“Around age seven,” Lillian said. “They may have to undergo regular maintenance, however.”
That got an uneasy murmur from the kids, who finally seemed to be waking up from their shocked daze.
“What are our next steps?” Alice asked, repositioning her camera. “This is all incredible, but we have no solid proof about Agent Ambrosia being added to the water supply. Leda quickly shuttered the research program. None of the Greens have turned up any information.”
“What would be proof enough for you?” Dr. Gray asked.
Alice didn’t have to think about it. “Some kind of documentation that shows it as part of the treatment mixture.”
“We could go to nearby treatment facilities,” Liam said. “Break in, take photographs, try to find hard copy or information on their computers.”
“That could work,” Alice said, eyes gleaming. “I think we’d need to hit at least five or six, just in case some of them turn out to be duds. And in different states, too, so they know it wasn’t limited to California. Do we have enough gas left to pull this off?”
“Wait—wait,” Cole said. “Our priority now should be lying low, refining our hit on Thurmond, and waiting for reinforcements to arrive. If anyone goes out, it should be to gather more forces for the fight.”
“Reinforcements?” Liam repeated, practically growling.
Cole raised his brows.
“Oh, you bastard,” Liam snapped. “Harry? You’re asking Harry to fight?”
“He volunteered. He and his unit of forty ex-military guys and gals are eager to do their part.” Cole turned to address the kids. “Contrary to what he’s been telling you, I would never have asked someone to fight who didn’t want to.”
“How many times do we have to drill it into your skull before you grasp the reality of this?” Alice asked. “The kids don’t want any fight.”
“Oh, they want a fight,” Cole said, rounding the circle to stand directly in front of her, “but they don’t want to have to wage it themselves.”
“No, we want to coordinate a media blitz with the truth,” Liam said. “To release the locations of camps we know about, along with the lists of the kids there. We let the American people rise up and go after them. It’ll cause some chaos, but now that we have the information that IAAN isn’t contagious, it increases the likelihood that foreign powers will come in as a peacekeeping force. Isn’t that right, Senator Cruz?”
“It’s not a guarantee...” she said. “But I could try to work with that.”
“You’re overestimating how much people care,” I said, shaking my head, noting with some satisfaction that the others actually stopped to listen. “I’ve seen too many times that the only way we’ll ever get what we want—the only way we’ll ever be able to get our freedom from this—is if we get it ourselves. The camps have sophisticated security systems, and Gray has shown time and time again he’ll do anything to cover his ass. What’s to say the minute you release the camp information, he doesn’t take it out on the kids? Use them as hostages, move them, kill them to bury the evidence?”
If they’d thought about that in all of their planning, it didn’t show on their faces. And the fact that Dr. Gray didn’t try to refute me seemed to lend some credence to the possibility.
“You absolutely cannot just release the information about Agent Ambrosia, I’m sorry, but no,” she said. “You are severely underestimating the widespread panic it’ll induce in the population.”
“True,” Senator Cruz said. “I’d rather not see people start tearing each other apart to get to natural water supplies. But I agree with Alice that we need evidence; not for the public, but for our foreign allies.”
The buzz that moved through the room was palpable—kids were already shifting around, assigning themselves to groups to drive out to the water treatment facilities. And there was Cole, watching it all. His hand gave a painful jerk as he lifted it to rub the back of his neck, and I wondered if he felt it, too, the slow unraveling. The train that had been so clearly under our care had jumped the tracks entirely. When he looked at me, there was a silent plea in it, a desperation I had never seen in him before.
I couldn’t stand it—it pushed me past furious. He’d done everything in his power to help us. To make the hard decisions. And now they were trying to push him out as leader? He was being mocked by the looks Liam and Alice exchanged? In that moment he could have backed out of the room and I wasn’t sure anyone but me would have noticed.
“Well,” he said finally, “I have some intel for you, if you’d like it.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you do.”
“You say you want to give the world a sense of who these kids are, but you’re really just setting them up to be pitied.” Cole tucked his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, his voice growing louder as the din around him faded. “What motivates people, even more than anger, is fear. Go ahead and release all that intel on Ambrosia, see where that lands this country when people start rioting over the last few fresh, untainted water sources. Or, you can show them Gray’s trump card—that he’s been building an army of Reds.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice demanded.
“You all saw what happened at Kansas HQ today,” Cole said. “But what the news didn’t tell you is that there are reports that it was Reds, not a military unit, that attacked them.”
“Oh, convenient—reports with nothing to back them up.” Alice waved him off.
But, if nothing else, Cole now had the reins of the conversation back in his hand. He was guiding the conversation now, not letting it happen around him. “My trusted source says that there’s a camp of Reds not too far from here, in a place called Sawtooth. I’d like to go and document evidence of them—their training, the camp’s existence—and I’d like to give it to you for Amplify, on the condition it’s used in conjunction with the actual camp hit.”
“Where did this information come from?” Liam asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“A trusted source,” he repeated.
His brother rolled his eyes. Alice, though—Cole had read her right. It was like a cat that had spotted a mouse creeping along the floorboards. She wanted this story, and she wasn’t going to run the risk of someone else getting it first.
“Okay, what about this,” she began. “We send out five teams to the water treatment facilities, and you can take a small group out to assess the situation there. Snap some photos.”
“I only need one other person,” he said, glancing at me.
“I’ll go,” Liam said, before I could. He set his jaw, daring his brother to refuse. Cole crossed his arms over his chest, eyes darting over to me, looking for a lifeline.
He doesn’t want Liam to go. And it had nothing to do with how Liam may or may not have been able to handle himself, or if he trusted him. I saw that now.
“I’d still like to go,” I said. “I think—”
“He just said two would be enough,” Liam pressed, turning back to his brother. “Unless you think I’m going to screw everything up on your precious little mission?”
Cole snorted, his lips twisting up in a rueful smile. “All right, it’s settled. Now...someone talk to me about our car situation. What’s the gasoline level at now?”
Dr. Gray returned to her seat, finally, eyes fixed on her hands in her lap as Senator Cruz asked her something. The meeting came to a natural end as five teams formed to go out to the water treatment facilities, Alice taking the lead, dividing them up by state and choosing which one she wanted to go with.
I didn’t stay around to watch the stiff conversation between Cole and Liam. I turned on my heel, vaguely aware ofChubs saying something to me as I made my way back into the tunnel, through the Ranch, back to the emptycomputer room. I sat back down at Nico’s computer station and switched on the news livestream.