“I didn’t say he wasn’t useful. Just not as useful as you woulda been.”
Dead air filled the room. A charged kind of silence that lasted weeks. Months. Years. Time we couldn’t afford. I was powerless to change the past . . . I couldn’t keep worrying about Agent Truman and the things he’d done or we might not have a future.
We had to move forward.
“You said the message Natty sent wasn’t meant for you. Who then?” Thom asked from where he was on the bed.
“No, sir. The message was sent out for another buyer, the one your girl had waiting in the wings. When you went up for sale, we weren’t even in the running. We were just lucky enough to be monitoring the signals, and picked it up.” He looked at me. “Unfortunately, you got away.” Truman took his frustration out on Thom as he dug the end of the knife into the thin tissue of Thom’s neck. “Except I think she and Eddie Ray couldn’t agree about it. I think the transaction woulda closed sooner if Eddie Ray didn’t think he could get more money for you from someone else. He was right, you know? You . . . being what you are . . . you’re worth big money.” He gouged the tip of the blade deeper. Digging. Burrowing. He had all the finesse of a butcher with a rusty hacksaw. It gave me the creeps.
“Got it!” Agent Truman held up what looked like a miniature-sized SIM card covered in Thom’s blood.
Thom sat up, wincing as he wiped his neck. “Did it really take that much work for something that small?” The gash in Thom’s neck was at least four times the size of the tracker Agent Truman had extracted.
Agent Truman grinned as he snapped the device in half before tossing it in the wastebasket, where it barely made a plinking sound. Then he wiped the blade of his pocketknife on his pants. “I always did enjoy my work.”
“You’re a monster.”
“We’re all monsters. You most of all.”
It stung, hearing him say it like that . . . the same way Griffin had.
What was her word? Chimera.
Didn’t matter that she called it something else, though, it still meant the same thing: monster.
Thom lifted the edge of his shirt to his wound, to try to stanch the flow of blood, even though it was probably already slowing on its own. “Maybe this is a mistake, working with him. He’s a Daylighter, after all.” His voice lowered, until it was barely a whisper. “Even if he’s Returned, what makes you think he’ll help us?” Thom asked, and Agent Truman gave me a look that said he wanted to know the answer as well—an Enquiring Minds Want To Know kind of look.
“Because I have a trustworthy face?” he goaded.
“Because that message said ‘The Returned must die,’ and you’ll do what you always do—save your own ass.”
“And what about you. You’re not one of us. You’re not Returned, you’re Replaced. Why should you get involved?”
I thought about the things Blondie—the dead girl—had said about me not being human. But she was wrong.
If what she’d said was true and these beings were coming, then where did that leave us—and I didn’t mean us the way Natty said it, as in us, the alien race. Or even us as in the Returned. I meant us . . . people. Because that’s who I was. That’s who I would always be.
A human being. A person. A part of this world.
No matter what my DNA said.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. I might be different now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember who I was. I can’t just throw that part of me away. Simon, Willow, Griffin . . .” I ticked off their names, again waiting for some flicker of acknowledgment. Something that told me he’d heard his daughter’s name. But he remained blank. Dead-faced. So I said the words he’d never be capable of, “They’re my friends.”
Agent Truman settled back now and somehow made it look even less comfortable than before, like he was balancing on razor blades rather than on a bed. “They’re not mine though.” He smirked, and frustration swelled within me.
“But if these aliens really are coming for us—for the Returned—we need to stop it from happening. Don’t you feel a sense of loyalty to your old life? To protect any friends you do have? You’re still half human. You can’t want this to happen.”
He frowned. “Look, you’re not getting it. These things . . . these beings are far more advanced than we are. If they wanted to destroy us, trust me, they would. You think that Chuck guy wanted to blow his brains out? Poor guy had no idea what was going on inside his own brain.” He inhaled, thinking it over. “No, there’s got to be something more to it. They want something.”
“You knew them. You made deals with them way back when. What do you think they want? And why would they want the Returned dead?”
Agent Truman’s expression hardened and his jaw flexed. “We had no idea what they were up to in the beginning. We really thought we were getting the deal of the century—trading a few people for technology beyond our dreams.”