Extinction Machine

Chapter Ninety-six

House of Jack Ledger

Near Robinwood, Pennsylvania

Sunday, October 20, 8:49 p.m.

“Erasmus Tull is your brother?”

“Yes,” said Junie. “And … no. It’s complicated.”

Top Sims leaned forward and put his forearms on his knees. “Miss, I would appreciate it if you would uncomplicate it for us. That man killed a couple of hundred people that I used to know.”

The room was dead silent. Junie looked around at everyone. At me. I hoped that the things I was feeling in my heart weren’t showing in my eyes. I knew the Killer was watching her.

“We were a year apart, but in the same orphanage,” she said, and immediately Church raised his good hand.

“Miss Flynn,” he said calmly, “credit us with some intelligence. We researched your history. You were never in an orphanage. Not in this country, and not under that name.”

Junie swallowed.

“That’s … only partly true,” she said. “I was in an orphanage until I was six years old, in Group Eight. Erasmus Tull was in Group Seven.”

“‘Group’?” said Bunny. “What kind of orphanage are you talking about, lady?”

Junie looked deeply frightened. I think that if there was a way out of that room she would have bolted and run. Instead, she took a big breath, forced herself to make direct eye contact with Mr. Church, and said, “I belong to a very specific group of children who were born and partially raised at a facility in Nevada. The site has no official name. The building I lived in was called Hive Two. There were ninety-six children in that facility, and there were at least ten facilities exactly like it.”

“Um…,” said Bunny, “are we talking clones?”

“No, of course not,” said Junie with a trace of a smile.

“Good, because I—”

“I’m pretty sure I’m an alien-human hybrid,” she said. “Just like Erasmus Tull.”