In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds 3)

“Well, realistically, we’ll probably all be in sleeping bags,” Cole said, irritation simmering under each word, “but no, no catches. If they want to be trained, then we’ll train them. If they want to fight, then who the hell am I to stop them? But I have a feeling they’re just as invested in finding out what caused IAAN and learning more about this so-called cure. And I also have this here little feeling that they’ll be hard-pressed to find another group willing to help them get back to their parents.”

“Don’t manipulate them into thinking this is—”

“This is what?” I asked quietly, pulling him aside. “A way for them to survive? Liam...I get it, fighting is dangerous, but this kind of life is dangerous, too, isn’t it? Being sick and starved and constantly on the run? They don’t have to stay at the Ranch forever. We can get them out once we figure out a safe system for it, if that’s what they want.”

He looked pained; if he had struggled with the idea of me being trapped with the League, what were the chances he would ever accept this for Zu? No matter how much he wanted to see the camps freed, to see a real cure out there, his first instinct was always going to be to take the road that was safest for the people he cared about the most.

“When all of this is over,” I said, my eyes sliding over to where Cole was helping the other kids eagerly pack up their things, “we can go anywhere we want. Isn’t that worth it? Having her come with us now is the only way we can guarantee she’s safe. We can take care of her.”

We should never have let her go in the first place.

He let out a rush of breath. “Hey Zu, how would you feel about helping us start a little war?”

She looked up at him, and over to me, her eyebrows drawn together as she considered this. Then Zu shrugged, like, Sure. Got nothing better to do.

“All right.” Liam released the words on the tail end of a sigh, and I felt the tension escape my body with it. With one arm around my shoulder, and his other hand on Zu’s, we started back through the trees to where the others were waiting. It was grounding, the familiarity of it—like I was finally tethered back to the world again. “All right.”

By the time we made it back to the cars, Chubs and Vida were there, leaning against the side of the truck. But while Chubs was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, firing off a hundred questions to Zu that he had no chance of getting answers to, Vida took one look at her, crossed her arms over her chest, and came toward us.

“Hey, Vi, this is—”

She didn’t stop, not to let me finish, not to take Zu’s hand when she held it out to shake. Vida’s eyes flashed as they met mine, and the accusation there was as silent as it was baseless. Her jaw clenched with the venom she was clearly fighting to keep back. “Can we get out of this f**king dump now?”

And just like that, the feeling of security was gone. A sick unease crept in, tearing my attention in two. Half of me wanted to go after her into the woods and the other half, the louder, more demanding one, wanted to stay exactly where I was, happily caught up in my love for the three people around me. My heart was swollen with it as Zu wrapped her arms around Chubs’s narrow waist again and he patted the top of her head in his usual awkward way.

Liam had turned to follow Vida’s shape as it disappeared into the darkness. When he turned back, I saw the question there; my own confusion, reflected back.

But I had no idea why she was angry.

It was hours past midnight by the time we reached Lodi, and the moon was already beginning its downward glide toward the western horizon. I’d slept on and off for a total of four hours, but felt absolutely no better for it. Sticking to surface streets, winding up California’s spine at a leisurely pace, had added an extra four hours to an already long trip—and the extra hour it took to find one more car, and enough gas to keep us all going, rounded it out to an even ten hours. We seemed to be caught in some kind of reality in which time was simultaneously stretching and shrinking; minutes flew by, but in endless numbers. The rushing tides of anxiety and fear washed in and out of me, and I caught myself sending up desperate, silent prayers that we’d find Cate and the others waiting for us. The day had already gone too well, and I knew better than to expect some kind of pattern to form. Life had the nasty habit of lifting me up just to throw me back down.

The town was more rural than I was expecting, at least the fringes of it. There were a number of barren fields that might once have been vineyards, but they’d been left to wither and die in the shadow of a series of long, silver warehouses.

“There it is,” Cole said, lifting his hand from the wheel to point. I was surprised he could tell the difference between each, given that they looked identical to my eye, especially in the dark.

“Are they here?”

“We’ll know in a second.”

The sky had blossomed into pale lavender by the time we entered the edge of town, our little line of cars like a parade through the empty streets. Cole’s mood was shifting again, ticking higher and lighter as the car slowed and turned into a used-car dealership. He guided the car into one of the empty, covered spaces—next to what was most definitely an old exterminator’s van and an electrical company’s truck.

Not a used-car dealership, I thought. At least not anymore.

“Okay, Gem.” Cole took a deep breath and glanced up at the roof of the car, muttering something I couldn’t hear. “You ready?”