tears filling her eyes from here. “Don’t you want a home? To live with a kind family?”
So many parents lost their kids to IAAN. I have to imagine that there are some kind ones out there that want to fill that hole in their family again. But I also have to imagine there are plenty who have dollar signs in their eyes over the promised “support packages” from the government for each child taken in.
“I have a family,” she says, her voice trembling.
The man doesn’t touch her, the way you’d normally comfort a kid who’s clearly on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. I can tell by the set of his shoulders that he didn’t expect this. There’s no strategy. The expectation was clearly that they would just nod and follow him out like a line of ducklings.
“Sweetheart,” he begins, looking around. “You don’t. I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks trying to track down your families. They’ve either moved and disappeared, they’ve passed on, or they—”
Say it, I think. Finish that thought. Or they said they didn’t want you back.
Then, a new voice: “My brother is coming for me. I’m staying.”
I’m sure I make a sound, but I can’t hear it over the growing buzz in my ears. If someone wedged a dull knife into the back of my skull, it wouldn’t hurt half as bad as this.
I was right.
In all the hours and days that I spent wrestling with myself over whether or not to come, one fact kept slipping under the chains of my resolve: Lucas wanted, more than anything, more than his own life even, to find his sister. Enough of his mind was intact after the training the Reds were subjected to that he actually volunteered to serve at Thurmond to search for her there, knowing full well that he could be caught. Instead, he’d found me.
Why did you turn around?
Why did you hesitate?
Lucas, why didn’t you leave me?
We were going to find her. He was going to get us both out of the camp, and we were going to look for Mia together. As much as the scars from that day still burn, and as many times as I’ve relived the moment they caught him, the emptiness in his face when he was brought back to duty at Thurmond, fully broken…it’s nothing compared to the way this image is scorching my heart. Mia has been waiting weeks for a brother who will never come for her.
I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.
She’s not alone. For the first time in weeks, I muster up enough anger to pull against the chains that apprehension has thrown over me. Anger—beautiful, dark, sweltering anger—burns out all my trembling uncertainty. Adrenaline hums through my blood, and I wish I were any other color but Green. I’d throw this man and all of these soldiers across the room, as far away as I could get them. I’d blow out the electricity and drag her away in the darkness. I’d burn this place and its lies to rubble.
Mia turns slowly. Her eyes are sharp, dark, with none of the distant dreaminess that softened them before.
“Your brother?” the man repeats. “I searched for him in the system, but there’s no record of him at all.”
“That’s bull—” Mia manages to catch herself before the curse can slip out. “He’s a Red! They knew what he was when they took him. And if the other camps are closed, then he’s coming to get me.”
“Mia…” the man begins. The other kids go stiff at that word: Red. It’s a single syllable that carries nightmares in its back pocket. Mia doesn’t know to be afraid. She knew the Lucas who was in control of his abilities, the fire simmering beneath too many layers of soft sweetness to be frightening. She hasn’t seen what they made him. How they cut, and cut, and cut to make sure he’d never bloom again.
“I’m staying,” she says. “If that’s still a problem, then you need to check your equation and solve it.”
The man’s back on his feet, looming over her, his arms crossed. “I need you to be a good girl and listen to me.”
Mia’s features pull back in a snarl. “I’m not a good girl. I’m waiting for my brother.”
“Even if he—” The man shakes his head. “Even if he were to come, he would be in the same position as you. He’ll be a ward of the government.”