GRIFFIN RAISED ONE EYEBROW. IT WAS THE SAME buck-up-soldier look I’d seen her use a thousand times before. “You okay? I’m happy to knock some sense into her, if you don’t have the heart.” Her tone though was gentler than when she was really giving a get-your-shit-together speech, which meant I must really look bad.
I laughed, or the best I could manage. “I’m fine.” I glanced over to where Kyra was still absorbing our conversation. I wasn’t sure what I felt.
Bad for not absolving her, sure. But after what Truman had said, about Kyra being responsible for that bloodbath at the asylum . . .
It was a lot to take in.
If what he said was true, then Kyra had assassinated those people, one of whom was supposedly her best friend. Shot them point-blank.
Maybe I didn’t know Kyra as well as I thought I did. I definitely didn’t know how I felt about that.
And maybe that was the problem.
I’d stood in front of her telling myself she was a virtual stranger, this girl who could kill in cold blood, and yet, still, I’d wanted her.
I’d wanted to grab her and kiss her and tell her I was the one who was sorry.
How messed up was that?
Super messed up.
Griffin leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s a standing offer. Let me know if you change your mind.” Griffin was a soldier—I knew she’d killed. Griffin never hid that fact. She was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of girl. So why was I holding Kyra to a different standard? Why couldn’t I forget what I’d seen at the asylum?
Because Griffin wasn’t the one I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. Griffin wasn’t the one I couldn’t stop thinking about.
I wasn’t in love with Griffin.
“Thanks, Griff, I’ll keep that in my back pocket.”
“No you won’t,” she baited, knowing exactly where my heart was.
I shook my head. “Nope. I won’t.”
The door opened and Dr. Clarke and Agent Truman—Griffin’s crazy ex-scientist-turned-Daylighter dad—came charging in. Griffin’s demeanor shifted from relaxed to tense in the blink of an eye.
“What about you?” I asked. “You okay? I’d offer to knock some sense into him, but I’m pretty sure your old man could beat my ass.”
She sighed, and let her arms fall to her sides. “Wouldn’t do any good anyway. He is smart, but never did have much sense.”
She kept her eyes on him as he moved to the center of the room, Dr. Clarke coming to stand directly behind him. Without even trying, the two of them filled all the space and demanded our attention. “All right, kiddos,” Agent Truman said, clapping his hands decisively as if he were issuing an edict. “Playtime is over. Let’s get down to business.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Days Remaining: Nine
THE CONFERENCE ROOM WHERE DR. CLARKE gathered us was sleek, all glass and metal and shiny surfaces. She never touched a light switch, but the lights went down as if she’d mentally commanded it. And almost on cue, there was a gasp from one of the lab-coated professionals. As if they’d never seen glow-in-the-dark eyes before.
I wanted to reprimand them, something along the lines of, Grow up already! Instead, I sank lower in my chair, hating being singled out already.
Behind Dr. Clarke a screen flashed to life, reminding me vaguely of one of those Smart Boards from school. Of course, there were a few minor differences between the technologies here at the ISA and what my old high school was using. First, Dr. Griffin queued up the image of an actual-authentic-not-animated alien—Adam. The second was that she only needed her fingertips, which she flipped and waved through thin air, to navigate the representation. Third, and also the most impressive, there was nothing two-dimensional about what we were looking at. The image wasn’t only up there, on the screen, like the boards at school. We were staring at some sort of hologram.
So cool.
“How much do you actually know?” Dr. Clarke began. “About how we first came in contact with them—the M’alue?”
“You mean the First Contact meetings?” I asked, referring to the first secret government meeting with the aliens, the one President Eisenhower allegedly attended back in the ’50s.
I shot a quick glance at Jett, who hated this particular part of our history. He was rubbing the place on his arm—a place that had healed decades ago—where he’d been tortured by our own government to find out whether he was a Returned or not.
My stomach tensed for a different reason. I couldn’t stop thinking about the things Tyler had told me, about how that map he’d drawn had led them here, straight to this underground facility. The whole thing bugged me, considering the messages I’d heard: The Returned Must Die.
All with what I had to assume were only nine days remaining.
It wasn’t—it couldn’t be—a coincidence we’d found Adam here. Had we—the Returned and the Replaced—somehow been corralled here? Had we made the most enormous-gigantic-monstrous mistake of our lives by following Tyler’s map?