Tilting my head, I asked, “So did it work? Did they get what they needed from us?”
Dr. Clarke frowned. “We don’t know. Not exactly.” She closed her fist and the images vanished, the screen behind her going dark. “There was a breakdown in communication—if you could call it that in the first place—between us and the M’alue. Cooperation ended abruptly, and we no longer know where they are in their experiments.” Her lips flattened into a thin line. “I had a chance to meet privately with Ben after his group arrived yesterday, and today with Agent Truman, and I think I’m up to speed on your reasons for coming. I know about the maps and the message. It’s not good.” She paused. “Hopefully, we can help each other out of this . . . situation.”
Jett glanced around the table, and I realized not everyone had all the pieces. “What exactly is our situation?”
Agent Truman arched one brow at me. “Go ahead.”
“What haven’t you told us?” Griffin prodded.
“I can’t say for sure, but I think they’re coming. And I think we only have nine days until they get here,” I said.
“How can you be sure?” my dad asked.
“I can’t. I mean, that’s the thing. Every morning when I wake up, I get this . . .” I turned to Tyler, thinking maybe he’d know what I was saying. He was the only one who’d witnessed what I’d gone through, while we’d been on the run. Plus, how did I even start to describe this? “Pains. Like intense, stabbing pains.” My voice was wobbly. “At first I thought it was nothing . . .” I shrugged. “Just part of this whole Returned/Replaced thing. Over time it got worse, and then while Natty was holding me hostage, one of them mentioned I was some sort of countdown. I started to realize what I was feeling was them . . . getting closer. Somehow I can sense them.”
“The same way you felt Adam,” Tyler said.
I nodded. “Yeah, like that. It’s like I’m tracking them. I mean, I could do without the stabbing part, but . . . yeah, like that.”
Jett—as our resident numbers guy—was the first to ask, “So where’d the nine days come from?”
“Same place Tyler’s maps came from, I guess.”
“So, thin air,” Simon said snidely to Tyler.
Tyler shrugged. “If that’s what helps you sleep at night.”
Simon rolled his eyes. “I wish.”
“We’ve gotten a bit off track,” Dr. Clarke interrupted. “The real question is, what do they want?” When no one answered, Dr. Clarke continued. “Have you ever heard the term extinction level event?”
“Do you mean like the dodo bird?” I asked, wondering where she was going with this.
“I mean,” she stressed, “that the Earth has already survived five mass extinction events, including one that wiped out ninety-six percent of all life on this planet.”
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to respond to that.
Dr. Clarke straightened the hem of her jacket and fixed her gaze on each of us, one at a time like she was weighing our skills. “This is our chance to play a part in stopping the next one.”
“How do you figure?” Willow asked.
“We need to find a way to prevent them from coming. To prevent them from exterminating us. And, apparently, we have nine days to figure out how to do that.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Days Remaining: Seven
TWO DAYS HAD PASSED AND WE WERE NO CLOSER to figuring out what the M’alue’s message meant, or what they wanted from us, than we’d been when we’d first taken the underground plunge into the ISA for help. I also still hadn’t figured out where Tyler and I stood. I knew he was avoiding me—using his new ability to sense me to vacate any room before I arrived, or to wait until I was gone to enter. It was frustrating and awkward, because everyone knew what was happening.
And whenever we were forced into the same room, I could feel his eyes on me. It was the same thing my dad had done, that watching-me thing, like I was too blind to notice.
With no news in the two days since Dr. Clarke had given us her “We need to stop them from exterminating us” speech, we’d all started to go a little stir-crazy.
We’d been given limited access to the underground facility, the parts that weren’t classified. Griffin and Willow had started making several trips to the gym each day, and then again to the large indoor track, just to burn off steam. I’d gone with them once, but they were hard core. Working out, for the two of them, was something that rivaled the Olympics, each of them jockeying to be the fastest runner, to lift the most weight, to do the most pull-ups, push-ups, chin-ups, or sit-ups. Pushing and challenging the other until I realized I’d gone invisible.
One trip had definitely been enough.