The Countdown

  My dad had done it. The hardest part was over, the ship was launched and Adam was on his way home.

  But my dad . . .

  I clamped my eyes shut. I can’t do this now, I told myself as I checked the clock. Less than an hour until the M’alue launch their attack.

  We’re running out of time.

  I didn’t know the whole story, only that it had been Molly who’d exposed my dad after she’d pulled a gun on them and he’d hit her with a fire extinguisher. Griffin and Thom had caught up with them shortly afterward, and now everyone was here as my dad’s ship cruised away.

  If we’d had more time, I would’ve asked to hear everything, but instead, we had to finish this thing.

  “You all need to leave,” I said, turning to face them.

  Simon scowled. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, get as far away from here as possible.”

  “What about you?” I was surprised to find Griffin’s big brown eyes pooled with worry. It wasn’t like her.

  I tried to explain. “This isn’t about me. We don’t have the security code we need.” I held up Dr. Clarke’s key card as I looked around at their faces, people who’d become my friends . . . and Agent Truman. “But even if we did, someone would have to give up their codes, and no one with that level clearance is gonna cooperate willingly. We’re running short on options. But, look . . .” I showed my hands as threads of electricity sparked between them. “Whatever this is, I can use it. I can bypass their security and blow this place sky-freaking-high. And trust me, you won’t wanna be anywhere near here when I do.” I grinned, but no one was smiling back at me.

  Tyler shook his head. “No way. I’m not leaving you,” he insisted.

  Not to be outdone, Simon stepped up. “Me neither.”

  But they weren’t getting it. “Look, guys. This isn’t some Feats of Strength contest where you win the girl in the end. There’s no prize for being the bigger hero.” I made a face at them. “Think about what you’re saying. Staying means you don’t walk out of here, and neither of you gets the girl. Or any girl, ever. Don’t be stupid, I don’t need your help.”

  But Tyler wasn’t buying it. I knew as much because I heard it from him. The thing was, though, I only had to convince him to go—he didn’t need to understand why.

  I glared at both of them. “If I’m being honest, your being here is a distraction, and the last thing I need is to be distracted. I said this isn’t about me, but the truth is, it isn’t about any of us. We need to stop this whole thing from happening. We need to convince the M’alue we’re no threat, and the only way to do that is to blow these ships up. I can’t do that with you two breathing down my neck.” Silently I begged each of them to trust me on this. I couldn’t let myself think about the part where this would be the last time I’d ever see them—any of them—again. “Please, if you care about me at all, just get away from here.”

  Tyler gave in first, probably because he was inside my head and could sense how serious I was and how hard this was for me. But that didn’t mean he was okay with it, I knew that too.

  His only outward answer was a silent nod.

  But seeing that nod, Simon finally exhaled loudly. “Yeah. Fine. Okay.”

  We couldn’t afford anything longer than the briefest of good-byes, and I was totally okay with that. Anything more and I might’ve lost my nerve.

  Agent Truman barely nodded before going to wait in the elevator, while Griffin, Thom, Willow, and Jett tried to make it as painless on me as possible. Jett was the only one who cried, and when he did, I punched him in the arm and called him a baby. Comforting him would’ve pushed me to my breaking point.

  Simon made Tyler go ahead of him, needing, as always, to have the last word.

  Tyler looked uneasy with Simon standing so close by, which was definitely the point. Simon wouldn’t want to make it simple for Tyler and me. He never had.

  But then Tyler reached for my hands and our skin connected. Electricity moved back and forth between us. He told me without words the things he’d been trying to say since I’d come back from the M’alue’s ship, and he said it all in one simple phrase: I’ll remember you always.

  I blinked in surprise, my breath catching in my throat as I searched his eyes to see if he truly understood what he was telling me. Those were our words, something he’d told me the night I’d first been returned . . . and then he’d written them in chalk on the road between our houses.

  And now he was using them again. I’ll remember you always.

  A dimple cut through his cheek, the same dimple I’d traced with my fingertip once upon a time.

  I almost couldn’t believe it. He’d more than forgiven me, he remembered. He remembered us.

  And with that, he leaned down and kissed me. His kiss wasn’t tentative or exploratory like this was unfamiliar territory, which was what I’d been expecting since for so long he’d had no memory of the two of us. Instead it was the deep-emotional-memory-laden kiss of someone who cherishes you. Someone who knows you.

  My heart was pounding when Simon cleared his throat, letting Tyler and me know in his less-than-subtle way our time was up. Tyler pulled away gently and stepped back, his eyes never leaving me.

  When it was his turn, I thought Simon would say something corny, or give some big speech to convince me he was the right choice all along.

  Instead, he whispered, thinking Tyler couldn’t hear, “You made up your mind before we ever even met.” And then he kissed me . . . a small, sweet kiss that wasn’t meant to sway me at all.

  It was what it was—a good-bye kiss.

  As the elevator doors closed behind them, I silently allowed myself to decide between them, once and for all. I said the name in my head the one and only time I would say it—Tyler. Tyler, who I would have picked, who I always would have picked if things could have been different.

  If I could have survived all this.

  And then I shut my feelings down because I had a job to do. One that didn’t allow me to think about either of them.

  Any of them.

  As long as this place was still standing, everyone was at risk.

  Dr. Clarke had given us a brief rundown of the systems, on the off chance we found the codes we needed. I gave the others a twenty-minute head start to get as far as they could from here, which was generous. They’d need at least three minutes just to get back to the main level, and then another five to clear the facility altogether.

  Beyond that, I couldn’t let myself worry about them. I had to hope they’d find Agent Truman’s car and would drive as far away as possible.

  If not, they’d have to run and hide and hope the blast stayed fairly contained.

  If they were hurt, they’d heal.

  If they were killed . . .

  I refused to let my mind go there.

  This wasn’t about us.

  I pressed my palms to the CPU’s fingerprint recognition software and shot a burst of current through the system, hacking into their mainframe.

  Overhead, the red lights stopped flashing, blinked once, and then once again. And then remained on.

  A new loop began on the speaker system: “Destruct sequence activated. All personnel evacuate the building. This is not a drill.”

  A new countdown clock had begun.

  TYLER

  I PRESSED THE BUTTON IMPATIENTLY, SHIFTING anxiously on my feet.

  Overhead, the monotone voice echoed off the walls. “All personnel must now be evacuated. Autodestruct set to commence in two minutes.” That was new, the audio countdown.

  This whole ordeal was almost over.

  I jammed my thumb at the elevator’s button one last time, deciding some kind of security protocol must have overridden the system and I’d missed my chance.

  Then, just as I was about to give up, the doors slid open and I leaped inside. I still had Dr. Clarke’s key card, the one Kyra had given us in case we came up against any security measures, and I swiped it, my pulse pou
nding recklessly.

  “All personnel must now be evacuated. Autodestruct set to commence in one minute forty-five seconds.” I didn’t want that to be the last voice I ever heard.

  When the doors slid open again, I was facing a room full of computers. I did a quick survey, all the time I could afford, and an unsettling thought knocked the wind out of me: something had gone wrong. Kyra had made a run for it.

  Then . . . I sensed her.

  She was still here, just not on this floor. My mouth went dry as I stabbed the button again.

  As the doors finally opened, I exited to the main floor, and I felt her presence . . . her awareness that I’d come back . . . her confusion and anger and reluctant pleasure all mixed up, all at once.

  “Tyler? What the hell?” Kyra said, wasting no time coming to me. I wondered if she knew her cheeks flushed when she was pissed, and that it only made her more beautiful.

  The voice intruded on our reunion. “All personnel must now be evacuated. Autodestruct set to commence in one minute fifteen seconds.”

  “That?” she said, pointing at the ceiling despondently. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Shut up,” I told her and reached for her. “This isn’t the time to tell me what I should or shouldn’t be doing.” I put my mouth to hers, not a kiss exactly, but the promise of one. Her lips parted and I could taste her breath. I could feel her heart beneath mine. “You said no one wins the girl, but you’re wrong.”

  And with that, I made good on my promise, kissing her so completely, so thoroughly, she didn’t have the chance to argue. Her tongue was sweet and familiar, and I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever forgotten her. Forgotten this.

  I felt whole and alive. This was where I wanted to die.

  Overhead, the speaker announced two more countdowns, leaving us less than a minute by the time I released her.

  “Why’d you come up here?” I asked gently. Softly.

  “I knew I couldn’t make it out in time, but I thought, maybe . . . maybe I could find a place to see the sky . . . the stars one last time.” Her lips were swollen and her eyes were glossy. “You should’ve gone.” But this time when she said it, she gave me a crooked smile and I knew, even without reading her, she didn’t mean a single word.

  “Liar.”

  She shrugged, and I pulled her into my arms.

  “All personnel must now be evacuated. Autodestruct set to commence in thirty seconds.”

  Against my chest, she jerked.

  “You scared?” I whispered.

  “So scared,” she answered truthfully. “How do you think it’ll happen?”

  I half shook my head and half shrugged because I had no idea. But I all-the-way held on as tight as I could. I listened to her breathing . . . in and out, in and out, until the voice gave us our fifteen-second warning.

  “I’ll remember you always,” I told her, this time out loud because I wanted the last things we said to each other to be spoken . . . human.

  She looked up at me, her eyes fat with tears as she answered back, “I’ll remember you always.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “THREE . . .” THE VOICE OVERHEAD DRONED ITS final notes.

  It was okay. I was okay . . .

  “Two . . .”

  Tyler was here. We were together.

  “One . . .”

  The first blast came from several floors below—the Basement most likely, where the ships were. Followed immediately by a second and a third. I didn’t even flinch as Tyler’s arms closed around me, trying to shield me from whatever was coming.

  When the flashes came, they weren’t in sync with the explosions, but I felt them all the same . . .

  Tiny pinpricks, like holes being cut right through me . . . all over my body. A million, billion, trillion infinitesimal stingers plunging into my skin.

  Tyler must have felt them too because I heard him gasp.

  From somewhere I smelled burning chemicals and smoke, and the ground and walls around us were rumbling. There were more eruptions now, closer to us.

  And right before everything was over . . .

  Right before the whole place went up in flames, I heard him say . . .

  “. . . always.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE STARS OVERHEAD GLOWED IN AN UNNATURAL way. Beautiful, but unnatural.

  It took me several tries to figure out why.

  Plastic. They were the plastic glow-in-the-dark kind that parents stick on kids’ ceilings.

  I stayed where I was, studying them for an eternity, trying to decide if they were familiar or not. They gave me the strangest sense of déjà vu, and I felt like I should remember them even though I couldn’t quite put my finger on the memory.

  I rolled over and looked at the clock. It was 4:13, but I was awake-awake so there was no point trying to go back to sleep now. I chucked the covers aside and made my way to the kitchen in search of coffee.

  The hallway was dark but I’d been in this house my whole life, I didn’t need a light. Still, everything about this was wrong somehow.

  I had the strangest sensation I was sneaking around someplace I shouldn’t. Trespassing.

  I froze when I reached the kitchen and saw Grant standing over the sink, loading dishes in the dishwasher.

  Grant.

  I knew him—his name, his face . . . and he obviously recognized me, because he grimaced when he saw me. “Sorry. Did I wake ya, slugger?”

  Slugger? Was that really his nickname for me?

  I tested it out, and the whole déjà vu thing tilted . . . right, but not quite.

  “No,” I answered, when he just stood there, waiting for my response. “I . . . uh . . . bad dream, I guess.” I shrugged.

  Was that the truth? It could’ve been a dream as easily as anything else.

  He nodded, his eyebrows tugging downward. “Your dad again? I’m sorry, slugger. It’ll get easier.” He reached for a dish towel.

  My dad . . .

  Just the mention of him brought an overwhelming something almost into range. A memory I couldn’t quite reach, but there was a sharp stab of pain.

  Again, I couldn’t help thinking none of this was right.

  I took a step away from Grant before he could finish drying his hands. I didn’t want him to try to hug it out or anything, and for some reason I got the feeling that’s where this whole touchy-feely conversation was headed.

  “All right,” he called after me as I staggered down the hallway to my bedroom. “I’ll be here if you wanna talk.”

  I slammed the door behind me, and did a quick inventory of the room. It was mine, but not mine.

  Mine from before, came the thought, hitting me like a freight train the same way the pain had. All these things were things from my past. From another me.

  It all came rushing back at me then. The Returned, the camps, the No-Suchers and Agent Truman, the ISA. Adam and my dad.

  The explosion.

  So how was I here now? Why hadn’t I been blasted into smithereens when we’d destroyed the ISA facility and their fleet of spaceships?

  And what had Grant meant about my dad? Why was he acting so weird?

  I looked around, at the plastic stars and the purple walls. At the stuffed animals and the trophies. Why was my room back the way it had been before I’d been taken all those years ago?

  Then, on my nightstand, I saw the program from a memorial service, and I knew whose it was before I even picked it up.

  In Loving Memory the heading read, and below that my dad’s face stared back at me. Not the way I’d last seen him, with his soft gray beard and bloated cheeks. In the picture, he was clean-shaven and clear-eyed, as if someone had decided an image from the past would better represent him.

  But I knew better. I missed my messy dad. The one who’d waited five years for me to come back and then hugged me so hard he’d almost choked me. The dad who’d gone on the run just to keep Tyler and me safe. The dad who’d sacrificed his own life to make amends for what he’
d done all those years ago.

  I bolted upright. Tyler.

  If I was here . . . back from . . . wherever, was it possible Tyler was too?

  Yanking on a pair of sweatpants I found on the floor, I decided to find out. I didn’t want to risk another share-your-feelings moment with Grant, so I climbed over my window ledge and bolted across the street to a house I’d once spent as much time in as my own.

  The house was dark, but I went straight around the back to Tyler’s bedroom window and tapped on it. The entire time my heart was going a hundred miles a minute in my chest. I had no idea what I’d do if he wasn’t in there, if I had to go through this . . . whatever was happening to me, all alone.

  When the bedroom light turned on, I closed my eyes and whispered a silent prayer, and with each footstep that came closer my stomach did a little flip.

  Please don’t be his mom . . . please don’t be his mom . . .

  Then, on the other side of the glass, Tyler’s face appeared. I waited a second to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, and then gave a little wave to say, It’s me.

  His eyebrows squeezed together as his green eyes took me in. It hadn’t occurred to me until this very second that the two of us might be back at square one. That he might not remember anything . . . not just about the ISA and the Returned. But about us.

  My heart plummeted, I wasn’t sure I could do this again.

  “Hey,” I said, when he opened his window, not sure how to go about testing the waters.

  “Hey. What are you doing here so . . .” He leaned back and looked at something—his clock probably. “So early?”

  “Jeez, Tyler.” Suddenly I felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry.” I bit my lip. “I . . .” I sighed. “I don’t even know what I wanted. I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

  I turned around and started to cross the street, deciding I had to be the most embarrassing person who ever lived. Behind me, I heard his feet land in the gravel. I hesitated.

  “I’ll remember you always.” I almost missed it, he said it so quietly. Less than a whisper.

  I closed my eyes, begging myself not to completely lose my shit, before I trusted myself enough to turn around again.