The Countdown (The Taking #3)(79)

SIMON


“AND . . . WE’RE IN.” JETT PUNCHED IN THE FINAL sequence of commands and then cracked his knuckles.

Ben stood back and admired him. “Damn. I’m impressed. They are majorly wired here. I have to keep reminding myself you’re not really a kid though.”

I leaned against the doorjamb and smirked. He was right, it took some getting used to, the whole youth thing. Especially on someone like Jett, whose face was more kid-like than the rest of us. Sometimes, I even forgot he was older than me.

I wondered how Ben would feel when it was his daughter he was talking about, years from now.

I shook it off. Jett had just worked a minor miracle—hacking into the ISA’s mainframe. Kid really was a frickin’ genius.

“Can you tell where they’re keeping those spaceships yet?” I asked, looking over my shoulder, checking the hallway. So far no one had noticed us. Willow was down there, keeping an eye out.

“Best I can tell, is someplace they call the Basement,” he answered, pointing at one of the monitors where he’d accessed a floor plan of the facility. “One level down from where they’re keeping the EVE. They got enough space down there to store at least . . .” He was swiveling in his seat to face me, when the words died on his lips. “Aw, crap,” he finished.

I snapped my head around, to see what had stolen his attention.

Behind me, just past my shoulder, Dr. Atkins was there, holding a gun to Willow’s head. I tried to hide my surprise, but how in the hell had she gotten the jump on us . . . on Willow?

“Nicely done,” she told Jett approvingly. “I honestly didn’t think you had it in you.” Then she nodded toward Ben. “Maybe the big guy there—I’ve seen his work firsthand. But not yours.” She grinned. “Guess I underestimated you.”

A sudden iciness settled over me as Jett looked from her to Ben trying to sort it all out. “Guess so,” Jett answered coolly.

But it was Ben I questioned. “So I take it Dr. Clarke wasn’t the only one you knew from your old life at the ISA?”

Ben sighed. “Dr. Atkins was one of the scientists I told you about. One who was taken and sent back.”

“I told you before, call me Molly.”

Jett ignored her request. “You’re a Returned?”

She shrugged, pointing her gun at Willow to remind us she still had it.

As if we’d forgotten.

Willow rolled her eyes. “Come on, the gun, is it really necessary? We’re on the same side here, aren’t we?”

But Molly shook her head. “I don’t know what you want with those ships, but we need them.”

“The M’alue are coming,” Jett explained. “And if they do come they’ll start a war. Why not just destroy the fleet before that can happen?”

“Let them come. I’m ready for them,” she snapped. And then her expression shifted. “I was one of the scientists who found the injured M’alue, you know? I brought him back to the lab and ordered the tests on him.” She blinked slowly, taking a long breath. “He probably would’ve been fine if we’d just let him heal, but I was the one who gave the initial order not to release him.” When she let out her breath, she gritted her teeth and a muscle bulged along her jaw. “When they took me . . .” She turned to Ben. “You have no idea what it’s like to lose everything.”

But she’d picked the wrong person to appeal to.

His face turned red as he slammed his fist on the console. “I lost my daughter!”

Shaking her head again, she notched her chin upward. “But it wasn’t you. They didn’t take you. When they took me, they took everything—my chance at a normal life. My future. They destroyed me.”

Jett tried to talk some sense into her. “But you’re here now. Your life isn’t over. We might not be the same, but we still have options,” he explained. “You have the chance to do the right thing. To be better than this.”

“I don’t want to be better. I want them to pay for taking my life away.” Her lips twisted into an ugly sneer.

“So, what, you plan to start a war with them?” Ben asked. “How can you expect to win? How can you think that’s okay, to risk other people’s lives like that?”

“I’ll get my revenge,” she stated flatly.

The problem was, she was wrong. There was no way she would win this thing.

We’d have to tread carefully.

I lowered my voice, hoping to make her see reason. “You’ll get us all killed.”

But she was past listening. Her eyes glittered. “If that’s what it takes.”

She used the nose of the gun to nudge Willow toward us, then indicated we all take a step back from the computers.

We did as she directed. Finally, Ben spoke up. “Why not just let us go? Give us a chance to get away from here?”

She took a breath once we were away from the equipment, her stance sagging. “You, maybe,” she told Ben. “But we need your daughter. Her, and the boy.”

That was what this was all about. Kyra and Tyler.

Suddenly I wasn’t just worried she was going to shoot us or start an intergalactic war. I was terrified of what she had planned for Kyra. “Why not one of us?” I asked. “Can’t I take her place?”