Never Fade (10 page)

Rob and Jarvin weren’t patient souls. They always finished their Ops on schedule. This would be no different, I was sure of it. Cate and a few other agents might be sympathetic toward us kids, but for how long? If we became liabilities, if it looked like we were nothing more than messes to be cleaned up, would they still stand with us?

Again and again, my mind kept turning back to the grenade, the way it had exploded directly under our feet. The way Rob had ordered us to stand exactly there.

I had the power to fix this; I knew I did. It was just a matter of getting close enough to Rob and all of his friends to do it. And, unfortunately, that was going to be the hardest part.

“Not a word,” I said, turning to go. “I’ll take care of this.”

And I would. I was Leader. Any thought I had been entertaining about escaping once I had word on Liam and the others fled like a dream in the morning.

Jude was alive, and Nico was alive, and I was alive—and, for now, I needed to focus every ounce of my energy on keeping it that way.

FIVE

I
NSTEAD OF HEADING BACK TO THE ATRIUM
, I hit the stairs and went up a level, following the second floor’s curve to the locker room to shower and change. HQ was cold and dingy as always, but every inch of me felt sticky and hot, like I was on the edge of a fever. A few minutes under freezing cold water would help me clear my head. I could use the rare quiet to try to put together some kind of plan to make sure one of us was with Jude at all times.

The lights were already on when I stepped inside. They had automatic motion sensors, meaning someone had either just come in or just left. I stayed completely still, my back flush against the door, listening to the steady drip of a faucet somewhere across the room. No one was in the showers; all of the yellow curtains had been thrown open, and I didn’t hear the squeak of faucets or the usual explosion of pressurized water.

What I did hear was quiet—almost undetectable under the drip. A steady tapping, like a boot against cement, and a rustling, like a page turning…

I took the long way around the lockers, crossing one foot over the other as I ducked around the corner and stepped into the other long row of gleaming silver metal.

Cole didn’t look up from where he was sitting on the bench, a folder in his hands. I caught a glimpse of the familiar sketch of Thurmond’s electric fence as he turned the page.

“…was Caledonia a lot like this, do you think?”

Every muscle in my back tensed, forcing me to stand up straight when the sight of him was enough to make me want to sink into the ground. I flexed my hands into fists at my sides and took a deep breath.

“No,” I said. “Caledonia was smaller. They remodeled an old elementary school. But some of the details are the same.”

He nodded absently.

“Thurmond, man,” he said, dropping a finger on it. “I saw some rudimentary sketches of it a few years back, but nothing this detailed. The agents we had there didn’t get to see half of this stuff—not even Conner.”

I stayed exactly where I was by the lockers, waiting for him to leave.

“Alban passed these handy copies out at our senior staff meeting tonight,” Cole said. “Cate got up to excuse herself halfway through. Any idea why?”

I said nothing. In truth, I did have an idea. Cate had been trying to drive me off this track for months. I had to slip the folder to Alban when she wasn’t around.

“And here I thought you were a mind reader,” he said with a faint laugh.

Cole’s muscles were still stiff, and it was obvious he was in a great deal of pain as he stood. He tilted his head toward the showers.

I followed him into one of the shower stalls. The curtain rings screamed as he pulled the cheap plastic shut behind us, making me jump and press my back against the cement wall. It was tight quarters, and I was already feeling uncomfortable when he leaned around me, bruised face a few inches away from mine, to turn the shower on at full blast.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, trying to push my way past him. He grabbed my shoulder and held me next to him under the stream. We were drenched before Cole began to speak.

“The showers are the only place in HQ that aren’t recorded. I don’t want to take a chance that the other cameras in the room can pick up our little chat.”

“I have absolutely nothing to say to you,” I said, pulling myself free.

“And yet I have so much to say to
you
.” Cole put both arms out to block me and nearly lost his balance. Unsteady on his feet, not performing up to maximum strength, tired—an easy target. I rammed my shoulder into him, but I must have telegraphed my plan. He caught one of my arms and twisted until my muscles screamed and my joints felt like they would pop. His skin was hot, like he was trying to spread the fire burning in his blood to mine.

He’s one of them, he’s one of them, he’s one of them—

“Calm down!” he barked, giving me a hard shake. “Get a grip! I’m not gonna hurt you! I want to talk about Liam!”

Cole released his iron grip on my arm, then took a step back, holding up his hands. I was still breathing hard as I turned. The water served as a nice barrier that neither of us was willing to cross. Steam curled up around my soaking sneakers, then my knees, and then I was breathing the hot damp air into my tight chest.

“Liam who?” I said, when I got a grip on myself.

Cole gave me an exasperated look, and I knew the game was up.

“You brought him back in,” I said, an edge to my voice. “I did
everything
to make sure he’d be safe.”

“Safe?” Cole laughed without a hint of humor. “You think sending the idiot out into the world to be captured or killed was a kindness? He’s lucky I still check for our contact procedure, otherwise the skip tracer on his ass would have happily delivered him to camp.”

I couldn’t help it; my fists clenched. “How did you force him to help you?”

“Why do you assume I forced him to do anything, darlin’?”

“Don’t,” I gritted out, “call me that.”

Cole’s light brows rose. “I guess that answers my question about why you lied to Alban. Care to explain how you even know my brother?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Cate didn’t tell you?”

“I have my suspicions, but there wasn’t any mention of him in your file.” Cole cocked his head to the side, a gesture that was Liam to a
T
. The second and third fingers on his left hand tapped against his leg—a nervous tic, maybe. “Alban seems to have some idea, but the others don’t.”

He leaned out of the stream, resting against the stall for support. Still suffering, but coasting on a wave of pride that kept him from showing it. Classic Stewart move. “Look, he wasn’t working with me at all. That night—the one you saw—was the first time I had seen him since he split from the League years ago. We set up a contact procedure for emergencies, and he used it. I thought it was a life-or-death situation, otherwise I
never
would have told him how to find me.”

“Because you were on a deep cover Op?” I asked. “What the hell is on that flash drive? I’ve never seen Alban so worked up.”

Cole kept a steady gaze on my face, and, I think—because I was so furious—I was finally able to match it. “Tell me.”

He blew out a long sigh, rubbing the top of his head with bandaged fingers. They’d broken every single one on his left hand to try to get information out of him. Alban had told me as much, with no small amount of satisfaction.

“I’m guessing your Op, whatever it was, ended up being compromised and that’s why they stormed your apartment?”

Cole looked insulted at the suggestion. “Hell, no. My cover was impeccable. I could have stayed there forever and they wouldn’t have suspected a damn thing. I only got hauled in because the skip tracer trailing Lee saw him go into my apartment and called me in for aiding a fugitive Psi kid. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t shown up—I was
three hours
away from being extracted!”

“Fine, but you still haven’t told me what the hell you were doing in Philadelphia. I want to know what was on that flash drive and why you couldn’t find it at the end. That’s what you were looking for, right?”

“Yeah,” he said finally. “That’s what I was looking for. The dumbass took it without even realizing it.”

I balked at that. “What?”

“I was deep cover at Leda Corp, working as a lab tech on their Psi research that Gray commissioned. You heard about that program, right?” He waited until I nodded before continuing. “My original objective was just to keep an eye on how things were going. Alban wanted to know what kinds of tests they were running and if they had figured anything out, but I was also supposed to report back if I thought it was possible to extract any kids from the program.”

“You did,” I said, making the link so suddenly it surprised even me. “Nico—that was the testing program he was in.”

Cole hunched his shoulders against the stream of water. “He was the only subject that was…strong enough to be taken out. The others were just…I can’t describe it to you without it sounding like a horror show.”

“How did you get him out?”

“Simulated cardiac arrest and death,” he said. “The ‘disposal service’ the lab used was called, but the League picked him up first.”

My brain was firing at a rapid pace, drumming up one horrible possibility after another. “So the intel on that flash drive—it was research that you stole?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Something like that?” I repeated in disbelief. “I don’t even get to know what’s on the stupid thing?”

He hesitated long enough that I was sure he wouldn’t actually tell me. “Think about it—what’s the one thing every parent of a dead kid wants to know? The one thing scientists have been after for years?”

The cause of the Psi disease.

“Are you—” No. He wasn’t kidding. Not about this.

“I can’t give you details. I didn’t have time to look through the research before I downloaded everything, but I heard the talk in the lab that afternoon when they concluded their experiments. They had proof the government is responsible for all of this.” Cole clenched his hands into tight fists. “Though the fact that they shuttered the lab and permanently silenced all of the scientists the day after I got picked up by PSFs should be proof enough for most people.”

“Did you tell Alban?” I asked. No wonder he was so desperate.

“Not until I got back and I had to think up some excuse for why my cover was blown. I told him I downloaded it, but it set off some silent security system. I’m sure my pride will recover from that in about a thousand years.” Cole sighed. “I was afraid if I told him what I had, the agents here would already have figured out how to use it before I even got back with it.”

Cole’s fingers tapped at his side. “I couldn’t tell him before and risk the news getting ahead of me. As disconnected from HQ as I was, I saw things were changing here. People I knew and trusted were being shuffled out to the other bases, and people I didn’t like all of a sudden had Alban’s ear. It was enough to make a guy a little uncomfortable, you know?”

I nodded.

“I knew if I had something real to offer Alban,” Cole continued, “there’d be a good chance we could outmaneuver the agents trying to change the League. But if word got around here what it was, they’d be able to start planning ways to use it. That intel is the currency we need to buy this joint back from the bad seeds, to convince Alban to stick with us. It’s the only way to outgun them at the staff table when their plan starts looking like the only real option we have.”

Random bursts of Rob and Alban’s argument were blasting in my ears.
Big statement. Children. Camps.

“If this intel is so important, how did you get it out of Leda in the first place?”

“Sewed the damn flash drive into the lining of my jacket. I walked right out of the building with it, because I was on the security team, and my buddies there didn’t feel the need to frisk me. I knew someone would be alerted I downloaded the files, but I used one of the scientists’ network IDs,” he said. “Easiest damn thing I’d ever done. By the time they figured out she was innocent, I was going to be long gone. Until my
precious
little brother saw the PSFs coming toward my apartment while I was out getting us food. He bailed and grabbed my jacket instead of his by mistake.”

If Cole hadn’t looked so angry about it, I’m not sure I would have believed him. I was torn between laughing and beating his head into the concrete wall behind us.

“How could you have been so stupid?” I asked. “How could you make such a dumb mistake? You’ve put his life in danger—”

“The important thing is that we can still get the intel back.”

“The most important—” I was almost too outraged to string a sentence together. “Liam’s life is more important than that stupid flash drive!”

“My, my.” A feral grin spread across Cole’s face. “Little brother must be a good kisser.”

The rage flared up in me so fast, so strong, that I actually forgot to slap him.

“Go to hell,” I said, and tried to charge past him. Cole caught me again and pushed me back, chuckling. My hand twitched at my side. Let’s see who’d be laughing when I fried every single thought out of his brain.