Through the Dark (A Darkest Minds Collection) (A Darkest Minds Novel) (38 page)

I can see the same realization dawning on Mia. Her shoulders hunch, her fingers curl, and a look like death comes over her face as she stares into each of the faces we pass. She’s winding herself up, cranking up her temper. I shake my head, but she ignores me.

We make a sharp turn down another hallway with more doors. But these have glass observation windows, and instead of offices and supply closets, there are cots and four blank walls. These are prison cells.

They don’t even cut the zip ties off our hands before they push us inside and let the door slam and lock behind us. Mia surges toward the window, where a crowd of soldiers and men and women in suits are slowing as they pass, or stopping altogether to look in.

“Where’s my brother?” she yells. The men and women turn toward each other, whispering, confused. “What are you even
looking at
?”

Mia whirls back to me.

“Don’t,” I say, reading her expression. She wants me to pick a target for her—I think she wants them to see that glass isn’t enough of a barrier to keep her from them. “It’ll only make it worse.”

It’s my turn to address them. “We want to talk to whoever is in charge.
Hey!
Are you even listening?”

We can hear the rumble of their muted voices, but no one actually speaks to us, no one so much as moves, until a short, stocky man pushes his way through the crowd, slides a key card through the door’s lock, and lets himself in. Two National Guardsmen trail in behind him, looking decidedly more worried.

The man in the blue beret motions for us to sit, but Mia and I remain on our feet, stepping back to the far side of the small room.

“I am Major Benn.” The man’s accent is heavy, filling whatever space his physical presence doesn’t. None of them are armed with guns, and I wonder if that’s a reflection on them, or on us. “You are at the Zone One Processing Center.”

“Where’s my brother?”

Major Benn waves his hands, shooing the question away. “You’ll be kept in this facility until you are collected for…re-homing. You understand?”

“Where’s my brother?” Mia repeats. “I want to see him!”

“Perhaps you will soon, if you are a good girl, okay?” the man answers, and I know I will hate those words,
good girl
, always. “You are…Mia, then? Mia…”

“Orfeo,” one of the National Guardsmen finishes, shifting uncomfortably. He glances down at a printout in his hand before passing it to the major.

The man’s blond brows rise and rise as he reads it over. “Then you are
blau
—Blue?”

My whole body tenses. Mia stares at him, her hands clenching where they’re bound behind her back. “Yeah. So?”

“You do the trick, please—you show us?”

What?

Major Benn unclips a pen from his shirt’s front pocket and lets it drop on the ground. “You pick this up. No touching, right?”

Mia and I exchange a look of disbelief. I think I’ve misheard him until I see the blood drain from the faces of the National Guardsmen. The muscles in my back tense to the point of pain. He’s watching us, brows still raised expectantly.

The pen is a deep blue, rimmed with gold. It’s still rolling back and forth, back and forth on the ground.

Maybe he does just want to see her abilities, marvel at them the way he would a magician’s trick at a kid’s birthday party. But I know for a fact that the group—the one that led to Thurmond being closed—released videos of the kids using their abilities and kids talking about the use of their abilities. So it’s not like he hasn’t had the chance to see it before.

“Is there a problem?” Major Benn asks, the words sharper now. He is not smiling, and that alone makes me straighten, catch my breath. I ease in front of Mia, just a step. He holds the paper up. “Is this wrong? Is this not what you do?”

“Sir—” one of the National Guardsmen starts to say, only to be silenced with a look.

At Thurmond, using your abilities—using them accidentally or willingly—was a punishable offense that involved lost meals and being forced to sit outside and let the elements prey on you. If not that, then…my leg throbs at the thought of stacked dog cages, remembering the snake, how it felt to be curled up and locked inside.

This isn’t fair—we don’t know the rules now! We don’t know if they’ve changed, if Mia will be hauled off for doing this, or applauded for putting on a good show. Could he claim that she was trying to use the pen as a weapon? That he
had
to kill us to subdue us?

“She’s not—” I start to say, but it’s already too late. Mia doesn’t have to lift a hand. She looks at the pen, looks at the faces peering in at us like we’re animals at the zoo, and she sends them on a collision course.

The glass doesn’t shatter, even with the force of the tip driving through it, but the cracks radiate out in a web that reaches the edge of its frame. There’s a collective gasp as the men and women standing there scatter, but it’s nothing compared to the click and swish of the National Guardsmen pulling out their White Noise machines.

What is she doing?
Does Mia really think they’ll let us see Lucas now?

“It was an accident,” she says, all sweetness, and if I could reach back to strangle her without them tackling me for moving, I would. “You said you wanted to see me move it. I guess my control isn’t very good.”

Every last trace of humor is gone from Benn’s face as he crosses the room in silence and slides the pen out of the window slowly, carefully, like one wrong move could bring the whole thing crashing down.

The person who slams the sheet of paper up against the glass behind him has absolutely none of these concerns. I don’t see her until Benn takes a surprised step back, and then it’s the electric purple hair that draws my eyes first, even before her fury-tight face.

“Show’s over, assholes!”

Every voice but hers seems to have been sucked out of the world. My stomach lurches, starts to flutter again.

It’s so strange to me that I remember this girl’s voice and can connect the right memory before I can do the same with her face. Or…not so strange. She’d been wearing a ski mask when she burst into our cabin.

This is the girl from Thurmond. One of the team that came to open up the camp. The window distorts her face, breaks it up into pieces, but what I see are dark eyes, rich skin, high cheekbones, full lips, and a glare like venom. The few stragglers in the hallway duck away into nearby offices; I don’t blame them. She’s shaking like she’s about to detonate and bring the whole building down.

Benn signals to one of the National Guardsmen to open the door, and the girl fills the doorway. She’s too smart to step inside, where they could trap her, too—actually, on second thought, I’m not so sure anything could cage her. She’s a full head shorter than all three men, and looks about ten times as lethal. Gun holstered at her side. Knife peeking out of the top of her combat boots. Plus whatever else she’s hiding under her oversized green army jacket.

“Transfer order,” the girl says, handing the paper over. “Signed, sealed, delivered—what the fuck are you squinting at? Get a fucking pair of glasses if you need a better view!” The National Guardsman who’s been staring at her immediately turns back toward Benn, who is reading and rereading the piece of paper.

“What—?” I give a sharp shake of my head at Mia, silencing her. I don’t know how she’s even speaking. My throat is so tight I can barely breathe.

“This is signed by…” he begins.

“Interim President Cruz,” the girl finishes.

“Where is—you are—” Benn releases the next few words in German. “You are not an officer of the law, armed forces, United Nations—”

She holds up what looks like a small identification card. I can’t read what it says, but it looks official. Mia watches the girl with wide, wondering eyes.

Benn is still holding the card when she snatches it back and gestures toward us. “Get moving, girls.”

I don’t need to be told twice. The door slams shut behind us, and I don’t risk looking back at the wreckage we’ve left.

“What’s going on?” I whisper. “How did you get us out?”

She narrows her eyes and slides them over to us. “Someone called in a favor on your behalf, so don’t jack this up, hear me?”

Someone?
Who?

The girl doesn’t cut our hands free, and keeping up with her long, steady strides means jogging on a leg that’s hurting badly enough for me to want to cut it off myself.

“What about my brother? Where is he? Are you getting him?” Mia asks the second we reach the door, when the spell of silence from the hallway finally wears off. The blast of damp air and gray skies is so at odds with the dry, white glare of the new building, it’s staggering. I have to limp slowly down the steps to keep from falling.

“Treating you like you’re fucking animals, the assholes,
God
—come here,” she says, tugging Mia over to her. I’m right, that
is
a knife poking out of her boot. The girl makes quick work of the zip ties around Mia’s wrists, then mine. By the time she’s finished, the door to the other building hisses open and a tall, lanky teen appears, his silver-framed glasses fogging up from the sudden change in temperature. He’s wearing something my dad would have worn—nice slacks and a dark fleece to keep out the cold.

I recognize him, too. This is the one who was at the press conference. The kid that spoke up.

The numbing hit of confusion takes away all of my words. I fumble for them, for the question screaming across my mind, and come up with nothing but a gasp.

He looks at the girl and shakes his head. “It’s like we thought. They already moved him out.”

“Lucas?” Mia asks. “Are you talking about Lucas?”

The girl throws a quick glance around to the soldiers moving between the construction site and the building. “Shit, girl, can you try a voice level under
screeching
? Let’s
go
.”

“I’m not leaving without my brother!” Mia leans back, digging in, nearly red with the effort to keep from either screaming or crying, I’m not sure which.

“You want to stay here?” the girl challenges, squaring her shoulders. “You want back in that jail cell?”

“Vi”—the boy tries to step between them—“we don’t have time for this.”

Mia raises her hand, and my mind blanks again.

The girl only arches her brow. “Try it. I’ll break both of your fucking legs and you walking out of here won’t be a goddamn question, will it?”

I feel like she’s reached in and ripped away my shock. My hackles rise, and no one is more surprised than me to hear a sound like a growl come tearing out of my mouth. If she so much as touches Mia—

“Look, we’re running out of time,” the boy says. “I checked the other building. Wherever your brother is, he isn’t here—but none of us are going to find him if we don’t get moving.”

Mia is breathing so hard it steams the air. She looks to me for an answer, and I hope I’m not making the biggest mistake of my life when I nod.

“Follow the road out—see that SUV? That’s our ride.” The girl jerks her thumb toward the car parked across the lanes, about a half mile down the road. “We’ll be right behind you. But for the love of God,
hustle
.”

It’s raining in earnest now; the clouds pelt us with cold, fat drops that do more to clear the haze of exhaustion than the growing disbelief that we’re out, that we’re with other kids, that this is happening.

“Who are these people?” Mia whispers. “How does she know who you are?”

“They’re friends…I think,” I say.

And I know I’m right a second later, when the back door to the car opens and a small figure climbs down, awkwardly trying to swing a heavy walking cast out without slipping. I don’t realize I’m moving faster, hobbling forward on my own bum leg, until suddenly I can see the worry fade from her face and relief settle in. I laugh at how pitiful we must look with our limps, but somehow it’s perfect. Despite all of our differences, Ruby and I have always been a pair.

She was always so careful and reserved with her touch and words, I’m shocked all over again as she throws her arms around my shoulders. Her clothes breathe out the heat of the car, and I let myself sag against her, too close to sobbing to say anything.

I knew she was okay. I read everything about her the papers published, including the fact that one of the Camp Controllers had broken her leg when she shut down the camp’s power. I saw the news reports speculating what was “to be done” with her, because of what her abilities are, every minute spliced with shots of a thousand exploding camera flashes as she left the hotel in West Virginia to go home with her parents. But I didn’t realize how badly I wanted and needed to see her until this moment.

“Are you okay?” Ruby asks, voice breaking. “Did they hurt you? We got here as fast as we could—”

Something about the way she cries finally triggers my own tears. They collect in my lashes, disappear in her long, dark hair. Another door opens and shuts; the driver comes around the front of the car. I recognize him, too. There’s a bit of scruff on his face, and he’s wearing a plaid shirt and leather jacket instead of black fatigues, but he’s the one who came rushing into our cabin with the purple-haired girl looking for Ruby. Now he hangs back, watching us with a wary expression, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans.

“How?” I manage to get out as I pull back.
How did you know? How did you find us?

“I had a friend flag your profile in the system so it would alert me if someone searched for you,” Ruby says, green eyes bright. “I hope that’s okay. I was so worried when I realized you weren’t at the hotel, and your parents never checked in. I’ve been looking for you for
weeks
.”

She turns to Mia, who hangs back, arms crossed, clutching at her elbows. Ruby brings a small, encouraging smile to her face. I haven’t seen one like it from her in years, maybe ever. Something about her steadiness must speak to the part of Mia that craves it, because she takes Ruby’s hand when she offers it, shakes it all proper and civilized.

“I’m Ruby Dal—”

“—I know who you are,” Mia blurts out. “I mean…the news…they let us watch at our hotel.”