The Vanishing Girl (3 page)

Chapter 5

For a moment
, all I could do was gape.

He was just like me.

I didn’t know there were others out there who shared my ability, but my captor did.

My captor. He’d vanished, leaving me alone. I could still escape.

As soon as that thought entered my mind, several black SUVs rounded the corner, their sirens on. They slammed to a stop in front of me, and then agents poured from the car.

Rough hands grabbed me and pulled me toward one of the vehicles. Guess I wasn’t escaping after all.

Dane Richards rounded one of the cars and assessed me. “Caden was right; you did run. Good to know that boy’s instincts were on the mark.”

“Caden?” I asked.

“The guy who caught you.”

He now had a name. Caden.

“He’s an extractor,” Richards continued. “And one of the best damn ones we have.”

“What’s an extractor?”

He put a hand on my shoulder and shook it. “All in good time, Ember. For now, your job is to focus on getting acquainted with our staff and the facility you’ll be living at.”

He let me go, and the other agents threw me into the backseat of an SUV. A moment later my backpack hit my side as one of the agents tossed it in after me. The door slammed shut behind me, and two agents I’d met earlier slid into the front seats.

The driver looked at the female agent in the passenger seat. “What’s the ETA, Debbie?”

The woman glanced at the dashboard and tilted her head. “We should arrive around seven
—
eight at the latest.”

Wherever we were going, it would take us five to six hours to get there.

The engine turned over and we pulled out into traffic.

I looked out the window and my chest constricted. The scenery flew by, and with it, my freedom.

“
Where are we
going?” I asked, already tired of watching San Francisco fade away behind me. The whole scenario felt like a nightmare
—
horrible, but too fantastical to be true.

“The facility is in the California costal hills near Big Sur,” said Debbie, a curly-haired brunette. “It’s full of teens who share your ability to teleport.”

My head snapped up.

“Just like Caden Hawthorne, the boy who cuffed you,” she continued.

Hawthorne. I now had a last name to go along with the first. I didn’t linger on that piece of information for long though, not once I processed Debbie’s words.

There were more of us. I guess I wasn’t quite as anomalous as I’d thought.

I rubbed my wrists, which were still red and sore. It had taken me twenty minutes to get my Swiss Army knife out of my bag and cut them off. The two agents hadn’t tried to stop me, but they hadn’t tried to help, either. Most interesting of all, they hadn’t taken away the knife.

They didn’t see me as a threat.

“I know this must be hard for you,” Debbie said, “but I promise you’ll love the facility.”

Unlikely
.

I looked out the window, choosing my words carefully before I spoke. “You’re not taking me to jail or recruiting me for the military, are you?” It was a rhetorical question
—
I knew they weren’t. I was receiving special treatment
—
the SUVs, the multiple agents, the escorted ride to the facility. Neither a typical soldier nor a criminal would receive this type of treatment.

Silence. Then, “Our program is called the Prometheus Project. It is a secret operations unit funded by the U.S. government, and its aim is to protect and maintain national security. To those without clearance it goes by the pseudonym the Generation Project.”

This was the project name Dane Richards used in front of my parents. I was taken aback by the government’s audacity. They hadn’t even allowed my parents, who consented to the program, to know its real name. That might be innocent enough, except that if the project’s true name was classified, then there must be other things about it that were classified as well.

Technically, I could be going anywhere and used for any purpose the government deemed necessary.

Debbie continued. “The Prometheus Project began over two decades ago when a group of scientists were hired by the U.S. government to mutate human genes. These scientists discovered that by manipulating the genetic code, they could alter a person’s appearance and intelligence. They could even create abilities never before seen. One of these was seeing if the human body could teleport.”

She fell silent, letting me take this in.

I felt my throat work, but no words came out. They made me a freak. On purpose. It was unforgiveable
—
I wouldn’t wish this ability on anyone.

“But when the children with this mutation were born,” Debbie continued, “they weren’t teleporting. And, after seven unsuccessful years of trials, the funding was pulled, and the program was shut down.

“It wasn’t until the oldest group of teleporters hit puberty that the project was revived.”

I remembered my first trip was shortly after my thirteenth birthday. Puberty
had
triggered it.

“When strange reports surfaced of children appearing and disappearing, the program was started back up. Ever since, we have slowly reclaimed the children with these abilities, most before they were eighteen. We’ve found the earlier we bring them in, the less traumatic the experience.”

That was an understatement.

“Of course, we’ve had to make some adjustments,” Debbie continued. “We had no idea that only the initial stages of sleep triggered the teleportation mechanism. Or that the body can only trigger a single ten-minute trip
—
nine minutes and fifty-six seconds to be exact
—
once per circadian cycle.”

Huh. That was interesting. I guess it explained why I only teleported once during fitful sleep.

“But we’ve sorted all those problems out. Now the ultimate goal of the Prometheus Project is to train you to use your talents to protect our country.”

Chapter 6

The drive was
long, and we didn’t end up arriving at the facility until the evening. Other than the disturbing information Debbie told me at the beginning of the trip, we hardly talked, and the male agent driving us hadn’t even attempted conversation.

For a long time all I could see were the dark forms of the coastal hills below an equally dark sky. Then at some point we pulled off the lonely freeway and drove into the ominous hills. I tried to keep track of all the turns we made, but gave up after a while. The winding hills and night sky made it impossible to orient myself.

The SUV turned off the paved road onto a dirt one, and I sat up a little straighter. We drove for another fifteen minutes before the sky lightened up ever so slightly.

Lights. We must be close to the facility.

Sure enough, our car began to slow. I leaned forward in my seat to catch the first glimpses of my new home. A tall chain-link fence came into view first. Razor wire wound itself around the top of it. On the other side someone sat in a guard tower, a gun in their arms.

Perhaps this was all meant to keep people out. Perhaps. But I wasn’t a trusting person by nature.

My muscles coiled, and as silently as I could I tried the door handle next to me. It didn’t surprise me when it didn’t budge. They’d locked me in from the outside.

When our car pulled up to the gates, the chain-link fence rolled back and the guard in the tower waved us in.

Our car crested a small hill, and then the facility stretched out in front of me. From the dim glow of the artificial lights, the facility appeared to be an off-white, industrial building three stories high. It was ugly and unimpressive to look at, and behind it were a series of similarly ugly buildings.

Great. This looked an awful lot like prison to me.

We came to a stop in front of the building. Our driver went to the back of the car and pulled out luggage from the trunk while Debbie opened my door.

“Nervous?” she asked me.

I slid out, slinging my backpack onto my shoulder.

I shrugged. The truth was, at the moment a whole lot of emotions swirled around, and I didn’t want her to know any of them.

“You can always come to me if you need someone to talk to. I’m the resident counselor here, so it’s my job to help you make a smooth adjustment to living here.”

Two years. Two whole years
—
some of the best of my life
—
would be spent cooped up here. My throat worked when I thought about what my future should have been. I’d already applied to colleges, and the acceptances were trickling in. Now I’d never get to go.

My shoes squeaked against the cheap linoleum floor as Debbie showed me to my room. It was one of many that lined the hall.

“This section of the facility is the dormitory, and it’s where you and the other teleporters will stay during your downtime. It’s mixed gender, so don’t be surprised if you see men in the halls.”

As if on cue, one of the doors down the hall opened, and a boy exited his room. When he noticed us, he waved at Debbie, a spark of interest flashing in his eyes as they passed over me. Debbie waved back, and we watched as he then walked away from us.

Debbie opened the door to my room, and we stepped inside. The first thing I noticed were the two familiar duffle bags resting next to my bed. One of them normally held my family’s camping equipment.
Pierce
had long ago been written along the brown canvas straps that crisscrossed it. I smiled sadly at my mom’s handwriting.

The other was my purple suitcase, what I normally took when my family went on trips. They’d packed my things for me, probably while I ran.

My eyes drifted from the luggage to the rest of the room. White walls, brown threadbare carpet
—
the kind that portable classrooms came with
—
and a bed fitted with white sheets and a rough wool blanket.

Forlorn. That was the word I’d use to describe my room. It looked like it was made to fit multiple occupants, but only my single, lonely bed sat in the corner, along with a single desk and dresser.

On the wall that ran to my left, a narrow door opened into a bathroom. At least I got my own shower.

“Ready for a brief tour of the facility?” Debbie asked from the doorway.

I shrugged. “Sure.” I didn’t have much else to do.

“Now, what kind of attitude is that?” Debbie smiled as she said it.

I just stared at her.

She coughed. “Okay, right this way.”

We left the dormitory and walked to the dining hall. It looked nearly identical to my school’s cafeteria with its linoleum floors and faux wooden tables. Dismal.

“Here’s the dining hall. Meals are at seven a.m., noon, and five p.m. Miss them and you’ll go hungry. We make announcements during mealtime, so it’s important to get here on time.

“Your parents packed your laptop and gave us your email address earlier today, so as soon as we enter it into our roster, you’ll start receiving emails.”

My throat constricted at the reminder that I was now far away from my family.

“Your class schedule and any assignments your instructors give you will be emailed to that account, so make sure to check it regularly. Until it’s entered in, you’ll have to rely on your partner for that information.”

“Partner?” I kept the budding panic out of my voice. I didn’t want a partner. I didn’t want friends period. I may have to be here, but that didn’t mean I’d have to enjoy it.

Debbie smiled, and although she had been kind to me since we meet, this was the first time genuine warmth filled her face. “I believe you’ve already met him.”

“
Caden?
” I asked, jumping to the only other teleporter I’d ever met.

She nodded.

No.
No, no, no. “You’re kidding, right?”

“’Fraid not.” She sounded way too cheerful about that. As though there wasn’t a conflict of interest here, such as him being the guy who cuffed me and dragged me into this whole mess. If not for him, I’d be on my way to Mexico right now.

“And what, exactly, does a partner do?”

Now she gave me a look that told me I should’ve already figured that one out. “They help each other out with classes, training, and eventually, missions.”

“Missions? What are we, spies?”

Debbie didn’t say anything to that, which made me think that was exactly what I was here for.

“C’mon,” she said, “we have more to see.”

We left the dining hall, and Debbie took me down another hallway lined with doors labeled numerically.

“These are the classrooms and labs. This is where you’ll spend most of your day. All your classmates have the same abilities as you, but you each have particular talents. Your studies will be tailored to you and your classmates’ unique genetic makeup. Just like at your last school, you’ll be grouped in classes based on your age group, as opposed to your skill level.

“Make sure you arrive to your classes on time. Each instructor has their own personal punishment for tardy students, and I can promise you it’s never fun.”

I was becoming increasingly downtrodden. By the looks of this place, I was going to have to spend my college years reliving high school.

It also didn’t escape my notice that the halls were empty. I may not be the only one with the ability to teleport, but by the looks of it, there weren’t many of us.

Next we walked to the library and study hall, where students lounged in recliners, highlighting notes or typing away on laptops.

I hadn’t noticed the students before, but now that I did, I couldn’t look away. A few looked unremarkable, but there was a sharpness about them that made me think of the phrase “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” 

And the rest
—
they were perfect. They had beautiful faces, sculpted bodies, and stylish outfits. Some looked younger than me, but most looked my age. I didn’t see anyone who appeared much older than me.

Debbie patted my arm. “I’ll save the introductions for tomorrow. C’mon, I’ll show you the gym, and then I’ll let you get settled in.”

The term “gym” was a bit of a misnomer. Connected to the main facility by a hallway, one of the satellite buildings was full of nothing but rooms equipped for a plethora of activities. We began on the third floor, which contained basketball and volleyball courts as well as a dance studio.

On the second floor were two weight rooms
—
one with machines and the other full of benches and free weights. But most of this floor was taken up by an open room covered in mats.

When we arrived on the ground floor, the air tasted musty. I could hear splashing before Debbie held the door open for me. Inside was an Olympic sized pool, and in it was a single occupant swimming up and down the length of it.

Like all the other rooms, I assumed I’d take a cursory look and then we’d move on. So it surprised me when Debbie left my side and approached the edge of the pool. She dipped her hand into the water and waved it back and forth. By the looks of it, she was trying to get the swimmer’s attention.

As soon as the swimmer began to slow down, she stepped back. He swam to the wall and placed his hands on the concrete lip of the pool.

I tried not to stare as he pushed himself out, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching and straining.  Water slicked back his golden hair and dripped down his torso.

Caden Hawthorne. It was a shock to see him here.

He pushed himself out of the pool in one fluid movement, every bit of exposed skin just as tanned and toned as I thought it might be. “Deb-bie!” He scooped her into a wet hug and she squealed. “I didn’t know that was you.”

“Caden, stop it,” she said, but even from here I could hear the laughter in her voice. “I brought your pair here to meet you
—
again.”

I was moving before she’d even finished the words. My shock had morphed to anger. This was the cocky prick who’d foiled my escape and rubbed it in my face.

Caden broke off the hug and turned to face me just as I closed the distance between the two of us.

I threw my arms in front of me and shoved him hard. His eyes widened for a split second. And then he caught my wrists as he fell.

I yelped and tried to pull away, but Caden’s hold on my wrists didn’t ease up. I felt my body propel forward along with his.

Cuffed, groped, and now dunked underwater. This guy knew exactly how to humiliate me.

Together we hit the water, and only then did he release my wrists. Chilly water enveloped me and I kicked away from him, gasping up for air and swimming to the wall.

Above us Debbie called out, “It looks like you two are going to get along just fine. Caden take care of Ember; this is going to be a tough time for her.” She spoke as though I weren’t in the room.

“Yes, ma’am,” Caden said.

“I’ll see you two in Professional Profiling later this week,” she said, and then the sound of her footfalls gradually quieted.

“
Hi princess,” he
said, turning to me in the water, his hazel eyes intense.

“Screw you.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Feisty as ever, I see.”

“Don’t pretend you know me,” I said, struggling to pull myself out of the water.

Caden swam to the wall, and easily lifted himself out of the water.

He turned to face me, and this close to him, I caught sight of crisscrossing white lines and pea-sized craters speckled along his arms and torso. Scars. Whoever this guy was, he led a violent life.

He bent down, reaching out a hand for me. Reluctantly I took it and let him pull me out of the water. “You’re right,” he said, still holding my hand. “I don’t know you
—
yet.” His eyes glittered. “I have every intention of figuring you out.”