The Countdown

  “I was worried sick,” my dad breathed into my hair when he finally got his turn, and suddenly I was seven and hadn’t heard him when he’d called me in for dinner. “When they brought the boys back, no one would tell us when you would return. Jesus, Kyr, I don’t know how much more my old heart can take.”

  I wanted to tell them everything, right then and there, but Molly hovered too, watching our every move, hanging on our every word. “Your heart’s fine and you know it.” I shoved him away playfully, and then glared at Tyler and Simon. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

  Simon cocked his head to the side. “It’s not like you took a quick detour into outer space.” He laughed, shrugging it off.

  But I frowned at him again. At them. “You heard me when I said five minutes. I mean, yeah, I didn’t realize I was in for the full decontamination treatment when I came back. But it didn’t take that much longer than I’d said.”

  Simon looked at Tyler, and then glanced warily at Molly, and I couldn’t help noticing the way her brow puckered.

  “What?” I insisted, feeling out of the loop all over again.

  “Kyra, how long do you think you were gone?” Tyler asked.

  “I don’t know . . .” My eyes shifted to the clock on the wall and I did the math in my head. It had been about 2:45, last I’d checked, right before I’d boarded the spaceship. Now it was right at 4:37. “Even with decontamination, it’s only been a couple hours . . .”

  But I stopped talking. From the reactions on their faces, I already knew I’d figured wrong. Like . . . way wrong.

  My heart thumped once, really hard. And then about a thousand times more. “Not even close . . . ?” It came out as a question, but I already had my answer. Before anyone could respond, I managed a tight, “How long?”

  Tyler grimaced. “Since yesterday.” He took a step closer, his forehead creasing. “You really didn’t know? No one told you?”

  I shook my head because that couldn’t be right. “I was only gone”—I looked to where Molly’s eyes were fastened to me, and I amended what I almost said—“a few minutes. I only flew that thing a few minutes . . . maybe half an hour.”

  This time it was Simon who was shaking his head. “No. We waited for you to come back.” Still shaking his head, more slowly now. “You fell off the radar, for like, thirty seconds. Then, when they turned your tracking device on . . . they saw you . . .”

  “Tracking device?” So even after I’d turned off the ship’s radar, they’d still been able to see me?

  Molly waved it off. “It was harmless. A fail-safe in case anything happened. We put it in your headset.”

  My stomach sank. How was I going to explain this—where I’d been and who I’d been with, especially since now I realized I had no idea how long I’d even been gone?

  “We saw you up on that screen . . . in space,” Jett finished, and I wondered how much more they knew. “Then Dr. Clarke said they took you.”

  “They?” I asked numbly.

  Simon looked to Molly. “She and Dr. Clarke wouldn’t let us stay. Said they’d keep us posted,” he added bitterly. “That was last night. We’ve been locked in here ever since.”

  Tyler stood in front of me. “Where were you all this time? Do you remember what happened out there? Anything?”

  An entire day . . .

  Had I really been up there that long? I searched my memory for the missing piece of time, trying to fill it in with tangible things that made sense—sounds, tastes, colors, anything to plug the gaps.

  But they weren’t there.

  There was just a missing chunk where the time should be.

  Except that wasn’t exactly right, because in its place there were new things. Information. Crucial facts the ISA had been withholding. Things they all needed to know.

  The missing time was worth the trade.

  I hesitated for only a second, and then went for it, clinging to the lie my friends had just offered me. I tried to imagine just how I should behave—I mean, what was the protocol for amnesia?

  And then told myself I had this . . . I’d done this before.

  “I don’t . . .” I let myself grieve for the parts of my life I was already missing . . . not just in the past twenty-four hours, but those days Natty and Eddie Ray had taken away from me.

  And the years I’d lost . . . those five long years.

  Tears burned my eyes, and instead of being ashamed, I let them come. “I can’t remember any of it.” I didn’t have to lie.

  Molly watched me for only a second longer, while my dad held me and patted my back. Tyler and Simon and everyone else huddled around me, doing their best to comfort me. To assure me I was safe now.

  It was laughable—safe. That was the last thing we were, yet somehow I kept up the façade.

  At least until Molly decided there was nothing to be gained from eavesdropping on our reunion and she sneaked out, letting the door lock in place behind her.

  “All right, young lady,” my dad reprimanded as he set me away from him. He tilted his chin down and crossed his arms as he zeroed in on me. “Mind explaining what all that was about?”

  I turned to Jett, and then moved my eyes knowingly around the room as I lowered my voice. “Is this place secure? Can we talk?” I raised my eyebrows, to make sure he understood exactly what I was implying.

  I knew Jett well enough to guess he’d already done a security sweep, checking for bugs—cameras and listening devices. Anything they could use to spy on us.

  “Secure enough,” he answered uncertainly. “From what I can tell there are cameras in most corridors, but only one on this level—out by the elevator.”

  Jett’s assurance was good enough for me.

  Jett looked from me to my dad. “Um, does someone wanna clue me in?”

  “Yeah, I think I might’a missed something,” Willow added, glancing around at Simon and then Griffin.

  My dad shook his head. “You didn’t miss anything. In fact, you were front and center. Meryl Streep here just put on the performance of a lifetime.” He slow clapped theatrically as if they were all part of my audience. “If I wasn’t so afraid you might use your skills against me one day, I’d be impressed. Now spill. And don’t leave anything out.”

  “Fine,” I said, wiping my crocodile tears and sniffing in a less dramatic way. “It wasn’t like I didn’t plan on telling you anyway. I just couldn’t risk letting Molly”—I nodded toward the closed door—“in on what we’re up to.”

  Griffin got up from her table and joined us, keeping as far from her dad as possible. “So we are up to something?” she asked, more interested now than she had been before.

  My temporary bout of amnesia magically forgotten, I nodded. “We are . . . or at least we will be. And we don’t have a lot of time.” I winked at my dad. “So here’s the deal. I wasn’t totally faking it; I honestly don’t remember everything about where I was that whole time. There’s a serious blank spot for me. But what I do know, is this place is definitely not on the up-and-up. What do you know about them?” I glanced at Agent Truman, who ignored Griffin’s cold shoulder routine. “If you thought there might be a war coming, why’d you decide to bring us here? Why not try to mobilize your own people? Call up the Daylighters instead?”

  “Because I know my guys. War isn’t exactly something our government shies away from, even if it’s unwinnable. And they’d never consider you and me allies. First thing they would’ve done is round up everyone with a hint of alien DNA and held us hostage, or used us as leverage. If you’ve read your history books, you saw what happened during World War Two . . . the internment camps. The Japs didn’t fare so well on US soil.” He scowled, looking more human than I’d seen since I met him. “From what I knew of the ISA, these guys’re hippie scientists mostly. Do-gooders who want to hug it out with ET. At least that’s how we’ve always pegged them.”

  “We, meaning the NSA?”

  “We, meaning everyone, far as I know. I’ve never heard otherwise. In
government circles they’re considered well funded but harmless. I met Dr. Clarke years ago at a conference, when she was giving a talk on Jerry Ehman.” When I just stared at him blankly he clarified, “The guy from SETI who intercepted what was thought to be the very first deep space radio signal.” He chuckled. “’Course we all knew it was bullshit. We’d been communicating with the little green bastards for years, but at the time Ehman’s little message went public it was big news. Ask your dad. He can tell you.” He glanced at my dad. “Ben? Wanna share how you know Clarke?”

  I stared at my dad. “What’s he saying? You knew her. Like before we got here?”

  My dad shifted on his feet, suddenly uncomfortable. “I . . .” He cleared his throat and ran his hand through his hair, something he’d already done several times. “Aw, hell.” He sighed irritably.

  “Maybe you two’d like a minute alone?” Agent Truman goaded my dad.

  Pulling a tight smile at the agent, my dad reached for my arm.

  When we were as alone as we could get inside the cramped four walls, he cleared his throat. “He’s right. Much as I hate to admit it, I need to talk to you, and what I need to say is better left between us.”

  I hated the way my dad was stretching this out, avoiding eye contact. The way he kept rubbing the thick bristles on his jaw, because I knew it was a nervous habit, and him doing that was making me nervous too.

  “Dad. Just say it.”

  “Kyra,” he started. “I should’ve told you this a long time ago.”

  I nodded, but the sour taste in the back of my mouth warned me I wouldn’t like this, and I considered faking another crying jag just to make him stop . . . before he said something he couldn’t take back.

  But he was already in it; the words were already out there: “It was my fault you were taken in the first place.”

  And once you said something like that, there was definitely no going back.

  “You . . . what?” I fumbled. “Your fault? What does that even mean? That’s ridiculous. It was no one’s fault. I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It was dumb luck. That’s all.”

  But he was shaking his head, and telling me, “No. No, Kyr, you got it all wrong.” He reached up and scratched his beard again. “It should have been me. You should never have been taken at all.”

  I raised my hand, and my voice, to shut him up. “Stop it. Stop right now. I get that you feel guilty, and it must suck to have your daughter carried away by aliens, but all this bad heart crap and trying to take the blame is just . . . We’re wasting time.” I whirled to go, but my dad grabbed me.

  He was stern in a way he’d never been before. “Goddammit, Kyra, I’m not messing around here. Now stop being such a baby, and listen to me, will ya?”

  This time I didn’t have to force thoughts of stolen memories to make myself cry. I blinked hard, and now I was the one avoiding eye contact. He gave me a curt nod and let go of me. “Good. Okay then.” He started talking, and I kept my eyes glued to his feet. But I listened hard. “Remember when you were little and you used to ask if you could go to the office with me? When they’d have Take Our Daughters to Work Day, and your friends would tag along with their folks? You always asked, and I always made excuses—meetings, appointments. Hell, three years in a row I pretended to have the flu just to get out of it.” Something heavy settled in my gut.

  “The thing was, I couldn’t. Bring you, that is. You knew I worked with computers, but what you didn’t know was that I worked for the ISA.”

  My eyes shot up to his.

  “It’s true,” he admitted. “I gave them almost twenty years. Most’a my adult life. They recruited me right out of college, and I worked out of their Woodinville facilities. Nothing near as intense as this . . .” He spread his arms to indicate this place, and then he dropped them, shrugging halfheartedly. “But definitely not small potatoes either. My security clearance was pretty limited, but I knew they had other operations all over the country.” He chuckled ruefully. “Hell, all over the globe.”

  I felt blindsided. How was I supposed to respond? All this time my dad had been working with the ISA and he hadn’t said a single word. I felt like I was talking to a stranger. Suddenly I had to wonder where he fell on my scale of who I could trust.

  But he just kept talking. “I was there,” he said, his voice like a growl. “The night the ship crashed—the EVE, they called it. It happened right outside Devil’s Hole. They tell you that part?”

  I shook my head, too dazed to manage anything else.

  Simon had told me once that Devil’s Hole was a hotbed of alien activity. I thought when he’d said that, he meant abductions and sightings. I hadn’t realized that included UFO crashes too.

  “I wasn’t actually at the crash site, mind you. That was reserved for top-level clearance personnel only. I wasn’t even part of the recovery team. But the body—that M’alue—was transported across the mountains, to where we were in Woodinville, and I happened to be in the facility when it arrived.” His voice drifted as he closed his eyes, remembering. “I saw it, all gray and broken.” When he looked at me again, his eyes were red. “I had no way of knowing how much trouble that thing would cause, but looking back, we probably shoulda let it die. We damn sure shouldn’t have kept it . . . not locked inside that capsule.” He covered his mouth to stop from choking on his sob. “Jesus, Kyr, I’m so sorry.”

  “So why did you then?” I asked.

  He let out a long, slow, shaky breath before trying again. “When they realized it was healing . . . that it was going to live, someone—I don’t know who, but some asshole—decided we should try to communicate with it. To break barriers.” He ran his hand through his hair. “No clue who thought that was a good idea. But that’s where I came in.” He started pacing, his voice no longer low, and I knew the others could hear him too. Everyone was watching us. Listening. “They put me in charge of writing a code—a translating program.” He shrugged. “Turns out it wasn’t all that complicated, at least to transcribe some of the stuff we recovered from the crash site. It was rudimentary, and like I said, definitely not perfect, but we made progress. That’s how we knew what it . . . what he was . . . that they called themselves the M’alue.” He scrubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “But we never quite got the verbal part right. I tried. Worked on it for months. Sat outside his tube and tried to communicate with him, and I thought I was making progress—a couple of times I swear he tried to respond to the messages I was transmitting. He would open his mouth and make this”—his gaze drifted as he remembered it—“this sound at me.” His eyes met mine. “Like static.” Like the hikers, I could practically hear his thoughts. “But I never understood. The program never deciphered it.”

  I still wasn’t sure what all this had to do with me.

  “I realized then just how much he was suffering,” my dad went on. “I tried to tell my boss, but he refused to listen. So I went to his boss. No matter who I told, no one wanted to hear it.” He just kept rubbing his chin, his jaw, his cheek. “But it was preying on my mind.”

  He dropped his hands and shook his head. “Around that time, the first of our people vanished. At first, no one thought anything of it. The ISA is a big organization, people come and go all the time.”

  “Then someone came back with a strange story about being whisked away in a strange flash of light, and waking up with no memory of where she’d been. When a second person returned and had an almost identical story, we started to take them seriously. Both were gone almost two days on the dot.” He exhaled. “But it wasn’t until the blood work came back and we realized they truly were . . . altered . . . that the higher-ups took notice.”

  “They were Returned,” I said, filling in the blank.

  He nodded, less comfortable now. “I was working late one night, when we received a broadcast over a frequency we didn’t even use anymore. At first, the guys on duty almost wrote it off as nothing more than a bunch of white noise. But they asked me to take a lis
ten. When I heard it, I realized what I was hearing—it was that same static-y sound I’d heard coming from Adam. Of course, I followed protocol and reported it, and the person who responded was Dr. Clarke.”

  My eyes leaped to his. “So that’s how you knew her? The two of you worked together?”

  He glanced over to where the others were clearly eavesdropping. “We weren’t friends or anything, but she listened to the message.”

  I held my breath. “And your code, was it able to translate the message?”

  My dad shook his head. “No, but I think they were using my own code against us. I think they were picking up our transmissions to track our location and that’s how they’d been able to figure out it was us holding their M’alue.”

  I frowned, letting all this sink in. “And even then, you never thought you should just set him free?”

  “It wasn’t up to me. And then it was kids who started to vanish. The first was the son of a man named Alexander Luddy. Luddy was the ISA’s head of operations. His boy’s disappearance caused a huge uproar, and Luddy demanded we surrender the M’alue. But by then it was too late. Experiments had begun. Ugly experiments, and they’d done way more damage than good. The ISA was afraid that sending him back would only make things worse. The kid was eventually returned, forty-eight hours later and halfway across the country.”

  The notion that the ISA had done experiments on Adam—ugly experiments, my dad had said—made me ill.

  “After that, Dr. Clarke’s own son was taken. That was when the M’alue was moved. I never heard where they took him, I only cared he was gone. I didn’t want anything to do with him . . . or with the project. I thought that was the end of it.” He scratched his jaw.

  “Then, another girl went missing, a thirteen-year-old honor student from Arlington, not too far from us. I worked with her dad—he was an IT guy, and I realized: we’d been tapped. This thing, it was never gonna be over, not as long as the ISA had that monster in custody. All I knew was, I couldn’t let anything happen to you, so I decided I’d never let you leave my sight.