The Replaced(76)

I thought about something Tyler had said to me, back when I’d first explained to him about the whole healing and aging thing, and he’d tried to convince me that neither of these things changed who I was: “It’s your memories and life experiences, your hopes and fears and dreams and passions that make you who you are, and none of those things have changed, have they?” and I wondered if that applied here too. If he’d still feel the same way now.

I wasn’t so sure.

“Who else knows?” I asked, suddenly wishing no one knew, not even me. I wanted to go away. To start over and never think about this, about how different I was again.

“Natty was here when we opened the file,” Thom explained, and he’d been so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was here at all. “She didn’t see the DNA report, but she already saw how fast you heal when we were rescuing Willow.”

I heard Griffin suck in a sharp breath. “Heal?” she repeated dazedly. “No one mentioned that.”

“Yeah,” Simon said. “She heals like”—he snapped his fingers—“that. You’ve never seen anything like it.”


Except, I remembered what Tyler said: that Griffin had told him he could heal faster than anyone else at camp. I wondered, then, was it a leap to read more into that? If we shared more than just being Returned?

I opened my mouth to ask Griffin what she thought, when she caught my eye and shook her head at me. The action was discreet and curt, but the message was loud and clear: I needed to keep my mouth shut.

Hadn’t she said the same thing to Tyler? Told him not to tell anyone?

I glanced around—at Jett and Simon and Thom—and tried to imagine who, in here, she didn’t trust. But I did as she instructed, swallowing back my questions.

Inwardly, however, they buzzed through my brain.

Did Tyler have any new and unique abilities too? Was there anything he could do the other Returned couldn’t?

And what about that other part—that thing where I’d been gone for five whole years? Was that because I was a Replaced and not just a regular Returned?

If that was the case, then where did that leave Tyler? I didn’t know how long he’d been gone, but it couldn’t have been too long. It certainly hadn’t been five years. Days at most. Yet when I’d come back, my memory had been whole, complete. His was a mess. Sure, he remembered things from before, but there was a definite gap, a missing chunk from right before he’d been taken . . .

. . . the entire part where we’d fallen in love.

It was the best part, if you asked me.

“Let me ask you a question.” Griffin’s eyes narrowed as her brief flash of concern over Tyler was safely tucked away. “How much control do you have over this telekinetic thing you have? Can you . . .” Her brows fell in a silent ultimatum. “. . . can you show it to me, so I can see how it works?”

I shook my head. “I wish. I have to be focused.”

Focused was putting it nicely. Angry, panicked, completely freaked out, all those probably made more sense.

Griffin nodded then, and I thought the gesture was for me, a kind of Okay, I get it.

But then the door opened and six of her soldiers stormed in all at once. They were armed to the teeth, their black rifles held at the ready, and suddenly the room that had been empty seconds earlier was busting at the seams.

I’d been wrong. Everything wasn’t okay, and Griffin didn’t get it. The nod had been a signal, all right, but not for me.

Simon was bulldozed out of the way by two of Griffin’s giants, who moved to stand on either side of me, while two others flanked Griffin. The two remaining soldiers stayed on their toes, eyeballing Thom and Simon vigilantly.

Jett, apparently, was not a threat.

Simon didn’t seem concerned that he was outmanned or outclassed. He jumped to his feet, his face red. “What the hell is this?” He shot daggers at Griffin, and then to Thom, who stared at him blankly.

“I’m sorry to have to do this,” Griffin said as one of the guys—a hulk of a dude—snatched me by the arm. I saw Simon lunge for him, but one of the other giants turned and pointed his gun, the nose of it aimed directly at Simon’s chest, causing him to crash against it.

It wasn’t aimed at his shoulder or his leg, places that could heal, but at his heart, and I doubted the gun would be firing beanbags.

“Simon, don’t!” I cried, just as Jett got to his feet too. Thom stayed where he was, his hands in the air.

I had no idea what was happening, but whatever Griffin was up to, it wasn’t worth letting any of them get hurt, or worse, killed. I turned back to Griffin. “Leave them out of this.”

Her brows pulled together. “They were never in it. No one was. This is about you, and only you.” She turned her back on me as she told the guys who were on each side of me now, squeezing my arms and dragging me toward the door, “Take her to the holding cell. And don’t take your eyes off her.”

Simon was still yelling, screaming, at Griffin when his voice finally faded to oblivion.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


REPLACED.

The word made me feel not real. Like a thing—a mannequin or one of those wax statues you can barely tell apart from the real celebrities they’re fashioned after. Like Wax Elvis or Wax Marilyn Monroe or Wax Lady Gaga.