The Countdown (The Taking #3)(68)

Even without looking at the monitor I could have guessed where I was: in outer space.

These stars were the stationary kind, unlike the ones I’d seen inside the cockpit. They didn’t burst like angry fireworks in the margins of my vision.

But it was what appeared in front of me that got my attention—a giant glowing ball of some sort. The sun, I might have thought, except the shape wasn’t uniform, and there were shades of green and gold and even flashes of red bursting throughout it.

A ship, I realized. This, I somehow knew, is where the signals have been coming from.

Maybe I should have been afraid . . . probably terrified. But afraid was the last thing I was. Even curiosity somehow escaped me.

“Go,” I said, this time out loud. The ship obeyed, leading me directly into the glowing orb ahead of me.





SIMON


DR. CLARKE’S FACE HIT A SHADE SO FAR PAST RED IT qualified as another color. “Someone tell me what the hell just happened!” She spun around to glare at everyone in the control room, including us, like we were the ones who’d let Kyra slip through those bay doors in the first place.

But it confirmed what I’d suspected. What I saw, up on that screen . . . I hadn’t imagined it. The blip we’d been watching, the one we’d all been focused on because it represented Kyra—her ship—it had just . . .

. . . vanished.

The guy manning the radar screen was the jumpiest of all. You could tell he didn’t want to answer. “We, um . . . we lost her, ma’am,” he admitted at last.

Dr. Clarke’s flinty gaze leveled on the poor guy. “Lost her? And how do you suppose that happened?”

His eyes shifted toward the elevator as if he was seriously contemplating making a break for it. He undid the top button of his shirt, his fingers shaking. “She . . . the entire ship . . . they just dropped off the radar.”

“Send up a drone,” she demanded without missing a beat. “I want the entire grid scanned for signs of that ship. If she crashed it, I want to know, and I want the wreckage recovered ASAP.” She turned to Molly, her jaw set. “Tell me you tagged her before you sent her up?”

Molly nodded. “Of course.”

Dr. Clarke granted Molly the most restrained smile. “Good. See if you can get a lock on it.”

But they all seemed to be forgetting we were talking about Kyra here. “Tagged? What the hell did you do to her? You better not’ve hurt her.” I wished I could back my threat up somehow. Here, I doubted it held any weight.

“It was nothing,” Molly reasoned. “Harmless. Nothing she was even aware of. We had to be prepared. Just in case.”

“You mean, in case she crashed?” Tyler railed, and at least he had the balls to sound hacked about it, because this whole mess was bullshit.

Dr. Clarke waved to someone at the door. “Get these kids out of here.”

“No way!” Tyler insisted. “We’re staying.” And then, when one of the guys tried to grab him, he shoved back. “Get your hands off me!”

Another one of the beefy security guards charged at me, and if I hadn’t been so worked up I might’ve pointed out that my guy was built like a bull . . . because—clearly—they considered me the bigger threat. I ducked away. “We’re not leaving ’til someone tells us what happened to Kyra. Where the hell is she?”

“If we knew we wouldn’t be forced to track her, now would we?” Dr. Clarke enunciated, pressing her lips together. “But we will find her. We just need to focus. Now, please, just go upstairs and let us do our jobs. I promise, we’ll tell you if there’s news.”

I glanced at Jett, who’d thrown his hands in the air the moment there was a hint things might get physical. Thanks for nothing, I told him with my glare.

Sorry, he shrugged in return.

Then Molly’s voice interrupted our silent altercation. “I think I’ve got something.” She pointed to the large monitor. “Yes! There! That’s her.” I saw what she meant, the tiny blip on the radar.

But she had to be mistaken. The place she was indicating was way, way too far away, and not just because it was nowhere near us—near the mountains, or even near California. It was nowhere near Earth.

She was implying Kyra was somewhere in space.

“Where is that?” I asked, hoping someone would tell me I’d completely misread her position.

Jett took several steps toward the screen, his hands still raised high above his head. And then he lowered one and pointed at something else. “The question is, what is that?”

An enormous oscillating globe had appeared on the screen—one that hadn’t been there a moment before. It was like it had come out of nowhere. It pulsed and swelled, looking ominous next to the microscopic speck that was supposed to be Kyra’s ship.

He glanced at me and Tyler, and then to Molly and Dr. Clarke and the others, to see if we were all catching this.

I swallowed, wondering what Kyra must be seeing, if that was really her up there. What the hell was she up against?

Just as Jett turned back to the image, just as we all turned back, the giant blob began to break apart. Or rather smaller dots began to erupt out from the larger one. It happened fast, in synchronized bursts. Like the larger thing was releasing hundreds or thousands of smaller ones in rapid-fire succession, until there was an army of them.