The Replaced(3)

Apparently, having a few minutes to myself didn’t just make me calmer, it made me bolder.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone for long.

When Simon finally found me, I was still sitting there, staring sullenly at the floor. I glanced at the bedside clock, and an uneasy jolt rippled through me as I realized that over an hour had passed—sixty-six whole minutes, to be exact—while I’d been sitting there, brooding over Simon and the lost message and all the reasons we were stuck here in the mountains of central Oregon in the first place.

“Kyra?” Simon stepped inside the doorway, and I felt my stomach drop when I heard the way he said my name, all patronizing, like I was too soft and needed coddling. As if he pitied me, and the very idea made me want to hit him all over again.

This whole situation was so hard to wrap my head around. Just twenty-five short days ago, my life had been so boringly normal. I was an ordinary small-town girl who wanted nothing more than to sneak behind the bleachers so I could make out with my boyfriend.

But the whole twenty-five-days thing was a lie—just smoke and mirrors used to disguise the fact that I’d been missing for five entire years. The truth was, that normal life of mine had vanished the instant I’d climbed out of my dad’s car in the middle of Chuckanut Drive and had been carried away on a flash of light.

It was the stuff bad sci-fi was made of: a girl, a flash of light, and a missing chunk of time. Yet it was all true. Ridiculously-appallingly-crazy but true.

And I’d seen it happen again with my own two eyes—one of those “takings”—the night Simon and I had dragged Tyler up to Devil’s Hole, hoping, because it was his very last chance in the world, that whoever they were would take him the way they had me.

And they had.

The fireflies had come, the way Jett had told me they would, as a precursor to the light. Except he’d made it sound like we’d see a small cloud of them, twinkling in the night sky to let us know we’d found the right place.

Instead, those fireflies had engulfed us, nearly choking me. And when they’d gone, it wasn’t just Tyler who was missing, it was my dad and Agent Truman too.

“I don’t wanna hear it wasn’t him,” I countered before Simon even had the chance to start in on me. “Who else would know my nickname?” It was the same argument I’d used before, and I hazarded a sideways glance when Simon sat down on the twin-sized bed right next to me, the mattress dipping heavily beneath him.

He sighed and sagged forward, balancing his elbows on his knees. His broad shoulder brushed against mine, and it was impossible not to notice the way he restrained himself for my benefit, like he wanted to tell me all the reasons I’d been wrong about the message being from my dad, reasons I knew, really, if I’d just stop being too stubborn to admit it.

Instead of saying any of those things, he scrubbed his hand over his dark, closely sheared hair and said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was your dad. But I’m not here to talk about that. If it was him, he’ll have to wait. At least for now. I want to talk about the other message. The NSA email.” He sighed again. “If it really means that much to you, I think we should go there, to the Tacoma facility. I think we should find out if it’s really Tyler they’re holding.” He faced me, his unusual eyes capturing my attention.

“I thought you said that’s the kind of place the Returned should avoid.” My voice was pinched and tight, but my chest—my lungs—filled fully for the first time as my heart crash-crash-crashed, making those crappy old windbags vibrate like crumbled parchment.

“True enough. But if it’s important to you . . . ,” he added, a smile slipping over his lips as he shrugged. “I just need to think. Come up with a plan . . .”

“You’d really do that for Tyler?” I bit my lip and lifted my eyes to his. “For me?”

“I know you don’t believe this, but I want you to be happy, Kyra.”

Regret over the way I’d behaved pricked me, and I had to stop myself from leaning into his arm, which was so much bigger than mine.

Then I grinned, because to borrow one of my dad’s expressions, even though I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth . . . come on. “And what else? I mean, besides getting Tyler back, what are you hoping to gain, exactly? I know you, Simon. You must think you can get something out of going there, or you wouldn’t risk it.”

I expected him to give me some cock-and-bull story about bringing me into his fold, or about teamwork, or . . . I don’t know, how it’s us against them—the Returned versus the No-Suchers. Instead, he answered candidly, “If we’re lucky, we’re hoping we can scrounge up some classified documents, maybe get our hands on some alien technology they’re hiding in there. Mostly, I wanna know more about these guys. What makes them tick. Figure out the chinks in their armor.”

“What if they don’t have any?” I asked.

Simon’s smile turned up full blast. “Everyone has ’em.”

In the end, it didn’t matter to me what his reasons were. I tried to tell myself not to get my hopes up, but it was almost impossible because I’d seen the email too. It might not have been from Tyler, but I’d already committed every word of the classified email to memory, and I was convinced it was about him:


“Washington State Patrol reported an unidentified male between the ages of 16 and 20 years old at a rest stop just south of Olympia, Washington. . . . Subject was carrying no identification and refused to reveal his name to officials. Subject is currently being held at the Tacoma facility for my inspection.”