In the end, all of that training came to nothing. I could shift and cry and try to scream, but my ribs felt like they were caving in. The whole world was collapsing, crushing, and dissolving the faces of everyone who stood there watching. Rob snapped on a pair of thick rubber gloves before shoving the muzzle over my mouth and tightening the strap behind my head, and I was a little girl again. I was the monster of the story.
My breath was hot, steaming. Joe passed the tablet to Rob and took several steps back. He looked at the white-haired woman to his right and said, “God, if I’d known…I wouldn’t have touched the thing at all.”
Rob bent and tried to haul me out of the mud by the chain that connected the handcuffs to the muzzle. I got no farther than my knees; the rest of my body still hadn’t solidified under me. With an ear-scorching curse and a grunt of disgust, he picked me up and carried me under one arm, letting my feet drag and bounce along the ground. I reared back, trying to knock my head against the knots of muscles in his arm, but he only chuckled.
“I don’t always get the world,” he said. “But sometimes it treats me right. That look on your face when you saw me—I tell you, that was something else.”
I twisted as he dragged me up into the back of his old red Jeep.
“I knew if I watched the skip-tracer network, you’d screw up eventually. I’d get to ask you myself about the real reason you dodged out of the Op—what Cole and Cate have to do with it. I wanted to be the one to pick you up, to drive you straight back to that little camp of yours and watch them drag you in.”
I screamed into the leather, kicking at the back of the seat.
“You and me?” he said, pulling a long strip of plastic from the backpack he was wearing to bind my feet. I tried to kick, which earned me another laugh. “We’re gonna have such a fun trip back to West Virginia. I won’t even ask for the reward.”
The door slammed shut on my face, finally blocking me from the cluster of adults that stood in a single line in front of their homes, watching. The car rocked as he opened the driver’s door and sat down.
“You wanna know why I killed those kids, bitch?” he called back. “They weren’t fighters. None of you are, but you’re the ones with all the power in the League these days. You get to overrun us, decide the Ops, turn Alban into a worthless pile of cooing shit. But you don’t understand; none of you does. You don’t get what this world has to be if we’re going to survive this. Even these skip tracers, they just don’t understand that you’re worth a lot more to this country dead than alive.”
Rob was speeding despite the Jeep’s shuddering protests, blasting ZZ goddamn Top as loud as the stereo would go. He shouted back that he was tired of hearing me snivel and sob. What a coincidence. I was pretty damn tired of “La Grange” and the smell of exhaust.
I tried everything I could think of to get the muzzle off. The strap around the back of my head wouldn’t budge. He’d tightened it to the point of pain and, from the sound of it, had used a smaller plastic cable tie to reinforce it. I grunted, shifting to try to get to my boot.
Something pulled at my lower back, and there was a feeling like a tear. I bit my lip, ignoring the warm flush of liquid soaking into my jeans.
Michael. I’d forgotten about him getting the jump on me. No wonder it felt like I’d been dragged under a truck. I’d seen the blade—it had been small, about the size of the one on my Swiss Army knife. I needed to push through the pain—keep riding the adrenaline to keep from passing out again.
The space was tight and almost too narrow to work, but I could be small when I wanted to be. I slid my fingers past the laces into the tight leather. I curled myself around my knees to better my reach before remembering there was nothing to get—I’d never gotten my Swiss Army knife back. I hadn’t been able to find it in the supplies. I swallowed hard. It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t panic—but I was. I could feel it bubbling up in my chest, and I knew if I let it get out of hand it would suffocate me. You’re okay.
The song finally—finally—faded out.
“Preparations for the Unity Summit are ongoing,” came President Gray’s eerily calm voice. “I look forward to sitting with these men, many of whom I greatly respect, and—”
Rob punched the station off. “It’s funny, isn’t it?” he called back. “That the president all of a sudden is that much more revolutionary than Alban? That he wants something new?”
Yeah, I wanted to say, hilarious. The guy had the misfortune of heading up an organization that had gone and grown itself another head, one with sharper teeth.
“It took Alban forever to see what a mistake it was to bring you in, and he still sent you shitheads out to do jobs any of us could have done. He can have his past, but he’s not going to change my future.”
I looked around, trying to find something potentially sharp enough to saw the plastic zip tie around my wrists.
“And Conner…she just wanted to babysit you, but we got no time for that. We got no place for you, here or anywhere. The only place for you is in those camps or buried with the rest of them. You hear me?” He was shouting now. “I don’t need an excuse for what I did! I joined to get Gray out, not play house with a guy who’s too damn scared to even go aboveground. He thinks we joined up because of you? He wants to know why we can’t respect you? But he won’t let us use you for the one thing you’re good for?”
Dying for people like him, I thought, that’s what he means.
“I did what I had to do, and I’d do it again. I’ll do it to every damn kid in the League until they get their heads straight again, and I’ll start with your team.”
Anger pulsed through me, warring with disgust.
Keep it together, I commanded myself. He doesn’t know. I didn’t need to touch him. He could silence me, but Rob had no power over my mind.
“What would Jude make of the electric fence at your old home, Ruby?” he wondered aloud. “What would the guards do to Vida when they saw just how pretty, just how built she is for a girl her age? And Nico—he’s a pretty easy target, isn’t he?”
I closed my eyes. I forced myself to relax, to remember that here, now, and always, I was the predator. This was what Clancy had meant when he had claimed I’d never be able to control my abilities because I was too afraid of what they would make me. I hadn’t been able to do it before—not from lack of wanting or trying, but because I couldn’t let go of needing to control where it would take me.