Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds Collection) (A Darkest Minds Novel) (29 page)

Say it, I think. Finish that thought.
Or they said they didn’t want you back.

Then, a new voice: “My brother is coming for me. I’m staying.”

I’m sure I make a sound, but I can’t hear it over the growing buzz in my ears. If someone wedged a dull knife into the back of my skull, it wouldn’t hurt half as bad as this.

I was right
.

In all the hours and days that I spent wrestling with myself over whether or not to come, one fact kept slipping under the chains of my resolve: Lucas wanted, more than anything, more than his own life even, to find his sister. Enough of his mind was intact after the training the Reds were subjected to that he actually volunteered to serve at Thurmond to search for her there, knowing full well that he could be caught. Instead, he’d found me.

Why did you turn around?

Why did you hesitate?

Lucas, why didn’t you leave me?

We were going to find her. He was going to get us both out of the camp, and we were going to look for Mia together. As much as the scars from that day still burn, and as many times as I’ve relived the moment they caught him, the emptiness in his face when he was brought back to duty at Thurmond, fully broken…it’s nothing compared to the way this image is scorching my heart. Mia has been waiting weeks for a brother who will never come for her.

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

She’s not alone. For the first time in weeks, I muster up enough anger to pull against the chains that apprehension has thrown over me. Anger—beautiful, dark, sweltering anger—burns out all my trembling uncertainty. Adrenaline hums through my blood, and I wish I were any other color but Green. I’d throw this man and all of these soldiers across the room, as far away as I could get them. I’d blow out the electricity and drag her away in the darkness. I’d burn this place and its lies to rubble.

Mia turns slowly. Her eyes are sharp, dark, with none of the distant dreaminess that softened them before.

“Your brother?” the man repeats. “I searched for him in the system, but there’s no record of him at all.”

“That’s bull—” Mia manages to catch herself before the curse can slip out. “He’s a Red! They knew what he was when they took him. And if the other camps are closed, then he’s coming to get me.”

“Mia…” the man begins. The other kids go stiff at that word:
Red
. It’s a single syllable that carries nightmares in its back pocket. Mia doesn’t know to be afraid. She knew the Lucas who was in control of his abilities, the fire simmering beneath too many layers of soft sweetness to be frightening. She hasn’t seen what they made him. How they cut, and cut, and
cut
to make sure he’d never bloom again.

“I’m
staying
,” she says. “If that’s still a problem, then you need to check your equation and solve it.”

The man’s back on his feet, looming over her, his arms crossed. “I need you to be a good girl and listen to me.”

Mia’s features pull back in a snarl. “I’m not a
good girl
. I’m waiting for my brother.”

“Even if he—” The man shakes his head. “Even if he were to come, he would be in the same position as you. He’ll be a ward of the government.”

“No he won’t, he’s eighteen now. He can be my guardian.”

Mia is so clearly proud that she’s figured this out. She has no idea that the usual rules don’t apply to us—we’re Psi, not human. The classification doesn’t overlap, not as far as the rest of the world is concerned. We can’t be our own guardians. That’s a direct quote, courtesy of the radio station I listened to on my drive through Nowhere, South Dakota to get here. We don’t have enough education and we lack a basic understanding of how life works, according to them.

And maybe…maybe that’s true. I hate that idea, that we can’t take care of ourselves, but…we had our world in the camp, we had our rules, and now we’ve been pushed back into this one. None of it makes sense. Everything changes out here so quickly, I can’t keep up.

The man exhales loudly through his nose. “If he isn’t in the system, he never was—”

“My sister is eighteen….” one begins.

“I have a cousin—he’s nineteen, he should be able to—”

“I searched for every name you gave me,” the man snaps, whirling back toward the other kids. “Either they never made it into the system and are out there, lost to the world, or they died before they ever made it far enough to be sorted into a camp!”

So much for patience,
I think, biting my lip.

His temper blows his lid off. The words crash down around them, blasting whatever is left of their world into a storm of flaming wreckage. One of the kids bursts into tears, shattering the shocked silence that follows.

“They took him! I saw them!” Mia protests, jumping to her feet. “I was right there!”

“You’re my ward, and you’ll do what I say,” the man says, bending down so he’s eye level with Mia. “Understood?”

Mia’s face hardens, transforms right in front of my eyes into something so much harsher than all of the sorceresses she used to play in the make-believe world of Greenwood. I’m barely keeping myself still, and it only gets more difficult when I recognize her posture, the way she shifts and her hands tremble at her side. This is the Mia who used to put the forest at her mercy, control the animals, take hostages up in her tower.

Only now her power is real, and I don’t know what the punishment is going to be for her shoving or striking this man, only that it’ll come. All I need to see is the outline of the man’s holster, and any final reservations I have about this melt away like the last of the early spring snow.

“Look, it’s just the way it is,” he says, and I can hear the regret adding weight to those words. He might not have meant for the truth to come out like a punch, but he still has the gall to clap his hands and say, “Come on, quick-quick. I’ll wait here while you go get your things….”

Most stand, casting quick glances at each other as they move to the elevators. The soldiers trail behind them like reluctant babysitters.

Mia slumps back into her seat, resting her elbows against her knees and her face against her hands.

“Sorry,” she mutters from under a veil of dark hair.

“It’s fine, kid,” the man says. “This isn’t easy for any of us.”

Oh really
? I think savagely.
I can tell how difficult this is for you
.

“Are you going to be okay waiting here for a sec?” he says. “I need to make a call.”

Mia nods, says nothing more.

“Good girl. Thanks.” The man hesitates for a beat, then steps out of my line of sight, toward the main elevator bank. I can just barely make out his reflection in the darkening windows behind Mia as I creep back around the corner, and I say a small, tiny little prayer that they can’t see my likeness there, too.

I have a plan. It’s just a matter of getting her attention now, and in the right way. Because if I get caught, then I’m in the same situation as the rest of these kids. And there’s so much more than just my and Mia’s lives riding on this.

Carefully, I peel one of the sheets of the camp roster off the wall. There’s a pen buried somewhere deep in my backpack, and it has one last gasp of ink left to write a single word. I start the S’s curve, only to change my mind halfway through—there are so many Sams in this world, who’s to say she’ll be able to put together that I’m the girl who used to live next door to her? I’m too far out of context.

So instead I write a different name, making the letters as large and bold as the pen’s thin tip will let me—a secret we kept between the three of us.

Greenwood
.

I glance toward the windows again. The man has shifted away from Mia, turning to lean his shoulder against the wall. His voice is a low murmur of sound, almost indistinguishable from the heat snapping and hissing out of the vents around us.

Mia’s eyes are fixed on the ground, like she’s trying to find the scattered pieces of herself there. I wave my arms, hoping the movement is big enough for her to see it out of the corner of her eye.

It is.

Her face goes blank with surprise in the second before I see her start to gasp. I hold up my makeshift sign, hands shaking.
Please, God, please let this work, please, please let me get her out of here, away from them
….Mia’s forehead wrinkles, and I know the exact moment she realizes who I am. Her eyes are electrified, her mouth starts to form my name. My pulse is hammering, and I barely manage to get a finger up to my lips in time to shush her and wave her forward.

She’s confused. Glances over to where the man is still on the phone. I shake my head.

And then she gets it.

Mia rises slowly, silently, her eyes fixed on the man’s back. Her movements are as light as a mouse’s as she weaves through the curving furniture, and her sneakers barely register a sound as she starts toward me. I turn, already prepared to spring forward as she reaches my side.

“Sam?” she whispers, and it’s the best thing I’ve heard in weeks. I take her hand and drag her forward, past the clean, empty surfaces of the bar. Her backpack’s strap catches one of the chairs and sends it spinning. Whatever is inside rattles, too loud, too loud—

We are halfway down the hall, the side exit in sight, when a loud
“Hey!”
cracks through the air.

I swallow the burning as it rises in my throat; my lungs suck in more air. Mia and I both look back over our shoulders in time to see the man rush out the front, and bark something at the soldier still smoking there. I am so high on fear and exhilaration at pulling this off that I’m worried I’ll rip the door off its hinges when I finally reach it and fling it open.

“Stop!”
the man shouts.
“Mia!”

Will they kill me for this? Will they hurt her? Did I just destroy what little chance we had for a good life? I can’t predict the response—I don’t know their minds the way I knew the PSFs’—

The emergency exit opens up on one side of the parking lot. There aren’t any cars or trash containers to duck behind, nothing for cover when the man shouts, “I’ll shoot!”

“Sam!” Mia gasps, feet slipping against the black ice. I’m already slowing us down with my limp. Pain lances up it, spiking each time I swing my leg forward.
“Sam!”

“Keep going!” I choke out. Across the street is a line of storefronts, and behind them, the car. “Don’t stop!”

The gunshot tears through the dusk, echoing back to us a thousand times over. The bullet pings against one of the streetlights—he’s shot wide, a warning.

Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop
. My thoughts keep pace with my tortured gait.
Lucas, Lucas, Lucas
—

Mia whirls around, dropping my hand. I skid forward against the ice, my breath a harsh white cloud around me. “No!”

But she’s not turning back. She throws her arm out at the same moment the guy takes aim, and she sweeps it sharply to the right. I stop, stunned, as the man goes sailing right back into the hotel’s brick wall, and he folds, as limp as any of the trash blowing by our feet. The papers didn’t list what ability each unclaimed kid has—Mia, then, is Blue.

“I…never tried that…before….” Mia’s teeth are chattering, and I can’t tell if it’s from the shock or the cold.

I take her arm. “Come on, it’s just a little farther.”

“W-where are w-we going?” she asks. “W-what are you doing here?”

I don’t stop, not until we’ve crossed the deserted street and bolted straight through the ravaged storefront directly in front of us. The racks and overturned shelves are totally bare, but if you take a deep enough breath, you can still smell polish and leather.

The back door swings open as I barrel my shoulder into it. Mia stumbles, her toe catching on the frame. “Wait—Sam,
wait
!”

I spin back, my breath wet in my chest. I cough, trying to get my wild, tumbling thoughts back in some kind of order. It’s not until the panicked haze clears from my vision that I look at her face—
really
look at it.

Mia is frightened.

I’ve scared her worse than the man back there ever did.

Of course you did!
I press the back of my hand against my forehead, surprised to feel sweat there.
You didn’t even ask her if she wanted to come with you! You took her—you took her just like one of the snatchers would!

“I’m sorry.” My lips are numb. It’s barely a mumble. “I just…do you want to go back? Do you want…do you want the procedure? Tell me you don’t…
please
, whatever they’ve told you…”

“I just want to know where we’re going!” she pants out. “Is that your car?”

There’s only one back here, and it’s parked at a diagonal across three spaces. A tan Honda sedan that was left unlocked in front of a shopping center not unlike this one. It was harder to teach myself how to shift gears, which pedal was stop and which was go, and the rough mechanics of parking, than it was to find the car itself.

“I’m taking you wherever you want to go,” I say, climbing into the driver’s seat. My hip is so stiff by the time I finally sit, my calf muscle strung so tight, I have to bite the inside of my mouth to keep my gasp in as I floor the gas pedal and send us sailing backward in reverse.

“Whoa!”
Mia scrambles for her seat belt—why didn’t I warn her to put it on? I should have warned her before ever getting into this car. I got her out of that mess, but now I’m going to get her killed because I don’t really know how to drive, and I don’t know how soon that man and those soldiers are going to come for us, and why did I do this? Why did I do this?

Lucas.

I whip the car out of the parking lot, and it turns on what feels like two wheels as we find the road. I painstakingly charted my drive out here on a map, but I know the way back by sight. Mostly. Was it right at this tree? No—
left
. The car flies forward into the intersection, cutting across the traffic lanes as I make the turn too sharply.

How long have I been gone for? How long will it take to get back? I glance over at Mia and catch her watching me with dark eyes, and I’m scalded all over again. Those are Lucas’s eyes. Those are their father’s eyes. And for a second, it’s like they’re both watching me—they’re both judging me for taking a mess and dropping a bomb into it.