The Countdown

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer him, but I couldn’t think of a reason to lie. “They’re dead.”

  If I expected a reaction from Agent Truman, I didn’t get it. “I guess that explains the silence on their end.”

  I frowned. “If he has a GPS tracker, how come I don’t?”

  Agent Truman regarded me. “How do you know you don’t?” He lifted his shoulders. “If you do, it’s not one we were given access to.”

  A tracker. If whoever bought me knew where I was that would change everything. My stomach convulsed.

  I hated asking, but I needed to know. “Can you tell if I . . . if they . . . put one in me too?”

  Agent Truman rolled his eyes. “Relax. The one in him is ours. We supplied it to them. And unless the folks who paid for you have access to highly classified government technology, like the device we put in your friend here, then you’re free and clear.”

  He didn’t exactly set my mind at ease, but he had a point. What were the odds there were two government agencies bidding on hybrid alien teens?

  I slipped closer to Thom, inspecting his neck. The skin was so smooth . . . as it would be, I supposed. He’d already healed around whatever they’d done to him. “So there’s something in there? And they put it there, Eddie Ray and Natty?”

  Agent Truman scoffed. “Natty? I heard that was what she was goin’ by now. Cute.” He used the knife’s tip to point at the bed, indicating it was time to get started. Thom reluctantly settled down.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  His eyes slid coolly, calmly, to the knife in his hand. “Haven’t you heard, sport? I’m a doctor.”

  Thom closed his eyes as Agent Truman began probing his fingers over the surface of his neck, presumably searching for whatever had been planted inside. I shuddered—he may have been a doctor once, but he had a terrible bedside manner. To distract myself, I pushed for more information. “So you knew Natty?”

  “I know . . . knew of her. She had an impressive reputation, that one. She and that partner of hers, Eddie Ray, worked the black market for years. Made a killing. No pun intended.” He winked, making it clear the pun was totally intended. Also, making it clear he had a cold, dead heart. He glanced up at me. “I never really trusted her.” His lips pursed. “Eddie Ray I got—his loyalty was all about the almighty dollar. Whoever had the deepest pockets, you know what I mean.” He pressed his finger over something and Thom grimaced. He seemed to have found whatever it was he was searching for.

  Then he got the knife ready.

  I spoke up before there was no going back. “Aren’t you at least gonna sterilize that or something?”

  “He’ll be fine. That’s the beauty of healing at super-speed. It works to fight off bacteria too. Right, sport?”

  Thom opened his eyes and gave me a he’s-not-wrong shrug. I couldn’t exactly argue. If Thom wasn’t freaking out, how could I?

  “About this black market you mentioned, what’s that all about? How does that even work? What would anyone even do once they got us?”

  Agent Truman gave me a quick but critical glance. “You’re not that naive, are you? You can’t tell me you’d be surprised to know how valuable you—we”—he corrected, because we all knew he was a Returned as well—“are on the open market. People pay big money for crazy shit. My division alone ponied up a crap ton for ol’ Tommy Boy here, all in the name of science.” He leaned over Thom and leered into his face, reminding me why I always thought of him as a shark.

  “You’re the worst.”

  “I doubt that. There are some sick SOBs out there, people who like to . . .” He jammed the tip of his knife into Thom’s throat, making Thom flinch. He didn’t actually cut him open or anything, but it left a nasty mark. “. . . experiment,” he finished.

  “Like you?”

  “You can’t have progress without sacrifice.” He shrugged as if it made no difference to him one way or the other, and I wondered if this indifferent attitude was all hot air—an act he put on to make me believe he didn’t give a crap. Or if he was really as cold and as unfeeling as he made it seem.

  “There are some who just like to ‘collect’ us, like freaks in a zoo. Create their own little museums.” Another who-cares shrug. “And others who like to use our blood for sport. Stick some poor sap in a sealed container and expose them to it. Then they sit back and watch.”

  “Until what?” But I had the sinking feeling I already knew the answer.

  Agent Truman didn’t hesitate to fill in the blank. “The Code Red.”

  My stomach rolled as I thought of Tyler—the way he’d suffered before I’d decided to take him to Devil’s Hole.

  “What about me? If you were buying Thom, how come you didn’t buy me too?”

  “Your friend ‘Natty’ never told me she had you. I mean, I knew they had a Replaced, that was why we attacked Blackwater in the first place—we intercepted that message she sent out.”

  So the message Natty sent hadn’t been to the NSA.

  He glanced down at Thom. “As much as I like my experiments . . . and I do like my experiments, kids like you . . . well, you’re chump change in the grand scheme of things.” He grinned. “No offense.” He offered it like it somehow absolved his vileness. Turning back to me, he explained, “Getting my hands on you would have changed everything.”

  I felt dirty. To my very core I felt sick and dirty and like I was the real traitor. I was the one who’d gotten Blackwater attacked, not Natty . . . not really. I turned to glare at Agent Truman. How had I ever thought he could be trusted? How had I thought this was a good idea, asking him to side with us? “And now? Is that what this is—your big chance to capture me?”

  “Jesus, girl, if I’d have wanted to haul you in, I’d’a done so by now.” There was an undercurrent of irritation in his voice, and I wondered if I’d struck a nerve. “If this is your way of thanking me for saving your friend here, then you’re welcome.”

  “What about Alex Walker? When we were at Blackwater, you said you didn’t need me, because you had him?” A thick cloud of guilt twisted and churned in my stomach, becoming something dark, something stormy.

  “Kid from Delta?” Agent Truman clarified. “Yeah, I thought he was like you, but I was wrong. Turns out, he was just garden-variety Returned.”

  I let out a long, low breath. “What . . . what did you do to him?”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t useful. Just not as useful as you woulda been.”

  Dead air filled the room. A charged kind of silence that lasted weeks. Months. Years. Time we couldn’t afford. I was powerless to change the past . . . I couldn’t keep worrying about Agent Truman and the things he’d done or we might not have a future.

  We had to move forward.

  “You said the message Natty sent wasn’t meant for you. Who then?” Thom asked from where he was on the bed.

  “No, sir. The message was sent out for another buyer, the one your girl had waiting in the wings. When you went up for sale, we weren’t even in the running. We were just lucky enough to be monitoring the signals, and picked it up.” He looked at me. “Unfortunately, you got away.” Truman took his frustration out on Thom as he dug the end of the knife into the thin tissue of Thom’s neck. “Except I think she and Eddie Ray couldn’t agree about it. I think the transaction woulda closed sooner if Eddie Ray didn’t think he could get more money for you from someone else. He was right, you know? You . . . being what you are . . . you’re worth big money.” He gouged the tip of the blade deeper. Digging. Burrowing. He had all the finesse of a butcher with a rusty hacksaw. It gave me the creeps.

  “Got it!” Agent Truman held up what looked like a miniature-sized SIM card covered in Thom’s blood.

  Thom sat up, wincing as he wiped his neck. “Did it really take that much work for something that small?” The gash in Thom’s neck was at least four times the size of the tracker Agent Truman had extracted.

  Agent Truman grinned as he snapped the device i
n half before tossing it in the wastebasket, where it barely made a plinking sound. Then he wiped the blade of his pocketknife on his pants. “I always did enjoy my work.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  “We’re all monsters. You most of all.”

  It stung, hearing him say it like that . . . the same way Griffin had.

  What was her word? Chimera.

  Didn’t matter that she called it something else, though, it still meant the same thing: monster.

  Thom lifted the edge of his shirt to his wound, to try to stanch the flow of blood, even though it was probably already slowing on its own. “Maybe this is a mistake, working with him. He’s a Daylighter, after all.” His voice lowered, until it was barely a whisper. “Even if he’s Returned, what makes you think he’ll help us?” Thom asked, and Agent Truman gave me a look that said he wanted to know the answer as well—an Enquiring Minds Want To Know kind of look.

  “Because I have a trustworthy face?” he goaded.

  “Because that message said ‘The Returned must die,’ and you’ll do what you always do—save your own ass.”

  “And what about you. You’re not one of us. You’re not Returned, you’re Replaced. Why should you get involved?”

  I thought about the things Blondie—the dead girl—had said about me not being human. But she was wrong.

  If what she’d said was true and these beings were coming, then where did that leave us—and I didn’t mean us the way Natty said it, as in us, the alien race. Or even us as in the Returned. I meant us . . . people. Because that’s who I was. That’s who I would always be.

  A human being. A person. A part of this world.

  No matter what my DNA said.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. I might be different now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember who I was. I can’t just throw that part of me away. Simon, Willow, Griffin . . .” I ticked off their names, again waiting for some flicker of acknowledgment. Something that told me he’d heard his daughter’s name. But he remained blank. Dead-faced. So I said the words he’d never be capable of, “They’re my friends.”

  Agent Truman settled back now and somehow made it look even less comfortable than before, like he was balancing on razor blades rather than on a bed. “They’re not mine though.” He smirked, and frustration swelled within me.

  “But if these aliens really are coming for us—for the Returned—we need to stop it from happening. Don’t you feel a sense of loyalty to your old life? To protect any friends you do have? You’re still half human. You can’t want this to happen.”

  He frowned. “Look, you’re not getting it. These things . . . these beings are far more advanced than we are. If they wanted to destroy us, trust me, they would. You think that Chuck guy wanted to blow his brains out? Poor guy had no idea what was going on inside his own brain.” He inhaled, thinking it over. “No, there’s got to be something more to it. They want something.”

  “You knew them. You made deals with them way back when. What do you think they want? And why would they want the Returned dead?”

  Agent Truman’s expression hardened and his jaw flexed. “We had no idea what they were up to in the beginning. We really thought we were getting the deal of the century—trading a few people for technology beyond our dreams.”

  “And you believed them?”

  “We had no reason not to. They’d been studying us for years. They understood us better than we understood ourselves. They knew our weaknesses,” Agent Truman explained.

  “So what happened?” I asked, leaning forward now.

  “We realized they were getting more out of the deal than we were. They were supposed to warn us before taking anyone, and then again when they sent them back so we could . . .” He pursed his lips, and I knew this was the part I wouldn’t like. “So we could intercept them.”

  “So you could experiment on them, you mean? See what makes the Returned tick?” I criticized.

  He shrugged, not bothering to deny it. “Then we realized they were taking people without consent . . . sending back fewer. Either that, or sending them back without notifying us. It became like a scavenger hunt, and we scoured the globe searching for people like your friends.” He said “your friends” like it was a filthy word.

  I considered what he was saying, that the aliens were the ones in charge of this so-called relationship. They’d always been the ones with all the power. “So, once you figured it out, why didn’t you say something? Try to stop them?”

  “What exactly do you think we should’ve done? Gone to the police? The president? No thank you,” he said, waving the idea away. “I’ve been to those woo-woo conventions. I won’t be lumped in with one of those nut jobs passing out pamphlets about how aliens are plotting to take over the planet, even if it’s true.”

  “So you’re saying some of those guys are legitimate?”

  “Best minds in the world.” He said it emphatically. “But no one gives a rat’s ass because the second they opened their mouths, they punched their ticket to crazy town. Think about it, what did you think when your old man tried to tell you his theory?” I winced, reinforcing his argument. “Yeah . . . and that was your old man talking. Besides, I realized long ago I could get more accomplished working behind the scenes. The NSA had offered me the perfect hiding place. No one thought to look for a Returned right under their own noses.”

  I closed my eyes. “Maybe this is a mistake.” I started toward the door, but Agent Truman blocked me in two long paces.

  It was Thom who answered, surprising me. “It probably is, but we don’t have a choice. He’s already here, and we can’t exactly let him go. Besides, maybe he can help.”

  I shook my head. “We always have a choice. This is too big. We can’t afford to make mistakes. We’ll figure it out without him.”

  Agent Truman leaned forward. “Ah hell, don’t make me say it.” And when I didn’t say anything, his face fell. “Fine, goddammit, I wanna help.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What happened to all this ‘they’re not my friends’ crap?”

  “Because, if what you said is true, and they’re really coming for us, we could be in a shitload of trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if that message you heard is right, then we’ve done something wrong. We could be facing a war. And if that happens, no one is safe. We could be extinct within a week.”

  I glanced at Thom, who looked as sick as I felt. “What do we do?” I asked Agent Truman.

  “We need to stop them from coming in the first place.”

  We only stayed at the motel long enough to scrub the room of signs we’d ever been there in the first place. On our way out, we slid two more fifties across the front desk to Mabel, hoping the extra hundred would work like that flashy-thing in Men in Black, erase her memory. Then we stopped at the nearest Walmart, where Thom and I ran in and grabbed the first things off the hangers that looked like they might fit. We changed in the car.

  Thom now wore a Bob Marley T-shirt and a pair of stiff new Dockers (khakis, of course), and I’d grabbed a Kiss Me I’m Irish tee off the clearance rack, a garden-variety navy hoodie, and a pair of black stretch pants. I kept Blondie’s boots, not just because I didn’t want to waste extra time searching for new shoes, but because they were surprisingly comfortable. I did my best to flashy-thing my own memory so I wouldn’t have to think about Blondie, and the last time I’d seen her.

  Agent Truman said he knew a guy, which I assumed meant someone who might be willing to help us. Thom didn’t ask, and neither did I. Mostly because I was so totally focused on that other thing he’d said, back at the motel. You know, the one about a war coming to Earth.

  Even if I’d had other questions, which I was sure I did—things like where were my dad and Tyler and the rest of the Returned right now?—our impending doom was enough to shut me up. To consume me. To eat me alive.

  War.

  Coming to Earth.

  And if it d
id, humans would become extinct.

  Was it possible he’d been exaggerating that last part?

  I sneaked a sideways glance at the agent who sat stiffly behind the wheel, hands at ten and two. Nothing about this guy struck me as the exaggerating type.

  So if he wasn’t exaggerating, what did that mean for us?

  How would they do it? Would they invade in waves, destroying everyone and everything that stood in their way? Would innocent people be sacrificed because they were incapable of fending for themselves? I imagined my mom and my little brother, ravaged by the perils of war. I imagined starvation, untreated diseases, festering injuries, and people turning on each other just to survive.

  Or would the aliens just end it all at once? Destroy everything, the entire planet in one fell swoop?

  That would be simpler, it seemed. More efficient.

  My eyes slid downward to the watch dangling loosely around my wrist. Even fastened at the shortest notch, Chuck’s beefy arms had been giant-sized compared to mine, but that didn’t stop its rhythm from settling my rattled nerves.

  Blinking about a million times, I tried to focus on the city whirring past in the dark—businesses of all shapes and sizes, some packed together in neat little strip malls and some freestanding with drive-throughs or giant parking lots. We’d driven all day and now neon signs flashed, and billboards and streetlights glared, all backed by hillsides dotted with houses and churches and more businesses, some lit and some not.

  Whenever a car pulled alongside us, I’d dropped my head, keeping my chin low so whoever was in the other vehicle wouldn’t see me. The last thing we needed was for someone to notice my eyes—eyes that glowed in the dark and could probably be seen even from behind the tinted glass.

  It wasn’t right to be here, with Agent Truman, when I’d been avoiding this . . . running from him for so long.