In The Afterlight

For a moment, I was sure he’d try to deny it all, brush Nico aside as being out of his mind. But Clancy didn’t bother to hide the small smile tucked in the corner of his mouth.

“Really had you going there, didn’t I?”

“You...” The idea of it was almost too much. Coming into my mind while I was asleep would keep me from sensing the tingling rush down the back of my skull that came when someone tried to force a connection between our minds. He’d walked me around like a doll—listened in on conversations, stolen whole moments of my life. I’d been his eyes and ears, and I hadn’t even thought that it could be done, that there was the possibility of it.

“How long?” I demanded.

“How long have you been having those ‘stress headaches’?” Clancy folded his hands in his lap. “They’re the worst, aren’t they? I’m glad I haven’t been suffering through them alone. But you should know you only have yourself to blame. Every time you enter someone’s mind, you form a connection with them—their memories, thoughts, will become yours. Each time you came into my mind, each time I got you while your defenses were down, you let me reinforce our bond. You’re the reason I was able to do this.”

“What did the messages say?” I demanded, stepping up to the glass. Nico slumped down against the wall behind me, hiding his face behind his hands. “Who were they sent to?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Clancy said. “You’re both clearly too emotional to understand. You’ve been so stressed, Ruby. It’s harder to control your abilities when you’re so...frayed...”

...Isn’t it?

I heard the words like they had been spoken inside of my skull and immediately threw down a black wall between the two of us, clipping the connection before it could fully form.

This was how he’d played me again—he knew the symptoms of anxiety and lack of focus, and even the headaches could be explained away by the stress of our situation.

Again, and again, and again, I thought. Every time, I walk right into it. We were on different levels, and I needed to stop pretending like we weren’t. My mind hadn’t even been twisted enough to imagine he’d be capable of doing this.

“That’s better.” Clancy gave me an approving nod. “You understand now. Your role in this is over. The Red is gone. You’ve set this up so well, it’ll be easy to step in and finish it. You can rest now. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“You knew he’d be hurt—killed,” I said, choking on the words.

“Only because you guaranteed it,” Clancy said, victory making his dark eyes shine. “Who do you think sent a message to the trainers there, warning them to be on the lookout?”

There was a moment of skull-shattering pain and then I did scream. I screamed and screamed, slamming my hands against the glass until I had nothing left but a miserable, low sob to give. My fault. My fault. My fault.

“It’s a bit tragic, isn’t it? To give someone the one thing they desperately want, knowing that in the end, it only has the power to destroy them. He wanted so badly to know he wasn’t the only one like him—to fit in with us. It was pathetic.”

I lurched forward, vision flashing red, black, white, the invisible hands in my mind already driving toward him.

He couldn’t have this.

East River, Los Angeles, Jude, the research, Cole—he had taken so much, destroyed every trace of hope just as it solidified into something real in my hands. He can’t have this. We were too close. I was too close to finishing this.

Nico brought me up short, stepping in front of me brandishing the keys. Hands steady, expression focused, he unlocked each of the three deadbolts on the door.

“Leave!” he said, throwing the door open. “Disappear again, the way you always do! Get out of here before you ruin everything for us—call off the people you hired to get you out, just...disappear!”

Clancy stood up from his cot, a strange expression on his face.

“Don’t you get it?” Nico said. “You haven’t hurt the people who hurt you by doing this—you never will, and you won’t admit it to yourself! You can’t even get close to them. The only thing you’ve ever done is hurt the kids who wanted to help you. We all wanted to help you!”

“Then you should have stayed out of my way.”

“Why did you help the League get me out of Leda’s program?” Nico asked, holding his ground as Clancy sauntered toward him. “You gave them the plan to extract me in Philadelphia, didn’t you? But you were the one who left me behind at Thurmond—you left all of us, even after you told us we would get out together, we would be able to live without fear or shame or pain. Clancy...don’t you remember the pain?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Why couldn’t you have just let me die like the others? You told me I had to live, but I wish I had just...I wish I had died, so you couldn’t have used me.”

Clancy was watching him, an expression on his face I’d never seen before.

“Why do you have to take every good thing we try to give you and break it into pieces?” Nico said. “You let them turn you into this...”

“This is who I am,” Clancy snapped. “I won’t let them change me. I won’t let them touch me. Not again.”

“No one is going to force you to have the procedure,” Nico said, his hands up, placating. “You’re free to go. You can disappear. Please...please...just call off the people who are coming. Please, Clance. Please.”