The Countdown (The Taking) (19 page)

WE’D BEEN KEPT WAITING FOR HOURS, TOLD SOMEONE would come for us when, so far, no one had. My restlessness was sharp.

When the door began to open, and I saw who was standing on the other side, that restlessness mutated, becoming sticky and hot as it burned the back of my tongue.

Of all the people it had to be, they’d brought us Thom. A snake might’ve been better. Or a rabid junkyard pit bull. Anyone but Thom.

After everything he’d done—sending the NSA the coordinates to Blackwater Ranch, putting a tracking device in the
watch he’d given Kyra . . . he was seriously the last person I’d expected to find standing there. Facing us.

“What the fu—” I started. But then I narrowed my eyes and bit down hard, clenching my jaw. “You piece of crap!” I bit out, right before I landed the first punch, hard in the face. And then the second. Somewhere along the line there was a third and probably a fourth.

From behind . . . or above us, since I was pretty sure we were on the floor now, I heard that son of a bitch Agent Truman, and realized he was here too. He was laughing. There were shouts and screams, but Agent Truman . . . yeah, he was seriously getting his rocks off.

No matter. I was seeing red—figuratively and literally—as I took everything out on Thom, wondering if he had any intention of fighting back.

KYRA WAS HERE.

That’s all I could think. All I could focus on, even while Simon was wailing on Thom, and that NSA agent was cracking up. Even as a team of security agents rushed the room.

Kyra was here. As beautiful as ever.

Alive.

I could breathe again.

AS SECURITY SWARMED PAST, I WONDERED WHY an agency whose sole purpose was research needed their own small army, and why they’d been so readily available. But the thought came and went quickly, swallowed up by my gratitude that they’d been there to break up the fight. My voice was hoarse from screaming at the two of them to stop, even though I doubted either Simon or Thom had heard me.

“Enough!” Dr. Clarke’s voice cut through the chaos as the enormous armed men peeled the boys apart.

But it was my dad, who seemed to suddenly be aware I was standing there, whose voice I heard as it echoed off the
metal walls and stone floors. “Kyra!” He shoved everyone aside to reach me and I breathed in his scent as he crushed me to his barrel-sized chest. “Kyra, my god . . . Kyra,” he repeated, as if he was trying to convince himself it was real. That I was actually there.

I wanted to ask him how he’d gotten here, where he’d been, and how he was. I wanted to know when they’d met up with Simon and to know every detail of every second from the moment we’d been separated, but it would have to wait.

When he let me go, all eyes were on me—curious and questioning. In my periphery I spotted Tyler, and he was watching me back. I tried to decipher his expression, that look on his face. Had he forgiven me? Or did he need more time?

Without thinking, I turned and caught Simon’s copper eyes. “Kyra . . .” He sounded like all the wind had just been knocked out of him, and I couldn’t remember a time the sound of my own name had been so intimate.

But it was too much, the way he said it, and I forced myself to look away. To look around.

And they were all there, all my friends in one place—Willow, Jett, Simon, even Griffin—and all I could think was how grateful I was they were alive. That my dad and Tyler had found them.

One of the guards was restraining Willow, and I tried to remember if she’d been part of the brawl. Beneath her breath she muttered, “
scumbag
” and I knew it was directed at Thom.

“It’s not like that,” I said, moving to stand by Thom’s side. “It wasn’t him.”

Griffin’s hands settled on her hips. “Don’t you dare defend that traitor. If it wasn’t for him . . .”

Simon crossed his arms and shot a scathing look at Thom. I had my work cut out for me.

“Seriously, you guys. It was Natty.”

My eyes slid to Thom, who wasn’t exactly making himself seem innocent by glaring at the lot of them. I guess I couldn’t blame him though; I’d be pissed too, if I’d been greeted by a full-scale assault.

Griffin narrowed her brown eyes. “So you’re saying Thom was, what? A pawn? That he was innocent. Natty was some kind of mastermind this whole time?”

“Go ahead,” I implored Thom. “Tell them. Tell them it was Natty who sent out the message.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I had no idea who she really was. She used my passwords to send out a message, and when I caught her, she and Eddie Ray took me prisoner. They tortured me to try and get my private code word for Silent Creek, so they could ambush my camp.” He shook his head and sighed. “Until Kyra found me, I had no idea Natty and Eddie Ray had kidnapped her too.”

“God, I’d love to shake the hand of the person who put that bullet between Natty’s eyes,” Willow ground out.

“Here’s your chance,” Agent Truman butted in. “She’s right here. She shot all of ’em apparently.” He held out a hand all Vanna White-style, offering me up as the grand prize on some game show.

“Christ,” Simon breathed.

But it was Tyler, whose eyes landed on mine that I cared about. “You? It was you who . . .
killed
them?”

I wasn’t sure what I saw in his expression. Accusation . . . disappointment . . . anger? Or was he disgusted that I’d pulled the trigger on my own friend, even though she’d been planning to sell me off the entire time?

Whatever it was, Griffin didn’t have the same qualms. She let out a gusty sigh. “I had no idea you had it in you.” But it was clear she approved.

“It was our only way out,” I explained, looking at Tyler now, and wishing everyone else would just go away.

I turned to Dr. Clarke, hoping to take the attention off me. “You said you didn’t think it was a coincidence when we showed up at the same time,” I said. “What did you mean?”

Dr. Clarke ran her hand over the side of her ponytail, making sure every hair was still in place. She signaled for the guards to wait outside.

“Because when I was showing them around,” she said, looking to Tyler, who hadn’t stopped watching me. “He woke the M’alue too.”

Dr. Clarke and Agent Truman had only been gone a few minutes, but already their absence was this thing you could feel, like someone had been sitting on your chest and once they were gone you could catch your breath.

It was like that, like finally breathing again.

Everyone started talking all at once. I asked my dad for a minute alone, and even though I knew he didn’t want to
leave me again, he reluctantly let me peel away from him.

Willow was just as bad when it came to Simon, staying glued by his side, which wasn’t a big surprise or anything, except that Griffin stayed there too, the three of them forming an uneasy truce as they hovered near Thom. But at least they were giving him the chance to tell his side of the story.

I needed to talk to Tyler, and when I turned to find him, he was right there, waiting for me.

“This is it, you know?” he said, before I could say anything. “The place I was telling you about back at the diner, before you were . . .” He dropped his gaze and gave a quick shake of his head before meeting my eyes again. “Before you vanished. The place I thought we needed to be.”

“Wait? The one you dreamed about?” I frowned. “How do you know? Are you sure?”

“Jett figured it out—using that map I drew. He used his mad computer skills to trace the coordinates to this exact location.”

I tried to make sense of that. The map, the one Tyler had drawn that night in the desert—on the cliff.

“And that’s how you ended up here?”

“Pretty much. The weirdest part is, that when we showed up, these guys came out and invited us in, showed us around like they’d been expecting us. Like we were guests or something.” He shrugged. “But once I saw that . . . when I saw
Adam
. . . I don’t know . . . I just felt . . .” His eyes searched mine, looking for an explanation. “Did
you
feel it?”

I thought about the way I’d wanted to stay there with
him. With Adam. I nodded. “I think so.”

“It’s the strangest thing though. It’s not just Adam.” His eyes were so green as they scoured my face, and it was almost as if I could feel his fingers on me. “It’s you too. Before you even walked through that door,
I knew
you were here.”

I frowned, mesmerized by his voice, his admission. His inspection. “You did?”

He nodded as he contemplated my face. His eyes roving over my nose and each and every one of my freckles.

“Did you tell the others?” I asked quietly.

He shook his head. “I was wrong last time, about the asylum. At least about when you’d be there. I didn’t want to be wrong again. So when I felt you, when I sensed you were here, I thought,
What if I’m wrong again? What if it’s not her?
” His gaze shifted to my lips. “And then when Thom was standing there instead of you, I was . . .” His face creased. “I was
so confused
. Until I saw you behind him.”

His hand started to move toward mine, but then he stopped himself, and I realized what I’d seen in his eyes: disillusionment. “So you really did that? Shot Natty and the others?”

I wanted to explain my reasons. How I’d been forced to look someone in the eyes and pull the trigger, again and again and again. But somehow I just couldn’t. Not now. Not when the fate of the planet was at stake.

This . . . us . . . suddenly, it just didn’t matter as much. And maybe he was going through the same thing.

I almost couldn’t speak. When I found my voice it was
like rusted metal, crumbling and dry. “I’m sorry.”

His brow crumpled. “For what?” he finally managed in the softest tone known to man. A heartbroken sort of sound. “Because you forgot to tell me how in love I am with you? Or for shooting your best friend?”

My shrug was microscopic. “For everything.”

He waited, thinking it over. “Me too.”

And then he left me standing there.

GRIFFIN RAISED ONE EYEBROW. IT WAS THE SAME buck-up-soldier look I’d seen her use a thousand times before. “You okay? I’m happy to knock some sense into her, if you don’t have the heart.” Her tone though was gentler than when she was really giving a get-your-shit-together speech, which meant I must really look bad.

I laughed, or the best I could manage. “I’m fine.” I glanced over to where Kyra was still absorbing our conversation. I wasn’t sure what I felt.

Bad for not absolving her, sure. But after what Truman had
said, about Kyra being responsible for that bloodbath at the asylum . . .

It was a lot to take in.

If what he said was true, then Kyra had assassinated those people, one of whom was supposedly her best friend. Shot them point-blank.

Maybe I didn’t know Kyra as well as I thought I did. I definitely didn’t know how I felt about that.

And maybe that was the problem.

I’d stood in front of her telling myself she was a virtual stranger, this girl who could kill in cold blood, and yet, still, I’d wanted her.

I’d wanted to grab her and kiss her and tell her
I
was the one who was sorry.

How messed up was that?

Super messed up.

Griffin leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s a standing offer. Let me know if you change your mind.” Griffin was a soldier—I knew she’d killed. Griffin never hid that fact. She was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of girl. So why was I holding Kyra to a different standard? Why couldn’t I forget what I’d seen at the asylum?

Because Griffin wasn’t the one I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. Griffin wasn’t the one I couldn’t stop thinking about.

I wasn’t in love with Griffin.

“Thanks, Griff, I’ll keep that in my back pocket.”

“No you won’t,” she baited, knowing exactly where my heart was.

I shook my head. “Nope. I won’t.”

The door opened and Dr. Clarke and Agent Truman—Griffin’s crazy ex-scientist-turned-Daylighter dad—came charging in. Griffin’s demeanor shifted from relaxed to tense in the blink of an eye.

“What about you?” I asked. “You okay? I’d offer to knock some sense into him, but I’m pretty sure your old man could beat my ass.”

She sighed, and let her arms fall to her sides. “Wouldn’t do any good anyway. He is smart, but never did have much sense.”

She kept her eyes on him as he moved to the center of the room, Dr. Clarke coming to stand directly behind him. Without even trying, the two of them filled all the space and demanded our attention. “All right, kiddos,” Agent Truman said, clapping his hands decisively as if he were issuing an edict. “Playtime is over. Let’s get down to business.”

Days Remaining: Nine

THE CONFERENCE ROOM WHERE DR. CLARKE gathered us was sleek, all glass and metal and shiny surfaces. She never touched a light switch, but the lights went down as if she’d mentally commanded it. And almost on cue, there was a gasp from one of the lab-coated professionals. As if they’d never seen glow-in-the-dark eyes before.

I wanted to reprimand them, something along the lines of,
Grow up already!
Instead, I sank lower in my chair, hating being singled out already.

Behind Dr. Clarke a screen flashed to life, reminding me vaguely of one of those Smart Boards from school. Of course,
there were a few minor differences between the technologies here at the ISA and what my old high school was using. First, Dr. Griffin queued up the image of an actual-authentic-
not-animated
alien—Adam. The second was that she only needed her fingertips, which she flipped and waved through thin air, to navigate the representation. Third, and also the most impressive, there was nothing two-dimensional about what we were looking at. The image wasn’t only up there, on the screen, like the boards at school. We were staring at some sort of hologram.

So cool.

“How much do you actually know?” Dr. Clarke began. “About how we first came in contact with them—the M’alue?”

“You mean the First Contact meetings?” I asked, referring to the first secret government meeting with the aliens, the one President Eisenhower allegedly attended back in the ’50s.

I shot a quick glance at Jett, who hated this particular part of our history. He was rubbing the place on his arm—a place that had healed decades ago—where he’d been tortured by our own government to find out whether he was a Returned or not.

My stomach tensed for a different reason. I couldn’t stop thinking about the things Tyler had told me, about how that map he’d drawn had led them here, straight to this underground facility. The whole thing bugged me, considering the messages I’d heard:
The Returned Must Die.

All with what I had to assume were only nine days remaining.

It wasn’t—it couldn’t be—a coincidence we’d found Adam here. Had we—the Returned and the Replaced—somehow been corralled here? Had we made the most enormous-gigantic-
monstrous
mistake of our lives by following Tyler’s map?

I tried to stay focused on what Dr. Clarke was talking about.

She looked pleased not to have to launch into a detailed explanation of the First Contact Meetings. “So you’re up to speed already? Good. It makes things easier. I’m sure you realize then, that, for a time the agreement between us and them was peaceful.”

“
Peaceful?
” I interrupted, sounding more than a little skeptical considering where we were standing right now. “Do you mean the part where they were kidnapping kids and experimenting on them, while the government turned a blind eye?” I crossed my arms. “We may have different definitions of peaceful.”

“Agent Truman has informed me of . . . of
what
you all are. So I can see why you might not understand the situation.” She glanced around at us. Other than my dad, everyone in our group had been taken and returned. “The matter was complex, Kyra. There was more to it than a simple pact. What you might not realize is that it wasn’t exactly a
negotiation
.”

Griffin shot her a black look. “Are you saying they would
have taken us whether there was an agreement in place or not? I have a hard time believing the president would have just accepted that.”

“And what would he have done about it? What would anyone have done about it?” she asked. “Do you know how incredible it is that they found us at all? Of all the planets, in all the solar systems, in all the galaxies, and they just happened to track us down? It’s the universal version of a needle in a haystack. If their goal had been to destroy us, then they could and would have. But clearly they had other plans for us. The M’alue are explorers. Scientists in their own right.” She made it sound like they impressed her. That she revered rather than feared them. Shrugging, she added, “Cooperating was our best option.”

“So what was the point?” I asked. “If you know so much about them? What was their reason for coming here in the first place? Why were they doing this to us?”

Dr. Clarke looked around—not at us, but at her team. “Clear the room.”

She didn’t say who was supposed to go, and who should stay, but they seemed to know. Only about five of her people remained by the time the evacuation was complete.

Beneath the table, I settled my hands on my knees to stop them from bouncing. This was it. We were finally going to get some answers.

“When they came here, they were dying. That is to say, a large segment of their population was sick, and they were looking for a cure. They thought we might have . . . that
we might be the answer they were searching for. Genetics isn’t my specialty.” She nodded to Agent Truman. “Dr. Arlo Bennett here could probably do a better job explaining the science of this, but I’ll give it a shot.” The hologram of Adam vanished and was replaced by a large, rotating double helix. “This is our DNA,” she explained. “Ours is remarkably similar to that of the M’alue considering how different our species and environments are.” She used her fingers to indicate she wanted to ply the strands apart, and the double helix exploded, sending fragments flying into virtual oblivion. All that remained was a single coiled, X-shaped piece. “What it really comes down to is this. They needed one imperceptible, but crucial, chromosome from our genome.”

Jett’s fingertips drummed on the tabletop. “Why not just ask for it? Couldn’t they just get a sample rather than go through all the trouble of abducting us? Experimenting on us?”

Dr. Clarke’s lips pursed. “It was more complicated than that. You might have noticed that you age slower now. Well, there’s a reason for that. Human DNA is subject to something called the Hayflick limit. Basically, it means that there’s a limit to the number of times a human cell can divide before those cells start to ultimately die. Our natural life span.” She shrugged. “And ours is significantly shorter than the M’alue. In order for our chromosome—the one they potentially needed—to be useful to them, they first had to make the life spans match, and the only way to do that was to get their
specimens
”—she raised her eyebrows as her gaze swept
meaningfully over us, letting us know in no uncertain terms that
we
were the specimens in question—“to live as long as they do before extracting the test samples. Increasing the life spans had other side effects as well—the advanced healing, the slower metabolisms, the need for less sleep.”

“You seem to know a lot about us. How come we’ve never heard of you?” Griffin challenged.

“We’ve tried to be discreet,” Dr. Clarke replied. “But we’re not entirely unknown. The government knows we exist, and as long as we don’t interfere”—she smiled smugly—“they don’t bother us too much—although, sometimes it’s a matter of what they don’t know won’t hurt them. All in all, we do our best to stay off their radar.”

Tilting my head, I asked, “So did it work? Did they get what they needed from us?”

Dr. Clarke frowned. “We don’t know. Not exactly.” She closed her fist and the images vanished, the screen behind her going dark. “There was a breakdown in communication—if you could call it that in the first place—between us and the M’alue. Cooperation ended abruptly, and we no longer know where they are in their experiments.” Her lips flattened into a thin line. “I had a chance to meet privately with Ben after his group arrived yesterday, and today with Agent Truman, and I think I’m up to speed on your reasons for coming. I know about the maps and the message. It’s not good.” She paused. “Hopefully, we can help each other out of this . . .
situation
.”

Jett glanced around the table, and I realized not everyone had all the pieces. “What exactly is our situation?”

Agent Truman arched one brow at me. “Go ahead.”

“What haven’t you told us?” Griffin prodded.

“I can’t say for sure, but I think they’re coming. And I think we only have nine days until they get here,” I said.

“How can you be sure?” my dad asked.

“I can’t. I mean, that’s the thing. Every morning when I wake up, I get this . . .” I turned to Tyler, thinking maybe he’d know what I was saying. He was the only one who’d witnessed what I’d gone through, while we’d been on the run. Plus, how did I even start to describe this? “Pains. Like intense, stabbing pains.” My voice was wobbly. “At first I thought it was nothing . . .” I shrugged. “Just part of this whole Returned/Replaced thing. Over time it got worse, and then while Natty was holding me hostage, one of them mentioned I was some sort of countdown. I started to realize what I was feeling was them . . . getting closer. Somehow I can sense them.”

“The same way you felt Adam,” Tyler said.

I nodded. “Yeah, like that. It’s like I’m tracking them. I mean, I could do without the stabbing part, but . . . yeah, like that.”

Jett—as our resident numbers guy—was the first to ask, “So where’d the nine days come from?”

“Same place Tyler’s maps came from, I guess.”

“So, thin air,” Simon said snidely to Tyler.

Tyler shrugged. “If that’s what helps you sleep at night.”

Simon rolled his eyes. “I wish.”

“We’ve gotten a bit off track,” Dr. Clarke interrupted.
“The real question is, what do they want?” When no one answered, Dr. Clarke continued. “Have you ever heard the term extinction level event?”

“Do you mean like the dodo bird?” I asked, wondering where she was going with this.

“I mean,” she stressed, “that the Earth has already survived five mass extinction events, including one that wiped out ninety-six percent of all life on this planet.”

I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to respond to that.

Dr. Clarke straightened the hem of her jacket and fixed her gaze on each of us, one at a time like she was weighing our skills. “This is our chance to play a part in stopping the next one.”

“How do you figure?” Willow asked.

“We need to find a way to prevent them from coming. To prevent
them
from exterminating us. And, apparently, we have nine days to figure out how to do that.”