“That’s right,” Simon acknowledged when I just crossed my arms and waited for him to elaborate. “The experiments I told you about, the ones that were done on you when you were taken.”
I hugged myself tighter. “The ones the aliens did,” I said, emphasizing aliens because even though I’d let go of my disbelief, saying it out loud hadn’t gotten any easier. “The experiments they did on all of us? What about them?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t tell you everything.”
I rolled my eyes. “Um, yeah. I kinda got that. So, go ahead. Tell me now.”
He gave me an are-you-sure? look, and all of a sudden we were in some kind of weird argument. But I was so sick of Simon holding back information for my own good. I was a big girl; I was perfectly capable of deciding what was good for me and what wasn’t.
“They weren’t random, these experiments. There’s a reason we can heal and that we don’t need much food or sleep.” He still hadn’t told the others about how I could move things—or shatter glass—with my mind, and all at once this seemed like as good a time as any. Maybe we’d had enough with the secret keeping.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t exactly spilling either.
He looked me over. “How come you never asked why we can do those things—what it is they did to us that makes us different?”
“You told me. You said it was because of the experiments. That they messed with us and we didn’t come back the same.” I remembered when he’d explained that I’d been gone longer than the other Returned, and that he thought that meant they were perfecting whatever it was they were doing to us.
He’d used the word “special” when he’d told me I could heal faster than the rest of them.
Me, I didn’t feel special. I felt weird.
And now what? Was he saying it wasn’t tests they’d been doing on us? “So, what is it, then? What’s worse than experimenting on us?” I’d already lost five years of my life. I’d already had to give up my family because of what happened. “Did they expose us to radiation? Kryptonite? Am I gonna lose my teeth? Grow an eye in my back?” I tried to laugh, but I was way past amused, and the sound lodged somewhere deep in my throat.
Simon swallowed my name, and I knew he was stalling. “Kyra.”
“Simon,” I shot back acidly. “Say it already.”
“It’s not like radiation or anything. And they didn’t just mess with us and our DNA, they introduced their DNA to ours.”
I faltered. “They . . . introduced . . . ?”
He glanced uncertainly at Thom, who gave him a you-do-it-or-I-will look. Simon exhaled noisily. He definitely didn’t want to do it. “We don’t know everything,” he went on. “Just that whatever it is, it’s some form of genetic splicing. They replace some of our DNA with theirs.”
“Replace?” I repeated, finding it almost impossible to form even that single word.
Simon nodded, having the decency to look chagrined. “Yes, replace.” He hesitated, and for the first time in forever the leader in him vanished. He was just a kid when he met my gaze. Like me. “That’s what this whole abduction thing seems to be about. Genetic manipulation.” He swallowed, his brows lifting.
I shrank back. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I put my hands up to warn everyone to just . . . stay back! even though not one of them had moved so much as an inch. I needed a minute, or maybe a lifetime, to process what he’d just said because it was so are-you-kidding-me? When I finally tried to talk, I’d reached that hysterical edge where my voice had shot up about ten octaves. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that I’m . . . that you think I’ve got some kind of alien DNA in me?” My last few words were laced with so much disbelief there was no doubt what I believed. “This isn’t for real. You can’t be serious.”
“The proper term for it is hybrid,” Jett offered, like he was being helpful or something.
My face crumpled, and my stomach plummeted. “Dude, no. Not you too.”
But Jett just nodded. Clearly, I was the only one who wasn’t onboard with this insane theory of theirs. “That’s what the offspring of two species are called: hybrids.”
“But that’s not what we are. We’re not”—I used air quotes to show what I thought of it—“‘offspring.’ It’s not like we were up there doin’ it or anything.” I knew I sounded like a twelve-year-old, but I was way past caring about my maturity level.
“No,” Jett agreed, and the way his voice lowered, getting all serious, it struck me all over again that he wasn’t nearly as young as he looked. “There was no”—he made air quotes too—“‘doing it’ involved. At least as far as we know. This was done good-old-fashioned test tube–style.”
I shook my head, but Simon nodded his in unison. And so did Thom, Natty, Jett, and even Willow when I looked back at her. I was pretty sure I must’ve banged my head on something or been rufied or maybe I’d passed out again and this was all one big crazy dream.
Hybrids.
I let the word rattle around in my brain.
Up ’til now I’d been pretty open-minded, or so I thought. I’d accepted a lot: that I hadn’t aged a single day the entire time I’d been gone, that I’d been “experimented” on and now would age ridiculously slowly, that my blood was now toxic to everyone who wasn’t like us. But this . . . this felt like a whole different level of crazy. “Okay, yeah,” I said, my voice rising another notch. “I saw that movie once. Isn’t that the one where Jeff Goldblum accidentally turns himself into a giant bug by mixing his DNA with a fly?” I sounded unhinged; I knew that. But who wouldn’t in my place? My mom and I had watched that movie too—The Fly. The scientist whose teleportation experiments had gone horribly wrong, and in the end, he’d morphed into something half man and half insect, and begged the woman he loved to put him out of his misery.