The Darkest Legacy by Alexandra Bracken
“I’m not going to pretend this doesn’t completely suck,” Jacob said. “They left us in charge, and while we got everyone out, it still hurts. But Haven is people, not a house. You could ask anyone here and they’d tell you that. As long as we can take care of each other, it doesn’t matter what roof is over our heads.”
I nodded, but the guilt didn’t ease.
“—and this is the standard prop,” Priyanka said, from somewhere behind me. “It pulls the quadcopter-style drone through the air, while the pusher prop at the back does what the name implies and pushes it forward. This is the memory card, which I will be taking with me. Ooh, and do you know what this is?” She paused for effect. “A motor mount. You should always check to make sure it isn’t cracked and the screws aren’t loose.”
I looked back, just in time to see several small heads nod, riveted. My eyes found Roman, whether they meant to or not. Sasha had waved him over and sat him down in the center of a circle of younger kids. Judging by her big hand gestures and the way stoic Roman’s cheeks were going pink, she was clearly regaling them with the story of her escape. Another one of the girls stood up and helpfully smoothed down his mussed hair for him.
“—emergency plan is already in play,” Jacob was saying, pulling my attention back to him.
“Are those the supply bags?” I asked, nodding to the large camping backpacks interspersed among the kids. Liam had mentioned them to me in passing during my last trip; they were outfitted with just about everything you could need for living rough for a while. The black trash bags they’d been wrapped in were currently being used by the kids as blankets to cover the ground.
“They are,” Lisa said. “There’s food, water, first-aid kits, and just about anything else you could want. It’ll tide us over until Liam’s dad and his friends get here.”
At my surprised look, Miguel held up a flip phone. “Sent the distress-code word as soon as I was through the tunnel. He’s checking the backup shelter for squatters and any monitoring, but he should be here fairly soon.”
A backup shelter. I took in a deep breath, eyes closing for a moment. That was a small relief, even though I’d never doubted that Liam and Ruby would have some kind of emergency plan in place if the house was exposed.
“And then what?” I asked.
“We’ll find a new house, or build one,” Lisa said. “And the littles will come to love that place, too.”
I glanced over to where Owen was sitting, alone. A few of the kids tentatively tried to approach him, to lay careful, hesitant hands on his shoulder, but he didn’t react to any of their touches. He stared straight ahead, toward the sunrise. I knew, without seeing them, how empty those big dark eyes would be.
“What are your plans, Zu?” Miguel asked. “There’s room for you here with us.”
“I’m going to go find them,” I said.
“I thought you would say that,” Lisa admitted. “I’d rather have you safe here with us.”
“People are looking for me,” I reminded her. “As much as I want to stay, you guys will never be fully safe if I’m with you. Not until I fix this mess.”
“With them?” Jacob clarified, tilting his head in their direction.
I glanced back at them—Priyanka, still showing the kids various parts of the drones, letting one of the Yellows zap what I assumed was a tracking device in it, and Roman, dropping a daisy chain he’d made onto Sasha’s head like a crown. She beamed up at him, the white flowers like stars in her dark hair.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I can handle them.”
“Figured as much,” Miguel said. “You’d better take the getaway car.”
“Getaway car?”
“Liam stashed a Toyota sedan in the woods, about a hundred yards past that line of trees,” Lisa said, pointing across the field. “Bring one of the packs with you. It’ll have everything you need, including a burner and a charger for it.”
I shook my head. I’d already taken far too much from them. “I can’t—”
“You can,” Lisa assured me. “We won’t need it.”
That’s what it came down to in the end. Need. If nothing else, we needed the burner, both to communicate and for Priyanka to create another device to make the cameras blink. Need made us do things, take things, we never would have otherwise.
“Please,” Miguel said. “Just try to check in with us. If you get any information, to let us know you’re okay…”
“I’ll try,” I promised.
“Wait,” Lisa said suddenly, turning back toward the pile of items salvaged from the house. Digging under some of the drawings, she pulled out a singed photograph and handed it to me. “I thought you might want this. I grabbed it from their room.”
It was a picture from five years ago, taken by Vida, of me, Chubs, Ruby, and Liam standing in front of Betty the van, out in the middle of the forest near Lake Prince in Virginia.
At the time, Liam had wanted to go looking for Betty so he could bring her in and fix her up. But by the time we found the old van, nature had done its worst to her engine and undercarriage. It would have been a nightmare to try to get a tow truck in there to haul her out. So we left Betty behind, as a kind of monument to what we had done together—who we had been together.
Liam had taken one of the hubcaps, though; he tucked it under one arm and Ruby under the other.
I looked so young in the photo, dressed in bright pink, face beaming. My hair was in a long pixie cut and the way I was smiling so wide made me seem almost impish. Chubs had glanced up at the sky, clearly exasperated by something that Vida had said the instant before she took the picture. Liam was looking over my head, smiling in Ruby’s direction. She was still in a walking cast after what happened at Thurmond, and was leaning back against Betty’s passenger door for balance. Her smile was small, but…peaceful.
I thought Chubs had had the only copy of it. He’d shredded it an hour before he testified in front of Cruz, UN representatives, and interim members of Congress that he no longer considered them friends, and that he had no idea where on earth they’d gone.
I took the scrap of memory, tucking it into my back pocket for safekeeping.
“Are Lee and Ruby going to meet us there?” I heard a boy ask Lisa. He twisted his hands together, turning his fingers into anxious knots. “Are they going to be able to find us?”
They are, I thought, because I’m going to bring them back to you.
But before I went looking, there was one last person I needed to talk to.
Roman looked up as I walked by him and headed for the lone figure sitting a few dozen feet away.
Owen had scrubbed the soot from his face, but the attack had left its mark on him. His expression was vacant as he held a blanket to his chest despite the heat. It was obvious that even his small stature and quiet, almost doe-like nature wasn’t enough to fully counteract the fear others felt at learning he was a Red.
“Hey, Owen,” I said, kneeling down beside him. “We didn’t really have a chance to meet before. I’m Zu.”
Nothing. No movement. Not a word.
“Thank you again for what you did,” I continued. “I can’t say it enough. Thank you. None of us would be here now, safe and together, without you.”
His only response was a slight nod as he tucked his chin against the blanket.
“Are you all right?” I asked him. Even at dawn, the humidity was setting in, and the blanket looked like it was made of wool. “Are you cold?”
He could be in shock, I thought. Owen, however, didn’t make any move to wrap the blanket around himself. He didn’t move at all.
“I have to ask you a question, if that’s okay,” I said, taking his silence in stride. “It’s about Ruby.”
Another nod. Progress.
The others had said Ruby was working with him one-on-one, trying to help him break Project Jamboree’s hold on his mind. This might be a long shot, but if she had mentioned anything to him about her trips, even in passing, it could be useful.
“Do you remember what the two of you talked about when she last spent time with you?” I asked. “She’s misplaced her phone, and we’re trying to track down where she might have gone.”
This wasn’t my first encounter with a Red who had been part of the ill-fated Project Jamboree, but it didn’t make it any easier. President Gray’s brainwashing program had been designed to turn them into weapons of mass destruction, but ultimately had only broken their minds and wills.
Ruby had worked with a number of them, until the world had tried to break her, too.
The longer I sat there, the longer that silence went on, the tighter my throat became. “It’s all right,” I told Owen. “You don’t have to say anything. But you should know that your voice is necessary, and you deserve to be heard.”
He looked up again, brow creasing, and I realized I’d had it wrong. It wasn’t that his gaze was empty; Owen’s eyes were like the deepest part of the sea, the darkness disguising every feeling, every fear, forcing them all deep below the surface.
“Well, no problem,” I said, tamping down the frustration I felt. “I’m really glad I got to meet you, Owen. If you think of anything, let Jacob or Lisa know. They can pass it on to me.”
I had just started to stand when a small voice said, “It’s for Ruby.”
“What is?” I asked, freezing in place. I turned to see him let the blanket fall into his lap. “The blanket?”
Owen nodded, not meeting my gaze. His thumbs ran along the edge of the blanket. “She’s so cold.”
It was only when those words ran through my mind a second time that I understood what he’d said. “You mean she was cold the last time you saw her?”
“She’s cold,” Owen said. “She’s so cold.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” I said. “Did she say something to you before she left?”
His dark gaze lifted from his blanket again. “Just good-bye.”
My pulse was already thrumming hard in my veins before I turned—before I heard Miguel’s “Oh, shit!” from across the field.
He, Lisa, and Jacob were huddled over one of the burner phones, each of their faces looking more horrified than the next. A short distance away, the burner phone they’d given us began to blare in Priyanka’s hand. Roman was already there beside her, and even from my distance, I could see the color drain from his cheeks.
The static was growling loudly in my ears again as I made my way over to Priyanka and Roman. They both glanced up, not saying a word as they passed the phone over to me.
At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. There was a live-streaming video of an airplane burning, its broken pieces strewn across a runway. The camera shifted over to the sight of a motorcade roaring away from it, police lights flashing.
The words scrolled across the bottom of the video, their truth blistering.
JOSEPH MOORE’S CAMPAIGN PLANE EXPLODES ON RUNWAY
“What is happening to this world?” I heard Lisa say.
AN EXPLOSIVE DETONATED JUST BEFORE THE CANDIDATE WAS DUE TO BOARD. TWELVE CREW AND STAFF ARE DEAD. NO SURVIVORS.
“I don’t understand,” Jacob said. “Why would anyone do this?”
SUZUME KIMURA, LEADER OF THE PSION RING, CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY
THE SEDAN WAS AS OLD as it was plain-looking. It was the kind of car Liam had always favored: safe and completely nondescript. The beigest of beige. His only other requirement, aside from a decent engine and standard safety features, was a working radio. I would have left it off, except we needed to hear the latest updates about the bombing and the fallout from it.
An hour into our drive, I had the shock of hearing a recording of my voice, one that had clearly been cobbled together from a number of other speeches. “This is in retaliation for all the crimes against Psi.” An hour after that, I had serious thoughts about melting the radio altogether.
The only channel we were able to pick up for miles and miles and miles wasn’t the official zone channel, but a new one clearly unsanctioned by the interim government called Truth Talk Radio with Jim Johnson. It featured an endless programming loop of subjects that became progressively viler with each passing hour.
My mind was buzzing with anxiety and impatience. Roman had insisted on resting in the car and waiting until we had the cover of nightfall before hitting the road. I hadn’t been able to drop into sleep the way the others had; the impatience to go, to get to Mississippi, was itching beneath my skin. Even if Ruby wasn’t there, I told myself, her last known location was the only lead we had.
“I mean, listen to this—it’s unbelievable. Just listen,” Jim Johnson said, his voice so smug it made my skin crawl.
Then it was a different voice coming to us over the airwaves. President Cruz’s.
“As a result of the act of terror perpetrated at the airport,” she said, her voice as steady and bold as it almost always was—it was a voice that was never allowed to be wrong—“I am temporarily reassigning the Defenders to a new role in the protection of our country. They will use all the many resources available to them to track down these…rogue Psi elements, the so-called Psion Ring. To that end, they have been authorized to use force in situations that call for it. They will be offered new specialized training that focuses on the unique dangers of dealing with psionic abilities. Those who previously received training in such matters will be cleared for duty in the next twelve hours.”
There was only one group who had “previously received training” in dealing with us: former PSFs. The thought chilled my blood.
But President Cruz still wasn’t finished.
“In exchange for their assistance in the identification of potential members of this domestic terrorist group, as well as any information they might have about the histories of these Psi, the interim attorney general will be dropping all charges against the remaining camp controllers who are still awaiting trial.”
The splotches in my vision reappeared, and if the two-lane road hadn’t been deserted, I would have pulled us over onto the shoulder to breathe through the panic. I wasn’t just shaking—I was glowing with fury.
Liar.
I could still hear her voice, her promise. You’ll never have to suffer as you did in the past. This is a new world, and it belongs to you as much as any of us.
There was going to be so much work to do when I got back to DC. For the first time in years, Cruz would hear me go off-script. She’d hear every thought storming through my mind.
“I’ve got none other than Joseph Moore, presidential candidate for the Liberty Watch Party, on the line. Mr. Moore, it’s great to have you back on the program.”
“Great to be here, as always.”
“The circumstances are horrible—can you assure the listeners that you and your family are all right?”
Moore let out a deep sigh. “My wife is rattled, and the campaign staff has been made to face an unimaginable reality. We lost so many good folks. The only thing we can do now is mourn them and pull out a win in honor of them.”
“Was that supposed to be him grieving?” Priyanka asked. “Because that whoosh in the background sure sounded like him seizing an opportunity.”
“On today’s welcome news: Were you surprised to see the interim president cave on these points?” the host continued.
“Of course Cruz finally gave in—she’s seen both her dismal polling numbers and the writing on the wall. Look at her favorite pets: one turns out to be behind the Psion Ring, and the other has finally been forced to disband that ridiculous sham of a council. I expect we won’t hear from him for quite some time, not until they’re through interrogating him.”
Chubs. The car lurched to the right with the force of my reaction. Roman reached over to steady the wheel.
“Sorry,” I breathed out. “Sorry…”
“That’s your friend?” Roman questioned. “The one you called before?”
I gave a weak nod.
“We’ve also received unconfirmed reports the Psi Council
They had him. They had probably grabbed him for initial questioning after the explosion, and then, when I’d called him directly, I’d confirmed that we were still close. That he might know where I’d go, and who’d I’d seek out for help or shelter.
“Well, he’s the link, isn’t he? Between Kimura, and even Daly and Stewart, who still have yet to be found. Who’s to say they aren’t involved with the Psion Ring, too? That he isn’t a mole for them? That’s the question I’d be asking.”
No. God, no—
I wished I wasn’t driving. My body wanted to curl into itself, just for a moment, and let my bones and skin deflect the truth.
I hadn’t just destroyed Ruby and Liam’s dream. Someone was using me to destroy Chubs’s as well, and I was powerless to stop it.
Not for long, I thought, gripping the wheel harder.
“It’s only a matter of time before Cruz is forced to face the truth,” Moore was saying. “In her heart, I think she knows that her UN overlords are running this country into the ground with their un-American restrictions. She’s got no shot at winning the election as long as she refuses to initiate some kind of program to reeducate the Psi on how to be members of our society. It’s one generation, but it doesn’t have to be a lost one. Rather than brush them aside, let’s ask them to work for this country. Haven’t we seen that across history? Training for service will get them off the streets—heck, it might even reestablish our dominance in global politics.”
“Her reluctance truly makes you wonder if the United Nations has any intention of releasing their death grip on us. Mark my words, they will cancel this election before they let you win.”
“That is ridiculous,” I snapped.
“Let’s hope that’s not true,” Moore said. “At this point, I think we can all agree on one thing: even Gray was a better president—”
I slammed my clenched fist against the volume button. I only meant to shut it off, but the spark that jumped from my knuckles to the dash crawled over the display. Joseph Moore’s rant ended with a satisfying snap.