The Countdown (The Taking) (18 page)

As far as Agent Truman, I hadn’t tried to have any heart-to-hearts with him or anything, but I’d definitely started to get a feel for subtle shifts in his demeanor. For his part, he’d actually attempted to break the ice with us. Even gone as far as trying to crack a joke or two, which had been nothing short of awkward. The corners of his eyes had gotten squintier than usual, almost as if he wasn’t quite sure of the proper procedure for smiling. Like it was a lost skill. But even after hours of traveling together, he hadn’t given us a first name so he was still just Agent Truman. Maybe “Agent” for short.

The one time I’d tried to broach the subject of Griffin, he’d frozen over like arctic tundra.

But of course Agent Truman wasn’t the buddy-buddy type and we weren’t friends. Agent Truman was more the
shoot-your-daughter-and-leave-her-for-dead type.

The only reason we were together at all was to stop an alien race from invading the planet.

Message received.

Days Remaining: Ten

THE STOP SEEMED TO COME OUT OF NOWHERE, maybe because we
were
nowhere. Not just up in the mountains, but parked in front of an actual mountain, facing a wall of jagged stone that would have been imposing if not for the tiny white flowers that sprang from its rocky surface.

I started to open the passenger side door because my legs were killing me, and right now, getting out and stretching them was all I could think of.

Agent Truman’s hand shot over and stopped me. “You might wanna hold up a sec.”

Without warning, the car plummeted as if it had been suspended by only a taut wire, and that wire had just been cut. My stomach lurched up all the way into my throat. I guessed we’d been parked on some sort of platform, a super high velocity elevator.

Whatever it was, the drop felt endless.

“What . . . the . . .” Thom glared at Agent Truman, who wore an almost-legitimate smile as he watched us from behind the wheel.

“A little warning next time,” I accused breathlessly, after my stomach had slipped back into place.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Agent Truman asked, switching off the ignition.

When we were parked aboveground, it had been broad daylight, but down here, deep underground, it was pitch-black. “What is this place?”

Agent Truman’s sly grin was back. “You’ll see.” And just when he said it, like he’d issued a command, a series of pale lights switched on all around us, illuminating walls that were carved from the cliffs themselves.

Beyond our car, a wide corridor extended as the walls shifted from rock to steel, the floor from stone that was rough and coarse to granite so polished it gleamed.

A woman emerged from the end of the tunnel. Her white lab coat was stark against her dark skin, and her hair was pulled away from her face in a ponytail that ended in a thick cluster of soft curls. It was clear from her welcoming smile that she’d been expecting us.

“
Now
it’s safe to get out,” Agent Truman said as he opened his door.

“Welcome to the ISA,” the woman greeted us as she approached. “The Interstellar Space Agency,” she clarified as she came to a stop in front of us. “I’m Dr. Clarke. So glad you could join us.”

The Interstellar Space Agency. She made it sound like I should know who, or what, the Interstellar Space Agency was. Like they were up there with the FBI or NASA, or even the PTA when it came to public awareness, rather than a clandestine organization operating from underneath a mountain.

Before I could ask exactly what it was the ISA did, and how they thought they could help us, Dr. Clarke turned to lead us back down the corridor she’d just come from. “Let me give you the grand tour.” Since Agent Truman and Thom were already following her, I wasn’t given much of a choice. I supposed I should too.

Even though we were so far beneath ground, the place had a sterile feel about it. When we emerged from the tunnel, we stepped out into a space that didn’t look at all like it could possibly be buried beneath a mountain. I remembered the first time I’d seen the Daylighters’ Tacoma facility—that blown-away sensation I’d had that I’d just walked onto an elaborate movie set. A science fiction lover’s wet dream.

I had that feeling now as I looked around at the enormous operation. Equipment that looked even more state-of-the-art than what I’d seen at the Tacoma facility. Things that
looked like they didn’t even belong to this world. “What is this place?” I asked again.

“Remember I told you about those brainiacs no one takes seriously?” Agent Truman answered. “Well, these are who I meant.”

Dr. Clarke gave Agent Truman a look that reminded me of one my mom used to give my dad, a we’ll-come-back-to-that look. A put-a-pin-in-it look.

I sort of hoped I’d be there for that conversation.

Then she launched into her own explanation. “You’ve heard of SETI?” Dr. Clarke asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Should I have?” I answered vaguely.

Dr. Clarke nodded, like she’d expected as much. “Most people haven’t. Stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” Dr. Clarke went on. “It’s the collective name given to several organizations using scientific data to establish interstellar communications. To search for life . . . out there.”

She moved us through the rest of our tour like we were in a race, zipping through one vast room after another. I’d call them labs, except the word “labs” wasn’t quite right because it didn’t do any of these places justice.

I wanted her to slow down. I wanted all of this to just . . .
slow down
. I had questions. I wanted
her
to ask questions—about who we were, what we were doing here, what we wanted. But she just kept talking . . . kept shuttling us forward until I’d lost track of where we were.

There were multiple levels with glass elevators on each side. There were chambers running around the perimeter with a giant open area in the center, and walkways that connected one side to the other across each different floor. People worked on different levels, on different projects with names she ticked off like Andromeda One, the Axis Venture, Project Frontline, XtropX. She tried to explain each one, but they blurred together until nothing made sense anymore.

We reached what looked like a nursery—another “lab” filled with plants, some beneath large lighted hoods and some that grew so large they were taller than we were. But all these plants were unusual—their colors and the textures of the leaves and the stems shooting up from the soil—none of it was quite right. Even the soil they were planted in was
off
somehow. Not Earth-like.

Curious, I stepped away from Thom and examined one of the spiky, red-tinged leaves. It was covered in a strange spongy substance that looked like it was expanding and contracting. I reached for it.

Just as my fingertips brushed it, the thing moved. Not the substance covering the leaf, but the plant . . . the entire leaf.

First, it shifted, but then in a swift lunging motion it took a swipe at me.

Thom yanked my hand away before I could even flinch.

“Did you see that?” I cradled my hand to my chest.

Dr. Clarke came up and steered us back expertly. “Oh,
dear, you don’t want to touch those.” The offhanded way she said it made me think that the delayed nature of the warning wasn’t entirely an oversight.

I rubbed my fingertips and my thumb together until they were practically raw, wondering what might have happened if Thom hadn’t saved me. I shot him a what-the-hell? look and he just shook his head because he had no idea either.

Dr. Clarke finally began to fill in the blanks about her agency. She barely acknowledged the part where a sentient plant had just tried to—
I don’t know
—attack me. “Not everyone realizes what a delicate balance the universe is. NASA has used their Hubble telescope and measured the age of the oldest planet in our galaxy at thirteen billion years,” she explained. “That’s more than twice as old as Earth. But there are more than one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.” She flashed a knowing grin. “And that’s just what NASA will admit to. There are species—
beings
—far more advanced and complex than us, who’ve survived millennia. Planets a hundred times older than ours. The Milky Way is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.” She was specifically looking at me and Thom, and I wondered how much she knew . . . about us. How much Agent Truman had told her when he’d placed his private phone call. “It used to be that everyone had their hands in SETI’s research—the Russians, NASA, most major universities. But by the mid-’90s, Congress canceled all government funding. Now it’s strictly a private enterprise, mostly through UC Berkeley.”

“So . . . you’re part of the SETI project?” Thom asked.

“Was,” she clarified. “Now I’m here, working with the Interstellar Space Agency. We do a lot of the same stuff, only with much better funding.”

We were approaching something that looked vaguely familiar. I froze as I glanced uncomfortably at Agent Truman. Dr. Clarke turned to watch us.

The canisters in question were so similar to the ones I’d seen at the Daylight Division, the human-sized ones they’d had at the Tacoma facility, that my skin went cold and clammy.

The only difference between them was that these weren’t empty. Or at least one of them wasn’t.

Dr. Clarke gave me a significant look, and then glanced back at the canister. “We’ve made better contacts as well.”

I followed her gaze. “You’re not saying . . .” I tilted my head, hesitating. “That’s not . . . ?”

I never finished my question, I didn’t need to—she knew what I meant.

An alien. I’d meant:
That’s not an alien, is it?

But I was sure it was. As sure as I’d been about anything in my life—Old Kyra’s or New Kyra’s.

I separated myself from Dr. Clarke and the others to get a better look, and no one told me not to go. My palms hadn’t been this sweaty since the first time I’d taken the pitcher’s mound and faced my very first batter. I hoped things turned out better this time around.

By the time I reached the canister . . . the one that was occupied, my teeth were chattering like one of those windup toys.

The liquid behind the glass was an odd translucent blue that bubbled in thick sticky swells. But there was something in there, embedded in all that gelatinous fluid. A creature of some sort.

If it truly was an alien, like Dr. Clarke hadn’t denied, it didn’t feel that way to me.

Something inside me tripped at the sight of it, like a switch or a trigger, and I was drawn closer.

It was human
-ish
but so obviously
not human
. It had a head and four limbs—two arms and two legs—hands, feet, a torso, fingers and toes, although nothing was in exactly the same shape as mine or Thom’s or Agent Truman’s or Dr. Clarke’s. Its skin was thicker, its head larger, its jaw wider, and as I circled around the canister, I noticed its spinal column was raised and thorny.

“What . . . ,” I tried. “What do you call it?”

“He’s part of a larger group we call the M’alue. Their actual name is unpronounceable, so M’alue is the closest our language can get to it. The meaning itself is totally lost.”

Thom moved to stand next to me. “But it’s a
him
?”

“Yes,” Dr. Clarke acknowledged. “We call him Adam.”

“What’s wrong with him? Is he . . .
alive
?”

Dr. Clarke’s voice was somewhere behind me. “We keep him in stasis. For his health.”

I stepped closer to the tube, as close as I could possibly get. There was something about him, about Adam . . . “How did you get him?” I asked. “How did
he
end up here?”

I leaned in, my breath clouding the glass as I pressed
my forehead against it. I raised my hand and let my fingers roam along the cool surface of the cylindrical canister. I felt sorry for him, thinking how easily the roles could have been reversed—me and him. I let myself wonder if that’s how
they’d
kept me, during the time they’d taken and held me for all those years. Had I been
up there
in a similar tube, breathing jelly-like blue liquid?

When his eyes opened, I jumped. Behind me, there was a gasp, although who it came from, I wasn’t sure.

Adam was looking directly at me.
Into
me.

The eyes that looked out at me were wide and golden and, like my newly transformed ones, they glowed.

Glowed.

But more than that, there was something happening between us. Something I was sure no one else in the room was aware of. I wasn’t sure if I heard or felt it. Or maybe it was just a singular awareness coming from inside my veins. But it was him . . . it was definitely him. He was communicating with me. Adam, he was trying to tell me something.

“Do you see that?” It was Thom, right at my back. “Kyra, are you seeing this?”

I nodded, thinking,
How could I miss it?

“Step back,” Dr. Clarke said, but she said it uncertainly. “We need to go.” And when I didn’t move, I felt her hand on my shoulder, more confident than her voice. She pulled me away as she insisted, “Now.”

“Okay, so that was something, right?” I whispered to Thom, when the tour abruptly ended and Dr. Clarke ushered us as far away from Adam as she could manage. Her welcoming attitude had vanished and now she was silently leading us down endless corridor after endless corridor.

Agent Truman stayed by her side, but every now and then he’d throw me a frosty look to let me know I’d messed up, even though I couldn’t quite figure what
I’d
done wrong.

We went into another of those glass elevators and Dr. Clarke punched a button. I barely noticed as the elevator sank and darkness closed in from all sides as chiseled cavern walls surrounded us. I was stuck on what had just happened back there. About that thing—Adam—trapped inside that tube. The way he’d looked at me.

Dr. Clarke had refused to answer any of my questions about him . . . about why they had him in there, and what was wrong with him. He was hurt I tried to tell her, mostly because it seemed so obvious. He was . . . damaged.

I knew because I’d felt it from him. I’d sensed an intense, unbearable, excruciating pain coming from him.

Her only response was that her team was doing its best for him. That he had the best minds in the world working on him and he was in good hands.

But I wasn’t like her. I couldn’t so easily brush Adam from my thoughts. . . .

When we emerged from the elevator, Dr. Clarke said, “I thought it was a coincidence, you showing up the way you did.” She eyed me, and then looked to Agent Truman. “But
after what I just witnessed . . . up there just now, I believe I’ve been mistaken . . .” Her voice trailed off as we stopped in front of a large metal door. I heard muffled voices coming from the other side of it. “I think your arrival might be connected in some way,” she explained, and then stepped aside as she opened the door.