Scan

by Walter Jury

  “Get us out of here!” I shout as our driver starts to slide into the SUV.

  He never makes it. He jerks and falls to the side, his blood splattering on the windshield. I press my face against the window and see him splayed out on the asphalt. He’s been shot right in the center of his forehead.

  Christina’s blue eyes lock with mine, and there’s this moment of absolute stillness. Probably only a fraction of a second, but it feels like an eternity. Her shocked expression mirrors my own. I want to reach for her, but I can’t move. I want to save her, but I’m powerless. An hour ago, we were joking in the lunchroom, and now we’re surrounded by blood and death. And it’s all my fault. I did this to us, brought this down on our heads. My bleeding father is next to me, slumped against the seat, and our driver is dead, all because I was stupid enough to bring that damn scanner to school. I know that’s why they’re after us, and none of it would have happened if it hadn’t been for me.

  I don’t know what Christina reads in my face, but her eyes flare with something white hot and knife sharp.

  My girlfriend throws herself over the front seat and slams the driver’s-side door shut. With no hesitation at all, she gets behind the wheel and hits the gas. A crashing thunk lurches the SUV just as we start to move forward again. One of the cops is clinging to the back, his feet on the bumper. Christina hunches over the steering wheel and peers through the blood-spattered windshield, swerving back and forth as we streak past the other cops, who are shooting at our tires now, like they don’t even care that their buddy is hanging on to the back and could get hit with a stray bullet. We’re moving so fast that we somehow make it past them, and as we do, I get one last look at Buzz Cut, whose face is rigid as he waves his arms and shouts at the cops, probably telling them to chase after us. But with one heavy, sudden pull of the wheel, Christina muscles the SUV around a sharp corner. The cop on the back yelps as he’s thrown onto the road. He lands in this broken sprawl right next to the wheel of a school bus. I’m not sure if he’s dead or alive—and not sure which one I’d prefer, a thought so filled with wrong that it turns my stomach.

  We speed down a side street. Christina, her breaths coming from her in high-pitched bursts, threads her way through the busy roads like a NASCAR driver before she hits the West Side Highway. It has to be taking everything she has to hold it together, but she’s doing it. For me. For us.

  I peer out the rear window. No one seems to be chasing us, as far as I can tell.

  But we didn’t get away cleanly.

  My father moans and raises his head. My chest caves in as I see the slick, black-red mess that’s dripping onto the seats.

  I peel my shirt off, bunch it up, and press it against his back. He clenches his teeth and arches, but I don’t let up. He’s bleeding too much. Too much. No one should bleed this much.

  “Dad, this is bad,” I say, wishing my voice wasn’t cracking. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

  He looks at me, his mouth halfway open, gulping air like he’s drowning. He shakes his head. “Too dangerous. Keep driving,” he calls to Christina, whose blond head is still low over the wheel. Her gaze is glued to the road. But her shoulders are shaking, and I know she’s crying now.

  “Listen to me, Tate,” my father says sharply, dragging my attention back to him. He sounds like himself, and it fills me with hope. “The scanner. It’s important. It’s—” He hisses and clutches at his side. Blood leaks around his fingers and turns my insides to acid and ice. I can’t tell if that’s the exit wound or he’s been shot twice, but neither seems good.

  He blows a halting breath through gray-pink lips. “I wanted to tell you this only when you were ready. I wanted to wait until then . . . but—” He looks me in the eye and chuckles. He actually chuckles. “I’ve waited so long to say this that I don’t even know how to do it.”

  “Just tell me,” I say, all air and no command, all little boy and no man. I’m buried in this, like I’m in a grave and they’re shoveling dirt over my head. I can’t breathe.

  “I protected you from this for too long.” He presses his lips together and watches me for a few seconds. Then he says, “We’re not alone here.”

  “What are you talking about?” I’m trying to translate, because I know this is huge, but I don’t speak this particular language.

  “We’re not alone on this planet. We haven’t been for a very long time.”

  I stare at him, my mouth opening and closing a few times around a word I can’t seem to say out loud. Is he talking about . . . ?

  “An alien race,” my dad says. “We call them the H2.”

  The laugh comes burbling out of me before I can stop it. “The Archer family responsibility . . . is aliens,” I say stupidly.

  He exhales a shaky sigh. “The H2 invaded about four hundred years ago. They look human, so they were able to blend in and breed with the population. But their elite—their leadership—they infiltrated governments all over the world.”

  I watch his face for any signal that he’s making a joke, but it’s not there. “Infiltrated?”

  “They hold positions of influence in every country. Some of the major corporations—but not all.”

  “How many humans are left?”

  He sucks a gurgling breath through his teeth. “A third of the population and falling fast.” That’s why he and George were talking about world population stuff at breakfast. And that’s what those numbers on the screen in his lab were showing, too, I’ll bet. I—

  Dad abruptly tries to push himself upright, but his trembling hand slips in the blood pooling beneath him, and he falls back to the seat. He closes his mouth and grits his teeth, but I hear the wrenching moan he keeps locked in his throat. When he catches his breath, he says, “Very few know the truth. It’s a secret the H2 are determined to keep. And it’s nearly impossible to tell human from H2.”

  This can’t be true. It doesn’t make sense. I can’t accept it. All my arguments tumble around in my head and come shooting from my mouth unformed. “But then—how could they—we’re not—this isn’t—”

  “Some of us have guarded this truth throughout the generations, even though the H2 Core have suppressed or discredited any attempts to reveal it.”

  His eyes meet mine, and suddenly I know exactly what he’s telling me. It hits me like a subway train, knocking the breath out of me. “This is why, isn’t it?” I ask airlessly, hoping he’ll understand what I mean.

  This is why I’ve spent years learning history. Math. Science. Self-defense. This is why I get up at four every morning. Why he pushes me every day to go beyond what I think I should have to do. Beyond what I think I can achieve. It’s not because he wants me to be perfect.

  It’s because he wants me to be strong.

  He nods. “The Archers have fought to protect the evidence of what happened, the true historic record—and our species—for nearly four hundred years. But it’s more . . . more than that.”

  Drops hit my forearms, and I look around in confusion. It’s not raining. We’re inside a car. And then I feel the tears streaking down my face. I don’t know when I stopped laughing and started crying, and I’m not sure it matters. I reach for my father’s hand, and he lets me take it. For the first time since God-knows-when, I’m his boy and he’s my dad, and I wonder how we lost this. I squeeze his fingers, and he winces, but he doesn’t complain.

  All these years I’ve resented him. Defied him. Snuck around behind his back. Even hated him. And he’s borne it all, patiently, impassively. Like a wall of stone I’ve been beating my head against, never straying from his purpose—to prepare me for this moment.

  And I’m not ready. I’m just me. I’m not him.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I whisper. “I don’t—”

  “The scanner.” He coughs wetly, spraying tiny droplets of saliva and blood over the front of his shirt. “
When the H2 first arrived, they crashed . . . One of our ancestors found something . . . and kept it secret . . .” He pauses for a moment, maybe trying to gather energy to speak, or maybe trying to decide what’s most important to say. “The scanner is made from H2 technology and must be kept safe. If it’s used the wrong way, so many would die . . .”

  My fists clench with a diffuse sort of rage as the warm stickiness of my father’s blood, now having seeped all the way through my shirt, trickles between my fingers. “Why don’t we fight them? How can they be allowed to take over like this?”

  My father’s lips twitch. “It’s not about that. An interspecies conflict would lead to devastating casualties. The scanner should stop that, not cause it.”

  An alien race has invaded the earth, is living among us, and is apparently running the show. And I’ve just done exactly what my father was trying to avoid—I’ve exposed his invention to the public.

  Deep inside me, fault lines crack and shift, tearing chasms of fear and regret right through my heart. My fist shoots out, punching the seat over and over, causing Christina to flinch and cry out, but I can’t hold myself back.

  “This is my fault!” I howl. God, I want to jump out of the car and smash myself on the asphalt. I want to shatter on impact, break into nothing. I am a fucking waste of space.

  My father’s hand closes over my arm, but his grip is weak and falls away instantly, leaving a streak of red along my skin.

  “Tate. Tate. Calm down, son. Listen to me,” he says softly.

  I have no idea how many times he has to say it before he reaches me, before his voice halts the cataclysm inside me, if only for a moment. “I kept this secret from you for too long,” he says when my arm falls limp into my lap and I sag against the seat next to him. “This is my fault. If I had taken the time to think about it, to think about who you are, I would have realized you’re just like me. You could never sit back and take things. You fight. You fight so hard, son. And because I kept you in the dark, you fought me. I thought . . . I had more time.”

  I bow my head, averting my eyes from my father’s broken body. He thinks I’m like him. And I realize: I want to be. I want to earn the words he just said. I want them to be the truth. I glance at his face. I want him to keep looking at me like he is right now, and I want to feel worthy of that.

  He touches my fingers with his, and I sit up, breathing again, ready to do whatever he says. “That man, back at the school. The one in the suit.”

  “The guy with the buzz cut?” I ask, recalling the way my father looked at him—both hatred and fear at once.

  Dad nods. “His name is Race Lavin.”

  “And he’s H2.”

  “More than that. He works for the Core, their central leadership. He’s very dangerous.”

  “Aren’t they all dangerous?”

  “Not all H2 are the same. Most don’t know they even are H2. Those in power want to keep it that way. If they knew what this technology was—and it seems like Race suspects it—they would suppress it or use it as a tool to oppress humans. But it’s crucial that it be used in the right way . . .”

  I curse, but it’s more like a whimper, slipping from my mouth and fluttering weightlessly in the air. My dad’s face is so pale, grayish white, and he’s fighting to keep breathing. In the back of my mind, a terrifying realization shears loose, a glacier sliding along the inside of my skull, slow and frigid. I push back against it with everything I have, trying to slow it down before it crushes me.

  “Lavin is an enforcer,” my father is saying. “And he’ll do anything to maintain H2 domination.”

  As he talks about Race, my father’s eyes flash with rage. If I didn’t know better, I’d say my dad has some history with this guy.

  “I wish I could protect you now, Tate.” His voice breaks. Not from pain. From fear. For me. I can tell by the look in his eyes. “They’ll come after the scanner with everything they have. But you also have to be careful with the fifty . . .”

  His eyes flutter shut. “The fifty what? Dad,” I say softly when he doesn’t answer. “Hey. Stay with me. Please.” I need to keep this connection with him, but it’s like a snowflake on my skin, melting fast.

  His eyes open halfway. He looks so tired, but I can tell he’s trying to be strong, to smile at me and reassure me, to be my father, if only for a few more moments. He looks at the device on the floor at his feet, the invention I treated like my personal toy. “The scanner reflects blue off humans,” he says wearily. “And red off H2. But it also—” He coughs, his whole body shuddering.

  I remember the cafeteria. A sea of red dotted with blue. When he said we were outnumbered by the H2, he wasn’t exaggerating. “What am I supposed to do with it?” I whisper.

  His eyes meet mine, and they’re so desperate, shouting a million instructions, begging me to understand. “This technology is the key to our survival, and when the time comes, when you . . . it’s Josephus . . .” He trails off, and something inside him seems to let go, subtly uncoiling, silently giving up the fight. His gaze goes unfocused, the sharp intelligence and ruthless determination evaporating, fading away forever.

  Lost, broken, slabs of me falling away, I raise my head and look at Christina.

  Whose skin flashed red under the light of the scanner.

  From her posture, trembling and tight, I can tell she’s heard everything my father said.

  And she doesn’t say a word. She just keeps driving.

  I AM SITTING NEXT TO MY DEAD FATHER IN THE BACKseat of a blood-smeared, bullet-pocked SUV driven by my girlfriend. Who is an alien.

  I can’t summon any intelligent thoughts into my head, because the complete batshit craziness of this situation is wrapped around me like a hungry anaconda. H2? Josephus? I have to be careful with the fifty . . . somethings? What the hell does that even mean? I can’t breathe; my chest is tight with grief. I can’t stop shivering; my teeth are chattering with the rhythm of a jackhammer. I can’t look anywhere but the horizon, the road fading to a pinpoint in the distance, because I don’t want to see him, don’t want to look at his ruined body and be reminded again that he’d be alive if it weren’t for me.

  Almost exactly twenty-four hours ago, I was in my dad’s lab, kissing Christina. Running my hands over her curves. My whole universe was just her and me. My only care was making the space between us disappear. And now . . . there are a lot of things I’d like to make disappear, but the space between us isn’t one of them.

  I have no idea how long it takes me to notice the buzzing coming from my dad’s pocket. It stops, then starts again. Stops, then starts again. Someone wants to reach him very badly. I flex my numbed fingers and steady my hand so I can reach into his pocket and pull the phone out. The screen reads Alexander. It’s Brayton, George’s boss at Black Box, the guy they were talking about going to meet today. I push the button and mutely hold it to my ear. I can’t quite get my tongue to work.

  “Fred! What the hell happened? What’s your status? You’re going north—where are you headed?”

  I look at the SUV’s dash, remembering what George told my dad this morning: He’s sending a vehicle for you at noon. This thing obviously belongs to Black Box, and it must have some kind of GPS tracking device in it.

  Brayton is still talking, firing words faster than I can process them. Then I realize he’s just saying the same thing, over and over again, loud enough that Christina must hear him all the way in the front seat, because she flinches every time he says Fred.

  “He’s dead,” I whisper.

  “Who is this?” Brayton asks, his voice flat—but full of threat.

  “It’s Tate.”

  He exhales right into the phone, filling my ear with static. “Tate. All right, son, where’s your father?”

  I can’t believe he’s going to make me say it again. Every word cuts deeper than the last. “He was shot. He’s dead.”


  There’s a sound like he’s covered the phone, and I hear his muffled voice saying something to someone in the background. Then he’s back. “My God, Tate, I’m so sorry. I knew they got Peter, but I thought the rest of you got away.”

  Peter McClaren. The guy who graduated from Yale and started working for Black Box a few weeks ago. The guy who saved our lives at the cost of his own. Was he human, like me? Like my dad? Does his family know they’ve lost him yet? I . . . Brayton’s voice is a constant drone in my ear. “Tate. Tate? Where are you headed?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumble. “We’re just driving.”

  “We?”

  Christina’s shoulders are trembling again, and I blink and look away. “I’m with a friend.”

  “And do you have your father’s invention with you?”

  It’s on the floor of the backseat, next to my father’s neatly polished shoe. Droplets of his blood decorate the toe. “Yeah. Wait—how do you know about that?”

  “It’s something he made for Black Box, and it needs to be secured. We want to get you as far away from the city as we can. Can you make it to Princeton? We have a safe house there. Can you meet us?”

  Safe. That sounds good. “I’ll meet you at the stadium.” Like I’m watching myself from the outside, I wonder why that’s the first place to come to mind. Then I remember that, as a Princeton alum, my dad took me to their games once or twice every year.

  Those are some of the very few happy memories I have with him.

  I rub at the ache in my chest and open my mouth to say we should meet somewhere else, but before I get a word out, Brayton says, “Sounds good—I’ll pick you up. I can be there by two thirty. They seem to be keeping the whole incident at your school quiet, but keep your head down and be careful.”

  I look at the phone and can’t believe it’s not even one o’clock yet. This day has lasted a lifetime already. “Okay.” It comes out quiet and strained, but he seems to hear me, because he hangs up.

  My hand drops into my lap, and I stare at the phone, its smooth screen smudged with my fingerprints. I hit the CONTACTS button and scroll through, staring at a bunch of names I don’t recognize. And then I come to one I do.