“We Imrians are an old people. We have lived for many millennia, and some of our beliefs are so deeply ingrained that it has been extremely difficult to recognize that they are wrong. I must thank your children, Reese Holloway and David Li, for showing me that we must change the way we have thought of you. For too long we have considered you, humanity, to be our responsibility, but now I realize that we have been acting out of guilt, and that guilt has blinded us to who you are. Your scientists have spent decades trying to uncover the origin of your species, and today I must tell you that they have been… misled by us.” A ripple of shock rolled through the assembly hall. “We Imria first came to this planet millions of years ago. We were a younger people then, and we thought we had all the power of science at our disposal, and we exercised that power by creating you in our own image. That is why we are so similar. Because we made you to look like us.”
The hairs on Reese’s arms rose at the sensation of utter astonishment that swept through the General Assembly Hall.
“Our belief in our own power, however, was arrogant,” Deyir continued. “We brought your species into existence, but we did not succeed in the most important way. As we told you a month ago, the foundation stone of Imrian society is our ability to share consciousness with one another: susum’urda. It makes us who we are. From the day we are born, we are connected intimately with our loved ones, and this is the reason that we have survived for so many millions of years. But we failed to give you this ability, and because of that, you grew into a very different kind of people. Because you cannot share consciousness with one another, you have had to create societies different from ours. We thought your lack of susum’urda made you a violent people, prone to attack rather than to love, and we wanted to correct this. In many ways, we saw you as our greatest mistake.”
A murmur rose in the hall, accompanied by waves of stunned disbelief and the beginnings of indignation. Akiya Deyir raised his voice.
“That is why we returned to your planet in the early nineteen hundreds: To find a way to right this wrong; to bring you the most wondrous aspect of our civilization. We thought of this as the next stage in humanity’s evolution. We called it an adaptation. Our research encountered many roadblocks. We had been absent from your planet for too long, and human beings have changed since the last time we intervened in your evolution. But we were overjoyed this past summer when our adaptation procedure was successfully implemented in two of your children. We thought this meant that the time had finally come for us to share this ability with the rest of you: to adapt all of humanity. We wanted to bring you into the Imrian family; to make you, finally, the people you were meant to be.
“Two days ago, I learned that Reese and David have adapted far beyond what we initially intended. They are now capable of susum’urda, but they are capable of more than that. They can not only share consciousness; they have true telepathic abilities. We do not know if all human beings who undergo the adaptation procedure will develop these same abilities, but we do know one thing: It is time for us to stop intervening without your full cooperation. We Imria are not the future of your species. We may be where you came from, but David and Reese are where you’re going. They are the future of both our peoples. I come here today on behalf of all the Imria to ask your forgiveness for what we have done and what we have left undone. I hope that we can move forward into a new age. Together.”
CHAPTER 34
“Reese, wait!”
Amber’s voice made Reese turn around halfway into the elevator to the parking garage. Amber was running across the landing outside the General Assembly Hall. The elevator door began to close and Reese put her hand out to stop it.
“Amber’s coming,” she said over her shoulder. Her mom, David, his dad, and Nura Halba were already inside. They were heading to the Waldorf for a special luncheon and had to take a car to get there. The elevator operator pressed his finger on a button to hold the doors.
“She’s supposed to go with Evelyn and the others,” Halba said, poking his head out to look.
Amber arrived a few seconds later. “Thanks. They told me I should go with you. They were held up by the press.”
“Do you know how long they’ll be delayed?” Halba asked.
Amber stepped inside. “No. There were a lot of reporters, though.”
“Are you ready, sir?” the elevator operator asked.
“Yes, thanks,” Halba replied, and the doors slid shut. Reese was glad she hadn’t been required to stay for the press conference. The response to Akiya Deyir’s speech had been chaos, with half the audience frozen by shock and the other half shouting a hundred questions at once. She had no idea how the Imria were going to deal with this, and though she knew she would have a part to play for the rest of her life, she was grateful for the temporary reprieve.
When the elevator came to a stop, they trooped out into the garage. It smelled faintly of gasoline fumes, and the fluorescent bulbs overhead gave the space a garish cast. As Halba went to request their vehicle from the valet, Reese asked Amber, “Why can’t we take the lander?”
“There’s nowhere to park it at the hotel,” Amber said. “We couldn’t get a permit.”
“You have to get a permit to park a spaceship?” David asked.
Amber shrugged lightly. “We’re trying to play by the rules.”
I wouldn’t have picked parking in New York as the right time to start, David thought to Reese.
Me neither.
David’s fingers worked at the knot of his tie, loosening it. “So what happens after lunch?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Meetings with diplomats, receptions, that sort of thing,” Amber said.
“Are we supposed to go to them?” Reese asked.
“Some, I think,” Amber said.
A limousine pulled up to the valet booth, and the driver jumped out to open the door. Nura Halba called them toward the vehicle, and Reese, David, and Amber turned to follow Reese’s mom and David’s dad into the limo. In the distance Reese heard a screeching noise, like brakes slammed on too sharply. She stopped, looking in the direction of the sound.
An explosion split the air like a whip crack through the stillness. The ground rocked.
Amber stumbled on her heels, falling against Reese as Reese banged into David. He grabbed her arm, saying, “What the hell?”
Sirens began to wail as emergency strobe lights flashed to life, sending bursts of white through the garage. Reese spun around, but she couldn’t see where the explosion had come from.
Her mom scrambled out of the limo, screaming, “Reese!” David’s dad was right behind her as a black-and-white police van careened through the parking garage straight at the limo.
“Mom!” she cried, starting toward the car.
David’s hand was still on her arm and he jerked her to a stop. “Get back!” he shouted, pulling Reese with him toward the elevator. She grabbed Amber, dragging her with them as David cried, “Dad, get away from the car!”
The van turned at the last possible second, barely grazing the limo’s front fender as Nura Halba, Reese’s mom, and David’s dad dived for the ground. The back of the van opened and several men in SWAT uniforms swarmed out. Relieved, Reese moved toward them. One of the men came directly for her and grasped her arm.
That was when she knew.
Inside the man was a cold, hard void, and she froze as she realized who he was—who they all were. They were from Blue Base, just like Lovick’s bodyguards. The man who had grabbed her bent her arms behind her back as easily as she might break a toothpick. With a ratcheting sound, her wrists were bound with a plastic strip, and the man half carried, half pushed her toward the van. To her left she saw David trying to struggle, but it was useless. He was shoved inside the van too, and deposited onto the bench across from her. A soldier inside the van covered her mouth with a strip of tape, then patted her down and pulled out her cell phone and handed it off to another soldier. It happened so fast that she hadn’t even had tim
e to scream.
The soldiers began to climb back into the van, falling into place silently and efficiently. Reese heard Amber cry out in pain, and a moment later she was pushed into the van too. She had a red welt across her face, and her eyes were bright and angry. The soldier who had thrust her inside pulled the door shut while another bound and gagged her.
“Who’s this? We already have two of them,” barked the soldier next to Reese.
“The orders say ‘all the teenagers,’ ” said the soldier who had taken Amber. “Here’s the third.”
“Fuck it, take her too,” the first soldier said. He smacked on the metal grate between the rear of the van and the driver’s cab. “Let’s go!”
They roared out of the parking garage, the wheels squealing. Reese’s stomach lurched as she banged into the soldier beside her. She recoiled from the dense compactness of his body, all muscle and adrenaline, and the acidity in her stomach threatened to rise into her throat. She choked it down, trying to inhale through her nose, but the tape over her mouth magnified the false sensation that she couldn’t breathe. A buzzing sound filled her ears as her panic crested. She thought she was about to faint and she looked across the van at David, his face swimming in her vision. Then someone pulled a hood over her head, and she couldn’t even see.
She screamed through the tape, but it came out as a desperate gurgle. The van took a curve so quickly she slid onto one of the soldier’s laps. “Sit up,” he growled, pushing her away.
She sat up, her limbs trembling. She focused on breathing through her nose and through the black material of the hood over her head. The air was warm and smelled of sweat and the soldiers’ sour, metallic odor. She strained against the tie around her wrists; it cut into her skin like a knife.
Reese.
She froze.
Reese, are you hurt?
David. Relief flooded through her. No, I’m okay. Are you?
No. I’m fine. Don’t panic.
She choked on a hysterical laugh, the tape an impenetrable barrier against her lips. Don’t panic? The soldiers around them were silent. She could hear them breathing like well-oiled machines. In, out, in, out. Beyond that she heard the rough inhale of someone trying to breathe through a mask. Amber? But though she focused as intently as she could, she was unable to sense Amber at all.
I can’t talk to Amber, she thought to David. Can you?
No. Did you feel these soldiers?
Yeah, like pits of nothing. Fear shuddered through her. They’re from Blue Base.
They had to be sent by Charles Lovick, since we obviously didn’t give Mr. Hernandez the info they wanted.
Something beeped loudly, and Reese recognized the lead soldier’s voice as he said, “Retriever one, we have the quarry.”
A scratchy sound followed, and Reese realized the soldier was speaking on a walkie-talkie. A woman’s voice came through. “Base six. Exercise option one-zero-four. Repeat, option one-zero-four.”
“Roger that.”
“Report when finalized.”
She heard the crunch of a lock being opened. Someone asked, “Why one-zero-four? They can’t do anything.”
“We don’t ask questions. We follow orders.”
A soldier pulled her away from the wall. His touch made her cringe. There was something disturbing about him that went beyond the dense weight of his body—something unstable. Without warning, a sharp needle plunged into her shoulder, and she yelped. The drug flooded into her bloodstream in a thick, numbing rush, and then she blacked out.
CHAPTER 35
Reese woke up slowly. She was lying on her stomach, her hands still bound behind her back, her cheek pressed against something hard and gritty. Her head was cloudy with the remnants of the drug they had injected into her, and her mouth tasted foul. She tried to lick her lips but the tape was still covering them.
That jolted her into blinking her eyes open, panic arcing through her as she wriggled against the restraints binding her wrists. Her cheek scraped against a dirt floor. Wherever she was, it was dark, but the hood had been removed. She inhaled through her nose, sucking in several deep breaths. She smelled dust and mold and something pungent—the scent of old chemicals.
Footsteps sounded above.
She tried to roll onto her back but her shoulder got in the way, grinding painfully into the ground. She scooted onto her side as well as she could, using her legs to turn herself, and angled her head toward the ceiling. There were several cracks of light in the middle of the roof. As the footsteps returned, she realized she was seeing floorboards. She must be in a basement somewhere. That explained the odor of mildew and closed-up spaces.
A voice called, “I’m going to check on them.”
“Take the drugs,” someone else said.
A door opened, spilling light into the basement. Reese froze, closing her eyes. The only thing she could think to do was play dead.
The man came down the stairs. Reese heard a click, and then light glowed through her eyelids. He had turned on an overhead bulb. His boots scuffed across the floor and paused. She heard a muffled whimper. Amber.
“You awake yet?” the man said in a low voice. There was a soft thump, and Amber cried out.
Fear lanced white-hot through the lingering haze in Reese’s mind. The man laughed.
“Aliens,” he muttered. “Too bad they don’t all look like you.”
Upstairs a door slammed. The sound of men’s voices floated down the stairs. “Why’s the door open?” someone asked.
“Wilson’s giving them another dose.”
“Aw, shit. I wanted to see them awake.”
“Why?”
Another man laughed. “Why do you think?”
They came down the stairs, their footsteps loud and carefree. Reese held herself as perfectly still as she could, trying to pretend she was the dirt floor itself. Her heart was beating so loudly she was terrified they would notice her twitching.
A pair of footsteps came closer to her. Paused. A man said, “What about this one? This is the human chick, right?” He grabbed Reese’s shoulder and pulled her onto her back, causing her to land on her wrists and elbows. Pain spiked up her arms and her head spun from the sudden movement. She forced her body to remain limp on the ground even as her upper arms burned from being twisted in a direction they didn’t want to go. “She’s still out,” the man said, sounding disappointed.
“Forget about her. This one’s awake.”
There was a ripping sound, and suddenly Amber screamed, “Don’t touch her! Don’t you fucking touch her!”
A thunk, brutal and hard. Amber made a guttural noise.
“Shut up or we’ll tape you again.”
Sweat broke out on Reese’s skin. She heard the sound of Amber’s ragged breath across the room.
Footsteps shuffled across the dirt. “Maybe she likes to be gagged,” said one man. The others laughed.
Reese concentrated on breathing. They wouldn’t do anything to Amber, would they? Her brain was so foggy that part of her felt as if she must be dreaming this.
“Let’s take a look at you. Just how alien are you?”
A snicker went through the men again. Desperately, Reese tried to figure out how many there were. Three? Four? She opened her eyes a sliver. The basement leaped into view, the overhead light seeming bright as a mini sun. It made her head pound. She winced and then froze, but she soon realized none of the men was looking in her direction at all. They were the soldiers from the van, and they were all on the other side of the basement standing in front of Amber, their backs to Reese. She couldn’t see Amber clearly, but she did see something move through the men’s legs.
“Nice shoes,” one of the soldiers said.
“Who’s looking at her shoes? You got something you wanna tell us, Carter?” More laughter.
Reese’s gaze darted around the basement, searching frantically for something, anything she could use to get away from this place. She saw David lying in a heap in another corner, fac
e-down and turned away from her. She couldn’t tell if he was awake or not. David? she thought, but her head throbbed when she tried to communicate with him. It felt as if a thick, cloaking blanket had been tossed over her mind, muffling her ability to project her thoughts. She couldn’t focus enough to be sure that he had heard her.
Reese looked back at the soldiers. She was afraid to watch but too terrified to look away. The men moved slightly and Amber came into view through a narrow gap between two legs. She was huddled on her side, knees bent, her dress hitched up to her thighs.
“Open up, Blondie,” one of the soldiers said. Reese thought it was Carter.
“Get away from me,” Amber hissed, pushing herself away from them until she struck the wall.
“There’s nowhere for you to go,” Carter said.
“I thought your people were friendly,” said another soldier. That got a big laugh.
“Not to assholes,” Amber spit out.
“Oooh, she’s got some fire in her,” one soldier said, and then he stepped forward and smacked her. “Shut up.”
“Now, here’s how we’re gonna do this,” said Carter, who was obviously the leader. “Wilson, go upstairs and shut the door.”
“Why?” said Wilson. Reese remembered that he had been the first one down here. “What sorta shit you thinking of pulling? You know Torres ain’t gonna stand for that.”
“Torres ain’t here,” Carter growled. “Go upstairs and shut the door.”
Wilson glared at the other soldier, but Reese saw him make the decision to give in. He was outnumbered. There was one of him and three of them, and if they were all Blue Base soldiers, he had no chance, even if he was one too. He gave the other soldiers a disgusted look and stomped up the stairs.
“Aiiight,” said Carter, clapping his hands together. “Come on, E.T. Let’s see what you got.”
One of the men bent down to grab Amber’s ankle and she kicked him, the heel of her shoe digging into his arm. He grunted in shock and cursed before yanking her shoe off and throwing it out of the way. Reese watched it spin across the floor, black patent leather still shining in the light of the bare bulb. She thought she was going to vomit.