Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds Collection) (A Darkest Minds Novel) (22 page)

Focus. Computer.
Then Sam. I just have to be fast.

I bring each kid I go to collect for their treatment down to the nurse in that same room, counting the minutes it takes for him to finish with them. In those minutes, I look for cameras. In the hallway. Through the doors that swing open. In the room directly across from where I’m standing I have seen not one, but two separate pairings of female nurse and male PSF disappear inside of it. I have heard the door lock behind them. And I have pretended not to notice how winded they always seem when they come out again a short time later. Whatever happens in that room is not being monitored, clearly.

I bring the last kid, 2231, a Green boy, in, open the examination room door, and practically push him inside to where the nurse is waiting. I take two seconds to look both ways down the empty hall and duck through the door opposite me.
Fast,
I think,
just be fast.

My heart slams against my rib cage as I lurch toward the dark computer. The room is a mirror of the one across the hall, with one exception: the PC isn’t already on. I waste two full minutes waiting for it to boot up, my ears straining at every muffled sound bleeding in through the walls. Sure enough, the camera in the upper corner has been all but torn off the wall and has been left dangling there by its rainbow wires.

There. Finally. The log-in screen glides into place and, before I can second-guess myself, I’m typing in the username and password I’d seen Dunn use. The system seems to load pixel by pixel, and it seems like each second is being shaved down to fractions of their former selves. I can’t explain the rush of power I feel when the database finally loads and a blinking cursor appears in the search field.

I type
Orfeo
and hit Enter.

No results.

I have to look again, because that can’t be possible.

No results.

I go hollow at the core. Pure, helpless anguish rushes in to fill the empty space where hope used to be. She’s not in the system at all? That means—it’s not possible, I won’t—Mia—
Mia
—

The door slams open behind me, hits the wall, and slams shut again.

“Dammit, dammit,
dammit
, heartless son of a
bitch
!”

I’m up and on my feet, whirling around, reaching for a weapon I don’t have. He’s so busy cursing and tearing his hands back through his chestnut hair that he doesn’t even notice me until the stool I’d been sitting on rocks back against the counter and clatters to the floor.

There’s a second where neither of us moves.

“What—
oh
.” It’s Nurse Dunn.

I can actually feel my heart stop on the next beat. I know what the others feel now, because my head has gone completely dark. I don’t have a thought inside, save for a single word:
shit.

How is he already done treating the kid I
just
brought in?

He’s breathing hard, his pale face flooded with furious color. And just when I need it most, my brain just walks off and abandons me. My body has to rely on instinct to protect it, and instinct is telling it to pick up one of the jars from the counter and—

“Easy—easy—it’s okay,” Dunn says, balking at the way I raise my arm to reach for the glass jar. He seems to remember what I am suddenly and puts his hands out in front of him. “Pal, it’s okay. You just…I didn’t see you in here. What’s—”

His eyes flick between the computer screen and my face. A roar of blood moves between my ears, and I can’t speak, I can’t think of an excuse fast enough. Why did I come in here without thinking of one? Damn, I’m so
stupid
I didn’t even think to try locking the door.

“Did someone tell you to come in here?” he asks. I can’t read his expression now. His words sound strained.
He thinks I’ll hurt him, kill him, burn him
—

Maybe I’ll have to.

No. I can’t. Not without setting the room on fire. People with flames racing along their skin don’t just stand still and calmly let their bodies be burned to cinder and bone. He’ll take the whole place down with him. It’s a gruesome thought, one that brings the sickening smell of burnt flesh to mind. My stomach flips over. In what scenario are both of us getting out of this room?

“Okay,” Dunn says when I don’t answer.

My heart is slamming against my ribs. He doesn’t know it wasn’t an order for me to come in here. Not yet. Maybe he won’t think to radio in and ask someone.

Can I scare him into silence? I think so—I take a step forward and he takes a generous one back. The Trainers taught us to fight with fists as well as fire. They wanted strength in body, not strength in mind. But he would know, wouldn’t he? That we aren’t supposed to do anything without orders, that my will has supposedly been crippled. Two issues with that: he can’t be as scared of me as I think, but when he finds out the rules don’t apply to me, he
will
tell someone. There’s no way he won’t. These adults are all on the same side.

Think, Lucas—Christ, do something, say anything, get the hell out of here
—

Killing him won’t help me and Sam get out of here. It won’t help me find Mia who—a wave of nausea passes through me—might not be findable. I can break the jar, use the shards to cut him deep where the Trainers showed us to, but how long before the Control Tower puts together who did it?

“It’s…hey,” the man says, his voice strained, “everyone needs to take a break, get away, right?” He starts to lower his hands. “It’s fine. Go get the kid you brought in and take him—”

His eyes have latched on to the computer screen. He squints at it and my pulse starts beating behind my temple.

“Orfeo?”

The name cuts me like a knife through my spinal cord.
I didn’t clear the search field.
I shouldn’t have done this, I should have made a plan, a real one, but—
I need to get out of here. I need to get Sam out of here. I need to find Mia.
My uniform is drenched in hot, clammy sweat and the collar of my vest has me like a hand wrapped around my throat.

The nurse steps closer to it, giving me a wary look as he reaches past my arm. I can’t speak. And not just because I’m supposed to be playing a role.

“Did you search for this?”

Can’t. Breathe.

I want to disappear into my head so badly. The silence that stretches between us is unbearable. I look down. He must take it as a nod.

“There’s no one here by that name,” he continues, leaning over the desk to move and click the mouse around. Another field appears on the screen, and the whole thing refreshes. “But there’s a Natalie Orfeo who’s listed as being in Belle Plain. That’s in Texas, apparently.”

I hadn’t searched right? I catch myself before I can spin toward him.
He’s baiting you. He wants to catch you. He’ll turn you back over to the Trainers.

But…if I hadn’t searched right, that meant that there were listings I didn’t see. It meant—

“No? What about a Mia?”

My body reacts before my brain can stop it. My whole body surges toward the computer. Dunn jumps back, both arms up, but I don’t care about anything other than what’s on the screen. Joy crashes into relief. My knees might give out on me if I don’t hold on to the table.

There’s a photo of her next to a profile—her hair is longer than I remember, dark and curling over her shoulder the way Mom’s used to. My throat burns. Weight, height—classified as Blue. God. Thank you, God. She’s alive. She’s not like me. Something brittle in my chest snaps, and I have to keep swallowing back the urge to cry.

Black Rock.
That’s her camp. Where is it? I keep scrolling, but it doesn’t say.

“Is that…your sister? A cousin?” Dunn is edging back toward me but stops when I turn and pin him with a glare.

They’re all the same. The Trainers, the PSFs, even these nurses. They are not on our side and they’ll never be. He is going to take so much pleasure in taking me down for this. Was this worth it? I know she’s alive and where she is, but I’m done. Done. I won’t even get to say good-bye to Sam, or somehow tell her that they’re taking me out, back to the Facility, back to be worked over again and again until they figure out a way to turn my head into an empty husk. The thought of the building with its bleach-white walls makes me feel almost manically desperate.

Mia is alive. She’s
alive
. Any happiness at the thought is smashed into pieces under the weight of knowing that, yeah, she’s alive, but she’s in a place like this. I’ll never be assigned there once the Trainers are told about this. They’ll keep me for months, trying to break me. Would they hurt her in order to hurt me? That would work. God—oh my God. There would be no place safe for that kind of pain.

Dunn leans against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. “They would never ask any of you to look something up in the system, so I have to believe that this was important enough to you to risk getting caught. I’d ask whose log-in you used, but it doesn’t matter. I admire your balls, but if you’re going to try this again, you have to be more careful. Anyone could have walked in.”

I rise to my full height, clenching a fist and drawing it up in front of me like I’m about to…do something. I have enough control over the fire to spark a flame with a small snap.

Dunn flinches. His voice goes tight and high as he waves his hands in front of him, saying, “Wait—
wait
.”

For some reason, I do. I wait as he turns back to the computer to type something else into the program. When he’s finished, he turns the screen toward me so I can see the profile he’s brought up.

The photo attached to it is a young boy with reddish-brown hair like Dunn’s and a wide, round face. He’s staring at the camera dead-on, with a look of open hatred.

“This is Martin,” Dunn says. “He’s the reason I’m here, and if you really think I’m going to turn around and report you for caring about someone enough to risk your neck then…you can tell the camp controllers that. We’re forbidden from serving anywhere we have a family relation.”

I don’t move. My brain has disconnected from the rest of my body.

“The draft caught up to me just as I was coming out of college and applying for medical schools. I served my four years at a camp in the Midwest, but I re-enlisted. You know why? Because this posting opened, and I’d been able to search our network and see they’d brought my brother here. I also knew that he’d gone into the system with our stepfather’s last name, and I’d kept our father’s—so I applied and, sure enough, they didn’t catch it. I wanted to be a good brother…I thought, if I can’t get him out, I can at least watch over him. It turns out I’m just as powerless now to help him as I am to help everyone else here.”

“Why?” The word is out before I can swallow it back down my throat.

The lines on Dunn’s face ease, but the shadows in his eyes are still there. “I’m limited in what I can do to help the kids. We can’t give them crutches when they sprain an ankle because they could be turned into
weapons
. We don’t allow them to stay overnight for treatment unless there’s a real chance they might die without being monitored. I can barely keep the medicine I need stocked. And the doctor doesn’t care. He won’t even come in to check on this poor girl we’re treating for a snakebite until the end of the week.
Family time.
” He makes a sound of disgust. “It’s all been for nothing. Martin isn’t here. Someone managed to break him out.”

I can’t keep shock from breaking through. “How?”

“Ironically, it was two nurses. Or, I guess, they weren’t real nurses after all. They put him in one of the large bio-waste bins we use to dispose medical trash. Just loaded it in their car and drove away. Business as usual, just going to dump it with all the rest. I have no idea where he is, but I’m stuck here, twiddling my thumbs, waiting my term out to start looking.”

Something sour rises in my throat. I swallow hard and shake my head to hide how desperate I am to find out more. It can happen. I can get myself out of here—more importantly, I can get Sam out, too. The way he described won’t work. They would have immediately changed that protocol. It’s more that it’s proof that this place isn’t necessarily the maximum-security prison they want the kids to think it is. The equipment and buildings are run down and practically painted with rust, patched over too many times. The PSFs and camp controllers are spread too thin, and because of it, they’ve let the blade dull in their hands. There have to be other gaps we can slip through.

“What’s your name?” Dunn asks.

“M27.”

“Your real name,” he says. “You’re not a number. Don’t let them make you think that.”

I think of all those kids I brought in with me today. How they spent the whole walk over to the Infirmary all knotted up with fear and anxiety. They didn’t relax until they were with him. He called them by names, not by numbers. I want to believe—I want to believe there’s no game here.

And, anyway, it’s in my file. I might not show up in the computer system, but I’m sure he’d have access to the information if he asked. “Lucas.”

“Lucas. I’m Pat.” The nurse’s smile is weak, uncertain, like there’s a thundercloud hanging over us about to burst. “I think we both have to get back to work.”

We do. My ten minutes were up two minutes ago. Dunn steps out into the hall first, which gives me a minute to wrap the shell of stony detachment back around me. It’s only the small, dark, curly-haired nurse waiting for us, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. The miserable look on her face is so at odds with the calm, sweet expression she’d been wearing with the kids.

“Sorry,” Dunn is saying, “I had to borrow him—”

“It’s fine. I sent the boy back to his cabin with one of the PSFs,” Nurse Kore says quickly, “but you need to come now. The swelling’s gotten worse and the fever’s back.”

Nurse Dunn goes rigid, his skin pulling back as he grimaces. He pushes past us both, all but running down the hall. The floor has emptied out almost entirely, but I see one PSF stick his head out of an office he’s packing up. Kore waves the soldier off, right on Dunn’s heels as he enters the first room—the one I’d seen O’Ryan and the doctor come out of earlier.