In the Afterlight - Bracken Alexandra (онлайн книги бесплатно полные TXT) 📗
Whereas, for someone like Zu, a Yellow, or me, or even Cole—we had to know we could turn it off, and completely, other wise we’d destroy everything and everyone around us. We used our minds like weapons clenched tightly in our fists, struggling to return them back to their holsters without injuring ourselves in the process.
“It must be torture for you to be around those three Blues constantly, to have them tell you everything will be all right and that you can control what you do—and then see them lift a finger and have it work perfectly. You spent six years at Thurmond, scared to so much as breathe the wrong way in case it made them give you a second look. You know what they’ll do if they ever catch you and bring you back to that camp. They’ll keep you there long enough to run their tests and confirm what they already know. You saw how quickly and quietly they took the Reds, Oranges, and Yellows out. The Reds, they went to Project Jamboree. The Yellows, to one of the new camps built specifically to keep their abilities at bay. But what happened to the Oranges? Where did those kids go?”
My throat had closed up on itself. What little courage I had left was draining out of me as fast as the familiar dread was rolling in.
“Do you want me to tell you?” he asked, his voice quiet as he leaned his shoulder against the glass.
I surprised myself with a breathless, “Yes.”
“Some of them went to Leda’s research program, the one that Nico and I were brought into after they closed the first one at Thurmond,” Clancy said. “The others, if you believe the word of some of the PSFs stationed there at the time, are two miles north of the camp, buried a few hundred feet away from the railroad tracks.”
“Why?” Why kill them, why waste their lives, why do it like they were animals that needed to be put down, why—why them—
“Because they couldn’t be controlled. Period. It was the neatest, easiest solution to their headache. And because they also knew, if the kids were to ever be released from the camps, they could explain it simply by saying that IAAN was the root of it, that they were susceptible to a non-existent second wave of the disease. Our gift manifests in few enough kids that it won’t raise many, if any, red flags.”
The birth rate was low enough these days—few people would take the risk of a child being claimed by IAAN—that it seemed impossible to guess.
His dark eyes slid toward me. “I’ve seen the military orders—the explanations for how to do it ‘humanely’ so the child only registers the smallest amount of pain. I’ve never been able to reach any of them in time to save them.”
“You don’t save anyone,” I said bitterly. “You only help yourself.”
“Listen to me!” he snapped, striking a palm against the glass. “You are your abilities and they are you. I can’t put it to you more plainly. Do you know why I hate this cure? It’s a statement that what we are is inherently wrong. It’s a punishment for something that isn’t our fault—all because they can’t control their fear about what we can do, any more than they can control their resentment that there are people out there stronger and more powerful than they are. They want to strip you of yourself—your ability to protect and enforce your right to make decisions about your life. Your own body. Mark my words: in the end, it won’t be a choice. They’ll decide this for you.”
“The cure is not a punishment if it saves the lives of the kids born after us. They should never have to experience what we went through. Did you ever stop and think about them before you tried to burn the research?”
“Of course I did! But this cure you keep talking about? It’s not a cure—it’s a painful, invasive procedure that only helps the kids who have gone through the change. It doesn’t do a damn thing for the others who were never going to survive.”
“Try again,” I said. “I’ve gotten much better at detecting your bullshit.”
He ran an angry hand back through his dark hair in frustration. “You need to be focusing your energy on finding out the cause—it isn’t a virus, that much Leda figured out. It has to be something in the environment, something that was tainted...”
Whether or not he realized it now, he’d walked right into the trap I’d hoped he would. I needed him to be talking and thinking about the cure. It would naturally lead to thoughts of his mother—what he had done to her, where we could find her.
“Now isn’t the time to change yourself to fit into the world,” Clancy said, his voice raw with whatever thoughts were storming beneath his skin. “You should be changing the world to accept you. To let you exist as you are, without being cut open and damaged.”
This was it—I felt the opening in the conversation as though the air had parted around us. He’d always been able to get what he wanted out of me by plucking and plucking and plucking at painful memories until I was too distraught or emotional to ward his advances off. I knew he was capable of losing his temper—I’d seen it too many times to think it was a rare occurrence—but I didn’t want anger. I wanted anguish, the kind I had seen on Nico’s face the instant he opened the photo of his younger self. When he reconnected with what they had done to him, Clancy would be as malleable as wet sand in my hands.
“If everything you say is true—that the cure is cruel and will change us—prove it.”
That brought him up short. “How?”
“Show me. Prove it to me that it’s as terrible as you say. I have absolutely zero reason to take your word for it, considering your stellar record of telling the truth.”
The look of hope on his face turned sour. “Years of research and information isn’t enough for you? I already gave you everything I had.”
“Yes, on Thurmond. On the Leda research program. Not about this.”
“Ah.” Clancy began to pace, running his fingers along the glass wall separating us. “So you want to see for yourself? If you can’t take my word, how can you trust my memory? Even those can be faked, as you yourself know.”
“I can tell the difference,” I said, realizing with a shock of awareness that I actually could.
The memory from the other day. The one he’d used to show me how to log into his server and pull all of those files. It had felt different because it was different. It was pure imagination on his part. That was why I’d been able to step into it, interact as myself with what was happening rather than reenact what had happened as the person I was reading. There’d been a different texture to the whole experience.
“You did figure it out. Well done.” Clancy sounded pleased. “Memory and imagination are two different beasts, processed and handled in different ways by the mind. All of those times you replaced someone’s memories, planted an idea in their head—you didn’t realize you were doing several different things at once, did you?”
Was I? Until now, I’d taken everything I could do in stride, done what had felt natural. Maybe it was pointless because hopefully I’d one day be rid of them and the terror they held for me, but...shouldn’t I at least make more of an effort to understand exactly what I was doing and how?
“You’re stalling,” I reminded him.
“No, just waiting for you,” he said quietly. “If you want to see it, if this is the only way to prove it to you, then...it’s fine.”
I tested his defenses with a brush of my mind against his. But he was waiting, and the moment I closed my eyes and tried to touch his mind with mine, it was like he’d reached out a hand to guide me in. I was pulled through the gauzy layers of stained memories, catching a face here, a sound there. Clancy possessed a highly organized mind. It was like running down a winding hallway of windows, each offering a tantalizing look inside. Or walking down the aisle of a library, searching for the right book, and only glimpsing the other titles as you quickly passed.
