Pete jumped in again. “We don’t have to tell you anything. You don’t have any reason to hold us.” He was almost shouting. But for a second, the cops seemed to realize the truth of this, and froze where they were. “Can I have my phone, please?”
These words he directed at the female driver, the one who’d originally flagged them down. Funnily enough, however, she didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. Again, Gemma had the impression of a statue.
No. Not a statue. An actor—a bit-part actor whose lines have come and gone, contentedly watching the rest of the play from the wings.
Too late, Gemma understood. Too late, Gemma knew there were no witnesses, and no one to hear them scream.
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 6 of Lyra’s story.
SEVEN
THE WORST THING ABOUT BEING kidnapped with your boyfriend, it turned out, was having to go to the bathroom. First Gemma thought she could hold it. Pete tried to get his hands free so he could at least pee in the corner, in a pile of rags or the empty water bottle that rattled across the floor whenever the van made a turn.
But he couldn’t get his hands free.
She pretended to be asleep, choking on her own panic, on tears she couldn’t even wipe away, while the van filled with a sharp metallic stink. Later it was her turn, and she felt a flood of shame that made her want to die, truly die, for the first time in her life.
Instead, she slept. Unbelievably, improbably, mercifully, she slept, with her head knocking against the filthy floor and the stink of ammonia everywhere.
Every hour or so, the van came to a stop: the drivers were in no particular hurry. Every time, Gemma woke with a start, hoping they’d come to a checkpoint, or a roadblock—hoping, though she knew it was impossible, that someone had already realized she was missing, that police had been mobilized across fifty states—but no one came to let them out, and every time, after they lay there in the sweating quiet for agonizing minutes, the van simply started up again. Who knew whether the strangers who’d cuffed and gagged them were fake cops or the real thing, just paid off by somebody higher up? She understood that the truck had been brought, and the accident staged, specifically for the abduction. It was likely Fortner’s friends had blocked off all the roads around Winston-Able with more fake accidents or fake checkpoints, scanning for a boy and girl traveling together, acting weirdly, no convincing story about who they were or where they’d come from.
By the time the van stopped for good, Gemma and Pete hadn’t looked at each other in hours. Her jeans were wet. His, too. She was still wearing her party top, which had beaded sequins along the hem. He was in his Hawaiian shirt.
She nearly toppled over when she had to stand. The man who’d masqueraded as the truck driver took her arm, surprisingly gentle, as if they were on a date and she had caught a heel in the sidewalk. But the woman who’d posed as a cop stepped forward and seized Gemma roughly.
“I’ll take this one,” she said simply.
It was dark except for a ring of headlights in the distance that might have been Jeeps, more vans, some kind of security cordon. There were streetlamps, but most of them were missing bulbs. People on foot patrolled with flashlights, and in the distance, Gemma made out a big, low, slope-roofed building, barely speckled with light.
Long runways of pavement, distant fists of furry trees, signs (A-32i, B-27a) blinking in the sudden clarity of the guards’ flashlights. It was an old regional airport; she could even now make out a single hangar, illuminated by the temporary sweep of passing headlights.
Where were they? Not Tennessee. They must have been driving for twelve hours at least. She smelled running sap, tilled mud, even a very faint tang of fertilizer. Farmland.
Crickets cut the air into sound waves. Stars wheeled prettily above them. Ohio? Indiana?
Their abductors removed their gags at last; they were wet and heavy with saliva. Tears of relief burned Gemma’s eyes, even though she still couldn’t speak: her tongue felt swollen and painful, her lips were raw, and her throat dry. She wondered why they’d been gagged in the first place—whether it was just to keep them from talking to each other, or so they would be afraid.
Voices shouted in the dark. Someone called, “Hot shit!” and there was even a smattering of applause, as if the people who’d seized Gemma and Pete had instead won several rounds in a bingo tournament.
“Where are you taking us?” Pete’s voice was hoarse, too. She wanted to reach over and squeeze his hands. But she was filthy, ashamed, and besides, her hands, still cuffed behind her back, were numb.
“Nowhere.” The guy who’d been playing male cop sounded tired. Almost reproachful. Like, hey, buddy, I’ve had a long day too. At least you didn’t have to drive.
“Don’t answer it,” the woman said. Hearing Pete referred to like that, like an it, sparked a new terror.
“My name is Gemma Ives.” Gemma’s words tasted a little like vomit. They were coming up quickly on the airport—too quickly. A few distant lights had swelled from fireflies to windows: in a few of them, she could make out concrete interiors, wires nested like intestines in the ceiling, banks of leather chairs still bolted to the floor. “I’m the daughter of Geoffrey Ives. My dad was one of the original investors in Haven. This is my boyfriend, Pete. You’ve got it all wrong. We’re not who you think we are.”
“I told you”—the woman sighed, speaking directly over Gemma’s head, as if she were nothing but air—“not to talk to it.”
“What does it matter, anyway? You want to know where we’re going, kid?” Her partner, or whatever he was, wouldn’t look at Pete or Gemma, even when he was addressing them. “Nowhere. We’re already here.”
The old airport terminal rose steep-faced and ugly, like someone’s blunt and splintered jaw. There was a faint hiss in the dark, and then the wheeze of rusted hinges: a door.
Gemma had known they were in trouble—big trouble. In the van she’d sat there grinding her teeth and trying to force her thoughts to settle, to pin them down whenever they flitted out of reach, like trying to catch horseflies by hand. They’d been followed. The military, or whoever was in charge, had figured out that they were trying to help Lyra and Caelum. Maybe they even knew that Caelum had managed to slip away, and somehow they blamed Gemma and Pete.
But now, for the first time, she understood. The people who’d abducted them didn’t think Gemma and Pete had helped the replicas escape.
They thought Gemma and Pete were the replicas.
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 7 of Lyra’s story.
EIGHT
INSIDE: THE SMELL OF SHOE polish, sweat, gunmetal. Two soldiers wearing military fatigues straightened up at their post. They were in a tight corridor, carpeted and filthy. A narrow set of stairs, dirty with footprints, rose into the darkness. Gemma knew once she went up the stairs—wherever they led—things would be hopeless.