Never Fade (6 page)

It was the size of a phone and could easily have doubled for one if you weren’t casting too careful of an eye on it. They’d salvaged an older generation of phones—the kind with an actual keypad, rather than a sleek touchscreen. The new shells they’d created for them were oval and thin enough to slide into a back pocket or up a sleeve during a lesson.

A couple of the Greens had developed this little gem with the idea that agents could relay digital messages, photos, and short videos back home without needing to ditch burner phone after burner phone. The tech behind them was mostly a mystery to me, but I understood they communicated on some un-hackable network the Greens had developed. They could only be used to contact other Chatters on the network, and only then if you had the other Chatter’s secret PIN number. They were useless if you needed to send large images or video files longer than thirty seconds; Alban had rejected sending them out in the field for that reason, dismissing them as some bored kid’s project. As far as I knew, the Greens usually just used them now to chat with one another in HQ when they were in different training sessions or at night after lights out.

“—really come back? Did you get to meet the agent? Was he as badass as everyone says? Can we—?”

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking between Nico and the TV screen. They’d picked the one showing only local California weather and news.

It was like I’d sucked the words straight out of him. Jude tensed in that wide-eyed way of his before flashing the kind of smile that was trying too hard.

“What’s going on?” I repeated.

Jude swallowed, glancing at Nico before leaning down to my ear. His eyes were scanning the atrium like they were looking for dark corners that didn’t exist.

“They sent Blake Howard out on an Op,” he said. “We’re just…”

“Blake Howard? The Green kid from Team One?” The one who looked like you could take him out with one well-aimed sneeze?

Jude nodded, giving another nervous glance behind me. “I’m just…worried, you know? Nico is, too.”

Shocker. Nico was never one to pass up a good conspiracy theory, especially when it came to the League. Every agent was a double agent. Alban was actually working with Gray to bring down the Federal Coalition. Someone was poisoning our water supply with lead. I don’t know where he got it from or if it was just the way his brain was processing all of the information he was absorbing and he didn’t know how to shut it off.

“They must be trading him for something,” Nico said, gripping the Chatter. “For information? To get another agent back? That’s not so crazy, right? There are so many Greens here already. They hate having so many of us. They hate us.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “Did the Op involve tech?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, but,” Jude said, “when have they ever sent out a Team One kid? They’re supposed to be for HQ use only.”

He wasn’t wrong. Vida called them the Squeakers, and the name had stuck with everyone. All Greens with supercharged logic and reasoning skills that the League put to use in deciphering codes and building computer viruses, creating these insane devices. They all had the same stumbling walk; Nico too. A weird half step where they dragged their feet against the tile, causing their sneakers to make these little squeaking noises. I’m sure they had picked it up from one another subconsciously; they were always moving in sync, just like the parts of a working machine should.

“He’s of age and he has the right skill set to help them,” I said. “I know for a fact the other Green teams are occupied this week. He might have been a last resort.”

“No,” Jude said. “We think they picked him on purpose. They wanted
him
.”

It was a while before Jude built up the nerve to look at me again. When he did, his expression was so obviously ashamed and terrified that I felt myself soften just enough to ask, “Is there something you’re not telling me? What am I missing here?”

Jude twisted the stretched-out hem of his shirt into a knot. Nico only stared straight ahead, eyes unblinking as they fixed on the Chatter.

“Me, Nico, and…Blake,” Jude began, “the three of us were messing around a few days ago down here. We’ve been trying to build one of those remote-control cars from leftover computer parts.”

“Okay…”

“Nico had to go up and talk to Cate, but me and Blake took the car on a test drive around this floor. It was around two in the afternoon, and no one was down here. So we thought it would be fine and that we wouldn’t bother anyone. But…you know those rooms that we use to store things for Ops? Like, the vests, extra ammo, that stuff?”

I nodded.

“We heard voices coming from one of them. I thought maybe the guys were just playing a card game or something—sometimes they do it down here so they can bad-mouth Alban or one of the advisers,” Jude said, visibly shaking now. “But when I heard them, what they were actually saying—they weren’t playing a game, Roo, they were talking about us. It was Rob, and Jarvin, and a couple of their friends. They kept saying things like
Reducing the freak population
and
Getting Alban back on track
and how they were going to prove what a waste of time and—and resources we were.”

It was a chill that sank straight to the bone. I pulled out the nearest chair and dragged it closer to Nico. Jude did the same, his hands twisting around each other.

“And they caught you listening?”

“I know it’s stupid, but when I heard that, I freaked out—I didn’t mean to, but I dropped the car. We ran before the door opened, but I’m positive they saw us. I heard Rob call my name.”

“Then what?” I pressed. My mind was making connections now, dangerous ones.

“Then Blake got assigned to that Op even though he’s on Team One. Jarvin said that they needed a Green to hack into the company’s server room, and he didn’t have a choice.”

I leaned back slowly. Reduce the freak population. My ear, the one that had taken the brunt of the grenade’s blast, seemed to have a pulse of its own.

That was an accident,
I told myself.
Rob was just being reckless.
But the second lie sounded less convincing than the first. Reduce the freak population. How? By putting them in deadly situations on Ops that could be waved off as accidents? Rob had killed kids before—I only knew of those two I’d glimpsed in his memory, but what’s to say there weren’t more?

Jesus
. A blinding wave of nausea blasted up from my stomach. Did he kill them to keep the number of kids here down?

No—no, I needed to stop. My thoughts were spiraling and getting out of hand. This was Nico and Jude—two boys with too much free time to sit around and trade nightmares. They were constantly poking at trouble, then acted all shocked when it turned around and bit them in their asses.

“It’s just a coincidence,” I said. I had another point to make, I’m sure, but it unhooked from my chain of thoughts when I heard someone call my name from across the room. One of Alban’s advisers, good old Raccoon Face, stood in the atrium’s doorway.

“He’d like to speak to you in his office an hour from now.”

Then he turned on his heel and was gone, clearly angry he’d been tasked to play messenger.

“What does he want?” Jude asked, visibly confused.

You almost never saw the walking suits more than a few feet away from Alban; I wouldn’t have been surprised if they broke into his quarters every night and took turns whispering plans and sweet nothings in his ear while he slept.

There were ten men total, all over the age of fifty, who had divided up the areas of Alban’s focus and assumed control over each. They coordinated and approved Ops, brought in supplies and new contacts, recruited new trainers, managed the League’s finances. All so Alban could focus on “big picture” goals and targets.

Jude claimed they were only there because Gray wanted them dead for one reason or another and they had no choice but to go underground. I still didn’t know half of their names, since most made it a point to never directly engage with the Psi freaks. It was easier just to fixate on their features and nickname from there. Raccoon Face, Monkey Ears, Horse Teeth, and Frog Lips were the ones I saw most.

What the names lacked in creativity, they made up for in accuracy.

“A debrief? Already?” Jude asked, glancing to the TV again.

I reached over and manually flipped the machine off.

“Hey!”

“You’re late,” I said, pointing to the clock on the wall. “Another two minutes and Instructor Johnson will hit you with a demerit.”

“So?” Jude shot back. “This is more important!”

“More important than eventually being activated?” I said. “Because the last time I checked, you were two demerits away from being stuck on HQ support forever.”

It was a mean tactic to play; Nico’s fuming look told me as much. But he knew, probably better than I did, that a future in which Jude never got to go out on an Op was a future Jude would have sold both arms to avoid.

I walked them out, tailing them all the way to the training room in case they got any ideas about slipping away. The teams we usually trained with—Two, Three, and Four—were already there, warming up, darkening the wall of mirrors. This was the one part in all of HQ that actually smelled fully human. The stench of sweat and warm bodies gave this hall a jolt of real, tangible life. It was better than the mildew, at least.

Instructor Johnson nodded in my direction as I held the door open, the fluorescent lights bleaching his already blond hair. Both Vida and I were excused from lessons and training for the day, but tomorrow they’d start all over again for us. I’d fall back into this place’s pattern, grateful for the relief of not needing to think about anything other than moving from hour to hour, door to door. A life lesson on how to cope, courtesy of Thurmond.

Jude and Nico could both hate me for this; I didn’t care. I just couldn’t afford to feed on their fear and let it twist my own. I’d worked so hard to numb myself to this place, and they didn’t get to blow that apart. They got my attention, my concern, my protection, but they didn’t get that.

Showered, fed, clothing changed, and thoughts collected, I was ready to meet with John Alban. But he wasn’t ready for me.

There was a lot you could say about the League’s founder, and maybe two words of it were actually flattering. He was a smart man, no one was going to deny it. The League was what it was today because of him. It was just that some felt it was time for him to take the assaults against Gray to “a new level,” and others were pressing for him to hold the course, since it was working.

I thought he had every right to want to think more about such a huge decision, but I understood their impatience. I knew they wanted to capitalize on the growing discontent and murmurs of protests we’d been tracking.

I heard voices beyond the door, soft at first, then enflamed enough to catch my attention. Every intention I had of knocking fell apart the longer I stood there, listening.

“No!” Alban was saying. “My God, no!
No!
How many times do I need to repeat the word for it to join your vocabulary? It was the answer the first time you presented it to the senior staff, when you convinced Jarvin to present it to the advisers, and, yes, now.”

“You’re not thinking this through—”

I rocked back on my heels instinctively, away from Rob’s harsh voice.

“You think we can keep this up without making a big statement? How many of these things do you just have sitting around HQ, wasting our time and energy?”

Alban cut him off. “They are not
things
, as you, I’m sure, are well aware. This is nonnegotiable. The ends will never justify the means, no matter how you try to pitch this. Never. They are
children
.”

In the back of my mind, a thought was beginning to knot itself with another, darker one, but I forced my attention to stay here. Now.

“You’re the one who always says
anything to get Gray out
, aren’t you? The distraction would be more than enough for us to go in and dismantle the camps, blast the news out to the rest of the damn country. This is the only way in now. They’ve wised up to our forged IDs—we can’t even get in to extract the agents we still have embedded in the camps. They’re waiting for us! We’re all waiting for you to do
something
! Decide
something
!”

There was a long, bitter silence that followed. Whatever words Alban was looking for, he never found them. I couldn’t keep my own mind in check. What kind of plan could get him this worked up?

“I’m just warning you,” Rob continued, sounding calmer, “that even I’ve heard agents wondering about what kind of policy we’re moving toward. A good number still think that you want to rekindle things with Gray in the end. That you miss your friend.”

I closed my eyes. It was an unspoken rule that we didn’t bring up Alban’s former friendship with President Gray and the first lady for any reason. Cate told me once that Alban didn’t even like to be reminded of the work he’d done as Secretary of Homeland Security—so I imagine he wasn’t thrilled to be reminded he was once in a small circle of people who enjoyed private dinners in the executive residence of the White House.

A new voice chimed in. “John, let’s not dismiss this entirely. This is a tactic that’s been employed before, and it
is
effective. They wouldn’t know. We have ways of hiding the mechanism—”

I was so focused on the conversation in front of me that I didn’t hear the person who hobbled up behind me. Not until he was hovering at my back, tapping on my shoulder to get my attention.

“I’d keep this one to yourself, Keyhole Kate,” Cole said. “Or do you need to hear the old one about that pesky cat and his curiosity?”

It was too late to jump back and pretend I hadn’t been listening, and now I was too flustered to bother trying.

The medic on Rob’s team had done a good job patching up the deeper cuts on Cole’s face, cleaning away the filth from his skin. He was wearing a loose shirt and pants that were a number of sizes too big for him, but he was out of his old vomit-stained rags, at least. He looked like a different person, and I was grateful for it. It was easier to get a look at him.