The Countdown (The Taking #3)(74)

The notion that the ISA had done experiments on Adam—ugly experiments, my dad had said—made me ill.

“After that, Dr. Clarke’s own son was taken. That was when the M’alue was moved. I never heard where they took him, I only cared he was gone. I didn’t want anything to do with him . . . or with the project. I thought that was the end of it.” He scratched his jaw.

“Then, another girl went missing, a thirteen-year-old honor student from Arlington, not too far from us. I worked with her dad—he was an IT guy, and I realized: we’d been tapped. This thing, it was never gonna be over, not as long as the ISA had that monster in custody. All I knew was, I couldn’t let anything happen to you, so I decided I’d never let you leave my sight.

“I started following you . . . everywhere you went. I started calling in sick so I could sit outside your school; I watched your practices from the parking lot; I stayed up all night just to make sure there was no way you’d be taken.

“The night you were taken, the whole reason I didn’t let you ride with your team after the game was because I couldn’t take the chance . . .” His voice broke. “I couldn’t risk taking my eyes off you, not for a second.”

His entire face crumpled. “And then it happened anyway. Despite all my planning and watching. Despite the sleepless nights and the stakeouts . . . they took you anyway. But I told myself it was okay because you’d come back . . . you were supposed to come back. Two days, that’s what it was for everyone else . . . less than two days.”

His face went slack, like all the life had been drained from him. “Not you though. You didn’t return. I lost my job after that, but I would have quit anyway. I hated the ISA. I hated everything they stood for. This was their fault—my baby being stolen. No one believed me, not your mom, not our friends, and definitely not the police. I had no recourse.”

He fell to his knees, sobbing. “I wished it had been me. They should have taken me.”





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


I WANTED TO ABSOLVE MY DAD. SAY SOMETHING comforting. Be one of those good daughters who said nice things and could forgive easily. Forget.

Maybe that was Old Kyra.

New Kyra needed time. Maybe Tyler and I had more in common than either of us realized.

I had no idea how I was supposed to feel. I was numb. Shell-shocked maybe, if that was a real thing.

All this time . . . all those years lost . . . could they really be his fault? Maybe not directly, but he’d known me being taken was a possibility. He’d worked for those responsible.

I thought I’d learned everything when the M’alue had downloaded all that information into me, but apparently even that was one-sided. They either didn’t know that my dad had worked for the ISA, or they didn’t consider it relevant.

But I did.

That was the other thing, the M’alue weren’t really the M’alue at all. They called themselves the Maanjaulfgaa.

The name was more a sensation than even a word. A shiver that started with a hum and ended with a vibration. In my head that made perfect sense, but my mouth couldn’t wrap itself around it. So, until there was a better option, Dr. Clarke and my dad were right, M’alue was close enough.

The information the M’alue had given me was enough to fill my brain, my dad’s brain, and everyone’s in this entire room. It was probably enough to fill every computer in the ISA.

Tyler had been right though. It was no accident we’d come here. The M’alue had been using us, leading us, homing in on us and sending messages meant only for us. They wanted us to be here. But not to hurt us. They weren’t the ones who couldn’t be trusted.

I now knew the full history of the First Contact Meetings, including who was really there, where they met, and the transcripts of each and every conversation they’d had.

I even knew the exact coordinates of the M’alue’s home planet, which was so far from Earth, and so outside the realm of human comprehension, that even if I tried to disclose it, I’d have to hand draw star chart after star chart just to get close.

I had the names, dates, and locations of every abductee who had ever been taken, and the information of everyone who was ever returned, which was a far smaller number.

I knew who’d died and who they sent back.

I would’ve been angry if I hadn’t also been given a glimpse at the M’alue and their dying population . . . not hundreds or thousands, but millions of them. As far as they were concerned, we’d been their last hope. Not because they’d believed we held the cure, but because by the time they’d located us, they’d run out of resources to keep searching for other options.

Fortunately for them, it had been us. We had been the answer they were seeking. It had taken them decades, and several failed attempts, but ultimately, through their experiments on humans, they’d managed to perfect and extract the one microscopic chromosome they’d needed to save almost an entire population.

Was it worth it? The M’alue believed it was, and who was I to decide whether their entire planet . . . their entire species should have gone extinct without what we—the human race—had to offer.

If only they would have gone about it a different way.

If only the ISA hadn’t captured and held Adam.

“Right now we have bigger problems,” I told my dad. “I know the real meaning of the message.” Suddenly no one was pretending not to listen, and it wasn’t just my dad and me having a private conversation. “We got it wrong,” I told the others. “It was a warning, but not in the way we thought it was. The meaning . . . the interpretation . . .” I shook my head, and looked at everyone but my dad. I couldn’t do it, make things right with him yet. “It wasn’t right. And we didn’t have the entire message. It wasn’t ‘The Returned must die,’ it was ‘The Returned must end.’ They were offering us a bargain. An exchange.” I hoped I was making sense because I was talking so fast, wanting to make them understand. We didn’t have a ton of time. “They were offering to end all this. To stop taking and returning humans if Adam is released.”