The Countdown (The Taking #3)(56)

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?

I tried to stay focused on what Dr. Clarke was talking about.

She looked pleased not to have to launch into a detailed explanation of the First Contact Meetings. “So you’re up to speed already? Good. It makes things easier. I’m sure you realize then, that, for a time the agreement between us and them was peaceful.”

“Peaceful?” I interrupted, sounding more than a little skeptical considering where we were standing right now. “Do you mean the part where they were kidnapping kids and experimenting on them, while the government turned a blind eye?” I crossed my arms. “We may have different definitions of peaceful.”

“Agent Truman has informed me of . . . of what you all are. So I can see why you might not understand the situation.” She glanced around at us. Other than my dad, everyone in our group had been taken and returned. “The matter was complex, Kyra. There was more to it than a simple pact. What you might not realize is that it wasn’t exactly a negotiation.”

Griffin shot her a black look. “Are you saying they would have taken us whether there was an agreement in place or not? I have a hard time believing the president would have just accepted that.”

“And what would he have done about it? What would anyone have done about it?” she asked. “Do you know how incredible it is that they found us at all? Of all the planets, in all the solar systems, in all the galaxies, and they just happened to track us down? It’s the universal version of a needle in a haystack. If their goal had been to destroy us, then they could and would have. But clearly they had other plans for us. The M’alue are explorers. Scientists in their own right.” She made it sound like they impressed her. That she revered rather than feared them. Shrugging, she added, “Cooperating was our best option.”

“So what was the point?” I asked. “If you know so much about them? What was their reason for coming here in the first place? Why were they doing this to us?”