Blackout

Aubrey’s eyes darted all around the room, looking for some other source of fear—some demon behind the little girl that she was using to mock the terrified Green Berets.

But there was nothing. Just a girl, just a gas mask, and six horrified grown men.

Aubrey struggled to stand, watching the girl to make sure that she hadn’t spotted Aubrey. But no, she was still hidden.

Aubrey stepped forward, staring mystified at the scene in front of her.

And then she smacked the girl in the head with the brick.

FORTY

IT WAS LATE—OR, EARLY. THEY’D been up most of the night, with only a couple of hours back at Dugway to sleep and recover. But the entire dorm had been awakened for a mandatory meeting in another building. Some people said it would be the meeting. Where they found out what would happen to them.

Jack stood outside in the cold October morning, looking up at the stars. Training was over, but it was all too clear that he had a long way to go. He could barely do the lowest levels of the fitness test, and he’d only been given the very basics of how a special forces team worked.

They hadn’t gone through weapons training either, but at least that was one skill he felt he already had. He’d hunted deer every season—and then lived off the venison for the rest of the year. He’d owned his first .22 at eight years old and had a deer rifle by age twelve.

Still, he wasn’t ready for war. He wasn’t ready to be helping the Green Berets, for crying out loud. He wasn’t even a private. He was a Lambda, outranked by every grunt in any of the armed services. And he was still surrounded by barbed-wire fences in all directions. He still had a bomb strapped to his foot.

“You’re going to be late,” a voice said. Jack turned to see Aubrey.

“I was waiting for you.”

She slipped her hand into his. She’d been doing that lately. So had he. He wasn’t sure what it meant, if it meant anything at all.

“I wonder what my parents think,” Jack said. “I wonder what they’ve been told.”

“The quarantine camps have started sending people home,” she said. “I heard that a few of the camps on the West Coast are totally cleared out.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jack asked.

Without hesitation, she nodded. “It feels right.”

Jack wished that he felt so confident, but there were too many things holding him back. He still had a family who loved him, a town that he missed.

And then there was Aubrey.

She could do amazing things. He’d followed her every motion in the school, tracked her every step, and he’d been amazed at how much she’d changed. She acted like a soldier now, after just one week.

But she’d almost been caught. And she’d had to fight. And Jack wanted nothing more than to protect her.

He pointed up at the sky. “I wish you could see this,” he said. “I’ve never seen so many stars.”

Not just stars. He could discern the shadows on the rims of moon craters, the vague clouds of nebulae, the circular disk of Andromeda, the moons of Jupiter. The night sky seemed to be lit up with Christmas lights, and it filled everything around him with light.

He wondered how bright it really was—whether he should be able to see each of Aubrey’s eyelashes, the splashes of color in her irises. He used to think her eyes were gray, but they weren’t; they were blue and green and yellow and brown. They were like little impressionist paintings, filled with a hundred colors that created the illusion of gray.

“Hey,” she said.

“What?”

Aubrey grinned. “You’re staring at me.”

He felt his face flush. “Sorry. I was just . . . My eyes are so much better now.”

She laughed, and then put her hands to her face. “My pores must be enormous.”

“No! No, that’s not it at all.” He didn’t know what to say without sounding stupid. He used to be so comfortable with Aubrey, but that was because she was just one of the guys. The one time he had tried to change things, she’d said no. That had been months ago.

He took both her hands in his. Aubrey’s were cold and rough, from too many obstacle courses and push-ups in the dirt. But he didn’t care. They could be coarse as dried leather and he wouldn’t care.

He opened his mouth to talk, but she spoke first.

“Promise me something,” she said.

“Anything.”

“They’re going to assign us together,” she said.

“What? How do you know?”

She smiled wryly. “Because I spy on people.”

“You need to be careful.”

“I’m okay,” she said, turning his wrist and looking at his watch. “Just promise me something. They were worried about one thing—that I’d be in danger and that you’d come charging in, being stupid.”

“I’m not going to let you get hurt.”

“The Green Berets have our backs,” she said. “You give them info, and they’ll take care of me.”

“But—”

“Don’t worry,” she said with a grin. “If some thirty-year-old meathead comes rushing in to shoot the bad guys, I’m not going to fall for him.”

She let the words hang in the air for a minute, and he didn’t know what to say. Don’t worry— I’m not going to fall for someone else. Was that really what she meant? Did that mean she’d already fallen for him?

There was a blare from the PA system, and it stung his ears.

“All Lambda recruits report to conference room A. All Lambda recruits report to conference room A.”

“Well,” he said, with a quick exhaled laugh. “That’s bad timing.”

Aubrey grinned, staring at him with those complex eyes. He could look at them forever.

She put a hand behind his neck and pulled him down to her, and before he could realize what was happening, their lips touched.

It was his first kiss, and he didn’t know what to do, but his brain let go and emotions took over. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close, concentrating on the texture of her smooth, wet lips, and the smell of her skin, sweet with the lingering smells of the day—soap and toothpaste and fabric softener.

“All Lambda recruits please report to conference room A. All Lambda recruits please report to conference room A.”

She pulled back and grinned. “Time for a meeting, soldier.”

FORTY-ONE

LAURA SAT IN THE THIRD row of folding chairs—close enough to look engaged but not so close as to be particularly noticeable. She planned nearly everything she did now, trying to anticipate the officers’ interpretations of her actions. It was exhausting, but she needed to fit in. This was a golden opportunity.

On the other hand, sometimes she wondered why she tried so hard. Looking around the room, she saw nothing but a bunch of kids. They’d all been drilled about military decorum, but they weren’t soldiers yet, not by a