The Replaced (19 page)

Neither screamed Daylight Division.

Off to the side, and closer to the sidewalk, was a man smoking a cigarette and murmuring into his cell phone. Again, since he was pushing seventy and wearing a hospital gown, I deemed him at least relatively harmless.

Rather than parking, Nyla decided to wait for us, which was probably a good idea, since no matter how I tried to spin it, I couldn’t come up with a reasonable story for the
three of us to be skulking around the hospital at three in the morning.

Also, with her shaved head, I didn’t imagine Nyla went unnoticed all that often.

There was only a small check-in counter inside, and the girl working it looked barely older than we did. When Simon and I stopped to ask where we could find Alex Walker, she chomped obnoxiously on her wad of gum and pulled out a spiral notebook, which didn’t seem very hospital-y at all. She had us sign one of the lined pieces of paper after asking us to confirm that we didn’t have any cough or flu symptoms, and then she just blurted out his room number.

Not, “Are either of you family members?” or concerns for privacy laws or anything. Just a raised eyebrow that asked,
Are we done here?
and we were on our way, wandering the halls of the hospital in the middle of the night, without so much as a glance at our (fake) IDs.

Apparently security wasn’t much of an issue in Delta, Utah.

We only had to go up one floor, which shouldn’t have been a big deal, except that, because the building was so old, the place was put together like a ransom note. The building looked small from the outside, but it seemed bigger inside, and it was as if every hallway had been added on as a second, and then third, thought.

I was beginning to feel like a rat in one of those science mazes, and that we should get some sort of reward for figuring our way through.

After several turns and dead ends and some backtracking, Simon and I finally found an elevator. When we got off on the second floor, I breathed a sigh of relief that there was an actual sign pointing toward room numbers 2024–2050, since Gum-Chewing Girl told us Alex was in room 2046.

I pulled Simon to a stop outside the closed door. “What did you mean when you said Griffin didn’t give you a choice about bringing me here?” I stalled, suddenly nervous. I mean, how do you even start to explain that everything this kid knew, his entire life, was a lie? That his whole world had just changed, all because he’d gone missing for less than forty-eight hours.

Simon leaned his head out of the small alcove and glanced down the hallway, making sure we were still all alone. It was end-of-the-world quiet out there. The flickering overhead fluorescents were dimmed, and it was super weird that we hadn’t even passed a nurse’s station on this floor, considering it was a hospital and all. “She didn’t say it in so many words, but I think she wants to keep you away from Tyler,” he explained. “If I didn’t know better, I think she feels threatened by you.”

I pursed my lips. “And that doesn’t worry you? Look at what she was willing to do to Willow when she was threatened by her.” Now it was my turn to look down the hallway, my heart picking up speed.

Simon put his hands over mine. “Relax, Kyr. Her beef with Willow had to do with power. I don’t think that’s her issue with you. I think she’s worried Tyler might be a little
too interested in you.” He took a step closer, too close, and suddenly my heart beat like a sledgehammer. “Frankly, I’m worried about that too.”

He leaned toward me, closing the gap that had already grown too small. There was a shift in the air, something tangible and sharp that I felt all the way to my toes. I could smell him—his skin, clean and crisp, but with the hint of the dust-blown air clinging to him. His eyes, so rich and coppery, landed on mine, begging me to tell him this was okay, what he was about to do.

I yanked back at the last possible second, just as his lips were about to brush mine, and my head thumped against the wall behind me.

His eyes sparkled then, like he’d been about to get away with something he’d known he shouldn’t have.

“You never give up, do you?” I accused, shoving him, and giving myself the space I needed to breathe again. And then, because it was easier to change the subject than to deal with the lingering tension, I eyeballed the door to room 2046. “Should we knock or just go in?”

Simon was still chuckling beneath his breath, and had his hand on the door, when we heard the elevator down the hallway sliding open once more. I couldn’t explain why exactly, since this was a hospital and people came and went at all hours in places like this, but something made me stop him from opening it.

I had the strangest feeling we should wait, for just a split second . . . for just the barest-tiniest-briefest of moments.

I craned my neck from the recess we were standing in to watch as two men stepped out of the elevator, and I flinched, dragging Simon back until we were out of sight.

The men were wearing suits—starched suits with crisply starched shirts. Even their ties looked stiff and starched. In any other place, at any other time, I’d say there was nothing special about them, these two men. Their suits weren’t matching, they weren’t dressed all in black, and they weren’t wearing sunglasses indoors or anything.

Except we already knew we were only a step or two ahead of the Daylighters, and these two were just . . . off somehow. In the same way Agent Truman had seemed off when I’d met him that first day, when he’d come to my front door.

The hairs on my arms went on high alert, and Simon dragged me back as we took one step, and then another and another, until we’d disappeared through the open door beside room 2046 and were hidden in the darkness of room 2048. Behind us, over my shoulder, I heard a machine pulse, beeping on even intervals that felt like it was keeping time with my heart.

My eyes were wide as we stood there, listening for the men’s footsteps in the hallway outside, and as they neared, their heavy soles falling against the tiles, my heart rate overtook the beating of the machine.

I squeezed Simon’s arm when I heard one of the men mumble, “Two-oh-four-six. This is it.”

2046. It was them. They were here for Alex too.

I had Simon in a death grip, afraid to let him go. He gave a curt shake of his head, letting me know to keep my mouth shut, as if I hadn’t already thought of that. My entire body was shaking and had broken out in a cold sweat, making me shiver like an insane person.

We were trapped in here.

“Who are you?” a voice, so small and so frail, asked from behind us.

I practically jumped out of my skin, spinning to see who was there, and even though I could see in the dark, the person was nearly invisible in the shadows, making it impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman asking.

“What do you want?” came the whisper of a voice again.

I gripped Simon even tighter. What if those guys out there had heard? What if they came in here to find out what was going on? We had to shut whoever it was up before they got us caught.

I let go of Simon and crept over to the center of the room.

I nearly hesitated when I reached the bed, but then leaned down and pressed my lips together. “Shhh,” I said almost inaudibly to the tiniest, most fragile-looking woman I’d ever laid eyes on. She had an oxygen tube tucked beneath her nose, and her skin was mottled with brown spots, skin so thin it was nearly transparent—Simon might not have known this, not in the dark, but I could see it clearly. Her eyes were pale, milky even, and it was a wonder she’d seen us at all. “We’re only staying for a minute,” I crooned softly,
hoping she could even hear me above the still-beeping equipment surrounding her.

She frowned, and I worried she was going to argue or call for help, or maybe try to find enough voice to scream. She had that look, like she wanted nothing to do with a couple of kids, strangers, in her room at this hour. I bit back the knot of fear, the sheer and utter panic, as I cast quick glances over my shoulder, while Simon continued to watch the door.

“I’m sorry. We can’t stay long,” I said, taking her hand and hoping I could convince her not to rat us out . . . at least not just yet. Her hand was delicate like a bird, her bones hollow and light, her skin papery and warm.

Her face lit up when she smiled up at me as her gnarled fingers closed over mine in a grip I wouldn’t have imagined possible from her. “It’s okay, dear,” she said back to me. “I know you try. You do what you can. I know that.” And then she let go and her head collapsed back to her pillow, and all at once her eyes closed.

I waited for a minute, listening to the machines and hoping she hadn’t just up and died on me. But the beeping noises continued, and so did her almost imperceptible shallow breaths.

She’d only fallen asleep, that was all.

I let out a sigh of relief as I released her hand, patting it once to let her know I was sorry I wasn’t whoever she’d thought I was. I felt bad for this woman, wondering if there really was a girl—maybe my age and maybe not—who didn’t
come by often enough to visit.

Simon was behind me then and when I turned to face him, his fingers bit into my arm as he made a screwed-up face. But it was the way he was looking at me that told me something else was wrong. “Aw, hell . . . Kyra, we gotta get outta here.”

Frowning, I asked, “Why? What’s wrong with me?”

He was still cringing when he shook his head. “It’s your eyes,” he said, like it was a bad thing . . . a really frickin’ bad thing. “They’re . . . I swear to Christ they’re glowing.”

I flinched, and my hands automatically flew up to touch them. I turned to the sink, which had a mirror above it—the metal kind that, even in the light, would have made me look distorted. But Simon was right; there was a too-vivid quality to my eyes that made them almost luminescent.

Like phantom fireflies.

Simon’s grip on my wrist drew me back to the situation at hand. “We need to get you the hell outta here before these guys come out of that room and find us. I have a feeling they’d way rather have you than that kid in there.”

“What about Alex? Shouldn’t we try to figure out a way to get him too?”

“It’s too late for him,” Simon whispered insistently. “Even if they didn’t come all the way from Tacoma, I doubt they’re planning to leave ’til they know for sure if he’s one of us. Agent Truman made that mistake with you—I doubt these guys plan to repeat it.”

He eased the door open and when he gave me the
all-clear signal, I followed him. As we passed room 2046, I could hear them in there, talking to the boy, to Alex Walker, and my step faltered, knowing what he was in for. I couldn’t believe we were about to leave him behind.

Simon must have sensed my reservation because he reached for me, pulling me faster as we hurried, running now, down the hall, this time passing up the elevator for the stairwell beyond.

We took the steps two at a time, almost tripping in our effort to get down them, and away from the two starched-suit men, who Simon believed would just as willingly, maybe more so, take me rather than Alex back to the Daylight Division.

So they could flay me open to see what makes me tick.

NYLA HADN’T WASTED A SECOND WHEN WE’D
raced out the ER doors; she was there with the engine already revving. She’d seen them too—the Daylighters—when they’d strutted right past her.

She’d spared me only the briefest of glances when I’d jumped in the backseat, right before saying, “Well, that’s new,” and I knew she meant the whole glowy-eye thing since that’s where she was looking, directly at my eyes. But then she’d jammed the Jeep in gear and peeled out of there, not bothering to look back—either at Delta, which faded in the distance, or at me.

Simon might have checked on me, but I wouldn’t have known since the second we were on the road, I’d leaned my head back and shut those eyes of mine, trying to block out the guilt about leaving Alex Walker behind.

I felt sick most of the ride back to Blackwater Ranch.

I mean, I guess we’d had to do it. I doubt we’d have been able to get him away from there, from those guys, unnoticed. And then what? They would have followed us? They would have known exactly
where
we were, where Blackwater was?

What kind of option was that?

As it was, I was so freaked out that they were only a few hours away, back in Delta, that when the sun had finally crested over the horizon, stabbing me with its presence, it felt more like penance for my failure to save the boy. Like I deserved each spasm that rippled through me.

This time when we got back to camp, the only ambush awaiting us was Griffin, which was almost worse than what facing her entire army had been when I saw the tightening of her lips as she gave the Jeep a once-over, doing a mental head count even before we’d come to a complete stop.

“What happened?” Her voice was filled with accusation as she turned to Simon, and then me, pointedly letting us know we’d let her down on our first recovery mission.

Nyla answered before either of us had a chance to explain. “Daylighters got there ahead of us. Nothing we could do.”

“Daylighters,” Griffin echoed. “They didn’t see you, did they?”

Before that moment, when I’d seen the look of abject
horror cross Griffin’s face, I’d had my doubts about her, like that maybe this whole sending-us-on-a-mission thing had been a setup. That she’d tipped the Daylighters off herself in order to get rid of Simon, Nyla, and me.

Mostly me, I’d suspected.

But now . . . now I didn’t think so. I doubted she’d sacrifice her own camp like that. Not on purpose anyway.

Nyla gave a decisive shake of her head as she jumped down from the Jeep. “’Course not. You think I’da come back here if they had? Nah, they got to the kid before Simon and Kyra could, and then we cleared outta there.”

“Damn,” she muttered. “So they got him? Too bad you couldn’t’ve gotten there sooner.” Griffin lifted her chin defiantly at Simon. “What happened? You used to be the best.”

There was a pause—the kind of extra-long one that makes you aware that there’s so much more than just a pause happening. That subtle communication of locked gazes and eyebrow raises and signals no one else was probably even aware of.

“That was a long time ago,” he said, finally backing down. “I didn’t ask to do this, Griffin. This was your idea. Kyra and I should never have been there at all.” He moved closer to me, creating a united front. “I’m not a recruiter anymore.”

Griffin scowled at me, giving me a this-has-nothing-to-do-with-you look that made me feel like an outsider all over again, and I had to remind myself what Simon had told me about her . . . about her father and everything he’d
done to her. It kept me from wanting to slug her for being such a
major B
about everything.

No wonder she doesn’t trust anyone,
I reminded myself.
It’s not entirely her fault
.

Then she looked Simon up and down as one of her tapered brows ticked up visibly. “Mmm . . . so I see.” And when she was finished giving him an unspoken slap on the wrist, she shrugged as if it had never mattered in the first place. Like what’s-done-is-done.

And so it goes,
Billy Pilgrim would have said.

Except this was a real-life person we were talking about, and I wasn’t sure I could flip the switch that easily.

“Well,” Griffin announced, “good news is Jett made amazing progress while you were off playing Rescue Rangers. Now that you’re back, he wants us to join him in the computer lab . . . so he can show us what he’s found so far. We can have him track Daylighter communications too. We wanna make sure they have no idea where we are, or that we ever even knew about the kid in Delta.”

My chest tightened at the mention of the boy, and the proximity of the agents. I choked back a healthy dose of guilt, trying not to imagine him strapped to a gurney, the same way Willow had been back in their central lab. I couldn’t help wishing we’d done more. Tried harder.

I had a moment of panic, though, as I reached nervously for Simon. “My eyes . . . how are they?”

His mouth turned downward as he leaned close, reassuring me with a whispered, “Can’t even tell in the light.” He
nodded toward Griffin. “
She
didn’t notice.”

True. There was no way she’d have let something that significant slide.

By the time we’d reached the computer lab, I was disappointed Tyler hadn’t come out to meet me. That would have been the one consolation to this whole mess, to find him there . . . preferably all alone.

And, in a perfect world, without his shirt.

The alone part wasn’t so far off, however. In fact, when we got to the lab it was practically deserted. Last time I’d been in here, the place had been bustling, with about a half dozen or so of Griffin’s soldiers assigned to monitor radio frequencies, internet traffic, and online activity.

Now it was just Jett and Thom waiting for the four of us.

Apparently Griffin was just as baffled as I was by the absence of activity. “Where is everyone?”

“I cleared the place. What I’m about to show you needs to stay between us.” Jett turned to Nyla. “I think she should go too. We can’t risk it.”

Nyla looked like she might argue, but Griffin nodded toward the door—an unspoken order. Nyla stalled, her shoulders, face, and arms tense while her eyebrows drew together in an uncertain line, like she was pained by the decision. Ultimately, though, her need to obey Griffin won out.

When the door closed behind her, Jett took a seat, this time not at his laptop but at one of Griffin’s computers, and went to work. “Here . . . ,” he said.

I watched as the large monitor in front of him came to
life, filled with the same NSA logo I’d seen that first day when Agent Truman forced his business card on me, the one with the golden firefly on it that signified his super secret-y Daylight Division. Jett entered a series of commands, line after line of code, as fluently as if he had full NSA security clearance.

I chewed the inside of my cheek while my eyes drifted to my watch, slowing my mind.

When the last of the files unlocked, and the screen in front of Jett, and all of the screens around us, began to fill with information, I took a step back, my eyes wide. There were files that looked like printouts and scanned documents—some official and some not so official. Pictures, old and new.

All about me.

It definitely wasn’t what I’d expected to see. All those images. All those memories. Like a blast from the past. My face, my name, my information. My birthdate, the address of our house in Burlington, my school and medical and Social Security records. My birth certificate with my teeny, tiny newborn footprints. Snapshots of me standing alone and posing for the camera on my first day of school, and then again with Austin on our way to Homecoming in the tenth grade. Portraits of me with my softball teams throughout the years.

And one photograph I didn’t remember being taken—of me on the day I’d returned—in the hospital in Burlington, with those orange and black ribbons I’d been wearing for our championship game still tangled through my hair while
I’d been wearing the ugly blue hospital gown.

They all filled the screens. Filled up every last square inch of pixelated space in front of, and all around, us.

“What . . . is this?” It was like staring at an online homage to me. A
This Is Your Life,
my dad would have said, which was some old-fashioned TV show he always brought up whenever we busted out our family albums.

This
was what the NSA—what Agent Truman and the Daylighters—had been hiding inside all those encrypted files? But . . . why? What was so interesting about me?

“Is there one of these on each of us?” It was the only thing that made sense: they were tracking all the Returned this closely.

Thom just closed his eyes, letting me know with a look that I was off the mark with my guess.

“So, what, then? What else was in the files?” I asked.

Griffin was apparently as clueless as I was. “Yeah. What are we missing? What’s so special about
her
?” I kind of liked the way she said “her,” like I was a bad taste in her mouth. She didn’t even bother looking my way.

Jett did, though. He glanced over his shoulder at me, and there was something in his eyes, those unusual, kaleidoscope eyes that clicked then. I recognized that look—it was the same one Natty had given me just after we’d raced out of the bowling alley, after . . .

He knew
. I wasn’t sure how, whether it had been Natty or Simon who’d told him, but Jett for sure knew my secret.

I frowned back at him and shook my head. “It’s not . . .
it . . .
no
. . .” I leaned over his shoulder, scanning the screens and the files for mention of it.

“
No,
what?” Griffin insisted, turning to scan the monitors. “Does someone want to tell me what’s going on? What was so important that you cleared the room . . . ?” But as she finished her sentence, her attention was caught by one of the screens. It was clearly an NSA document, with a red “CLASSIFIED” stamp across it.

I didn’t have to guess who’d told Jett my secret after that; it was right there in black, white, and bright-classified-red. Agent Truman had written up a report all about me. But what I focused on first—and most—was the section on what I’d done to him:

Subject displays an uncanny ability to move objects without making obvious physical contact with them. Subject appears capable of some form of high-velocity telekinesis
.

Subject
. My very identity had been whittled down to a designation rather than a name.

Agent Truman had put what I could do in writing, in a secret government file.

That I could move things. Without touching them.

“What else?” Griffin demanded. “What else can she do?” Again, she said “she” like it was a dirty word, only this time she was staring right at me.

I wanted to answer her, really I did. I just couldn’t come up with a single response because everything, all of it, being
exposed like this, in front of them, felt . . .
too personal
. Especially with Griffin, who couldn’t even say my name.

“She can see in the dark,” Jett finally blurted out. “And she doesn’t need to breathe as often as the rest of us.”

I hated being set apart like that. Being different.

“So you knew about this?” Griffin asked him.

Jett shook his head. “Not about the telekinesis thing.” He flashed me a hurt look, and suddenly I felt like a jerk for not confiding in him. “You could’ve told me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I told Jett. I told all of them.

But Jett just frowned. “Kyra, they have your blood work too. From when your parents took you to the hospital, after you came back.”

I shrugged. “So what. You already told me our DNA’s different. I assumed they knew that much too.” But there was still that feeling in the air and I knew I was still missing something . . . something crucial.

“Yours was different,” he said. “Different from any of the rest of ours. From anyone’s.
You’re different
.”

Griffin took a step toward me, her expression shifting as she examined me. “Different,” she repeated, and I couldn’t tell if she was saying it in a bad way, like I was one of those chimera-monster things Simon had said she considered us, or whether she was just saying it, like it was a fact—the sky is blue, the earth is round, water is wet—that kind of thing. But she was looking at me differently.

“Like . . .
how
?” I asked, giving a cockeyed shrug and trying to laugh it off like it was nothing. A mistake.

But inside, where my heart was going a million miles a minute, I understood it wasn’t nothing. I understood it was a huge-giant-enormous something. I could tell by the way they were all looking at me, watching to see if I was ready to hear what they had to say.

Like they were about to unload a pile of
Can she handle this?
on me.

Unconsciously, I reached up to rub the back of my neck, suddenly thinking it had gotten at least ten degrees hotter in here in the last five minutes.

Griffin didn’t seem to notice. She was impervious to the heat and the constant hum of the computers that was starting to make my head ache, and to the fact that her bra must be at least a size too small to be pushing her boobs halfway up to her neck the way it was, something I’d only just noticed, but now couldn’t stop thinking about. I told myself to look away because it was weird that I was staring at her chest, but it was easier to look there than at the interest I saw spark in her eyes. “Oh my god,” she breathed. “You’re the one they’ve been searching for. Your blood work proves it. And until they find you, they’ll never stop searching.”

“Who . . . the Daylighters?” But yes, that was exactly who she meant. “Why me?” I went on, not needing her to answer my first question. “What’s so special about
my
blood work?” And what I meant was, what made mine different from theirs, because I already knew mine was different from any normal person’s.

“It’s the DNA,” Jett finally said, pointing at the place on
the monitor that had some sort of sophisticated, science-y looking chart on it. “The Daylighters ran an analysis of your DNA, your genetic makeup. I’ve seen some similar blood tests, from some of the other Returned, and the rest of us . . . well, we still have most of our human DNA, mingled with some foreign—or what we suspect is the alien—DNA we told you about. Yours . . . ,” Jett started, but then he hesitated.