In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds 3)

“No!” That single word, a sharp bark from Chubs, brought Vida up short. “Absolutely not! Take her back to the room and stay there!”

There were a number of Greens hovering outside the window.

“Get lost!” Vida barked at them. And by the force of her voice alone, they did, scrambling to get away as she opened the computer room’s door and thrust me inside.

“What’s going on? Did something happen?” Senator Cruz appeared in the hallway, Alice not far behind, her flaming red hair collected in a crooked ponytail, red marks from her pillow and sheets on her face. Vida must have tried to explain to them but I heard none of it. Nico looked like he’d been sick several times over, and the smell in the computer room seemed to align with that theory. He was drenched in sweat as I came toward him.

“Do you...do you really want to see?”

“This is a bad idea! Ruby, listen to me, you don’t want to—” Chubs’s pitch got higher until it finally cracked. He leaned back against the wall, his face buried in his hands.

Nico didn’t move. His hands were limp in his lap, forcing me to reach over and click through the series of photos that had come through from the cell phone on Cole. There was a test shot in broad daylight—a distant mountain, Liam’s back as he faced it, looking out into the distance. There were three dozen of a low, squat building, all taken after sundown. He’d captured the PSFs posted outside, a ladder up to the building’s roof, a sniper in position. If there was a fence around the camp, Cole and Liam were already inside of it when they’d started snapping the photos.

“They’re going in,” Senator Cruz said. “I thought they were supposed to stay outside?”

They had gone inside. The images were fuzzy, lacking the brightness the full moon outside had provided. They were high up, looking down at tables below, the heads bent over them, eating. The kids wore dark red scrubs—the same uniforms we all had to wear in the camps, but the color—I hadn’t seen that shade in years—

The next image was of one of those kids in uniform looking up, eyes locking on the phone. My finger hesitated over the mouse before clicking again. Nico made a small noise at the back of his throat, his hand closing over mine. “Ruby, you don’t want to...”

I pressed my finger down.

There was a moment where my mind couldn’t make sense of what it was seeing. The photos were taken inside of a dark room, the walls painted black, the lights lining the floors rather than the ceilings. The figure at the center of the room was slumped forward in a chair, the weight of his body straining against the restraints around his chest. Blond hair fell over his face, masking it. My hand gripped the desk as I clicked forward again. A metallic taste flooded my mouth when I noticed the splatters of blood on his neck and ears. The angle made it impossible to tell, I needed another photo—

Click.

“Who took these photos?” Senator Cruz demanded, though no one seemed to be able to respond.

“My guess is the people who caught...” Alice wasn’t sure if it was a him or them. I pressed back against the question, focusing on the screen. Someone had hung a sheet of paper over his neck. Two words had been scrawled there in thick, uneven writing: TRY AGAIN.

In the corner of the shot was a sliver of deep red cloth, and even though my brain knew what was coming, knew it sure enough for the screaming to start inside of my head, I moved to the next photo.

Fire.

The image, the whole of it, was flooded with white flame.

Fire.

Fire.

A screen of gray smoke, and—

Senator Cruz tore herself away from the computer, walking to the far corner of the room, trying to escape the sight of the charred remains. “Why? Why do it? Why?”

The dispassionate, cold creature the Children’s League had been careful to nurture in me clawed its way back up inside of me. And for a second, one single second, I was able to look at the burnt, mutilated corpse in the careful, distant way a scientist would have studied a specimen. In the small section of his face I could see, what skin remained was burnt, dark and rough, like a scab.

I moved back through the shots of the fire. The sick ass**les—those goddamn sick f**ks who took these pictures. I’d kill them. I knew where to find them. I would kill each and every one of them. I held onto the cold fury with everything I had because it froze out the pain, it didn’t let me shut down the way I wanted to. The burn of tears was at the back of my eyes, my throat, my chest.

“I can’t tell,” Chubs said, edging closer and closer to full-out hysteria, “dammit—”

I scanned through the earlier photos, my stomach as tight as a fist. If I started crying, the others wouldn’t be able to stop. I had to focus—I had to—I stopped on the second photo of the figure in the chair, when they’d put the sign on him. His head lolled to the left, but I saw it. I hadn’t imagined it. I knew who it was.

“It’s...” Vida leaned forward again. Her nails dug into my shoulder. “I can’t...”

Alice had spun away from the gruesome image, overcome by her own retching. But Nico—Nico was looking at me. I felt the words leave my throat, but I didn’t hear them.

“It’s Cole.”

“What?” Vida asked, looking between me and the screen again. “What did you say?”

“It’s Cole.”

A thousand needles flooded my veins, shooting toward my center. I doubled over against the desk, incapable of speech, of thoughts, of anything other than seeing the body—Cole’s body, what they’d done to it. I sucked in a shallow breath, trying to push the pain down. I wanted the numb control back. My head was spiraling faster, harder than even my stomach. Because I knew what would matter to Cole, I knew what he would be asking. Where is Liam? If Cole was—if Cole was—