The Replaced (16 page)

Jett
. I’d waited days to see Jett again, face-to-face.

I followed clumsily, eager to reach Jett, to hear what he had to tell me, and just as twisted up about when I’d get to see Tyler again. Griffin led Simon and me to the same white building where I’d spied her and Jett earlier while I’d been doing drills with Natty. She knocked again, the same way she had then, only once, and then we, too, slipped inside.

It wasn’t only Jett I was reunited with inside—Willow was there too, safe and sound. When she saw me, she winked at me.

Winked,
as if to say:
Hey pal, long time no see
. It was completely surreal.

If Griffin hadn’t been there, watching our every move, I might have hugged Willow because it was so damn good to see her again. But the last thing I wanted was to give Griffin even the slightest insight into my state of mind. She already had enough ammunition to use against me, having her hooks in Tyler and all.

So instead of hugging, or even winking, at her, I lifted my chin, which had to make me seem totally stuck up, but it also kept my feelings where they needed to be: under lock and key.

“What is this place?” I asked, my eyes landing on Jett as I gave him that same aloof nod I’d given Willow.

He looked unsure for a minute, and I wondered if it was because of my greeting or the question. But then he scratched his cheek and said, “It’s the computer lab. Pretty fancy digs, right?”

He wasn’t wrong. The first thing I noticed, besides how much warmer it was in here, probably from all the electrical equipment—the computers and monitors crammed into such close quarters, making it downright stuffy—was that it was a lot like the place Jett had kept back at his old camp. Back at the abandoned Hanford site when I’d first met him. I was impressed.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Since the first day we got here.” He grinned at Griffin and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “Been workin’ ever since.”

Not you too, Jett?
I wanted to shake some sense into him, but I could hardly blame him for falling under her spell. Talk about finding the key to Jett’s heart.

I doubted Griffin had batted a single lash this time; all she’d had to do was give him access to a bunch of computers and hook him up to a satellite feed. He’d have been eating out of her hand in ten seconds flat.

Damn her!

Jett indicated his trusty laptop, which was linked to their network. “I don’t know if anyone told you, but we may have something.”

I was all ears. “Something like what?”

Jett plopped down in the rolling chair and cast me
an expectant look. “I don’t want to get your hopes up or anything, but we may have gotten another message from someone claiming to be your father.” His brow lowered as he rubbed his palms over the tops of his knees. “Don’t get too excited, but . . . I think it might be legit.”

My eyes widened, and for just a second, just a teeny, tiny second, I was able to forget all about Tyler and Griffin, and whatever reasons she had for keeping us apart while we were here. “My dad? You think it might be him . . .
for real
. . . ?” I didn’t know if I could allow myself to believe it might be true.

Jett stopped me before hope could take root. “We can’t be sure yet. I’m just saying we can’t rule it out either. We’ve done IP traces and we’ve definitely ruled out the Tacoma facility. But if it is him, he’s being extra careful. Whoever it is, he’s taking as many precautions as we are.”

“Then let
me
talk to him,” I gushed, knowing I could figure it out if they gave me the chance. “I’ll ask him things only he’d know.”

I stepped toward Jett, but Griffin’s fingers dug into my shoulder. “We can’t do that. Not just yet,” she said. “Not until we make sure whoever he is, he isn’t running a trace. We can’t be too careful. When mistakes are made, people die.”

I wrenched out of her grip, not caring that she had a point. “So, how long will that be?” I asked, directing my question to Jett instead of Griffin because I was so over her.

He just shrugged. “Could be a coupla hours, could be
a coupla days. Could turn out to be a hoax altogether. I just thought you should know.” When he met my gaze, he silently told me he didn’t think it was the latter, and I nodded back, thanking him for that.

“What about the files?” Willow finally spoke up. “Tell them where you are with those.”

“We’re definitely in,” Jett explained, eager now, and Simon stepped closer to peer over Jett’s shoulder.

“Find anything interesting so far?”

“Not yet,” Jett answered, glancing back at him. “Even with the encryption codes, all of their internal files are password protected, so every time we break one code, we have to break another. It’s slow going, but we’re piecing it all together a little at a time. Soon, though.”

Soon. That sounded a heckuva lot faster than when I’d know about my dad.

There was a thump at the door, and when it opened, Nyla materialized, and right on her heels was Tyler. Butterflies swarmed my stomach.

I became
that girl,
the one who was worried about how she looked and whether her breath was bad, and I had this sudden urge to check to see if I had a booger hanging out of my nose and I so totally hoped I didn’t because I was sure I would absolutely die of sheer embarrassment if I did. If
that
was his second first impression of me after we’d just re-met each other.

I glanced at Griffin, who looked downright stunning. How in the heck had she found the time to apply lip gloss
when she had an entire camp to run?

I smoothed my hand over my hair, wishing I at least had some other style besides finger comb and rubber band. I had to remind myself that even if he didn’t remember it, this was the boy who’d given up everything to help me, and we’d seen each other in far worse circumstances.

“Hey,” Tyler said, and when he smiled, I forgot all about my hair and boogers, and almost even about my dad.

“Hey,” I said back.

And then I almost died anyway when I realized he wasn’t talking to me at all, but to Griffin, and all of a sudden I was back in junior high all over again as I had one of those awkward moments in the hallway when someone waves to you and you wave back, only you realize a second too late that they were never waving at you at all, but at the person standing behind you all along.

So. Embarrassing
.

My cheeks blazed like someone had thrown a gallon of lighter fluid on them, and I lowered my gaze, unable to look at anyone. Humiliation brimmed in my eyes and I had to blink several times to keep them from spilling over, certain my charcoal cheeks would cause the tears to sizzle.

On the other side of me, I felt Simon’s fingertips brush over the back of my hand, but I curled my fingers until all that was left were white-boned knuckles. I didn’t want his pity. I never had.

But Tyler rescued me when he nudged me with his shoulder. “You guys almost done here?” And this time he
was most definitely talking to me.

My breath caught as I glanced up again. He grinned at me with his way-too-alluring lips, and the butterflies beat rather than fluttered like a flock of spastic birds in the pit of my stomach. “I am.”

“You wanna get out of here? Maybe go someplace we can catch up?” He looked to Griffin for approval and the butterflies died a horrific death. I didn’t want him to seek her approval. I wanted it to be just us, him and me, so we didn’t have to do any of this in front of the rest of them—not her or Simon or Willow, who was giving me the eyebrow version of a thumbs-up. “Do you mind?”

Griffin took it all in, from Tyler’s far-too-eager-to-please expression to my less-than-thrilled, arms-crossed-over-my-chest stance. She was in her element, being in control like this. Having the final-ultimate-
absolute
say in whether we would be alone or not.

All I could do was wait, telling her with my own eyebrows to give it a rest. But all the while my lungs were paralyzed as I waited for that single, almost imperceptible nod. And when she gave it, I tried not to be too obvious. The last thing I wanted was to give her the satisfaction of knowing she had me all twisted up inside . . . even though she totally did.

I’d have done anything for her in that moment. Traded anything.

Given up everything.

“Have her back in her quarters by dawn,” Griffin told
Tyler as he passed her. “She’s staying in Paradise. Sector nine.”

Tyler paused and shot her a puzzled look. “Paradise?”

She lifted a brow, letting him know the conversation was over, and Tyler just shook his head.

“Come on,” he said, reaching for my hand. When his fingers closed over mine, I didn’t shy away from him the way I had from Simon. I let our hands melt together, our fingers interlocking as if they’d been made for this—two halves of one whole that fit together, like jigsaws in a puzzle.

He dragged me enthusiastically, and I followed, just as eagerly, impatient to make him remember he loved me.

MEMORY WAS A TRICKY THING
.

As much as I wanted to fix the gap in Tyler’s mind, the place where I should’ve been—where we’d spent our time together—it wasn’t that simple. I couldn’t just hand the missing chunk back to him.

I understood, of course; I’d lost time too. Five entire years. I mean, it wasn’t exactly the same since I’d really been gone that whole time and his was more of a glitch in his memory, but that didn’t mean I didn’t get how weird it would be if I were to just spring it on him, the news that
we’d been a thing, he and I, something he had absolutely no clue about.

Instead, it was like a do-over, like I was meeting seventeen-year-old Tyler that first time. He was looking at me and thinking about me the same way he had been that first day I’d come back.

Except this time we had something new in common:
we were both Returned
.

We walked in silence past the training field, and for several long, almost too long, seconds I thought maybe we’d have nothing to say to each other. It was strange, seeing him and trying to put myself in his shoes. He’d been here at Blackwater ever since he’d been sent back, which, if everything I’d been told about the whole forty-eight-hour thing was right, must have been several weeks already.

That was a long time to be indoctrinated into Griffin’s way of thinking. To be training with her so-called army.

I understood how Tyler could end up in a place like this. I even understood why he’d want to stay.

It was terrifying being one of the Returned, finding out you’d been taken and experimented on, and you could never go back to your old life. It made it easier to know there was someplace you could go, someplace safe, with others who’d been through the same thing you had.

I wouldn’t want to go through it alone.

Heck, if Griffin had found me first, I couldn’t say I wouldn’t be one of her soldiers now too. Instead, I’d ended up with Simon.

But who’s to say that had been the right choice, that there weren’t other camps, with other leaders, and other causes that might have been better, safer . . .
righter
.

It seemed like a crapshoot if you asked me, and my dice had just so happened to land on Simon. Tyler, well, he’d gotten Griffin. And Natty, she’d rolled Thom.

“I like your new hair,” Tyler finally said, glancing down at me once we’d cleared the fields and were in almost the exact same place Simon and I had just been when Nyla had snuck me away from the showers so we could meet in private. He grinned, and that dimple of his, the one I’d spent so much time thinking about, obsessing over just a few short weeks ago, made a welcome appearance.

I smiled up at him, and he scratched behind his ear. “Weird, right?” he asked. “This. Running into you here, of all places.” And then his dimple vanished. “And both of us being, you know,
Returned
. . .” It was almost comical the way he said “Returned,” like he hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea yet, and I wondered when I
had,
because it hadn’t been all that long ago that I’d said it the same way he did.

There was a large flat boulder, low to the ground in front of me, and I kicked it once. I wasn’t sure how to respond, because everything I wanted to say was unsayable. I couldn’t tell him I loved him or that I’d missed him, because as far as he was concerned, five years had passed, and the last time I’d seen him he’d been a kid. I propped one foot against the rock, struggling for the right words.

“Is this Simon guy your leader? Have you been with him
all this time?” Tyler asked, searching my face through the darkness.

“No . . . I, uh . . .” How could I even start? “I only just came back a few weeks ago. Right before you were taken.” I wondered if now was the best time to tell him the rest.

His eyes widened like he hadn’t even considered that. “So this is all new to you too?”

“Pretty much,” I admitted. And then, because I was dying to know more about him, I asked, “So what happened? Where did you wake up?”

He moved closer, and I had to stifle a shiver that had nothing to do with the night air. He sat on the boulder and tilted his head back so he could look at me. “Somewhere not far from here, I guess. I honestly don’t know exactly where I was or what I’d have done if Griff hadn’t’ve come along when she did.” Somehow I managed to keep the cringe off my face when he mentioned Griffin, saying her name the way Simon did, but I felt it deep in my gut. I didn’t want him to be grateful to her. I didn’t want him to be anything to her, which made me feel petty on top of everything else, considering she’d saved him and all.

But I wanted to be the only important girl in his life.

There, I’d said it. So shoot me.

Tyler kept talking. “Would it make you think less of me if I admitted I was scared shitless when I woke up?” He grinned and regarded me sheepishly, the same look I remembered from before. “I had no idea where I was or how I’d gotten there,” he explained.

I laughed. “It totally wouldn’t,” I confessed. “I know exactly how that feels. One minute I was arguing with my dad over college, and the next I was waking up behind the Gas ’n’ Sip. At least that’s what I thought.”

“Dude. You woke up behind the Gas ’n’ Sip?”

I smirked. “Talk about weird, right?”

His grin grew. “Talk about
gross
.”

The butterflies were back . . . every time he smiled at me. I couldn’t help it. I remembered exactly the way those lips felt on mine. “So how much do you remember?” I asked, changing the subject before my entire body burst into flames.

Shrugging, he told me, “Just that. Me waking up surrounded by sand, and then Griffin and some of the other Blackwater Ranchers showing up with this crazy story.” He patted the spot next to him on the rock, and I didn’t hesitate to take it. Somehow the rock was still warm, but his arm, where our skin made contact, was even warmer. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you I thought she was smoking crack when she first tried to tell me what happened. I mean, it’s pretty nuts, the whole alien thing.” I had to laugh, because we’d had this conversation before, only it had been me trying to figure out a way to explain it to him without sounding like
I
was on crack. It was funny to hear him being so
whatever
about it. “I guess it’s hard to argue with the healing thing, though,” he said as he nudged me again. “You know, I do it faster than anyone else.”

“Wait. What?” I bumped against him when I sat up
straighter. “The healing? What do you mean faster?”

He gave me a you-should-be-impressed kind of look. “You heard me. Like, if you cut me, I heal faster than anyone ever has before. That’s what Griffin says, anyway.”

My knee-jerk reaction was to argue, because there was no way he could heal as fast as I could, right? But I couldn’t be sure whether my reaction stemmed from my competitive streak, or whether I was just in shock. Was it really possible there were two of us who could heal faster than the rest? And could it really be a coincidence that that person had turned out to be Tyler?

It took me forever to even come up with, “So, who all knows?”

“I haven’t told anyone, if that’s what you mean. Griffin told me not to. But I figured it’s okay to tell you . . . since we’re friends and all.”

Friends
. The word felt like a knife through my heart. I didn’t want to be Tyler’s friend. I mean, I did . . . of course I did. It’s just that’s
not all
I wanted to be.

I hoped we could be so, so,
so
much more than just friends.

I nodded, either a
Yes, we’re friends
or
Yes, you can trust me,
I wasn’t sure which or whether it made a difference.

“Did she say why?”

Tyler’s mouth turned down when he shrugged. “Nah. She just says I shouldn’t let it get around. Not yet, anyway.”

“No. That’s probably a good idea.” I thought of the way Simon had kept the way I could move things from the
others. I wondered if they hadn’t already known I could heal faster, if he’d have kept that from them too.

“So, I guess if you haven’t been back that long, you probably don’t know, then,” he said, his voice growing apologetic and kinda drifty. “About your parents . . .”

I shrugged, since I was still in that gray area—not sure how much I should admit—but I didn’t want to lie either. “No. I do. I . . .
know,
” I finally admitted.

He nodded. “I couldn’t go back to see mine.” This time his expression was downright pathetic, and I was reminded that at least I’d known I was saying good-bye to my parents. The last time Tyler’s parents saw him, Agent Truman had told them I was contagious and if he stayed with me, I would contaminate him. I wondered where they thought he was now. Tyler didn’t remember any of that. “Griffin says since we’re not safe to be around, it’s better for them to just think I . . . ran away.”

“What do you think?”

He cocked his head to the side, his eyes overbright. “She’s probably right. It just sucks, is all. I miss ’em.” Then he bumped into me again, this time not so much a nudge as it was a brush, like he wanted to connect with someone. He glanced down at me.

“I know what you mean. I miss my dad.”

“Who’d’a thought he was right all this time.” His eyes sparkled just a little. “I mean, after everything that happened, and everything everyone thought of him, turns out he was the sane one in all this.”

I lifted my eyes to his. “Well, I don’t know about sane, but yeah.”

There was a prolonged silence as I tried to decide if this whole thing was awkward or not, when Tyler reached over and picked up my hand. My heart tripped over itself as I watched him study it, almost like he was seeing something new . . . something he’d never seen before. Curiously he flipped it over and uncurled my fingers, flattening them until my fingers were splayed, and then he pressed his own against mine so our palms were aligned. His fingers dwarfed my own like I was only a child by comparison. “Do I look different?” he asked, his voice rough and low.

A lump rose in my throat as I struggled for the right answer. Different how, I wondered? Different from the Tyler he thought I remembered—the one from five years ago? Or different from the Tyler I’d fallen in love with, the one I’d seen just a few short weeks ago? The one I’d been desperately-hopelessly-achingly searching for?

“No,” I whispered, my eyes locking on his. I could’ve stayed like that forever, even if he had absolutely zero memory of me. “You look the same as I remember,” I finally said, because I couldn’t lie.

I could never, ever lie to him.

His fingers closed over mine and he squeezed once, an apology squeeze, before he let go. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I think I’m just homesick, is all. I . . .” He didn’t finish.

“It’s okay.” I didn’t want him to stop or to be sorry
or . . . to stop. Ever. “I totally get it. I miss everyone and everything. It’s nice to
know
someone. From home.” I took his hand again, wishing I could convey all my true feelings. “It’s
nice,
” I ended lamely because it was all I could say.

Tyler accepted my “nice” speech. Our fingers intertwined, and even though it wasn’t like
before,
when sparks flew and fireworks exploded, it was comforting. And right now comforting was a million times better than nothing at all.

Maybe comforting was better than fireworks anyway. Comforting fit like a sweater, and kept you warm, and made you feel protected.

Comforting could kick fireworks’ ass any day of the week.

He gave me a sidelong glance before talking again. “I don’t know if it’s weird for me to bring this up, but I miss Austin.”

“It’s not weird, Tyler. You’re allowed to miss your brother. It would be weird if you didn’t.” I let out a sigh and leaned my head against his shoulder.

“I just wasn’t sure . . . if . . .” He did this shrug thing, and it was completely filled with all the words he didn’t want to say, and I knew exactly how he felt because I had just as many words I was holding inside.

I let him off the hook. “I know about them too—Austin and Cat.”

“I didn’t realize.”

I know,
I wanted to tell him, and then I wanted to bury
my fingers in his hair and drag him down and kiss him, full on the lips. If only I could taste him, just one time. And press myself to him.

Instead I smiled a small, sad little smile.

“They didn’t do it to hurt you,” he said, exactly the way he’d said it a month ago, when he’d explained it to me the first time, and my eyes burned because he was so the same Tyler I remembered that I wanted him to remember too.

I nodded again, and then one more time, my eyes still stinging, to let him know I’d heard enough. Enough about Austin and Cat, and enough about our old lives with our old families. This was our new life, and even if he never remembered, if this was where we were starting from, we’d get through it, and everything would be okay, I told myself, because here we were, Tyler and me, together again.

We stayed like that for hours, huddled side by side. Sometimes he’d talk and sometimes I would, and sometimes we’d just stay silent. But for the first time in weeks I anticipated the morning, because this time, when the sun rose, there wouldn’t be the familiar stab. Tyler was back at long, long,
long
last.

Except, the moment the first streaks of dawn finally appeared, gilding the desert with its warm blush, I knew I’d been wrong.

Tyler wasn’t the cure.

I nearly doubled over as the sun ascended, crippling me as it claimed its place in the sky.

“Are you okay?” Tyler worried. “Should I get you back?”

But I shook him off, biting my lip until the pain had passed. “It’s nothing,” I lied. “I’m just so glad we have each other.”

He reached over then and squeezed my hand in that sweater-hug safe and comforting way that blew the fireworks and sparks out of the water, and I leaned my head against his shoulder to tell him a silent thank-you while I finally let the tears fall.

Natty pounced on me the second Tyler had delivered me back to our tent, just the way he’d promised Griffin. “
Ohmygosh,
Thom told me all about it. How you found Tyler . . . right here,
in Blackwater,
” she gushed as if it had been accidental that we hadn’t run into each other sooner. Like Griffin hadn’t had a hand in keeping us apart.