The Countdown (The Taking #3)(52)

Dr. Clarke nodded, like she’d expected as much. “Most people haven’t. Stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” Dr. Clarke went on. “It’s the collective name given to several organizations using scientific data to establish interstellar communications. To search for life . . . out there.”

She moved us through the rest of our tour like we were in a race, zipping through one vast room after another. I’d call them labs, except the word “labs” wasn’t quite right because it didn’t do any of these places justice.

I wanted her to slow down. I wanted all of this to just . . . slow down. I had questions. I wanted her to ask questions—about who we were, what we were doing here, what we wanted. But she just kept talking . . . kept shuttling us forward until I’d lost track of where we were.

There were multiple levels with glass elevators on each side. There were chambers running around the perimeter with a giant open area in the center, and walkways that connected one side to the other across each different floor. People worked on different levels, on different projects with names she ticked off like Andromeda One, the Axis Venture, Project Frontline, XtropX. She tried to explain each one, but they blurred together until nothing made sense anymore.

We reached what looked like a nursery—another “lab” filled with plants, some beneath large lighted hoods and some that grew so large they were taller than we were. But all these plants were unusual—their colors and the textures of the leaves and the stems shooting up from the soil—none of it was quite right. Even the soil they were planted in was off somehow. Not Earth-like.

Curious, I stepped away from Thom and examined one of the spiky, red-tinged leaves. It was covered in a strange spongy substance that looked like it was expanding and contracting. I reached for it.

Just as my fingertips brushed it, the thing moved. Not the substance covering the leaf, but the plant . . . the entire leaf.

First, it shifted, but then in a swift lunging motion it took a swipe at me.

Thom yanked my hand away before I could even flinch.

“Did you see that?” I cradled my hand to my chest.

Dr. Clarke came up and steered us back expertly. “Oh, dear, you don’t want to touch those.” The offhanded way she said it made me think that the delayed nature of the warning wasn’t entirely an oversight.

I rubbed my fingertips and my thumb together until they were practically raw, wondering what might have happened if Thom hadn’t saved me. I shot him a what-the-hell? look and he just shook his head because he had no idea either.

Dr. Clarke finally began to fill in the blanks about her agency. She barely acknowledged the part where a sentient plant had just tried to—I don’t know—attack me. “Not everyone realizes what a delicate balance the universe is. NASA has used their Hubble telescope and measured the age of the oldest planet in our galaxy at thirteen billion years,” she explained. “That’s more than twice as old as Earth. But there are more than one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.” She flashed a knowing grin. “And that’s just what NASA will admit to. There are species—beings—far more advanced and complex than us, who’ve survived millennia. Planets a hundred times older than ours. The Milky Way is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.” She was specifically looking at me and Thom, and I wondered how much she knew . . . about us. How much Agent Truman had told her when he’d placed his private phone call. “It used to be that everyone had their hands in SETI’s research—the Russians, NASA, most major universities. But by the mid-’90s, Congress canceled all government funding. Now it’s strictly a private enterprise, mostly through UC Berkeley.”

“So . . . you’re part of the SETI project?” Thom asked.

“Was,” she clarified. “Now I’m here, working with the Interstellar Space Agency. We do a lot of the same stuff, only with much better funding.”

We were approaching something that looked vaguely familiar. I froze as I glanced uncomfortably at Agent Truman. Dr. Clarke turned to watch us.

The canisters in question were so similar to the ones I’d seen at the Daylight Division, the human-sized ones they’d had at the Tacoma facility, that my skin went cold and clammy.

The only difference between them was that these weren’t empty. Or at least one of them wasn’t.

Dr. Clarke gave me a significant look, and then glanced back at the canister. “We’ve made better contacts as well.”

I followed her gaze. “You’re not saying . . .” I tilted my head, hesitating. “That’s not . . . ?”

I never finished my question, I didn’t need to—she knew what I meant.

An alien. I’d meant: That’s not an alien, is it?

But I was sure it was. As sure as I’d been about anything in my life—Old Kyra’s or New Kyra’s.

I separated myself from Dr. Clarke and the others to get a better look, and no one told me not to go. My palms hadn’t been this sweaty since the first time I’d taken the pitcher’s mound and faced my very first batter. I hoped things turned out better this time around.

By the time I reached the canister . . . the one that was occupied, my teeth were chattering like one of those windup toys.

The liquid behind the glass was an odd translucent blue that bubbled in thick sticky swells. But there was something in there, embedded in all that gelatinous fluid. A creature of some sort.