In the Afterlight recap

The last of the Children's League hides out in an abandoned desert base with Clancy Gray as their prisoner, while Cole leads and Ruby works on Clancy for everything he knows about Thurmond and about his mother's research into the disease. They gather more runaway children, make contact with the Federal Coalition, an adult opposition movement, and trade recorded testimony about the camps for support. Zu returns after years apart. The broadcast turns public opinion against the administration, and the government strikes back. Clancy engineers his escape and the destruction of the base, and Cole is killed. Ruby and the others regroup with the Coalition, track down Lillian Gray, and mount the operation Ruby has wanted since the beginning: an assault on Thurmond. The camp is opened and its children are freed, the truth about the camps and the disease is made public, and the administration falls. Ruby destroys Clancy's mind, and the survivors are left free, grieving, and with ordinary lives to relearn.

Previously: a disease killed most of America's children, and survivors developed abilities the government answered by locking them in camps. Ruby Daly hid inside Thurmond for six years pretending to be a harmless Green, when she is in fact an Orange who can enter minds and rewrite memory. Freed by the agent Cate, she fell in with the runaways Liam, Chubs and the young Zu, reached the settlement at East River, and was trained and then used by Clancy Gray, the president's son. East River was destroyed, Zu was sent west, and Ruby gave herself to the Children's League to save a wounded Chubs, erasing herself from Liam's memory first. As a League agent she led a team with the Blue Vida and the young Yellow Jude, was sent after a flash drive holding Lillian Gray's research into the disease, and found it in Liam's possession. She confessed and restored his memories. Clancy, captured by the League, manipulated everyone and escaped. The League's headquarters was destroyed, Jude was killed, and the organization collapsed. Cole Stewart, Liam's older brother, took charge of the survivors and revealed that he is a Red.

What is left of the Children's League goes to ground in an abandoned base in the California desert: Ruby, Liam, Chubs, Vida, Nico, Cole and a handful of others, with Clancy Gray locked up as their prisoner. Cole is in command and runs the place like an operation rather than a refuge, which puts him at odds with his brother almost immediately. Ruby's job is Clancy. He is the only source they have on the inside of Thurmond and on his mother's research, and every session with him is a negotiation in which he decides what a piece of information costs. Ruby goes in anyway, because the plan she will not give up on requires knowing what is behind Thurmond's fences. Grief for Jude sits over the whole base, nobody sleeps properly, and the group has no allies, no money, and no way to move in the open.

The base fills up as runaway children find their way to it, which strains supplies and makes hiding harder. Ruby trains, and her ability keeps expanding past what she thought its limits were. Clancy works on everyone who comes within reach of him, setting Cole against Liam and Ruby against both, and giving up his mother's research in fragments that always require something back. Cate resurfaces, now attached to the Federal Coalition, an organized adult opposition that is trying to remove President Gray through politics and public pressure rather than force. The Coalition has resources the children do not, and wants something the children have: firsthand accounts of what the camps actually are, from the people who were in them.

Zu comes back. She has spent the years since East River with other children in California, she is older, and she has no intention of being kept out of what happens next. The Coalition's terms are settled: the children record their accounts of camp life and the government's treatment of them, and the Coalition supplies the support needed for an operation against Thurmond. Senator Cruz is straightforward that the testimony is a political weapon, which does not make it untrue. Recording it costs the children more than they expected, forcing them to say aloud things they have spent years not saying. The material is prepared for broadcast, and the group waits to see whether a country that has looked away for years will look at this.

The broadcast lands, and it moves the country: what the administration has claimed about the camps stops being believable, and the pressure on the president becomes real. The government retaliates, and the base becomes a target. Clancy, who has been preparing for exactly this, engineers his escape, and the base is destroyed in the process. Cole is killed. Liam loses the brother he had only just got back, the survivors lose the only place they had, and Ruby loses the one person who could push an operation of this size through. The group scatters and reassembles with the Coalition, smaller, angrier, and out of time, with the assault on Thurmond now the only move left rather than one option among several.

Working from the Coalition's side, the group tracks down Lillian Gray, whom the government has kept hold of because of what she knows. Her work is the closest thing anyone has to an account of what the disease did to the children who survived it and what, if anything, can be done about it, and the last of it never left Thurmond. Planning for the assault becomes concrete: Ruby's six years inside the camp make her the person the whole thing turns on, and she has to decide how far she is prepared to go with an ability that can strip a person's mind out. Clancy is still loose and still a step ahead of them. The Coalition, the surviving League children and Ruby's own group are aligned for exactly as long as the operation lasts.

The assault on Thurmond succeeds. The fences come down, the children are brought out, and Ruby finds Sam among them. Lillian Gray's research and the evidence taken from the camp are made public, and the administration's account of the last decade collapses with it: President Gray is brought down, the camps are closed, and the surviving children begin to be returned to families who were told they were being treated. Ruby ends Clancy herself, going into his mind and taking it apart so that he can never do to another person what he did to her. The victory is not clean. Cole is dead, Jude is dead, and the children coming out of Thurmond are not undamaged. Ruby, Liam, Chubs, Vida, Zu and Nico are alive, together, and no longer hunted, and Ruby is left holding an ability she will not give up and a future she never expected to have.

The operation against Thurmond goes ahead and the camp is opened: the fences come down, the children inside are led out, and Ruby finds Sam among them. The evidence gathered from the camps and from Lillian Gray's research is put in front of the public, and the case the administration built its power on does not survive it. President Gray's government falls, the camps are shut down, and the surviving children begin the long process of being returned to families who were told for years that they were being treated. Clancy is dealt with by the only person who could: Ruby goes into his mind and takes it apart, leaving him no longer able to do to anyone else what he did to her. The cost is high. Cole is dead, Jude is dead, and the children who come out of Thurmond come out damaged. Ruby, Liam, Chubs, Vida, Zu and Nico are alive and together, no longer fugitives, and Ruby is left with an ability she has stopped hiding and a life she now has to decide what to do with.