The Taking

by Kimberly Derting

  “Well, Jett and his stupid statistics only made me feel worse,” I shot back under my breath, not wanting to disturb Tyler. “Now it’s all I can think about.”

  And it was true, I kept turning the numbers over in my head.

  Most people who were taken were never returned, that much I’d already known—Willow had said as much—but Jett had hammered the point home. He didn’t have any hard numbers, but his best guess had been somewhere around 33 percent. That was one person returned for every three taken, he’d clarified.

  I hated to think what might have happened to the other 67 percent.

  Maybe they were returned, too, and had never come forward. Or maybe they were failed experiments. Maybe they hadn’t survived whatever torture we’d been put through.

  Maybe we were all expendable.

  I couldn’t afford to think that way, not when I had Tyler’s life in my hands.

  According to my father’s records, Jett explained, the likelihood of being taken from Devil’s Hole was higher than anywhere else. In the past five years there had been seven people reported missing from that area. That was the highest incidence of repeat “takings” ever recorded.

  Seven people missing. It made sense that Tyler had a chance of being taken if we could just get him there in time.

  The problem was, of those seven people, only one had returned.

  One.

  That was only 14 percent, Jett had explained. Considerably lower than the 33 percent average. The idea of subjecting Tyler to those odds made me sick.

  But listening to Tyler breath now, I knew time was against us. Devil’s Hole was his last chance.

  “Can I ask you something?” I probed, trying to push aside numbers and statistics because Tyler was more than that. “Why do you think they’re doing it? The experiments, I mean? What’s the purpose? What are we being put back here for?”

  Simon stared out at the road for a long, long time, and for a long, long time I waited. After a while I gave up, turning my attention to the road, too, convinced he had no intention of answering me.

  And then I heard him. “I ask myself that every day. Every day since I realized what I was. We all have. A lot of what Jett does is search for theories. He coordinates with other camps and even tracks down the lone Returned, trying to come up with some . . . reason for what’s been done to us.” He went silent again, and I remained rigid. Eventually he sighed. “I think there must be a reason; we just don’t know what it is yet. But it’s something big, and I think the No-Suchers think so, too, and that’s why they want to get their hands on us so badly.” Swallowing, he looked over at me. “I believe there’s a reason you were gone so much longer than the rest of us before you were returned. That they’re perfecting what they do to us, preparing for something. And those things you can do that we can’t, I think they’re important.”

  I shook my head, afraid he might be able to see how much he was scaring me with all his talk of plans and something coming. “I think you’re wrong,” I denied in a whisper. “I think we were just in the wrong petri dish at the wrong time.”

  Simon smiled at me. “Maybe you’re right. I think that, too, sometimes. That they’re just fucking with us because they can. That it’s all just a game, and we’re the pawns.”

  I turned away. I hated to think my life had been turned upside down for some cosmic chess match. “How much longer till we get there?”

  Simon looked at the gauges in front of him. “About two-and-a-half hours. Three at most. It’ll be dark by then.” He cast me a wry look, and I knew he was making a mental list of things I could do that the other Returned couldn’t. “But that shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

  I leaned my head against the window, wondering how I’d last for three more hours listening to the labored sounds coming from the backseat and wishing I could stop myself from asking “How much longer do you think he has?”

  Simon didn’t stop to ponder his answer the way I would have. He didn’t candy coat it either. “He might not survive the trip.”

  It was a strange location. Not as hidden or off the beaten path as I’d expected, considering all the weird things Jett had told us about the place.

  Because he was so into legends and facts, and where the two intersected, Jett had given us the exact coordinates, along with driving directions for how we could find the real Devil’s Hole.

  The directions, however, were relatively simple to follow, and like Simon had predicted, it was just starting to get dark when we pulled off the main highway and onto the gravelly side road that Jett had marked for us.

  After a couple of turns, we found the place at the end of a dirt road. No warning signs—no signs at all.

  The only thing that struck me as unusual were the crickets, which shouldn’t have since we were out in the middle of the desert. Even with my window up I could hear them, giving the whole scene—the dry, weedy grasses and scrub brush for as far as I could see—a poetic vibe.

  I twisted around in my seat as we came to a stop at the top of the short hill where the road ended. I was relieved that Tyler was still breathing.

  Reaching out to Simon, I let out a shaky laugh. “We did it.”

  Simon shut off the engine, his expression reserved. “Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves. We haven’t done anything yet.”

  I frowned at him, wanting him to be more optimistic. This had to work.

  Glancing back at Tyler once more, I bit my lip. He was still unconscious, and I told myself it was the morphine. “Hang in there,” I whispered softly.

  Beside me, Simon reached over and pressed his hand over mine. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I don’t want you to get hurt.” He withdrew his hand. “You need to be prepared, because this might not work, Kyra. He might not be taken. And even if he is . . .” He didn’t finish.

  I swallowed. “I know.”

  Simon opened his door and switched on his flashlight. “Don’t let your guard down,” he said in the same voice he used when he spoke to Willow or Jett. I wondered if that’s who I was now, one of his Returned. “The last thing we need is to be caught unaware.”

  Caught. My mouth went dry at the reminder that the NSA might know about this place.

  I searched the spare terrain, looking everywhere the flashlight couldn’t reach—all the places Simon couldn’t see. The car had kicked up a cloud of fine sand behind us, dust that would take several long minutes to settle. And our tracks, if someone was looking for them, would be easy enough to find.

  I joined him, pretending I was interested in the map, even though the lines and squiggles, the keys and symbols, and the scales were complete gibberish to me. “Where is it?”

  He looked around and then pointed off to the right, just beyond a cluster of flat rocks past the end of the road. “About twenty meters that way. We’ll have to carry him the rest of the way.”

  I nodded mutely.

  From inside the car, Tyler coughed. A wet, hacking sound.

  “We need to hurry,” Simon told me, throwing down the map and shoving the flashlight into his back pocket. “We’re almost out of time.”

  Even though Simon carried most of Tyler’s weight, I was sweating by the time we reached the top of the short hill. My job was to hold Tyler’s feet and serve as lookout, but Tyler was more alert now, moaning every time we bumped or jarred him, which was pretty much always, making me cringe inside. The coughing was worse, too, growing deeper and wetter sounding by the second. I worried he was drowning in his own fluids.

  “Simon,” I rasped, unable to hold back my tears. “We found it. This is it.”

  He grinned back at me, and for the first time I thought he might feel it too. Hope. “Just a few more steps,” he beamed.

  When we reached the edge of the legendary crater, we set Tyler down and I collapsed. Wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand, I approached the brick wall that surrounded the rim. Someone had gone to great care to look after this place. Even the perimeter was well manicured. The grasses and b
rush were trimmed back so they didn’t crowd the wall or the area surrounding it.

  At my feet, Tyler wheezed, a rheumy sound that made my skin crawl. “Now what?” I turned to Simon fearfully.

  He looked back at me, and I could see it . . . in his eyes. The look that told me he had no idea.

  We’d been waiting for almost an hour.

  Waiting for the taking. Or, it seemed more likely at this point, waiting for Tyler to die.

  I was okay with that now. I just wanted him out of his misery already. It was too hard to watch him suffer. Too hard to listen to his pleas for relief.

  The morphine was wearing off, and he’d begun clawing at his own skin—at the blisters we could see, and the ones we couldn’t. It was like watching him try to rip away his own flesh.

  “Try singing to him again,” Simon said from his place near the edge of the cavernous pit, where he’d been chucking rock after rock into the hole. “He seems to like that.”

  Simon was right; the singing had worked . . . for a while. I’d tried everything I could think of to keep Tyler calm: whispering, cajoling, soothing.

  “It’s not working,” I shot back. “He’s in too much pain.” My face crumpled. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

  He paused, his arm cocked midthrow. “I’m positive. How many giant holes could there be?” He flung the rock to emphasize his point, and I knew he was as frustrated as I was.

  I didn’t want to freak out, but that’s exactly what I was doing. “Maybe we’re scaring them. Maybe they won’t take him with us sitting right here, in plain sight.”

  His shoulders fell as he stepped away from the rim. “Kyra,” he explained, and even in the dark I could make out those eyes of his, the same way I had that first time I’d seen him, in the bookstore. “People have claimed for years to witness the takings. Obviously bystanders have never stopped them before.”

  “Then what?” I complained. “What are we doing wrong?”

  The sound of tires rolling over gravel stopped us both cold. My head snapped around, in the direction we’d parked, while my heart beat once . . . twice . . . and once more, hammering agonizingly, thunderously inside my chest. “It’s them, isn’t it?”

  Simon lunged for the flashlight on the ground, and he switched it off, ignoring me as he scurried to the ridge to get a better look. He gave me his answer the second he dropped down again, his back pressed against the wall of rocks and his fingers to his lips. There was nothing I could do about Tyler’s whimpering.

  “What do we do?”

  He pulled a knife from his back pocket and rolled up his sleeve. “I don’t want to do this, but if we have to, I’ll infect them.”

  “Simon, no . . .” I jumped up from my spot next to Tyler, meaning to go to him, to convince him that was crazy talk. How could he be willing to use himself—his blood—as a weapon like that?

  But I stopped, unable to speak or think or breathe the moment I saw it . . .

  . . . them.

  So very many of them.

  It was like looking at a constellation.

  A radiant, sparkling, living constellation.

  “Oh my god . . .” I covered my mouth with both hands and gasped between my fingers. Tears blurred the lights, blending and distorting them until they were one giant mass in my eyes. “They’re so . . . so beautiful. . . .”

  Simon looked at me, confused. He lowered the knife and let go of his sleeve as he turned to see what I had. To know what I knew.

  That we’d been in the wrong place all along.

  “Fireflies,” he breathed.

  They weren’t amassed near the mouth of Devil’s Hole like we’d believed they would be but were gathered at the top of a rugged stone peak instead. The site of them, with the moon hanging high above and the outline of local wild-flowers and brush below, was picturesque, and almost made me forget what they foretold . . . and the reason we were here in the first place.

  I knew for certain then that I’d never seen anything like them before, not in real life, because if I had, if I’d ever witnessed anything like their spectral presence, I would have known. I would have remembered. They were as out of place as they were haunting, and I fell to my knees as I realized what seeing them meant.

  Because they were too far away.

  We could never reach them, not in time.

  Tyler was going to die.

  Tyler passed out the moment we tried to lift him, as if he’d just given up.

  As if even he knew we were too late.

  Everything inside of me knew the same, but I couldn’t afford to stop trying. Not when we’d come so close.

  But when I heard the last voice I ever expected to hear all the way out here, in the middle of the night near this strange place called Devil’s Hole, I froze, my eyes prickling with tears and my throat squeezing tight.

  “You have to put the boy down, Kyra.”

  I turned to watch the man approach, and I had to blink several times because I was blinded by the approaching flashlight.

  But as the light bobbed away from my eyes, I saw him clearly. I would have recognized that flannel shirt and scruffy beard anywhere. “Dad?”

  It was true. My dad was there, but he was with Agent Truman—the starched man in the starched suit—who stood just behind my dad.

  “Kyra,” my dad said to me, his voice all rough around the edges, like it was hard for him to talk.

  That was when I realized I had no family left to go back to. Agent Truman had convinced my mom I was dangerous and turned my dad against me too.

  Blood pulsed behind my ears while my eyes slid to the thick Ace bandages wrapped around the agent’s right hand.

  Seeing Agent Truman’s lopsided wrap job made me feel a million times better. I hoped he ended up needing surgery that involved metal pins and rods and lots and lots of recovery time, the same way Carrie Dreyer had when that broken bone had come through her skin.

  “Do as he says, and your dad here doesn’t have to get hurt,” Agent Truman snarled at me over my dad’s shoulder.

  I looked down then and saw the gun in Agent Truman’s good hand—his unbandaged one. He held it awkwardly, his grip unnatural, pointing directly at my dad’s back.

  My dad lifted his hands in the air, showing me he was the same as me—a pawn. “I’m sorry, Kyr,” he said hoarsely.

  My gaze slid out of focus as tears welled fatter behind my eyelids. My dad hadn’t turned on me. He was still my number one fan.

  Simon gave me a meaningful look, and we did as we were told, easing Tyler onto the dusty ground. I took extra care to make sure we weren’t laying him on any rocks, and then I turned to my dad.

  I struggled to find the right words, but everything seemed wrong and not big enough, and definitely not sorry enough for the way I’d turned my back on him. “No . . . Dad . . .” I shook my head, wishing more than anything I could run to him so I could feel his bear-like arms around me. “I’m the one who’s sorry. For everything. For not believing you in the first place.” Then my gaze shifted to Agent Truman. “You can’t do this,” I told him. “It’s illegal. He hasn’t done anything.”

  His mouth twisted into a snarl. “This isn’t about legal or not legal.” He lifted his bandaged hand. “You have no idea how special you are, and I’m not about to let you get away again.”

  I’d been so focused on my dad that I’d nearly forgotten all about Simon.

  “I don’t think you have much choice,” Simon stated. His voice was subdued when he spoke. “That,” he said, nodding at the poorly wrapped Ace bandage. “That’s nothing.” He clutched his knife in his fingers, clenching and unclenching his fist.

  Agent Truman’s eyes narrowed as they fell on the knife, but he didn’t even flinch. “You wouldn’t. Not with Kyra’s old man here.” He lifted his gun then, holding it to the back of my father’s head, and my heart nearly exploded.

  Simon’s eyes slipped to my dad and then to me. I could see the surrender in his eyes even before his ch
in dropped and he lifted his hands in the air. And then, as if all the will had been drained from him like a deflated balloon, he opened his fingers and let the knife slip to the ground.

  But Agent Truman didn’t back down as easily. He shoved the nose of the gun hard against the back of my dad’s neck. There was something in the agent’s expression, the wild look in his eyes and the firm set of his jaw, that made him look determined. He settled his gaze on me. “The easier you make this, the less likely dear old daddy won’t end up at in the bottom of that pit over there.”

  “Let him go.” I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the gun. I couldn’t let him do what he was threatening. I couldn’t go with him, and there was no way in hell I was letting him hurt my dad. “Drop the gun,” I warned, trying to sound reasonable. “I mean it.” I concentrated, my hands curling into fists so tight my fingertips ached. A throbbing started in the back of my head.

  I thought about the way I’d felt when I was at that gas station, when I wanted—when I needed—those pain relievers for Tyler so he wouldn’t die from fever.

  And now what I needed was for Agent Truman not to kill my dad.

  I blinked slow and hard. I forced all my attention on the gun, on the barrel.

  I clenched and unclenched my fingers, balled and unballed my fists. “No!” I screamed. “Let! Him! Goooo!”

  When the gun jerked from his grasp, it flew end over end so fast that I could barely track it. It was that fast. A blur.

  But I did see it, and so did everyone else, watching as it hurtled like a rocket toward the crater.

  We never heard it hit the bottom.

  For a moment I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I’d done it. I’d actually moved something with my mind . . . on purpose. And this time there were witnesses.

  Simon didn’t take as long to react, and he turned to me in an instant, his copper eyes finding me as he demanded, “You . . . you did this.” It wasn’t a question because, of course, he’d seen the truth with his own two eyes.