The Replaced (5 page)

BOOM!

The explosion wasn’t so much a sound, the way I’d always imagined an explosion would be, but more like a vibration. Except that wasn’t exactly right either. It reminded me more of thunder, that deep booming feeling that seemed to center somewhere in my chest or belly and was trying to rumble its way out, jangling my bones and my teeth, and making my skin scream. My eardrums seared like someone had stabbed them all the way through with just-sharpened icepicks.

The whole thing lasted only milliseconds, even though it seemed like forever, especially since so many things went
through my head at once, like: Where had the blast come from? Had Jett caused it, or were they in trouble because they’d walked into some dangerous NSA booby trap? What if we were all walking into traps?

And where was Team One now?

My eyes had gone wide and I was buzzing with excess energy. I knew this was what my science teacher meant when he explained fight-or-flight, which meant I was on high alert for attack. But the weird thing was, I felt numb at the same time, and that confusion was making it hard to focus on any one thing. Just when I thought my head might finally be clearing and I was about to tell Simon we should make a run for it, I saw this plume of black smoke rising from behind the building, and every light inside the facility shut off all at once as it went entirely black.

Behind the glass entrance, sirens blared to life.

“That’s our cue!” Simon shouted above the alarms as he pulled out the key card Jett had given him. But instead of using it to access the security panel beside the door, Willow pulled out a long, metal crowbar-looking thing and smashed the glass entrance to smithereens. When I didn’t follow right away, Simon asked, “You coming?”

“Wait!
That
was the plan? No one mentioned an explosion!” I knew I was yelling, but I couldn’t help myself. From inside my head, my voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.

Simon grinned and lifted his finger to his lips. “Don’t
worry. We got this. Jett knows what he’s doing,” he said, a million times more quietly than I had.

So Jett’s part of the plan was to draw them away from the front entrance by blowing up the back one?
Subtle,
I thought, squeezing my eyes shut. The increasing pressure behind my ears made my skull and teeth ache. Whatever did the job, I supposed.

But even as I thought it, I could already feel my body reacting to the assault, curing whatever in my head felt . . .
broken
. Healing me.

I wasn’t sure whether “our cue” had been the sirens or the smoke or the brain-jarring blast itself, but I wasn’t about to be left behind, so I ducked through the hollowed-out frame. My feet crunched over broken glass as I hurried after Simon and Willow. The siren sound was louder, and there was some sort of generator or emergency lighting system that had kicked on, bathing the entry in a ghostly red pall that made everything seem super creepy.

“Which way?” Simon asked Willow.

Willow grunted and pointed down a deserted hallway. I wondered where all the people were. Scary-cute name or not, the Daylight Division was part of the NSA, after all—the dreaded Tacoma facility—shouldn’t there be an army guarding it?

As if my thoughts were being transmitted along the earsplitting sirens that cut through the air, Simon told us both, “We won’t have long before they figure out the detonation
was just a diversion. We need to hurry.”

Hurrying wasn’t a problem. Now that we were in here, I felt trapped. That sledgehammer sensation in my chest was no longer from Jett’s distraction, but was exactly what it was supposed to be—my heart trying to crack a rib. Simon hadn’t explained in detail what would happen to us if we were caught, but he’d explained enough and my imagination had filled in the rest. In my mind, there was no amount of self-regeneration that could undo the damage Agent Truman and his buddies had in store for us.

We reached a doorway, and again there was an access panel, and again Simon ignored it, choosing not to use the key card he still clutched in his hand. He pulled something from his backpack, and I watched as he affixed a small piece of what looked like Silly Putty—that gooey gray stuff that came in a plastic egg and that my dad and I used to stretch and bounce and roll over the newspaper comics and then stretch some more—to the panel. Yet even without being told it wasn’t Silly Putty, because of course it wasn’t, I took a few steps back at the same time Simon and Willow did. Simultaneously we all covered our ears and ducked, and my heart continued to punch my chest.

This detonation wasn’t nearly as intense as the first one. In fact, I’d hardly heard it above the wail of the sirens, which were still screaming so loud my ears felt like they were bleeding. This explosion didn’t come with a rumbling boom or all the smoke, just a satisfying bang, followed by the even more satisfying sight of the heavy, locked door releasing.

That was when things got real, and this ordinary-looking building suddenly became so much less ordinary and so much more frightening.

“This is it, isn’t it? The central lab?” I eased past both Simon and Willow, not sure I’d have been able to stop myself even if they would have told me not to go in there.

They didn’t even have to answer because it totally was—I would have known the place anywhere. There was nothing else it could have been. If my dad had been there, I probably would have had to wipe the drool from his chin—this place was like crack for any alien conspiracy theorist.

It was like I was standing on a movie set . . . or a lot—an entire frickin’ movie lot.

The ceiling shot all the way up—two or three, maybe even four, stories. The floor of this “central lab” was made from these enormous glass tiles that, in this light—the emergency light—seemed like they were tinted red, just like everything else around us. Suspended some ten feet or so above the glass-tiled floor, along one entire wall, was what appeared to be an observation chamber of some sort that was set behind even more glass. Inside, the chamber was pitch-black, but my eyesight was better than anyone else’s and I could see past the glass. I knew there was no one in there . . . watching us.

There were too many things to look at all at once: sleek metal tables, like the gurneys that belonged in a morgue. Huge glass cylinders that were so big you could probably fit an entire grown man in them and still have room left over,
which made me wonder if that wasn’t exactly what they were for: people. They had these giant tubes sticking out of them, some wide and some not, some attached and some not. There were shelves littered with bottles and beakers and rubber hosing, and things I couldn’t even make sense of because I’d never even seen anything like them before. Everything in here seemed to be made of steel or glass, and had that hospital-sterile appearance, but smelled . . .
not quite hospital-y
.

I couldn’t quite place the smell, but it was off somehow. Like antiseptic, but not.

I shook my head because that so wasn’t what mattered right now. This place . . . here . . . Simon had been right about it all along. My gut said we shouldn’t be here. None of us. They did things here . . . really,
really
bad things, I just knew it.

If this
was
where they’d brought Tyler . . . my stomach plummeted because we were standing in a place no Returned should ever be.

I spun in a circle, because another thought was crashing down on me. “Where is he?” I needed one of them, Simon or Willow, to tell me we hadn’t made a huge mistake coming here, that we hadn’t just been tricked by Agent Truman. The alarms and the red light pushed my fears to the surface. “You said he’d be here. You said we’d get him and bring him back with us.”

I made a fist, suddenly wishing we were back at camp, and I could change my mind about the outcome of the
standoff between Thom and Simon. I wanted Thom to smash Simon in his lying face after all. Maybe then, instead of ending up here, in the middle of this empty freak show of a lab trying to convince myself that I’d known this was a possibility all along, and telling myself to
buck up, soldier,
we could’ve just stayed back in Silent Creek, where we’d all have been safe. Safe.

Safe!

“Kyra . . .” Simon’s voice was slippery. “We haven’t looked everywhere—”

“I’ll check the computer wing,” Willow said, hiking her backpack higher on her shoulder. “Meet me in the research chamber, near the east exit.” She took off, leaving me to wonder how we were supposed to know where these places were, but also filling me with renewed hope as the icy grip around my throat eased and I inhaled sharply.

The computer wing and the research chamber—there were still places we could search for Tyler.

Maybe, at long last, I’d get the chance to tell him I was sorry.

Simon had turned his attention to the maze of large glass human-sized canisters, and even though I was desperate to find Tyler, my curiosity compelled me to follow him. That and the fact that I had no idea where the research chamber was.

These canisters were enormous, towering above our heads, and we threaded our way in and around and under the tubing that stuck out from them.

I nearly crashed into Simon’s back when he stopped directly in front of the last one—the only one that was covered by some sort of shiny, silver sheet. Beneath the wrap, there was a static-y hum that reminded me of a giant metallic beehive, buzzing with life.

“
What are you doing
?” I whisper-accused when he reached for the thin casing, but already my skin buzzed like the tube, anticipating what might be hidden there.

Just then, there was an abrupt hush. The alarms went suddenly and totally silent. Simon’s face, still frozen in shock or horror or . . . revulsion, stayed that way as we looked around us like stupid, startled rabbits.

The absence of sound was a million times more disturbing than the shrill warnings had been. And when the red lights switched off too, and there was that brief moment when there was total blackness—just the blackness and the silence—I knew we were done for.

It took a second, but then one at a time, and row by row, the white fixtures on the ceiling high, high,
high
overhead began switching on. The lights were blazing, so bright I flinched as if I’d just accidentally looked directly into the sun. And while I waited for my eyes to adjust, I found myself studying the floor and I realized that the glass tiles weren’t red at all, but were actually an eerie shade of blue.

We heard shouts—a jumble of voices mingled with footsteps that were heavy and hollow—that could have been coming from above or behind, or right in front of us, for all
I could tell. It was like being in a twisted version of a carnival funhouse. One where the end result was being strapped to a metal gurney and being dismembered.

Beside me, I jerked Simon away from the canister or tube or whatever it was, deciding we needed to get the hell outta Dodge at the same time he whispered, “
Run,
” as he reached for my hand.

I no longer cared that just seconds ago I’d wished he’d been punched in the face. I was like that, I guess—fickle.

Blood rushed past my ears as he dragged me. I glanced behind my shoulder, and then up to the observation room and all around us, convinced that at any second we were going to be caught. Willow was already gone, and my fingers clung to Simon’s.

The exits no longer seemed like viable options—we had no idea which direction they’d be coming from when they finally arrived. Ahead of us, though, there were several vents of some sort, giant grilles in the walls. Instead of waiting to find out if Simon had a plan, I let go of him and rushed to one of them. I tried to pry it off myself, but my hands were fumbling and awkward. The voices grew clearer, louder . . . sounding like they were right on top of us.

“Here,” Simon said, coming in behind me. His breath was hot against my cheek as he leaned over the top of me, his fingers surer than mine as he removed the grate deftly. “It’s okay. Trust me.”

I hated the way he said it, like he was my hero, but I didn’t
have time to complain. Instead, I eased into the dark opening behind the wall, with Simon coming in right behind me. He reached for the cover, and within seconds, he’d managed to secure it back in place. Just as the central lab was swarmed with an army of footsteps.

The only light came in through the vent openings, from the lab beyond. It was bigger back here than I’d expected, more like a hallway than a space behind the walls. I leaned my head against the wall, trying to slow my breaths and waiting . . . waiting to see if we’d been discovered. We stayed like that for an eternity. I was terrified that the slightest sound, the barest scrape of my hair or the rasp of my breath might give us away. And the entire time my heart was ripping a hole in my chest.

“They got away,” a man’s voice said from inside the lab.

“You!” someone else shouted—an order, “Take a team to sweep the perimeter. Make sure they don’t get too far. But suit up, and be careful. These kids are dangerous. I don’t want any Code Reds on my watch.” My skin crawled with recognition. The voice . . . the man giving the order, I knew it. It was him . . . Agent Truman.

“Sir, there aren’t enough bio-suits for everyone,” the other man responded.

There was a pause, a heavy, thought-filled pause, and then Agent Truman answered, “So pick your best men and suit them up. We need to shut this down. And fast.”

My eyes went wide as a flurry of activity came from inside the lab and then it grew somewhat less frantic.

He was here. Agent Truman was here, right on the other side of that wall. My head swam as I considered just how close he was. How easy it would be for him to find me. To capture me.

Not only that, they knew it was us they were after.

“We have to go!” I half mouthed through the semidarkness. “There,” I said, pointing because Jett hadn’t been wrong about that human-flashlight thing. Here, I definitely had the advantage.

Ahead of us, there was a staircase. I had no idea where it led, except down. But since our alternative was to turn ourselves in to those Daylighters in the lab, I figured it was worth a shot.