The Replaced(19)

When she charged Agent Truman, she looked like a bull—nostrils flared, jaw set. She was seriously pissed.

And he may as well have been standing there waving a red bullfighter’s cape. He dug in, securing his stance and setting his feet shoulder width apart. And then, just when I thought I’d seen it all, he pulled the trigger one more time.

When the bullet caught Willow square in the chest, I thought my own might collapse as well. Willow gasped, her mouth open for an eternity, like a fish gulping and gulping for air.

And that’s when I realized what was wrong. With everything. With this whole scene.

It was the reason Agent Truman hadn’t been worried about shooting us.

There was no blood.

He was shooting at us . . . he had shot Simon and Willow, but there wasn’t a single trace of blood.

I dropped to my knees and lunged for Willow, who was still grappling to catch her lost breath, and I wondered if her ribs had been shattered by whatever Agent Truman had fired at her. I wished she’d hurry up and mend already, but Simon had told me that I healed faster than anyone else, and clearly that included Willow. Her hands clawed at mine as if somehow, some way, I might be able to give her what she needed. But I couldn’t.

I scoured the ground around her, trying to find a reasonable explanation for the lack of blood, and when my eyes fell on the lone capsule, I snatched it up and closed my fist around it.

When I looked to Agent Truman, he met my gaze with a vicious sneer.

The exit door crashed open, and two more men came bursting into the alleyway, stopping behind Agent Truman’s back. Unlike him, they were in full hazmat gear, but beneath those plastic face masks, I could see what they really were: soldiers. Just like the one we’d left behind in the ducts beneath the lab, their faces smeared in black paint.

They’d come prepared, as if they’d known all along where to find us. My eyes strayed to the security camera as I wondered if Agent Truman had been lying about it, the same way he’d lied about Tyler being here.

Simon was still trying to get to his feet, so I grabbed Willow, meaning to drag her out of the way. But she was dead weight and I couldn’t make her budge. Not even an inch.

A tremor rippled through me as I watched, frozen in horror, while one of the men lifted an enormous rifle of some sort. Its barrel was too wide for bullets of any kind, and when he pulled the trigger, I realized why. Netting burst from the end of it, hurtling toward us—toward Willow and me—unfolding and spreading toward us.

It was a net gun, and we were about to be tangled in its web.

Simon’s hand closed over mine, and he yanked me out of the way just as the edge of the rope glanced off my cheek.

Willow wasn’t so lucky. The heavyweight mesh trapped her, making it impossible for her to move more than a few inches in either direction.

She thrashed beneath it, still not breathing.

Simon’s grip tightened as he continued dragging me away, and from behind us, I heard Agent Truman’s voice shouting, “Don’t let her get away!”

But they were too late because we were already running in the opposite direction, through the darkened alleyway.

Away from them . . .

. . . and away from Willow.


Jett, Thom, and Natty were waiting for us in the SUV not too far from the place we’d left it. They spotted us way before we saw them, and they were flashing the headlights even while they were speeding right toward us. Since they barely slowed, we had to run-jump to make it inside the still-moving vehicle.

Once the doors were closed, Simon panted, “Go!” to Jett, but even from the backseat, his devastation was palpable.

“Where’s Willow?” Jett demanded to know from behind the wheel.

Natty and Thom turned to stare at me, and for the first time since I’d been returned, I wished I couldn’t see in the dark. I wanted their expressions to be as veiled from me as mine was from them.

Eighty-four minutes. That’s how long it had taken us to cause an explosion, break into a secret NSA lab . . . and to lose one of our own.

Had we really just abandoned Willow at the Daylight Division’s headquarters? Did Agent Truman really have her now? How did that make us any less monstrous than the men we’d just handed her off to? What kind of friends were we?

I pressed my forehead against the glass, watching the Tacoma facility recede out of the corner of my eye. Somehow, it looked so peaceful from here. “What are we going to do?” I asked, breaking the silence at last.

When we turned a corner, disappearing behind a row of darkened warehouses, Jett slammed on the brakes. “Someone tell me what happened back there. Where’s Willow?” he repeated, while he massaged that memory of a wound on his arm.

I turned to Natty, who was watching me. When she didn’t answer, I looked to Thom, but he just shook his head. Maybe Willow didn’t matter to him because she wasn’t one of his people.

It had only been seconds, but it felt like forever since anyone had spoken.

“Simon?” I reached in front of me to the passenger seat, settling my hand on his shoulder. He flinched, rolling his neck and shoulder, reminding me that Willow wasn’t the only one who’d been shot. He was healing—I was sure of it—but slower than I would have. “What are these things?” I dropped the pellet I’d picked up in the alley. It fell with a dull scrape on the center console.