Never Fade Read online

  “Rob, listen, I just want to know their names. I want to know if you even bothered to ask before you killed them.”

  “Do you think this is a game? Stop lying, goddammit! When I find you—”

  “You better hope you never find me,” I said, ice edging each word. I didn’t even have to close my eyes to see that girl’s face. I felt her walking beside me, her eyes open, forever fixed on the barrel of the gun and the hand that held it steady. “Because what I’ll do to you will be so much worse than a bullet in the skull.”

  I didn’t wait to hear the response to that. I yanked the comm out and dropped it, letting the feet behind me smash it and scatter the pieces. I motioned for Jude to follow me as I jogged to catch up to the protesters. We were swept into the flood of people pouring down Massachusetts Avenue’s wide berth. I was being jostled from all sides—arms were being thrust around, people were yelling and screaming, and it was the safest I had been in months. I threw a glance behind me as I surged forward, looking for Jude’s pale face—there he was, eyes wide, cheeks and nose pink with the blistering cold. I was coasting on a wave of simmering power and control. I had gotten us away, and now no one was even looking at us.

  I felt Jude grab the back of my jacket again and guide us forward, flowing with the crowd. The drums up ahead rattled to life with a frantic rhythm, and for the first time, I felt a twinge of panic. I thought I heard someone calling my name behind me, but even the chanting was drowned out by the fury gripping my mind.

  The crowd around me was still growing, and the farther they moved down the street, the more they seemed to work themselves into a frenzy of excitement. The same chant was singing through their blood, More, more, more, more. That was the only thing they had in common. The only thing they all wanted—more food, more freedom, more money, more.

  I realized where we were headed almost immediately: back into the heart of Boston. The Massachusetts Avenue bridge was up ahead—and so were the familiar blue and red flashing lights of the police cars that were blockading it.

  The protesters didn’t stop.

  There were dozens of policemen in riot gear, National Guardsmen taking aim, and not a single one of the protesters stopped marching forward. I felt my feet slow and was shoved forward by the momentum of the crushing wave behind me.

  The policeman in the center of all this, a grizzly old man staring the rest of us down, held up a megaphone. “This is Sergeant Bowers of the Boston Police Department. You are trespassing in violation of Mass General law, chapter two sixty-six, section one twenty, and are subject to arrest. You are unlawfully assembled. I demand you immediately and peacefully disperse. If you do not immediately and peacefully disperse, you will be arrested. This is your only warning.”

  I didn’t see the first stone that was thrown. I didn’t even see the second or the third. But I heard the clatter of their impact against the clear shields of the riot police.

  “Fire, then!” someone was yelling. “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

  The girls around me picked up the word and began screaming it. “Shoot, shoot, shoot!” was the only rival to the chant.

  I took a step back, elbowing my way through the crowd’s throbbing crush. They wanted the police to open fire on them? To make a point, or—

  To capture it on video. I saw the handheld devices clutched in their stiff, frozen fingers. The snowflakes clung to the cameras’ glassy eyes, following the path of every rock, snowball, and brick that was launched toward the men and women in uniforms. I ducked, holding my arms over my head as I fought my way to the back of the herd. A stray elbow nailed the back of my head, and it was enough to knock me out of my haze.

  I reached behind me, grabbing Jude’s arm as I turned—but the person holding my jacket was a short Asian girl with thick black glasses, who seemed just as startled to see me as I was to see her.

  “Sorry!” she shouted. “I thought you were my friend—”

  Dammit. I whirled around, scanning the nearby crowd. Where is he?

  The gunshot was the only thing sharp enough to cut through the chanting, the only thing strong enough to silence them. The girl and I both jumped back but were roughly shoved aside by the people still marching forward behind us. Maybe the officer or soldier thought the threat of it would break up the crowd, but they had seriously misjudged the anger powering these people.

  The protesters at the head of the pack were clearly used to this kind of bullying. I glanced back over my shoulder; they were struggling against the clear shields blocking their paths, clamoring over the hoods of the police cars. The unlucky ones were yanked back and beaten into the ground by batons.

  “Jude!” I called, my guilt nearly cutting me down at the knees. “Jude!”

  The first can of tear gas released with a sinister hiss, but it wasn’t enough to shift the crowd. They only launched themselves toward the officers at a run. I felt someone try to grab my arm and haul me back around to face it with him, but I yanked myself free.

  Bad plan, I thought, choking on the poisoned air. Bad, bad, bad plan, Ruby.

  It was dumb luck I even saw him then; I had started turning the other way, only to catch a glimpse of a curly head of hair out of the very corner of my eye.

  The blue EMT jacket was flapping in the wind, one sleeve torn with a ragged edge. Jude was standing on his toes, one hand on the nearest streetlight to keep himself upright, the other curled around his mouth as he shouted, “Ruby! Roo!” over and over again.

  I saw now the way that fear fed anxiety and turned it into chaos. Jude’s shape went out of sight, tucked into a cloud of tear gas, hidden behind the sudden stampede of bodies trying to get away from the guns, from the smoke, from the bridge. People were screaming and the gunfire hadn’t stopped. There were new noises, too—a helicopter hovering above us, casting a light down over us. The whirring of its blades drove some of the smoke away, clearing the way for the National Guardsmen to rush toward us. For the first time, I noticed more than one black uniform in the mix.

  If it had been a clear night, if my eyes weren’t streaming with tears, if I could have heard anything other than the thrumming thunder of my own heart, I would have noticed it sooner. The air seemed to vibrate against my skin, and I caught the whiff of ozone a second too late to do something about it.

  “Jude, don’t!”

  The line of streetlights along the stretch of road began to buzz, their orange lights bleaching to a molten white a second before they blew out together, sending a shower of glass and sparks down on the already terrified protesters.

  I’m not sure anyone recognized what Jude was, not until the lights from the nearby buildings switched on after months or years of darkness.

  I reached him half a second before the National Guardsman and his gun did, throwing my shoulder into his chest and driving us both to the ground. The impact blew the air from my lungs, but I scrambled up, shielding him from the butt of the soldier’s rifle. With one blow, it cracked against my skull and sent me spinning into darkness.

  SEVEN

  THE GROUND GRUMBLED beneath my cheek, a low clattering that underscored the dull pain in my brain. Feeling was slow to come back to my limbs. I took a deep breath, trying to swallow the taste of iron and salt from my dry tongue. Matted hair stuck to my neck in clumps. I tried to reach up and brush it away only to realize that my hands were trapped behind me, something sharp digging into the skin there.

  My shoulders ached as I twisted to readjust myself on the van’s grimy floor. It was dark in the back, but every now and then a flash of light would come through the metal grating separating the front seats from the rest of the vehicle. Just enough for me to see that the uniformed driver and the man sitting in the passenger seat were dressed in black.

  Damn. My heartbeat was in my ears, but I didn’t feel afraid, not until I saw Jude sitting pin-straight on one of the benches, his hands bound and his mouth gagged.

  While the PSFs had bound my hands, for whatever reason—probably because I was already unco
nscious—they hadn’t used a gag on me, and I was grateful. Bile rose, burning the back of my throat, and the only way to make the whole thing worse would have been to choke on my own vomit. I could feel the anxiety in me building to a slow and steady beat of Not again, not again, I can’t go back there, not again.

  Calm down, I ordered myself. You’re no good like this. Get a grip.

  I couldn’t get my jaw to move, to say something to get Jude’s attention. It took several precious moments for him to notice that I was even awake, and when he did, his body gave a huge jerk of surprise. He tried in vain to rub the cloth out of his mouth with his shoulder. I shook my head. If we were going to do something, it would have to be quietly.

  Jude’s fear was an actual, living thing. It hovered over his shoulders, black, thunderous. He began to shake violently. He tossed his head, trying to draw desperate gulps of air into his lungs.

  He’s having a panic attack. The thought was a quiet, sure one, and I was surprised by how much resolve it flooded into my veins.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered, hoping the guys in front wouldn’t hear me over the chatter of their radios. “Jude, look at me. You have to calm down.”

  He was shaking his head, and I could read his thoughts clear as if I had actually been inside it. I can’t, not here, not now, oh God, oh God.

  “I’m here with you,” I said, bringing my knees up close to my chest. It was painful, but I managed to drag my arms up around my legs, so my bound hands were in front of me.

  “Take a breath through your nose, a deep one,” I said. “Let it out. You’re all right. We’ll be fine. You just need to calm down.”

  And he needed to do it sooner rather than later. My mind was going in circles trying to think of where the nearest camp was—upstate New York? Wasn’t there one in Delaware, out near a whole town of abandoned farmland? Where were we now?

  I held Jude’s gaze with mine. “Calm down,” I said. “I need you to focus. You have to stop the car. Do you remember Saratoga?”

  If there was only one good thing I could say about the League’s methods of training, it was that the instructors were creative. They tended to have a supernatural sense of what kinds of situations we would find ourselves in, including a practice run-through of almost this exact scenario. In that simulation, Vida, Jude, and I had been on a make-believe Op in Saratoga and had been taken hostage. Vida and I had fought our way out of the van and both ended up “dead,” shot in our escape. Instructor Fiore pointed out everything we should have done, which included Jude doing something other than cowering in the back of the car.

  I saw him take a deep breath and nod.

  When I had traveled with Zu, the biggest hurdle she had to overcome was controlling her Yellow abilities. She had worn rubber gloves for the better part of our time together to avoid zapping machinery or the car, but we’d seen her lose control twice without them to block her charged touch. Jude, though—he’d been trained. He’d had the benefit of being around other Yellows who were willing to help him learn. Although he ran at a speed that was ten times faster than everyone around him, he kept his abilities in check. The scene out by the protest had been the first time I’d ever seen him slip, and in such a huge, horrible way.

  He closed his eyes, and I rolled over onto my knees, trying to brace myself.

  I felt the huge swell of electricity, felt it ripple along the hairs of my arms. It crackled in my ears, heated the air until it burned white.

  It was too much for the car’s battery to take. The car didn’t even shudder as it died; it was like it had slammed into an invisible wall. I went sliding toward the front grate with the force of it. The two PSFs cried out in confusion.

  But I didn’t think it through. Cars on the East Coast were rare, with the sky-high prices of gas and the cost of upkeep. I had just assumed that there would be no one else out driving, that the van would stop, and I would find a way to take the PSFs out one at a time.

  I saw the flood of white headlights at the same moment the PSFs did. The force of the impact as the semi truck clipped the front of our van sent us spinning fast and wild. The airbags exploded with a scent like burning. I slammed into the bench opposite of Jude, who went tumbling to the floor.

  The van went onto its right tires, and for a split second I was sure we’d start rolling and that’d be the end of the story. Instead, the van slammed back down onto all fours. Over the hiss of the smoking engine and the cusses one of the PSFs was hollering, I heard the semi truck’s tires squeal as it slid to a stop.

  “—Flowers, Flowers!”

  I shook my head, trying to clear my double vision as my hands felt along the ground for Jude. They didn’t stop until they met with his boney, warm ankle and I felt him twitch in response. Alive. It was too dark to see if he was in one piece.

  “Flowers! Goddammit!”

  If it had been anyone else beside the PSFs, I might have felt sorry for the trouble we’d caused them. One of the men in uniform—Flowers, I guess—was slumped forward in his seat, his deflating airbag smeared with blood.

  “Shit!” The driver was pounding on the steering wheel. He felt around the crumpled dashboard until his fingers latched onto the radio. Jude had done his job, though. Anything electronic within fifty feet had been fried. The man kept trying to click it on, kept saying, “This is Moreno; do you read?”

  The PSF must have remembered protocol, because he reached over and forced the door open, jumping out into the snow. He’d have to secure us, make sure we were all right.

  I was ready for him.

  My legs were shaking like a foal’s as I dove over Jude’s prone form, beating the soldier to the door. He had his gun in one hand but needed the other one free to unlatch the back door. I had my handcuffs looped over his neck and his face between my hands before he could let out a gasp of surprise.

  The soldier, Moreno, was rattled enough that his brain didn’t put up much of a fight. Taking control was smooth, easy, without the slightest whimper of pain in my mind.

  “Take…our handcuffs off,” I ordered. I waited for him to reach up and do it before ripping the gun out of his hand. Jude let out a blissful moan as their metal grip released.

  “Turn around and start walking back toward Boston. Don’t stop until you reach the Charles. Understand?” My finger curled around the trigger of the gun.

  “Walk back toward Boston,” he repeated. “Don’t stop until you hit the Charles.”

  I felt Jude at my back, swaying, but kept the black handgun trained on the PSF’s head as he walked away, disappearing into the swirling clouds of snow, deep into the night. My arms began to shake, both from the frigid cold and the stress of keeping myself upright.

  The truck driver took his time, but he appeared at the driver’s side window, pounding against it. “Is everyone all right? I’ve called for help!”

  I signaled for Jude to stay back. The PSF was still visible as he made his way down the highway despite his dark uniform and the pitch-black road. The truck driver spotted him immediately. I counted off his steps as he ran after him, calling, “Hey! Where you going? Hey!”

  At the sight of him, Jude slipped the cuffs from his shaking hands, and they clattered as they hit the floor. When the truck driver spun on his heel, I was already waiting for him, gun up, hands steady.

  The truck driver’s face went stark white under his beard. For a moment, we did nothing but stare at each other, the snow collecting in his wiry hairs. His jacket was a vivid red plaid and matched the knit cap he had pulled down low over his ears. Slowly, he raised his hands in the air.

  “Kids,” he began, his voice shaking, “oh my God—are you guys—”

  Jude’s hand tightened around my shoulder. “Roo…” he began uncertainly.

  “Get lost,” I said, nodding toward the gun in my hands.

  “But…the nearest town is miles away.” I saw the driver relax, his hands dropping back down to his sides now that the shock had worn off. Clearly he thought I wasn’t capabl
e or willing to shoot him if it came down to it. I didn’t know whether to be furious or grateful about it. “Where are you going to go? Do you need a ride? I don’t have much food, but…but it’ll be warm, and—”

  Maybe the driver thought he was being kind. Jude obviously thought so. I barely caught the back of his jacket to keep him from jumping out of the van and throwing his arms around the man in weepy gratitude.

  Or maybe the driver just wanted the $10,000 per head he’d get for turning us over.

  “I need you to get lost,” I said, switching off the gun’s safety. “Go.”

  I could tell that he wanted to say something else, but the words caught and stuck in his throat. The driver shook his head once, twice, and gave me a weak nod. Jude let out a strangled protest, lifting a hand in his direction, like he could compel him to stop. The driver was slow to turn and slower to walk away.

  “What did you do that for?” Jude cried. “He was just trying to help!”

  The thin layer of ice on the road cracked as I jumped down, snapping me back to full alertness. I didn’t have time for explanations, not when the need to run was singing through my veins. The night was long and the piles of snow in the heavy woods around us unmarred. We would have to move fast and cover our tracks.

  “We help ourselves,” I said, and led him into the dark.

  The distant specks of headlights down the highway did nothing to ease up on the chill that had dug its fingers into my chest as we ran. I kept hoping to come across a car we could use, but every single one that had been abandoned on this stretch of road had a dead battery or no gas. Five minutes of charging through the knee-deep snow of the nearby woods, following the edge of what I assumed was the Massachusetts turnpike, finally turned up an exit sign for Newton, Massachusetts, and another one telling me it was forty-five miles to Providence, Rhode Island.