The Taking: The Countdown Part 27

I snapped my head around, to see what had stolen his attention.

Behind me, just past my shoulder, Dr. Atkins was there, holding a gun to Willow's head. I tried to hide my surprise, but how in the h.e.l.l had she gotten the jump on us . . . on Willow?

"Nicely done," she told Jett approvingly. "I honestly didn't think you had it in you." Then she nodded toward Ben. "Maybe the big guy there-I've seen his work firsthand. But not yours." She grinned. "Guess I underestimated you."

A sudden iciness settled over me as Jett looked from her to Ben trying to sort it all out. "Guess so," Jett answered coolly.

But it was Ben I questioned. "So I take it Dr. Clarke wasn't the only one you knew from your old life at the ISA?"

Ben sighed. "Dr. Atkins was one of the scientists I told you about. One who was taken and sent back."

"I told you before, call me Molly."

Jett ignored her request. "You're a Returned?"

She shrugged, pointing her gun at Willow to remind us she still had it.

As if we'd forgotten.

Willow rolled her eyes. "Come on, the gun, is it really necessary? We're on the same side here, aren't we?"

But Molly shook her head. "I don't know what you want with those ships, but we need them."

"The M'alue are coming," Jett explained. "And if they do come they'll start a war. Why not just destroy the fleet before that can happen?"

"Let them come. I'm ready for them," she snapped. And then her expression shifted. "I was one of the scientists who found the injured M'alue, you know? I brought him back to the lab and ordered the tests on him." She blinked slowly, taking a long breath. "He probably would've been fine if we'd just let him heal, but I was the one who gave the initial order not to release him." When she let out her breath, she gritted her teeth and a muscle bulged along her jaw. "When they took me . . ." She turned to Ben. "You have no idea what it's like to lose everything."

But she'd picked the wrong person to appeal to.

His face turned red as he slammed his fist on the console. "I lost my daughter!"

Shaking her head again, she notched her chin upward. "But it wasn't you. They didn't take you. When they took me, they took everything-my chance at a normal life. My future. They destroyed me."

Jett tried to talk some sense into her. "But you're here now. Your life isn't over. We might not be the same, but we still have options," he explained. "You have the chance to do the right thing. To be better than this."

"I don't want to be better. I want them to pay for taking my life away." Her lips twisted into an ugly sneer.

"So, what, you plan to start a war with them?" Ben asked. "How can you expect to win? How can you think that's okay, to risk other people's lives like that?"

"I'll get my revenge," she stated flatly.

The problem was, she was wrong. There was no way she would win this thing.

We'd have to tread carefully.

I lowered my voice, hoping to make her see reason. "You'll get us all killed."

But she was past listening. Her eyes glittered. "If that's what it takes."

She used the nose of the gun to nudge Willow toward us, then indicated we all take a step back from the computers.

We did as she directed. Finally, Ben spoke up. "Why not just let us go? Give us a chance to get away from here?"

She took a breath once we were away from the equipment, her stance sagging. "You, maybe," she told Ben. "But we need your daughter. Her, and the boy."

That was what this was all about. Kyra and Tyler.

Suddenly I wasn't just worried she was going to shoot us or start an intergalactic war. I was terrified of what she had planned for Kyra. "Why not one of us?" I asked. "Can't I take her place?"

"You think we didn't try that? I was one of the first to volunteer. We all emit a certain amount of the kind of power we needed. Problem is, our human side. Our cell membranes absorb too much of that energy, and then our immune system sees it as a threat and breaks it down. The more attempts we made, the weaker I became. It's why I have this." She pointed to her b.u.m leg. "I broke it a couple of years ago, and it never did heal properly, not even by human standards.

"Our only option was getting our hands on a Replaced." She laughed wryly. "Don't you see? Without those two kids, this whole house of cards crumbles." She never said their names-Kyra's or Tyler's-as if naming them would personalize what she was doing. "Funny, I don't think the M'alue realized they were handing us the solution to our problem when they created them." Her smile was tinged with lunacy. "We searched high and low, sending out teams, operatives. We even had people inside the Daylight Division. We set up our own task forces-teams of Returned who worked for us. They infiltrated camps just so we could keep tabs on new abductees. We promised them the world if they could deliver us a Replaced."

"It was you . . . ," I hissed, unable to stop myself from charging her. "You sent Natty after Kyra."

She tensed, raising the gun again, and Jett caught me. He held me back. His fingers gripped my wrist, reminding me it wouldn't do any good to get shot now. To get Willow shot.

We still had to save Kyra . . . and, yes, Tyler too.

"Yeah," Molly chuckled. "And we almost had her. We got word that Eddie Ray's team had her and she'd be ready for transport within the day. They'd figured out how to sedate her and everything was set." She shook her head. "At first when they didn't answer us, we thought they'd changed their minds . . . maybe found another buyer for her."

Buyer. The pulse in my throat picked up when she talked about Kyra that way. Like she was some sort of property, to be traded on the open market.

"Then you guys showed up. Just . . . showed up. Out of the blue." She nodded at Ben. "And it no longer mattered that we didn't have the girl. You handed us the boy on a silver platter. The second he entered the building we knew: he was the key." Her long sigh oozed satisfaction. I wanted to punch her in the face. "The girl showing up a day later was just a bonus. You know, we've never seen someone emit so much energy, Ben? You should be proud. She's like a walking power plant."

"You're going to h.e.l.l," he spat at her.

She smirked. "I'm already there."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

"I HAD A SON ONCE," DR. CLARKE SAID, HER FACE masked in the eerie blue glow coming from the gel inside Adam's tube. She stepped around it, so we could see her more clearly, but she never released her grip on the syringe in her hand. It stayed where it was: ready to kill Adam with just the flick of her thumb.

"You don't have to do this," Tyler said, his eyes moving between the needle and her tortured expression. I didn't know how he managed to sound so reasonable.

Dr. Clarke focused on Tyler. "I'm doing this for him," she explained slowly. Softly. "All of it. This project." She blinked against the tears she could no longer hide. "He was taken at the same time the other children were." Her eyes fell on me. "Not long before you were taken." A single tear slipped down her cheek and she used her shoulder to brush it away. "Only he never came back. Not even after all these years." Her voice cracked. "Do you know what that does to a parent?"

Agent Truman lowered his gun as I eased past Tyler and stepped in front of her. I swallowed the lump in my throat, but my chest ached. "I do, actually. My dad . . . he's not the same as he was before. It broke him."

She jiggled the tubing, letting me know I'd come far enough. "He was fifteen," she whispered, eyeing me desperately. "And if I can find him . . . If we can go up there and bring him back, he'll still be fifteen."

From behind me, Tyler reached for my shoulder, maybe trying to tell me not to, but it had to be said. She needed to know. I shook my head. "All you'll do is make things worse," I told her. "Get the rest of us killed too. You don't want that, I know you don't."

It had been painful to admit the truth out loud-how damaged my dad had been by my taking-but looking at Dr. Clarke I couldn't help thinking maybe it wasn't her fault.

And maybe it wasn't my dad's either.

I took a step toward her. "Dr. Clarke, your son-" I faltered; she'd never said his name.

"Nathan," she moaned. "My son's name, it's Nathan. Do you know?" she asked. "Did they tell you . . . ?" She took a shaky breath. "He's not coming back, is he?"

Nathan Clarke.

I didn't want to answer her. How could I?

But I knew the truth. They'd downloaded all that information into my head. I knew who'd survived the experiments. I'd seen his face. I knew what they'd done to him.

A quiver ran along my spine even before I found the strength to shake my head. Dr. Clarke's face . . . her entire bearing crumpled. I turned to Tyler, wishing he could do something, anything to fix this.

But no one could.

Her mouth fell open, and I thought she might scream or howl, but all that came out was an arid gasp. It was like watching someone take her dying breath.

"No," she finally mouthed.

Her head dropped forward, her chin collapsing against her chest. But her fist was still closed around the tubing, and I was worried she might take it out on Adam, exact what small revenge she could. "No, no, no." Her voice was almost nonexistent, in mute denial.

"Please," I whispered. "Nathan wouldn't want this." My gaze fell on Adam and she followed my eyes. "He wouldn't have wanted you to drag others into this because of him. I know because I wouldn't have wanted that. None of us would."

I could feel Tyler behind me, silently agreeing with me.

She stood there trapped by uncertainty as she contemplated my plea. I guessed she was thinking of her son and considering what he would, and wouldn't, have wanted.

Finally, she exhaled and dropped the needle.

Everything inside me uncoiled, like a clock's springs wound too tightly.

"Let's get him out of there," she said. "And then I'll do anything you need me to."

TYLER.

FREEING ADAM HAD BEEN LIKE FREEING MYSELF-I saw the world more clearly. My senses were boosted.

The moment the three of us touched, it was like a jolt-the connection . . . our connection-sizzling through my veins. Thrumming beneath my skin.

I began to see images, like clips of broken film. A network of light shining over the dark spots of my broken memory, until all at once it came flooding back.

Kyra and me on the swing set the night she was returned . . .

Me, pulling an all-nighter to draw a chalk pathway between our houses . . .

Leaving her a copy of Fahrenheit 451-my favorite book.

Our first kiss . . . and then our second.

Kyra's face when she realized she'd cut herself in front of me.

I had no idea if Kyra was seeing this or not.

Agent Truman protested, "Jesus-H. He smells like a rotting corpse."

Okay, so that part wasn't entirely wrong.

True to her word, Dr. Clarke had helped us extract Adam from the canister they'd been keeping him confined in.

"He's been in a sort of stasis for years," she explained while she drained the solution he was suspended in. "We took him out only when Dr. Atkins ordered it." It was shocking to hear her say that Molly was the one in charge. She hadn't struck me as the decision-making type. "She would do things to him"-Dr. Clarke blanched as she stumbled over her words, her hands shaking-"horrific things. I'm not sure how he's even survived all this time."

But we had him now. He was safe, even as he slipped in and out of consciousness-shock, most likely, from being outside of his tube, according to Dr. Clarke.

His body was practically weightless, light like a bird's, and Kyra and I carried him as if it was nothing. His skin was no longer moist from the blue gel but it had a sticky feel. Not in the syrupy sense, but like one of those gummy rubber b.a.l.l.s from a candy machine outside the grocery store.

And he stunk, just like Agent Truman said he did.

"They won't have to see us on the cameras, they'll smell that SOB coming from a mile away," Agent Truman muttered.

But then Dr. Clarke put the facility into evacuation mode, entering the codes herself, and overriding every safeguard they had in place. Her access allowed her to declare a state of emergency that required the entire operation to shut down until the facility could be safely cleared.

There was a self-destruct sequence as well, she told us, in the event of a real emergency, but her security clearance didn't allow her to initiate that. We'd need someone with higher access codes to do that.

"Find someone with Level Three clearance-Dr. Atkins or someone who works on the EVE project. Then you can blow up the entire fleet . . . the entire facility," she explained. "They'll lose everything. They'll never be able to duplicate the technology."

For now, all she could guarantee was that the building would be clear, giving us at least a chance to save the planet.

"I'll stay here and lock the lab down," she'd told us. "You get to the Bas.e.m.e.nt. That's where you'll find the ships."

Then she handed us her key card and gave us her access codes. Once she was locked inside, I turned to ask where she wanted us to meet her, when she nodded to us once from behind the gla.s.s door-a Farewell or Good luck, or maybe it was an I'm sorry-right before she plunged the tip of the needle into her arm.

I wanted to tell her to stop, but it was already done and the words died on my lips.

She collapsed.

I stood there stunned, waiting for something to change. To realize I'd seen wrong. But then she exhaled, a shuddery breath, and foam escaped her lips which were already turning blue.