The Countdown (The Taking #3)(62)

“We’ve picked up a signal.”

“Signal?” Jett asked. “What kind of signal are you talking about?”

“That’s the problem,” Dr. Clarke explained. “We’re not sure yet. We haven’t been able to decipher it. If it’s some kind of message, it’s buried in a narrow band frequency; similar to the ones SETI was transmitting in their search for extraterrestrial life. It’s as if whoever . . . or whatever is out there has been using our own signals to communicate back with us. Only this one’s been modified beyond recognition. Actually, this isn’t the first signal we’ve received. They’ve been coming in like clockwork. Each morning. Usually around dawn Pacific time.”

I froze as Tyler’s head snapped in my direction. Up until a couple days ago, he was the only other person who knew what I’d been going through each morning, the only one I’d shared that bit of information with.

“So you already knew?” I repeated numbly. “That they were coming?”

“We knew transmissions were coming in, but we didn’t know why or what they meant. And that was before we knew about you. That was why we asked to monitor you. To see if the two were synchronized.”

“Were they?”

Dr. Clarke nodded, but it was a dismissive nod, like the answer was obvious to anyone paying attention. “Today, though, we received another transmission. This one came in on a different frequency, at any entirely different time of day. And when it did, Adam went crazy.” Her eyes narrowed as she studied me. “Almost as if he sensed the transmission—”

“When?” Simon interrupted. “When did that happen?”

I slid my gaze to him, thinking the same thing he was.

She checked the clock on the wall while I glanced at Chuck’s watch on my wrist. “Twenty-three minutes ago,” I answered before she could open her mouth.

She looked at me. “So it is them?”

The waver in my voice was 100 percent reasonable under the circumstances. “If it is, why now?”

Jett crossed his arms impatiently. “You said Adam went crazy. He feels them too then?” He faced Dr. Clarke, clearly frustrated by the lack of information. “What aren’t you telling us?”

“You saw him,” she stated flatly, her expression neutral. “Do you think he’s in there because he wants to be?”

She waited for one of us to put two and two together, but it didn’t happen, at least not for me.

But Jett . . .

Jett was better at puzzles. At solving complex problems.

Understanding shattered his boyish features. “You think they’re here for him. To save him from you.”

My eyes widened. “Is Jett right? Is this some sort of rescue mission?” The idea that we might be caught in the middle of an alien hostage standoff was insane.

But Dr. Clarke was shaking her head. “No.” And then again she repeated, “No,” and I wondered who she was trying to convince—us or herself. “Trust me, Adam being here was strictly accidental.” But she was about as convincing as a terrorist. “It wouldn’t make sense that they’d come for him now. Not after all this time. If that’s all this was, why not come sooner?”

“How long’s he been here?” Tyler asked.

“Almost seven years. Not here, in this facility the entire time, but that’s how long he’s been on Earth.”

Seven years. Her words hit me like a jolt from Lucy. How much of that time had he spent in that tube?

I wanted to scream, to ask how something like this happened. To find out why they’d kept him like that. But all I could manage was, “How?”

“A crash,” she said, closing her eyes.

“Like at Area 51?” Jett probed. Jett was almost worse than my dad with his never-ending hunger for conspiracy tales. Probably because he’d lived so many of them firsthand.

Dr. Clarke made a scoffing sound, another dismissal. “Nonsense. Unlike the Area 51 hoax, this crash was real. And it was bad.” She said it like her account was firsthand, and I wondered if that was possible. Had she been there seven years ago when Adam had crash-landed? “When we pulled Adam from the wreckage, we were sure he was dead. There was no way he could’ve survived it. It wasn’t until later, when we’d taken him back to our lab that we’d realized he was regenerating. Healing. The same way you Returned can.” She looked around at the four of us. “Seeing it happen with my own eyes was”—she put a hand to her lips, remembering—“thrilling.”

“So, if he healed, why’s he still in there?” Tyler asked. “Why not let him leave?”

Dr. Clarke shook her head. “He might have healed after his crash, but something about being here on our planet is killing him.”

“You sure that has nothing to do with being kept in that giant test tube?” I contested.

“We saved him. Without our intervention, he wouldn’t have made it. Besides, even if he could sustain himself outside the tube, he has nowhere to go; his ship was too badly damaged in the crash.”

I wasn’t buying it. Maybe I’d spent too much time on the run from the No-Suchers, aware of what they really wanted with us—all the experiments they had planned.

Or maybe it was just her—Dr. Clarke herself. I couldn’t say for sure whether I trusted her or not. That was the thing, I didn’t know her. And right now, not knowing someone was the same thing as not trusting them in my world. I’d already let myself trust Natty, and look where that had gotten me. I couldn’t afford to blindly trust a total stranger.