The Replaced(14)

We reached a doorway, and again there was an access panel, and again Simon ignored it, choosing not to use the key card he still clutched in his hand. He pulled something from his backpack, and I watched as he affixed a small piece of what looked like Silly Putty—that gooey gray stuff that came in a plastic egg and that my dad and I used to stretch and bounce and roll over the newspaper comics and then stretch some more—to the panel. Yet even without being told it wasn’t Silly Putty, because of course it wasn’t, I took a few steps back at the same time Simon and Willow did. Simultaneously we all covered our ears and ducked, and my heart continued to punch my chest.

This detonation wasn’t nearly as intense as the first one. In fact, I’d hardly heard it above the wail of the sirens, which were still screaming so loud my ears felt like they were bleeding. This explosion didn’t come with a rumbling boom or all the smoke, just a satisfying bang, followed by the even more satisfying sight of the heavy, locked door releasing.

That was when things got real, and this ordinary-looking building suddenly became so much less ordinary and so much more frightening.

“This is it, isn’t it? The central lab?” I eased past both Simon and Willow, not sure I’d have been able to stop myself even if they would have told me not to go in there.

They didn’t even have to answer because it totally was—I would have known the place anywhere. There was nothing else it could have been. If my dad had been there, I probably would have had to wipe the drool from his chin—this place was like crack for any alien conspiracy theorist.

It was like I was standing on a movie set . . . or a lot—an entire frickin’ movie lot.

The ceiling shot all the way up—two or three, maybe even four, stories. The floor of this “central lab” was made from these enormous glass tiles that, in this light—the emergency light—seemed like they were tinted red, just like everything else around us. Suspended some ten feet or so above the glass-tiled floor, along one entire wall, was what appeared to be an observation chamber of some sort that was set behind even more glass. Inside, the chamber was pitch-black, but my eyesight was better than anyone else’s and I could see past the glass. I knew there was no one in there . . . watching us.

There were too many things to look at all at once: sleek metal tables, like the gurneys that belonged in a morgue. Huge glass cylinders that were so big you could probably fit an entire grown man in them and still have room left over, which made me wonder if that wasn’t exactly what they were for: people. They had these giant tubes sticking out of them, some wide and some not, some attached and some not. There were shelves littered with bottles and beakers and rubber hosing, and things I couldn’t even make sense of because I’d never even seen anything like them before. Everything in here seemed to be made of steel or glass, and had that hospital-sterile appearance, but smelled . . . not quite hospitaly.

I couldn’t quite place the smell, but it was off somehow. Like antiseptic, but not.

I shook my head because that so wasn’t what mattered right now. This place . . . here . . . Simon had been right about it all along. My gut said we shouldn’t be here. None of us. They did things here . . . really, really bad things, I just knew it.

If this was where they’d brought Tyler . . . my stomach plummeted because we were standing in a place no Returned should ever be.

I spun in a circle, because another thought was crashing down on me. “Where is he?” I needed one of them, Simon or Willow, to tell me we hadn’t made a huge mistake coming here, that we hadn’t just been tricked by Agent Truman. The alarms and the red light pushed my fears to the surface. “You said he’d be here. You said we’d get him and bring him back with us.”

I made a fist, suddenly wishing we were back at camp, and I could change my mind about the outcome of the standoff between Thom and Simon. I wanted Thom to smash Simon in his lying face after all. Maybe then, instead of ending up here, in the middle of this empty freak show of a lab trying to convince myself that I’d known this was a possibility all along, and telling myself to buck up, soldier, we could’ve just stayed back in Silent Creek, where we’d all have been safe. Safe.

Safe!

“Kyra . . .” Simon’s voice was slippery. “We haven’t looked everywhere—”

“I’ll check the computer wing,” Willow said, hiking her backpack higher on her shoulder. “Meet me in the research chamber, near the east exit.” She took off, leaving me to wonder how we were supposed to know where these places were, but also filling me with renewed hope as the icy grip around my throat eased and I inhaled sharply.

The computer wing and the research chamber—there were still places we could search for Tyler.

Maybe, at long last, I’d get the chance to tell him I was sorry.

Simon had turned his attention to the maze of large glass human-sized canisters, and even though I was desperate to find Tyler, my curiosity compelled me to follow him. That and the fact that I had no idea where the research chamber was.

These canisters were enormous, towering above our heads, and we threaded our way in and around and under the tubing that stuck out from them.

I nearly crashed into Simon’s back when he stopped directly in front of the last one—the only one that was covered by some sort of shiny, silver sheet. Beneath the wrap, there was a static-y hum that reminded me of a giant metallic beehive, buzzing with life.