In the After (31 page)

“Just another citizen who needs to get better. We’ve moved her from another floor.”

“Do I know her?” I ask, frowning
.

“If she’s upsetting you, we’ll have her removed.” Dr. Thorpe finishes examining me
and walks to the girl, swiftly wheeling her from the room
.

I stare after her, but I can’t trigger a memory. I hope I can remember to ask Rice
when he comes. Maybe he knows who she is. Maybe he can help me remember. I try to
think back again, and this time Kay comes to mind. I let myself focus on her instead
.

• • •

“They’re bringing in a group of post-aps if you want to tag along,” Kay told me a
few weeks later. “I can show you our protocol for arriving survivors.” Something shifted
that night when the sonic emitters broke. Her nasty edge was gone, and while she was
still on my ass in training, she was more serious than sadistic. She even promised
to take me out in the hover-copter so I could learn the controls. It was like she
already considered me part of her crew.

We headed over to the hover-copter landing pad and waited for the post-aps to arrive.
“Don’t touch them,” she warned me. “A lot of them aren’t used to human contact. And
obviously, keep the noise to a minimum.”

“Obviously,” I confirmed. I remembered too well what it was like to emerge from the
hover-copter, freaked out and helpless. It was only a few months ago.

“It doesn’t seem like you took this much care when you brought me in,” I commented.

“I already knew you were a special case . . . and I wanted to punish you for shooting
me. Twice.”

“You’re never going to let that go are you?”

“Not anytime soon, sunshine,” she told me with a smirk.

“Kay, how did
you
make it here?” I asked. I’d never thought about it before.

“I was here when it happened, visiting my brother.” Her expression changed and I wondered
what she was remembering.

“Your brother worked for Hutsen-Prime?” I asked.

“And now he works for New Hope. He’s such an overachiever. My parents always loved
that about him.” I detected a hint of jealousy in her voice.

“They didn’t care that you were a superstar?” I had a Kay Oh and the Okays poster
when I was twelve. I loved her blue hair.

“I was a joke.” She didn’t sound regretful exactly, more annoyed. “I’d rather be here,
doing this.” It almost sounded like she preferred the After. “I mean, it was awesome
at first, don’t get me wrong. They remade me, turned me into a sex symbol. I had stylists
and assistants and assistants to my stylists.”

“Sounds awful,” I said sarcastically.

“It was, after a while.”

“I don’t understand,” I admitted.

“No one ever does. You know, I wanted to be a cop,” she told me. “When they started
the Guardians, about a month after they announced the world was over, I was first
in line to try out. It was great. Everyone thought I would fail horribly. People don’t
expect a small Japanese girl to be able to break a man’s arm.”

“They didn’t assume you were a ninja?”

I was rewarded with one of Kay’s rare laughs. “No. Of all their assumptions, ninja
was not high on the list.” She pointed toward the rising sun. “Here comes the copter.
When they open the door, be prepared to detain the post-aps if they bolt, but only
use violence as a last result.”

“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” I told her.

The hover-copter landed almost silently, only making noise when its bulk hit the soft
ground. The door slid open and a child stepped out. He was about ten, sickly and malnourished.
It was clear he was frightened. I smiled at him and to my surprise he smiled back,
relief evident on his face.

The next person off was a woman—young and pale, with black hair. She looked around,
bewildered, then found me. Her eyes went wide and I froze. Betrayal and hatred instantly
flooded my system. “You!” I barked out.

I covered the distance between us in a few strides and within seconds my hands were
around her neck. My fingers squeezed, her face turned red. She couldn’t breathe but
I didn’t release her. I saw nothing but the girl’s darkening face. My anger tuned
out every sound but her last gasps for breath.

Like lightning, Kay’s arm shot around my neck and the other Guardians grabbed my wrists.
Something hard hit the base of my neck and I fell into blackness. The last thing I
saw before my vision blurred was her, gasping for air.

Amber.

“Let me see her,” I insisted from my hospital bed in the clinic. Kay brought me, told
my mother I fainted on my morning run, that the heat was too much.

“You almost killed her. What the hell?” Kay asked.

I recounted all that had happened, a deep bitterness in my voice. I still despised
Amber for her betrayal. I hated her for taking from me the one thing, the only thing,
that was normal—my home.

When I finished, Kay whistled and shook her head. “Now I get why you wanted to choke
her. There’s no way I’m letting you near that girl.”

I tried to sound calm. “I won’t hurt her, Kay.”

Kay raised her eyebrows at me.

“I
want
to hurt her, but I won’t. I promise. I just need to talk to her and ask why she did
it. Baby loved her. I trusted her.” I couldn’t continue. I wanted to cry and it was
hard to swallow after the choke hold Kay had put on me.

Kay considered me. “You can see her, but only if I come along,” she said at last.

“Agreed,” I said quickly. “Where is she?”

“Two doors down the hall. She needed medical treatment too.”

I stood, woozy. I held on to the bed for support until my head cleared. Eventually
I was able to stand without fear of falling over. “Let’s go.”

“Be calm,” Kay warned, motioning to the door, and I walked inside a room identical
to mine. Amber was in bed, her eyes closed tight.

My eyes narrowed. “I know you’re not sleeping,” I told her. She still pretended, but
I heard her breath quicken. “You sound like a bullhorn when you sleep.”

She opened one of her eyes, then the other. “Are you here to kill me?” she asked,
annoyingly innocent.

“I’m here to ask you why.” I stared into her eyes until she looked away. “How could
you do that to me and Baby?” I demanded.

“I didn’t expect your voice to be so sweet,” she told me. “You were so stubborn about
not speaking with me . . . I always thought you’d have an irritating voice, high pitched,
you know.”

“I’m not here to discuss my voice,” I said between clenched teeth.

She sniffed. “Oh, Amy, I didn’t want to do it. But how could I say no to Paul? They
saw you and Baby one day. They wanted to know where you were staying. You’d survived
so long on your own and you didn’t have a gang or bows or anything. They wanted to
know how you did it. I thought about telling you the truth, staying with you and Baby,
but I couldn’t leave my brother. After what happened, when that Florae almost got
you the night I left . . . I didn’t think you’d want me around anyway. I had to go
back to my brother, even though I hated the basement.”

“What basement? I thought it was a bomb shelter. Did that not exist?” I growled.

“It did. Paul and I lasted six months in there. He protected me until we made our
way to the city, and then he found the group to hook up with. He found us a safe place
to stay. He saved me. We lived in the basement of some bank building. The Floraes
couldn’t get through the bars. . . .”

“How do you know to call them Floraes?” I asked. Until I came here, they were nameless
creatures. They were just Them.

“That’s just what everyone calls them in the other city.”

I glanced at Kay, who levelly met my gaze. “What other city?” I asked. “What is she
talking about?”

“Fort Black,” Amber told me. “It’s in Texas. That’s where Paul and I were before we
headed east and found our gang. They have walls surrounding the whole area.”

“How many people live there?” I asked.
An entire other city
.

“I don’t know. A lot. It’s like the Wild West in there. That’s why Paul and I left,
to take our chances somewhere else.”

“And where’s your gang now?” I asked. “Why didn’t you stay at my house?”

“They died there, all of them. We knew those copter things were picking up people
so when I saw one, I ran at it.”

I shook my head at her. She was lying. I couldn’t listen any longer. I had to leave
or I would hurt her again. I turned to the door.

“Wait. What about Baby?” she called. “Can I see her?”

“I will never let you near Baby again,” I sneered.

She grimaced. “I’ve seen that mark she has . . . the one on her neck.”

“What?” I froze.

“I’ve seen it on other children, in Fort Black.”

“You are a liar.” I clenched my fists, and Kay grabbed my shoulder, pushing me toward
the door. In the hall, I paced back and forth.

“Let’s go to the Rumble Room,” Kay told me. “We can talk about things there.”

“She needs to be watched,” I told Kay as we walked. “I don’t want her to be alone
for an instant.”

“Why?” Kay studied me.

“Because she’ll make it her priority to fit in and find out how New Hope works. One
day she’s going to disappear and when she comes back, it will be to destroy everything
we have.”

“Look, Amy, even though you hold a grudge against that girl, you have to realize that
New Hope is not some unprotected house in the middle of a Florae-infested city.”

“No, at least I had a fence.” New Hope was completely unprepared for the recent Florae
attack and lied to cover it up. If the emitters weren’t faulty, they must have been
sabotaged.

I looked at Kay and wondered how much she knew, what she was keeping from me. My mother
told me nothing, Rice only slightly more. Rice, who paid so much attention to Baby
and noticed her scar right away. Did Amber tell the truth about other children with
the same mark?

“We’ve increased security measures since the Incident,” Kay said as we reached the
Rumble Room. She scanned her key card with a glance over her shoulder and opened the
door for me. “A teenage girl is not going to bring down New Hope.”

I walked through the door, wanting to believe her. She was so confident. But I knew
better. Amber was trouble.

“She wasn’t lying about the city in Texas,” Gareth told me later as we huddled together
on a bench in the locker room. He pulled me aside at practice after seeing how upset
I was and I told him everything that had happened. “The Guardians know about it, but
we were told to keep it a secret. I went there with my crew to see it with my own
eyes.”

“Everyone in New Hope thinks we’re the only ones left,” I said. I stood and began
to pace, nervous energy coursing through my veins.

“Listen, Amy, it’s better that way. Fort Black is a cesspool. There’s no law or order.
The strong prey on the weak.” I watched him massage his left knee. It was giving him
trouble lately but he didn’t want anyone to know.

“And what is it here? People are lied to. People are given a reality that isn’t real.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” Gareth said. “I’d rather not know myself. Believe me, it’s much
better here.”

“Amber mentioned something”—I knelt to meet Gareth’s eyes, choosing my words carefully—“about
children in Fort Black being marked. . . .”

“What, like branded?”

“Maybe. Something about the back of their necks.”

He looked at me blankly. “I didn’t see anything like that.” He shook his head. “Amber
probably lied. She doesn’t want you to go check it out so she’s made up a story about
children being mistreated so you’ll stay here with Baby. If her brother died, she
might see you as family in some crazy-cakes, delusional way.”

“I know Amber was lying about her brother being dead.” I continued to pace. “I see
the way she talks about him, you know? If she’s capable of love, she loves him. When
she said he was dead, she said it like she was telling me the time.”

“So you think we need to watch her?” Even Gareth sounded doubtful. “Did you tell Kay?”

“Kay said we had twenty Guardians and too much to do.”

“You think that her gang can hurt us?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Look what two malfunctioning emitters did to us,” I said. “Sometimes ignorance isn’t
bliss. Sometimes it’s just dangerous.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that we don’t have the manpower. I have to agree with
Kay.”

I sighed, giving up. I would keep an eye on her by myself if I had to.

“I have to tell you something,” my mother said. “I know you’ve decided to become a
Guardian.” She didn’t sound angry, more resigned. She stared down at the coffee table,
deep in thought. She looked tired, with more wrinkles than I remembered.

“I think it’s what’s best for me,” I told her.

“I agree,” she said, to my surprise.

“You do?”

She looked at me wistfully. “I’m concerned, of course, but I think you’ll be an excellent
Guardian. You’ve always been a quick thinker and you’ve gained certain skills living
with the Floraes. . . . I think this is the best way for you to help New Hope.” She
reached over to hug me.

“And there’s something else we need to discuss.” She hugged me closer. “When you class
out, Adam is going to need his room back.”

“Of course,” I said. “Baby will move in with me.”

“Baby can’t live with you, not if you are going to be a Guardian,” she told me quietly.

“What?” I pulled away from her. “Why not?”

“Guardians can’t petition for parental rights. Their jobs are too dangerous. They
don’t keep a regular schedule.”

“Neither do you,” I said. “How much time do you spend with Adam? How much time did
you spend with me when I was little?” I meant for it to hurt her and I could tell
by her pinched face that it did.

“I’m just telling you the rules,” my mother said.

“You help make the rules.” I took a deep breath. “Can’t you just move into a bigger
apartment, so Baby can stay with you?” I asked. “Adam already thinks of her as a sister.”