alban to figure out what really happened and that Liam’s involved, and I know you don’t want to give him any reason to invest in Meadows’s plan. And I’ll make sure Alban does turn his attention to freeing the camps—the
right
way, the one you suggested in your report. That’s what you’ve been after all this time, right? The reason you put together that whole packet of info for him? I know it wasn’t to give Meadows a way to turn it against you.”

You can find him.
Want was overpowering the cooler, quieter, rational part of my brain.
You can see him again. You can make sure he gets home this time. And you can help all of those kids. All of them.

“If I agree to this,” I started, “you have to guarantee I won’t be reprimanded when I get back for taking this little joyride. And you have to swear on the terms, because if you go back on your word, I will tear every thought out of your head until you’re nothing but a drooling puddle of snot. Got it?”

“Atta girl,” Cole said. “That’s my Gem. I’ll see if I can’t get you on the next Op back east. You’ll have to get creative in how you ditch the Minder they send with you, but I think you’re up for the challenge. Address is 1222 West Bucket Road, Wilmington, North Carolina. Can you remember that? Start there. Lee’s a creature of habit; he’ll try heading home to see if our stepdad left a clue about where they were headed.”

I took a deep breath. My body was completely still, but everything inside me seemed to be galloping—my heart, my thoughts, my nerves.

“You can do this,” Cole said quietly. “I know you can. I’ll have your back the whole way.”

“I don’t need your protection,” I said, “but Jude does.”

“The beanpole? Sure. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“And Vida and Nico.”

“Your wish is my command.” Cole gave a small little bow as he backed out of the curtain. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the familiar tilt of his smile and the way it made my chest feel like it would explode. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Hey,” I said suddenly. If anyone might know, it would be another deep cover agent. “Have you heard of an Op they’re calling Snowfall? An agent called Professor?”

“I think I’ve heard of Snowfall, but only that it was a project they were running in Georgia. Why? Want me to look into it for you?”

I shrugged. “If you have time.”

“I have all the time in the world for you, Gem. Trust me on that.”

I was still standing there when the locker room door slammed shut and the last of the water drained at my feet.

Two long, torturous weeks passed before I found the red folder in my locker. I felt each day tick by, went through the carefully structured routine of training, food, training, food, bed. I kept my head down but my thoughts moving. I was too afraid to look anyone in the face on the off chance that he or she would see the guilt or what I was planning. I almost cried, half in relief, half in panic, when I saw the Op folder balanced on my small stack of books.

The locker room was roaring with speculation around me, one voice bleeding into another. Someone had been brave—or stupid—enough during our lesson for the day to ask Instructor Johnson what they had done with Blake’s body and whether we’d have any kind of service for him. Nico had gone green around the gills, but Johnson had only waved the question off.

Team Two’s Leader, a Blue named Erica, was loudly airing her opinion that he was still down in the infirmary being studied, but another, a Green named Jillian, insisted she had seen them take a body bag out through the Tube a few days before.

“They obviously buried him,” she was saying.

I stood by my locker, reading the folder behind the cover of the door. I could hear Vida a few feet away, laughing loudly at something another Blue had suggested. When I turned, I craned my neck around, trying to look into her locker. Good. Nothing but the messy heap of shirts she had shoved in there. She would be here. I could tell Jude and Nico to stay close to her—no one would try anything with her there, not even Jarvin. There was too much sting in that honeybee.

I opened the folder again, letting my eyes skim down each line. Please be East Coast, I thought, please be back east.… I could get to North Carolina so much easier from Connecticut than I could from Texas or northern California.

OP ID: 349022-A

TOD: 15 Dec 13:00

Location: Boston, MA

Massachusetts. I could work with that. Some of the train lines were still running.

Objective: Pull Dr. P.T. Fishburn, Director of Administration Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases Harvard School of Public Health; disable lab.

I felt my stomach clench—“Pull,” meaning I would interrogate him there in Boston at a League safe house, or, if he proved to be uncooperative, we would bring him back to the nearest base. My job. “Disable,” meaning fry, destroy, demolish. The tactical team’s job.

Tact Team: Beta Group

Psi: Tangerine, Sunshine

Minder: TBD

“Oh,” I whispered, feeling leaving my hands completely. “Hell no.”

I left the folder in my locker and slammed it shut, twisted my wet hair back into a loose bun. I was out before anyone could notice I was gone. It was three in the afternoon—if Cate wasn’t in a meeting, she would be in her room, most likely, or in the atrium.

A drip of water fell from my hair onto my cheek and I swiped angrily at it, plowing through the hanging strips of plastic that were, in theory, supposed to help insulate what little warmth we had in HQ. I glanced up at the low ceilings to avoid making eye contact with yet another cluster of agents, stepping off to the side to allow them to pass.

The hair on the back of my neck rose with each step that echoed behind me, keeping pace with my own.

There was someone behind me. There had been since I stepped out of the locker room.

The heavy steps and the throaty gulps of air made me think it was a man. I glanced up as I passed one of the steel beams overhead, but whoever was following me was doing it at the exact right pace. I couldn’t see his reflection, but I could feel him behind me. Feel every ounce of his disgust for me cutting through the hallway’s damp chill, gripping the column of my spine.

Don’t look,
I thought, clenching my jaw,
just keep going
. It was nothing; my mind was playing tricks, like it loved to do.
It’s nothing. It’s no one.

But I could feel him hovering behind me, like his fingers were trying to smooth down the goose bumps on my skin. There was no stopping the sudden upswing of my heartbeat. I knew what I could do and that I had enough training to fight someone off, but all I could think about was Blake Howard’s shoe dangling off his pale, stiff toes in the infirmary.

I found the double doors I’d been looking for and burst into the atrium, half out of breath.

They were in the middle of setting the round tables and folding chairs again, returning the space to its usual use as a rec room. Here and there, I saw agents dressed in their finest League sweats, dolling out playing cards, watching the news on the TV screens, or even playing with a mismatched chess set.

Cate came in through the opposite set of doors, cutting a sharp image in her unusually polished navy skirt suit. Her blond hair was twisted back into a tight bun. She absently bumped into an agent sitting at a nearby table, murmuring a faint apology. I didn’t realize she was looking for someone until her eyes landed on my face.

“There you are,” she said, jogging over the best she could in her heels. I opened my mouth, but she held up a hand to quiet me. “I know. I’m sorry. I did everything I could to change Alban’s mind, but he insisted.”

“He’s not sixteen yet!” I said. “He isn’t ready—you
know
that; we all do! Are you trying to turn him into the next Blake Howard?”