Never Fade

punctuated with a slap. When she stood up to hug Cate, I felt two inches tall and as solid as air.

Instead of reclaiming her seat, she stayed standing, inching in front of Cate so that she stood between us. I knew that stance. How many times had I taken that position in front of Zu, or Chubs, or Liam? How many times had they done it for me? With her back to the woman, Vida studied me closely. “You poor thing. Just follow me and you’ll be fine.”

It’s like that, is it? I thought, bristling at her tone.

When she looked back at Cate, it was all sweetness again. Her dark skin had an unmistakably happy glow.

“That’s Nico in the corner,” Vida said, taking over the introductions. “Dude, can you unplug for two seconds?”

Nico was sitting on the floor, his back to Cate’s tiny dresser. He looked small to me somehow, and I immediately saw what Cate meant when she had used the word delicate. It wasn’t his stature or his build, both of which were slight, but the tense lines of his face. A stray strand of raven-black hair escaped from the clutches of the gel cementing his comb-back as he said, “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

And then he dropped his eyes to the small black device in his hands, his fingers flying over the keys. The device cast his tan skin an unnaturally bright white, highlighting even his near-black eyes.

“So, what’s your story?” Vida asked.

I tensed, one arm crossing over the other in a mimic of her stance. And I knew, without any doubt, that if this was going to work—if I was going to live with these kids and see them and train with them—then there needed to be distance. The one thing the past few weeks had driven into me over and over was the more you got to know someone, the more you inevitably came to care about him or her. The lines between you became blurred, and when the separation came, it was excruciating to untangle yourself from that life.

Even if I had wanted to tell them about Thurmond, there was no way to put that kind of pain into words. No way to make them understand, not when just the thought of the Garden, the Factory, the Infirmary was enough to choke me with anger. The burn stayed in my chest and lingered there for days after, the same way the bleach used to blister our hands in the Laundry.

I shrugged.

“What about Martin?” Jude asked. His fingers twisted around one another, wringing his hands pink. “Are we going to have five on our team?”

Cate didn’t miss a beat. “Martin was transferred to Kansas. He’ll be working with the agents there.”

Vida swung back toward her. “Really?”

“Yes,” Cate said. “Ruby will be taking his place as team leader.”

It was over that quickly. Whatever fake pleasantries Vida had managed to summon up for Cate went out with a single, sharp breath, and in that second, I saw the flash of betrayal. I saw her physically swallow the words down and nod.

“Wait, what?” I choked out. I didn’t want this—I didn’t want any of this.

“Cool! Congrats!” Jude gave me a friendly punch to the shoulder, pushing me out of my daze.

“I know you’ll all help Ruby feel welcome and show her the ropes,” Cate said.

“Yeah,” Vida said through her teeth. “Of course. Anything she wants.”

“Let’s go get dinner together,” Jude said in a bright voice. Totally and blissfully ignorant of the way Vida’s fists were clenching and unclenching at her sides. “It’s pasta night!”

“I have to check in with Alban, but the four of you should go—then you can show Ruby where the bunks are and get her settled in,” Cate said.

No sooner had I stepped out the door and shut it behind me than I felt someone grab my ponytail, wrench me around, and throw me up against the nearby wall. Black stars exploded in my vision.

“Vida!” Jude gasped. The outburst was enough to get even Nico to look up.

“If you think for one fucking second that I don’t know what really happened, you’re wrong,” Vida hissed.

“Get out of my face,” I snapped.

“I know that story about Cate losing you is bullshit. I know you ran,” she said. “I will tear you to shreds before you hurt her again.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, feeding off her anger in a way I didn’t expect.

“I know everything I need to,” Vida spat out. “I know what you are. We all do.”

“That’s enough!” Jude said, taking my arm and pulling me back. “We’re getting dinner, Vi. Come or don’t come.”

“Have a lovely fucking meal,” she said in her sweetest voice, but the fury that radiated off Vida’s form cut through the air between us and closed around my neck like a fist. Like a promise.

I’m not sure why the ring of empty tables around us bothered me as much as it did. Maybe it was the same reason Jude felt like he had to talk through the entire meal to make up for their silence.

We had only just sat down at one of the smaller circular tables when a number of agents and other kids got up from theirs. They either took their trays and left the atrium completely, or they squeezed themselves onto one of the already full tables farther away. I tried telling myself it wasn’t because of me, but there are some thoughts that live in your mind like a chronic disease. You think you’ve finally crushed them, only to find them morphing into something newer, darker. Of course they’d get up and leave, a familiar voice whispered in my ear. Why would they ever want to be around something like you?

“—is where we eat and hang out if we have some downtime. After Mess hours they clean everything up so you can come in and play cards or, like, Ping-Pong, or even just watch TV,” Jude said around a mouthful of lettuce. “Sometimes an agent brings back a new movie for us to watch, but I mostly stay downstairs in the computer lab —”

It was bizarre and sort of dizzying to be in the circular-shaped room, and the feeling was intensified by having ten televisions in eyeshot at all times. Each was tuned to the single surviving national news channel—it turns out when you’re willing to jump into the president’s pocket, you find quite a bit of money there—or giving us a riveting view of silent static. I didn’t have the stomach for whatever horrors of the day the anchors were trotting out. It was a much more interesting game to see which new arrival to the atrium broke away to which table. The kids, after they picked up their food from the buffet tables, flocked toward the other kids. The beefier guys that were probably ex-military sat with all the other guys with the exact same look, with only a few female agents scattered in there for some variety.

I was so focused on counting the women off that I didn’t notice Cate at all until she was standing directly behind Jude.

“Alban would like to see you,” she said simply, reaching over to take my tray.

“What? Why?”

Jude must have mistaken my revolted look for one of fear, because he reached over and patted my shoulder. “Oh, no, don’t be nervous! He’s really nice. I’m sure…I’m sure he just wants to chat, since it’s your first day. That’s probably all it is. A one-and-done kind of thing.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, ignoring the note of jealousy I detected in his voice. Apparently being summoned wasn’t a typical thing. “Sure.”

Cate led me out of the atrium and back into the hall, leaving my tray on a waiting cart beside the door. Instead of taking a right or left, she guided me toward a door on the opposite wall I hadn’t noticed before, half dragging me down the stairwell behind it. We bypassed the second level, winding down and around to the third. I was happier from the second she shouldered the door open. It was warmer, dryer than the creeping dampness of the upper floors. I wasn’t even bothered by the smell of static and hot plastic as we passed the large computer room that sat where the atrium did on that level.

“I’m sorry about this,” Cate said. “I know you must be exhausted, but he’s so eager to meet you.”

I clasped my hands behind my back to hide the way they’d started to shake. On the flight over, Cate had tried to paint a noble portrait of Alban as a gentle man of true intelligence—a bona fide American patriot. Which was, you know, a little at odds with everything else I’d heard about him: that he was a terrorist who’d coordinated more than two hundred strikes against President Gray around the country and killed a good number of civilians in the process. The evidence was everywhere—agents had tacked up newspaper articles and newscast screen shots on the walls, like the death and destruction were something to be celebrated.