If Liam recognized that that had been lifted from his original plans at East River, he didn’t show it. He sat with his legs sprawled out in front of him, leaning back on his hands. He watched his brother with wariness.
“The catch is, the kids who volunteer can’t have been previously in a camp. PSF policy dictates that kids be returned to the original camp they were processed through, and Oasis is a relatively new camp. There is absolutely no pressure to participate. Like I said, this is purely volunteer.”
Zu glanced between Liam and Chubs, but it was Vida who smoothed a tuft of her hair down in silent reassurance.
“That aspect of the plan won’t be necessary for Thurmond, as we have three people who have been inside of the camp and are intimately familiar with its layout. The other difference between this and the big hit is what we’re doing with the kids we free. From what intel we have”—otherwise known as what intel Clancy let us have—“Oasis has approximately fifty kids, all of whom I’d like to have return with us. Depending on how willing they are to fight, we can ask them to join us in the Thurmond hit, or we can slowly return them back to their parents, a few kids at a time.”
“Are we still going to go out and try to round up the tribes of kids?” Chubs asked, jerking his thumb back toward the map.
Cole nodded. “We’ll start sending out cars once we have supplies. We need as much manpower as possible if we’re going to pull this off ourselves.”
He moved through the other parts of the plan quickly; they were sketchy at best until we had actual images from inside of the camp’s walls. It would be a small team, no more than ten of us, armed but with the order to avoid a firefight if we could. With only fifty kids, there would be maybe twelve PSFs there at most, and one or two camp controllers. We would pose as a military convoy bringing in the weekly supplies; I would be out in front, of course, because I’d have the job of influencing one of the camp controllers. He or she would continue to report that everything in the camp was fine while we drove the kids out using the camp’s own transportation, whether it be SUVs, trucks, or a bus.
The kids were silent, processing this, until Liam finally said, “Fifty kids is a hell of a lot different than three thousand kids.”
“Better to run this through on a scaled model,” Cole said, smiling but somehow not smiling.
“Okay, that may be true, but other than giving us practice, and rescuing a small group of kids, what is this going to accomplish?”
Cole put his hands on his hips, one brow raised. “That’s not enough for you? Really?”
“No, I mean—” Liam ran an agitated hand back through his hair. “The plan is good, but couldn’t it serve as something else, too? Are we going to release the photos or video that’s taken so people can actually see what conditions are like in there?”
A few kids murmured in agreement, including Lucy, who added, “I like that idea a lot. People should have the opportunity to see what it’s really like.”
“Do you have the means to do that without Gray tracing their source, swooping in, and blowing this place sky high?”
Liam’s face was still hard, but I could sense him retreating under Cole’s look.
“Whose plan was this?” Chubs asked. “I read through all of them, and I don’t recognize it....”
Cole’s jaw set, just for a moment. “It’s a combination of a number of them. I pulled the best elements from each.”
Actually, it was the exact plan I had handed him, and he knew it. I faced the front of the room, refusing to turn when I felt Chubs’s gaze fall on me. There was no reason to fuel the fire by pointing it out to them.
“Senator?” Cole motioned for her to step up.
“Ah, yes,” she said, “I was able to secure a promise of supplies from my contacts in Canada. Food, gasoline, technology, and a limited supply of guns. The issue is that they refuse to bring them across the border into California. They want to bring them in by boat to Gold Beach, Oregon. Is that doable?”
Liam spoke up before Cole did. “I just need a map and a car, both of which I can find around here.”
“And at least three kids as backup,” Cole amended. “Kylie, Zach, and Vida.”
“And me—” The words were only just out of my mouth when there was a bang at the other end of the room. I turned around in time to see Nico stumble backward and trip over the chair he’d been sitting in. He pressed both hands against his mouth as his knees gave out under him. The noise that escaped him was a high, keening moan.
I was up and moving toward him before I could stop myself, gripping his arms to steady him and stop his rocking. “What? What is it?”
By then, Cole and the rest of the room had already surrounded the laptop, blocking my view of whatever was on the screen.
“Cate,” Nico cried, “Cate. Ruby, they took her—they took Cate.”
Gasps flew up around me like a flock of birds. I released my grip on Nico and pushed to the front of the kids, who folded against each other to create a path for me. Vida was gripping the laptop, had lifted it off the desk, and it was only because Chubs was there to grab her arms that she didn’t get to slam it down against the hard surface.
“You son of a bitch!” she spat at Cole. “This is on you, ass**le! God dammit—dammit—” Chubs wrapped both arms over her chest, pinning her arms to her side as she lashed out with her feet, not caring who she kicked. She thrashed around, trying to headbutt him off, and only succeeding in knocking his glasses off his face. Zu rushed to pick them up before they could be trampled.
The video on the screen was looping on the homepage of a news site, fuzzy and shaky, as if it had been shot from a distance. A long line of men and women with black hoods and bound hands and legs were lying on the side of a highway, with smoking car wreckage nearby. They were loaded onto the back of a military truck one at a time, overseen by soldiers armed with assault rifles that reflected the late afternoon light. The headline running beneath the pictures was Children’s League Agents Captured in Colorado.
My head throbbed as I watched it play through again, searching for her, trying to see what made Vida and Nico certain. Nearly all of the prisoners were dressed in black sweats or Op gear, the same things they had left the Ranch in—some were easy enough to identify. Sen’s long braid. Instructor Johnson’s imposing height.
Maybe she hadn’t reached the other agents in time to try to turn them back—maybe she was the one who had recorded the video, and was safely on her way back to us—maybe she—
Cole paused the video on a shot of the prisoners lining up at the truck, and pointed to a smaller figure at the end. I leaned forward, bringing my face close to the screen. When he moved his finger, I saw the traces of white-blond hair escaping from beneath the hood. The figure was standing calmly despite the awkward angle at which they’d bound her arms. The other agents bucked and bumped the soldiers, hassling them even on their way into imprisonment. Cole unpaused the video and she walked forward, head down, not so much as shrugging off the touch of the soldiers who lifted her into the back of the truck.
No.
I felt a painful crack down my center. The shapes and faces around me seemed to blur as I stepped back, wrapping my arms around myself. Blood pounded through my veins, making my legs feel light, my head lighter. I couldn’t calm the sensation, couldn’t get the jitters out of my nerves long enough to think a whole, coherent thought. Cate.
She left.
I let her go.
They’ll kill her, they’ll execute her as a traitor, I let her go, and now they have her—they have Cate—I heard Nico’s crying and felt the pressure build behind my own eyes, a pain that spread to cover my whole face.
“What does the AMP watermark mean?” Liam was asking. “It’s in the upper right-hand corner of the video.”
“That’s short for Amplify,” Senator Cruz answered. “They’re an underground news outlet. Gray must be livid. They’ve shown he hasn’t successfully stamped out the League in the Los Angeles attacks like he promised.”