The Taking

by Kimberly Derting

  This time I could read the signs that were hung on the fencing: WARNING: RESTRICTED AREA

  And at the bottom of the sign, in bold red letters: USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED.

  The whole thing—the signs, the fencing, the quarantine—it was all insane.

  “So, I never asked this, but when we were at the bookstore, Tyler and me, there was an agent who . . .” I stopped because it was hard to find a way to put the words together just right.

  But I didn’t have to finish my thought, because Jett turned around to look at Simon—another silent exchange. They already understood what I wanted to know.

  “He killed himself,” Willow answered before either of the two boys had a chance. “Shot himself. That’s how we knew you were in trouble; their frequencies blew up with word of an agent being exposed to a Code Red and offing himself.”

  Code Red. So that’s what he’d meant.

  I turned to Willow, who didn’t seem to have any qualms about answering my questions. “And Jackson?”

  “Was that the other guy’s name?” She shrugged, and again I was struck by how easily they accepted all this. “They got him. He was exposed, too, I guess. Must’ve been fresh blood still on the floor when he came in to see what happened.”

  I shifted on my feet. “How do you know he was exposed?”

  Simon and Jett exchanged a look again, and again it was Willow who didn’t mince words. “We already got confirmation that he died.”

  “Died? How?” I asked, ignoring both boys and turning all my attention to her now.

  “How do you think?” she answered as if I were dense.

  My voice cracked. “Already?”

  Simon pushed past Willow to stand in front of me. “He probably touched it—the blood. If it made contact with his skin, it would have reacted more quickly.”

  But that didn’t make sense. “It was on my clothes,” I explained. “Tyler . . . he touched me after I saw you. He should’ve—”

  Simon interrupted. “It wasn’t fresh then. There’s only about a sixty-second window when contact makes a difference. Airborne’s bad, but skin contact’s worse.”

  I don’t know if that was supposed to make me feel better, that Tyler would outlive Jackson because he hadn’t touched my blood within that sixty-second window, but it didn’t. Dead is dead.

  I shook my head, not wanting to be like them. Not wanting to be okay with all this, to accept death so willingly. Already, though, I could feel the hollowness consuming me, and I wondered if this was how it started. The carving out of your emotions. If I would soon be empty, a shell. “There has to be a way,” I murmured, collapsing bonelessly into one of the chairs.

  And then it was Jett—Jett who’d only been twelve when he’d been taken but was now sixty-four years old. Jett who looked at me with those confusing, kaleidoscope eyes when he said the words that gave me back some of myself. “Maybe there is a way.”

  I shot to my feet. “Wh—what are you talking about? What are you saying?”

  Simon looked as confused as I felt, and behind me, Willow was silent.

  Jett blinked rapidly and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “What if . . .” He rubbed his hands on his pants. “What if he could be one of the returned?”

  It was as if Jett had poured gasoline on an open flame.

  “What you’re suggesting is crazy!” Simon shouted, waving his hands as he spoke. “No one’s ever done that. Not on purpose. Even if we wanted to, there’s no way of even knowing where or when one of these ‘takings’ might occur.”

  “Besides,” Willow added, a million times more subdued than Simon was but just as convinced. “There’s no guarantee he’d even come back. Most don’t.”

  I didn’t know that. I knew some didn’t, but not most. It didn’t matter, though. What Jett was suggesting, it was crazy. Beyond crazy.

  It was as good as murder as far as I was concerned.

  It was taking a normal, living, breathing human and turning him into something . . . less than human.

  I’d be sentencing Tyler to a life where he would no longer be normal. Where he’d be a walking time bomb because his blood was toxic to everyone around him. And where he’d never age like other people, so he’d be forced to give up all his friends and family in order to keep his secret.

  He’d be a freak, like me.

  “Think about it,” Jett went on. “What if we can figure it out? What if we can pinpoint a location and take him there?”

  “How?” Simon interrupted. “Where?”

  Encouraged by Simon’s questions, Jett sprang into action. He went to one of the walls where he’d already hung the mostly decimated map I’d taken from my dad’s place. He tapped it, looking at me. “I enhanced the map we got from you. . . .” He went to the nearest workstation and pulled up an exact replica of the map, only this one was easier to read, the smudged lines clearer and more legible. “I also tried the USB, but it’s too damaged. I couldn’t get anything off it.”

  Impatient, Willow chimed in. “Will you please just get to the point?”

  “The CDs were another matter,” Jett continued, oblivious to Willow’s short temper. He grinned like a kid on Christmas morning. “Those were your dad’s backup files for the past five years, and your dad is one righteous record keeper. Most of what he had on those discs we already knew: names, dates, locations—that kind of thing.”

  “So?” Simon interrupted. “What’s your point?”

  “The point is, there’s one place that comes up in his files numerous times as a taking site. One place that’s shown up again and again and again and again in the past five years that we’ve never been able to pinpoint.”

  Jett jumped up from his chair and tapped a spot on the map with the tip of a pen. “And it’s not that far from us.”

  I stared at the distorted map of Washington State. “Where is it?” I asked, because even if I wasn’t willing to entertain the idea of letting Tyler become like me—like us—I needed to hear Jett out.

  “It’s called Devil’s Hole.” Jett breathed the name, filling it with as much wonder as he could manage.

  “Devil’s? Hole?” The skepticism in Willow’s voice was obvious.

  Again Jett didn’t seem at all discouraged by her cynicism. “It’s here, not too far north of the Oregon border,” he explained as he traced a path from where we presumably were—in an abandoned nuclear bunker below the ground—all the way to the place where Jett believed Tyler had a chance of being taken.

  “There’s been a lot of talk about it being just an Indian legend. In fact, there was this Native American shaman named Red Elk who once told reporters that his father had first taken him to see the hole back in 1961. He claimed that not only was the hole ‘endless’ but that strange things happened whenever he went near it. He never really said what those strange things were, but there were others who swore that animals refused to go anywhere near the giant crater. Some have said it’s the gateway to hell.” He flashed a crooked smile.

  “Of course, none of these things was ever confirmed. At least not for the general public. But here’s the interesting thing. . . .” He raised his eyebrows. “No one’s ever really known the true location of Devil’s Hole. But there are those who believe the government knows exactly where it is and that it’s always been a source of alien activity, and they’ve been trying to conceal the location for years. According to your dad”—he was looking at me again—“those people are right, because he seems to know exactly where it is too.”

  He took off the pen’s cap and circled a pinprick of a spot on the map, making it clear that this was the location in question. I studied the distance between here and there. He was right; it wasn’t far. A couple of hours at most.

  “And what? You think we can just show up there, and they’ll take Tyler and heal him?” I couldn’t help it. The idea was preposterous.

  “Not just heal. Restore,” Simon corrected.

  “But if his body’s already damaged, won’t he come ba
ck that way too? Like me, with my bruise and my tan lines?”

  Jett was already shaking his head. “That’s not usually how it works. We’ve seen cases where people with cancer were returned completely healthy, and people who’d had gruesome scars came back unblemished.”

  It was so incredibly, unbearably, outrageously tempting—the idea of saving Tyler’s life.

  But it wasn’t really his life I’d be giving him back. It was a new life.

  I knew because I wasn’t the same anymore. As much as I wanted to believe I was still the same Kyra Agnew I was five years ago, I couldn’t keep living that life anymore. How could I possibly subject Tyler to that? How could I take away his life like that?

  He still had a family who loved him.

  I shook my head, more confused than ever. “I don’t know. How can I force him to become one of us?”

  Willow scoffed at my reluctance. “What choice do you have? If you don’t, he’ll die.”

  I spun around to face her. “If I do, his old life is over. Isn’t that the same thing?”

  No one stopped me when I left the underground bunker and made my way to the surface once more. I had to see Tyler.

  Either way I was a murderer; there was nothing I could do to change that fact. But this way at least he could die with dignity. He could leave this world the way he was meant to go—as himself.

  Still, knowing it was the right choice didn’t make it any easier when I knelt beside him and saw the blisters that had broken out over his lips and cheeks, spreading down his neck. I wanted to touch him, to feel his heart beating beneath my palms; but I was afraid my touch might somehow hurt him, so instead I whispered his name into the chasm between us.

  “Tyler,” I breathed, holding back the flood of emotions that hearing his name stirred within me. A name I’d forever equate with humanity. A name that would forever brand me—the way the fireflies had been seared into the skin of those suspected of being returned—a killer. “Tyler, I’m here. I promise I’ll stay with you.”

  His head lolled my way, and spittle foamed at the corner of his mouth. I shouldn’t have disturbed him. I should’ve left him in peace. “K—K—Kyra,” he finally managed.

  “Yes. It’s me.” I reached for his hand but stopped myself before I grabbed it. The outer layer of his skin was peeling away. At this rate, even if what was inside of him wasn’t killing him, he was sure to get an infection from the pollutants in the air around us. “Don’t say anything. You don’t have to say anything.”

  But he struggled anyway, trying to talk. “K—Kyra.” He panted my name. Panted. And I physically ached at the effort he put himself through. “I w—want you to . . . know . . .”

  “Tyler, don’t. Just . . . shh . . .”

  He reached for me, blindly, clumsily. His raw fingers searched for me. And I wanted to touch him so badly that when they found me, I clumsily grabbed them, clinging to them, unable to stop myself. Unable to care that I might be hurting him. Maybe he was past hurt. Maybe I didn’t even care anymore. I wanted to stroke him. Kiss him. To breathe him in so I could remember that smell forever. “I . . . love . . . you . . . ,” he gasped at last.

  That was it. He undid me with those words.

  It would have been better if he’d said nothing at all, because I could live with nothing. Love . . . well, love was another matter altogether.

  Love required sacrifice and making hard choices and doing things that were bigger than just you.

  It wasn’t something you asked for, or could control or change. It was something you accepted.

  Love was a force of nature.

  Lifting his hand to my trembling lips, I remembered when he’d told me that he might be falling in love with me. I remembered exactly what he’d said to me.

  “You can’t stand there and tell me you’re not that same girl, because I’m telling you, you are. You’re more perfect than anyone I know.”

  Tyler thought I was perfect. And even now, knowing that I was the one responsible for doing this to him, he was able to say those words to me: I love you.

  He understood, maybe better than I did, what it meant to love.

  I searched his face, wondering how I could possibly let him go when he had so much left to do. Even if his family turned their backs on him, or if he had to walk away from them, didn’t he deserve a chance? Was it really up to me to decide who was, and wasn’t, normal enough?

  I got to my feet, easing his hand down and squeezing it as gently as I could. “I love you, too, Tyler. So goddamned much it hurts.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I RAN OUT OF THE DUSTY CABIN, YELLING ALL their names. Screaming for Simon and Willow and Jett. There were other Returned living in the camp, and they stopped what they were doing to watch me, none of them looking alarmed by the stranger in their midst. But I didn’t know any of them, and I didn’t care that I was drawing attention by my hysterics. I only cared about one thing now.

  Without pausing, I plunged, feet first, through the opening in the ground. I was still shouting for the others as I sprinted down the concrete corridor, their names echoing off the walls and bouncing back at me.

  But they were already halfway to me when I nearly barreled into them.

  “We need to go.” I was breathless and panting. “I changed my mind. I want to take him. To Devil’s Hole. I want to try to save him.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible now,” Simon said, pulling me aside. “We . . . have a situation.”

  “What? No. We need to take Tyler. We don’t have time—”

  “Kyra . . .” Simon didn’t lower his voice, but he gripped my arm, and it was clear from his tone that whatever was wrong, it was serious. “We have to get out of here,” he confided. “Somehow they know where we are.”

  “Who knows? The NSA? How?” I turned to Willow, remembering what she’d said when she’d picked us up, that there was no way we could be found here. “I thought you said this place was safe?”

  Willow took a step toward me, her shoulders hunched as if I’d just declared war with my accusation.

  Jett jumped between us. “We don’t know how. Maybe your dad knew about us. Maybe there was something in his files—a map or a diagram with our location—and they found it.” He shrugged as if it was impossible to believe, even for him. “I thought we were more careful.”

  Simon waved both Jett and Willow away. “Doesn’t really matter now. What matters is, they’re coming. And if they know where we are, it’s just as likely they’ll figure out about Devil’s Hole. It might not be safe to go there.”

  I shoved Simon, pushing him against the wall. I couldn’t let him give up that easily. “Nuh-uh. No way. I won’t let you do this. You said it yourself—what choice do we have? If we don’t take him and at least try, he’ll die for sure.” I could feel my decision, and Tyler’s last chance, slipping like sand between my fingers, and I was desperate to keep hold of it. “We have to take that chance.” I lowered my hands. “Simon, please,” I begged. “Please. We have to try.”

  Simon closed his eyes, clearly struggling with what to do.

  My gut twisted, and I chewed nervously on the inside of my lip while I waited for his answer.

  When he opened his eyes, he looked past me to Willow. “Stay behind with Jett and organize the retreat. Gather as many supplies as you can.” He turned to Jett then. “Collect all the hard drives, and any paper and electronic files we have. Don’t leave them anything they can use to track us. Understood?”

  “Of course.” Jett nodded, and then took off back toward the computer room to start stripping it down.

  Simon turned back to Willow. “When we’re done, Kyra and I will rendezvous with the rest of the group at the Silent Creek camp. I’ll radio ahead and let them know to expect us. They’ll take us in, at least until we can find a new place to
call home.”

  “And Tyler,” I added, relief overwhelming me.

  But Simon just shook his head. “No, Kyra. Tyler will either be gone by then—taken by them—or he’ll be dead. We can’t wait around to find out which. Once we get to Devil’s Hole, we’ll have to leave him there. Even if we had the luxury of waiting around for the next day or so to see if he’s going to be returned or not, people are rarely returned to the same place they’re taken from.” He ignored me then and looked at Willow once more. “We should be meeting you there by morning.”

  If it hadn’t been for the morphine, I definitely would’ve changed my mind.

  As it was, the screaming had stopped once the drug had finally entered Tyler’s system, which was just about the time we reached the long, barren stretch of highway on our way to Devil’s Hole.

  But the screams still echoed inside my head, as did the implications of what I was about to do.

  Playing God.

  Still, I prayed it worked. That we weren’t chasing a pipe dream. That I wasn’t pinning all my hopes on the impossible.

  Next to me, in the driver’s seat, Simon gave up trying to find a decent station on the radio. “Jett was trying to help, you know? That’s just his way,” he explained. “He grew up in Vegas. He was young, but his old man was a bookie, so numbers—odds—come second nature to him. He thinks everyone gets the same comfort from them that he does.” I thought about what Jett had told me, about his dad not being the kind of guy people messed with, and I guess it made some sense.

  With the radio off, I could hear Tyler’s gurgling breaths coming from the backseat. It wasn’t that I’d wanted to be in front with Simon, but I’d been too afraid to sit in back with Tyler. I didn’t want to accidentally brush any part of his skin, which had broken out in large lesions. My jaw tensed as I turned to check on him.