Never Fade (The Darkest Minds 2)

“When was this?”

“Just after you left HQ.” Vida tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, glancing over at me. “Nico said you told him not to, but something you said to Cole made him push the issue. They’re sitting on the video until we bring the intel back.”

Of course—because keeping the Children’s League together was the top priority here. Not protecting kids. Not cutting off the psychopaths.

“Let me see if I understand this,” Chubs began. “Cate was in on everything from the beginning, but she kept silent on it? Was that to act as some kind of fail-safe?”

“Not bad, Grannie,” Vida said. “Cole said Cate’s role had to stay a secret, even from you. If you dipshits got caught and were brought in for questioning, he didn’t want you to be able to implicate her—if he took the fall, at least Cate would still be around to be on our side. She hated it, but I told her she had to agree, otherwise I wasn’t going to help you. She didn’t say yes until she realized there was no way to get Jude removed from the mission without it making people suspicious. Rob requested him personally.”

Jude looked like he was a breath away from throwing up all over himself. The firelight drew out the flush of panic in his cheeks.

Vida threw a truly pitying look his way. “Cate said he ran after you called him out. Went totally off the f**king grid before Barton could bring him in for questioning.”

“So he won’t be there when we get back,” Jude said, sighing in relief.

No, but it meant that I had released a furious monster out into the world to rip it apart and remake to his own liking.

“That’s everything I know,” Vida said. “The end. But I’m telling you now, if either of you breathe a word—one goddamn word—about Cate, I will come down on you so hard, they’ll be naming hurricanes after me for a f**king century.”

I opened my mouth to fire back at her but thought better of it in the end. For as long as I’d known Vida, I’d felt a sharp sense of pity over her obvious worship of Cate. I thought I’d been given a glimpse of the real Cate that lived below the pristine exterior. But now it was becoming harder and harder to believe that either one of us was completely right about who she was. To me, her belief in the League had always seemed naive—I really thought she blinded herself to everything going on around her to stay in that happy world that existed only in her mind. Maybe Jude really was right, and the League of today didn’t remotely resemble the one she had willingly joined years ago.

Then why did she only give herself up to me in pieces? And why had it taken me so long to put them together into a somewhat complete picture?

“You’ve been communicating directly with Cate, I suppose?” Chubs took the Chatter out of my limp hand and turned it over. “She’s been guiding you along?”

“Yeah,” Vida said. “She sent me the routes to get down here. Too bad she couldn’t just load his ass into Google Maps. Not even Nico has been able to track him.”

The screen between Chubs’s fingers flashed to life and let out a low, vibrating growl. The light it emitted was bright enough that we could all watch as his eyebrows rose steadily up past his glasses’ frames to his hairline.

“Well, maybe she can’t send exact coordinates,” he said, flipping it around, “but she has an idea of where we could start.”

TWELVE

TARGET SIGHTED OUTSIDE NASHVILLE // HOSTILE BLUE TRIBE IN NEARBY AREA // APPROACH WITH CAUTION

“The sighting isn’t listed in the skip-tracer network,” Chubs said. His finger flicked against the screen of the small tablet I had fished out of the glove box for him, scrolling down. “That’s not surprising, though. I haven’t been able to pick up an Internet signal in a few days to download an update.”

“What is that thing?” I asked. At the top of the color screen was Liam’s bruised, scowling face—the picture that had been taken, I guess, when he was brought into Caledonia. Next to the photo was a list of the same information I had been able to access in the PSF network—the only update being that his reward had gone up to $200,000 and his last reported sighting was outside of Richmond, Virginia.

“It has direct access to the skip-tracer network,” Chubs said. “You get one after you register and are approved by the government. The information on there is closely guarded—the PSFs don’t have access to it, so they can’t swoop in and steal a score.”

It was a touch screen, easy enough to flick through the various listings beneath it. A skip tracer named P. Everton had been the one to sight him in Richmond—he had posted the following on Liam’s listing: Stewart driving red Chevy truck, stolen plates. Target in jeans and black hooded sweatshirt. Lost sight of car during pursuit.

“Why would they be sharing information with one another like this?” I asked. “If only one of them gets the reward?”

“Because if a tip turns out to be good, you’re upped in the standings. Each kid, especially the big bounties, are assigned points in addition to dollar amounts—but you can also earn points by adding tips or supporting the PSFs when they are trying to locate a kid.” Chubs shrugged. “The top twenty or so skip tracers get more supplies from the government, not to mention better equipment—and easy access to the Internet. That alone makes a huge difference. I can’t even tell you how many stupid kids have been found because of the pictures and postings their families had online. I think that’s probably how the PSFs found me the first time. Mom forgot she had an album of our cabin up on some website.”

I nodded, continuing to scroll through the list. There were only about a thousand or so active listings of kids, many of them without pictures. These, I assumed, were the lucky ones who had been added to the online IAAN registry by their unsuspecting parents for updates and instructions from the government, but who had avoided being collected and brought into a camp. They had either found a great place to hide or had mastered the art of living off the grid. I kept scrolling.

Dale, Andrea. Dale, George Ryan. Daley, Jacob Marcus.

Daly, Ruby.

The picture was of a ten-year-old me, eyes wide under a ratty mess of wet, dark hair. That’s right, I thought. It had been raining the day they brought us in.

“What the hell?” I held it up for him to see. “Four hundred thousand dollars for a reward?”