Simon raised his hand in what definitely was not a salute and just kept walking, leaving Jett and me to finish loading the vehicle.
Sometimes it was hard to remember that, despite their still-teenage appearances, Jett was an old man compared to Simon, and that both of them were practically geriatric compared to me. As the most recently Returned, I was by far the baby of the group.
I shot a cursory glance at Willow’s toned and tattooed arms as she hefted a duffel bag into the back of the SUV.
“Need a hand?” I asked.
Her response was a terse glare, pretty much the only kind of look she gave me, right before she slammed the back hatch closed and stomped away, putting an end to yet another attempt to make nice with her.
Jett nudged me in the ribs. “Someone’s making progress . . .” He said it singsongy, like a deranged cheerleader.
“Why, because she didn’t growl at me this time?” I watched as Willow trudged toward Simon.
Jett chuckled, while Willow spit in the dirt and then rubbed it in with the toe of her scuffed leather boot. It wasn’t hard to guess the topic of their discussion. Willow didn’t second-guess Simon or his orders, but she had a hard time keeping her opinions to herself. And her opinion today was that we should definitely-absolutely-for sure not be going to the Tacoma facility.
Least of all on some jacked-up mission that would get us all “sliced-and-diced.” Her words, not mine.
Thankfully, Simon disagreed.
“What do you think?” I asked Jett.
“About you, or about the Tacoma facility?”
I considered that and then sighed. “Are they really all that different?”
His gaze slid sideways. Without realizing it, he did that rubbing-his-arm thing as he contemplated both me and my question. “I think neither of you is as impenetrable as you’d like to seem.” He dropped his hand, and a slow grin eased over his features. “Besides, I think Simon’s right. There’s a reason the No-Suchers keep that place under such tight security. They’re hiding something. If we can just get in there . . .”
I didn’t really care what else they were keeping there—if they had Tyler, that was all that counted. I watched as Willow crossed her arms while Simon said his piece, probably something along the lines of what Jett had just told me, and then he walked away, leaving her there. She didn’t look too happy about whatever he’d said, and almost immediately she turned her attention back to me. This time, even from all the way over here, I felt her growl.
“See?” Jett said, nudging me again. “If that’s not a smile, I don’t know what is.”
Groaning, I turned away from Willow’s glare and glanced down at Jett’s wrist. His old-school digital watch made it easy to catch the time because its backlit face was ginormous.
It was 11:38—only twenty-two minutes ’til we’d be leaving camp. I was anxious about the possibility of finding Tyler. But it was more than that, because there was another possibility as well: the very real chance I might run into Agent Truman again.
In almost every comic book I’d ever read, or every cartoon or movie or TV show I’d ever watched, there was a bad guy. A nemesis for every hero. A villain.
For Superman, that enemy was Lex Luthor. For Luke Skywalker, it was his very own father, Darth Vader. For Cinderella, there were three of them out to get her: her evil stepmother and her two ugly stepsisters.
For me, it was Agent Truman. I’m definitely not saying I’m a hero or anything. I was just trying to get by, to survive this craptastic situation I’d been dropped into. But that didn’t make me hate Agent Truman any less. Ever since I’d been back, he’d done everything in his power to ruin my life, which was pretty much my definition of “nemesis,” and why I’d been blindsided when I’d seen his name on that NSA email about Tyler.
So why, then, had Agent Truman referred to Tyler as an “unidentified male” in his email? Assuming they actually had Tyler at all, why had he gone out of his way not to name him? The only thing that even kinda-sorta made sense was that he was worried that if he leaked Tyler’s name that we—those of us looking for Tyler—would somehow find out he’d been returned. That the NSA had gotten to him before we had.
He wasn’t wrong. We had discovered the email, after all.
Still, it wasn’t just Agent Truman and the other No-Suchers I was worried about—I mean, yeah, I was worried about the whole breaking-Tyler-out thing and all. Anything that had Simon packing the SUV full of explosives must be pretty risky.
But as crazy as it sounded, I was almost as worried we would find Tyler as I was that we wouldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to save him or anything—it’s just that I worried about what his return would even look like. And I didn’t mean that in the shallow I-won’t-still-love-him-if-he-has-scars kind of way, because I swear nothing could change my feelings for him, even if he was a complete mess on the outside.
That wasn’t it at all. It was more about what all of this—this being infected by me, and then taken and experimented on—might have done to him on the inside I was worried about.
Being one of the Returned had done a serious number on my head. I’d lost my friends, my family, my home, and even who I was in a sense, since I was now a danger to those I used to care about. Case in point: look at what I’d done to Tyler.
Jett dragged me back to the present when he asked, “What d’ya think that’s all about?”
I glanced up in time to see Natty—my quiet-as-a-mouse Natty—charging like a determined bull toward the SUV we’d just loaded. She was dressed in head-to-toe black—fitted black T, black fatigues, black boots—and her hair was pulled back in a supertight ponytail that made the attack-mode expression on her face seem all the more serious. Hot on her heels was Thom, and he looked as pissed as she did adamant.