The Replaced

by Kimberly Derting

  What I remembered most were its teeth, which were long and yellowed from age, but still pointy and sharp.

  I don’t think I knew at the time why we were standing in line, at least not until it was our turn and my dad pushed me out in front of the bear, all twelve feet of it—I know it was twelve feet because, years later, I looked it up on ask.com, and that’s the answer I got: twelve feet. But at that moment, when my dad made the decision to shove his innocent three-year-old daughter with her scraggly little blond ponytail toward that twelve-foot bear with all those razor-sharp teeth, she totally lost her shit. That was when the screaming started.

  I don’t really remember screaming, but my dad used to tell me about it. He said they were gut-wrenching, bloodcurdling screams—the kind of screams that aren’t supposed to come from little girls. The kind you hear in horror movies. He said people in the mall shot him dirty looks, trying to decide exactly what he’d done wrong to make me scream like that, while he did his best to ignore them, and their judge-y stares, as he carried me—still screaming, mind you—all the way through the mall, and then the parking lot, to our car.

  He said the screaming didn’t end until way, way later, when I’d finally fallen asleep during the drive home. I hadn’t even stopped screaming when he’d offered me ice cream in an attempt to bribe me into silence.

  At least that’s the way he’d always told the story. All I remembered were those teeth.

  That was maybe the last time I’d felt like something deserved the word daunting until this very instant. And even though this wasn’t at all like the “polar bear incident,” my feelings were precisely the same. I wanted to scream and run away.

  The building didn’t look all that special, just a regular building that was huddled among a bunch of other regular-looking buildings—the kind of place where something as ordinary as zippers or lip balm might be manufactured. Not so much the kind of place you’d expect the NSA to be concealing an undercover operation. A place where they kept teens who were newly returned from alien experimentation.

  Yet here we were.

  And in there . . . who knew. Would we find Tyler? Agent Truman . . . ?

  I shuddered as that nemesis feeling gripped me again.

  From the moment Agent Truman had landed on my mom’s doorstep, he’d given me the creeps. There’d been something off in the way he’d pretended to be all friendly and concerned about me, asking where I’d been during those five years, like he was a regular cop but never telling me who he really was. Yet all along he’d suspected I was one of the Returned.

  I might never have discovered in time how shady he was, except my mom had already taken me to the dentist. We’d already learned I hadn’t aged—that the comparison of the X-rays I’d had done before I’d been taken and the ones done after I’d come back had proven I hadn’t gone from sixteen to twenty-one the way I should have during my absence. Agent Truman had known it too, even though he hadn’t said so at first. But when he realized I wasn’t going to cooperate, he’d come back, along with a team of NSA agents, all suited up in hazmat gear and brandishing the kind of medical equipment designed for dissecting people like me.

  If Simon hadn’t come along and saved my ass . . . well, let’s just say my head would probably be mounted and stuffed on Agent Truman’s office wall as we speak.

  So maybe it wasn’t the building after all. Maybe it was the idea of facing my nemesis again, if he was in there at all, that made me think of the polar bear incident after all these years.

  I was sure I was overreacting. I mean, I’d already proven I was physically stronger than the NSA agent. Heck, his hand was probably still broken from when I’d shattered it with a baseball.

  Plus, there was that other thing I could do—that weird thing no one in either camp, other than Simon, knew about . . .

  Except I hadn’t been able to do it again, not since that night at Devil’s Hole, and I was starting to think that whatever it was, it controlled me rather than the other way around. So far, I’d only managed to make it happen twice, and neither time had been entirely on purpose.

  The first time had been right after I’d infected Tyler. I’d left him in the motel room where we’d been hiding from Agent Truman and the rest of his hazmat team, while Tyler had been delirious from fever. I’d been desperate to find a way to make him better. So desperate that, without meaning to, I’d moved an entire display of pain relievers across a cashier booth at a gas station, using only my mind . . . all to get my hands on some Tylenol.

  If anyone had been there to see it, they wouldn’t have been more shocked than me.

  The second time it happened, Simon had witnessed it. We’d been up at Devil’s Hole, where Agent Truman had tracked us down and was holding my dad hostage. I’d seen the look in the agent’s eyes—he was going to kill my father.

  But I hadn’t let him, and again, there’d been the familiar throbbing in the back of my head, and before I’d realized what was happening, the gun he’d been holding just a moment—a second—earlier, flew, rocketed, from his hand. Disappearing into the depths of Devil’s Hole.

  It had been me. My mind that had done that.

  Since then, I’d tried to roll pencils or to make water slosh or to flip on a light switch—just by concentrating. Anything to prove I had control over it, rather than the other way around.

  So far, I’d gotten nothing but a headache for my efforts.

  Simon hadn’t mentioned it again, not after that night. Maybe he would have if I’d given him a chance, but I didn’t think so. Without saying so, it had become a secret—our secret. And I wanted to keep it that way. I didn’t want the Silent Creekers to know. I didn’t want anyone to know because it made me feel like a freak. A freak among freaks.

  But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t use it again if I needed to. Like now. I’d do anything to save Tyler, even if it meant revealing my secret in front of everyone.

  “You guys ready for this?” Simon asked from the passenger seat, his eyes moving around the inside of the vehicle, where we’d parked it across the road from the warehouse-looking building. He stopped at each one of us, including Thom.

  “Ready,” Thom announced, sitting straighter, and looking like he was prepared to take any order Simon threw at him.

  I nodded, trying to convince myself I was ready too. My heart jackhammered in my chest, the way it used to right before the start of a crucial pitch—the kind of pitch that wins or loses games. Except this time the stakes were so, so much higher than just a championship trophy.

  I remembered what my dad always said about those clutch plays. It’s not the best athlete who wins the game; it’s the one who stays cool under pressure.

  Instead of thinking of all the things that could go wrong, and all the things I couldn’t do, I forced myself to focus on the things we could control—just like in a big game.

  “Let’s run over the basics one more time,” Simon said. “Just to be sure everyone’s got it down. If you have questions, now’s the time.”

  Jett broke out his trusty laptop and opened up a blueprint, and I wondered again where he’d even gotten a blueprint of a secret government installation. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you found on Google.

  “What’s the ‘Daylight Division’?” I’d been so focused on the ins and outs of the plan, I hadn’t noticed the watermark running across the top of the schematics before.

  Jett gave me a curious glance. “That’s the name of their division, the underground branch of the NSA that your Agent Truman and the other No-Suchers searching for the Returned belong to.” He pointed at the screen again. “The NSA is headquartered back east, but this place, the Tacoma facility, is the Daylight Division’s main base of operations.”

  It was a strange name. “Why the Daylight Division? It seems a little . . .” I shrugged, because I wasn’t quite sure what it seemed. “. . . innocent sounding.”

  “That’s the point,” Willow said. “It’s always the opposite of what it is with th
is government shit. Like, if you hear of something called Operation Rainbow, it’s probably nuclear fucking winter coming.”

  Jett nodded in agreement and then got back to the task at hand. “We already agreed to break into two groups,” he explained eagerly. “Team One, that’s my team—” he started.

  “Team One?” Simon interrupted cynically from the front seat, giving Jett a pointed take-it-down-a-notch look.

  “Fine,” Jett conceded, lowering his enthusiasm a degree or two. He tapped the screen. “So, Team One will come around back with me, while Team Two waits near the entrance for the all-clear signal. Team One already called dibs on Kyra.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  Jett perked up, and Simon flashed him that look again. He withered, putting his business face back on. “Because. It’s dark and you can be my eyes. You’re like a human flashlight.”

  I would’ve argued, or pretended to be embarrassed, but he wasn’t so far off. They might not know I’d moved things just by concentrating on them—even if it only had been a couple of times—but there were things they did know about. Like that I could see in the dark and hold my breath underwater for what seemed like forever . . . and that I could throw crazy hard. I almost smiled, because that last one was the reason Agent Truman had been wearing a cast the last time I’d seen him.

  I might not have liked that I was different from the others, but there were definite advantages.

  “So you really think you can disable their security system?” Willow asked.

  “Not disable exactly. If we shut it down, then they’ll know there’s a problem and come looking for it.” A sly grin slid over his face. “I was thinking a more subtle approach is in order. Something that makes it so they never see us coming.”

  Now that we were here, I tried not to freak the hell out. We were a group of perpetual teens about to break into an undisclosed government facility with state-of-the-art security.

  When I thought about it like that, the whole idea sounded half-baked. But instead of losing my shit, I forced myself to stay calm, centered, reminding myself we were no ordinary kids. We were different . . . special.

  Me most of all.

  My concern must’ve been telegraphed all over my face because Simon’s sympathetic look almost did me in. “You can do this, Kyra. Just . . . breathe.”

  I swallowed my doubts as I rubbed my sweaty palms over the tops of my knees, and then nodded again while I kept my eyes trained on his, hoping to soak up some of his confidence.

  Jett tapped Simon on the shoulder and handed him a white key card, turning his attention back to the plan, while I thought about what Simon had said about everyone having a weakness. He was right, at least as far as I could tell. We might be able to heal faster than normal people, me more so than the rest of them, but that didn’t mean we were invincible. Not by a long shot. Simon had made it more than clear that these “Daylighters” knew ways to kill us.

  “Team Two,” Jett said, his finger dropping to a place in the center of the plans on his computer screen—a place that looked like a large, open space that could be any kind of room. “Once you’re inside, you locate the central lab. That’s your best chance of finding Tyler if they’ve got him.”

  Lab. I swallowed a golf ball–sized lump that formed in my throat every time they used that word. It conjured gruesome images that made my stomach pitch. I was sure I didn’t want to know the answer, but it didn’t stop me from asking, “What do you think they’re doing to him in there?”

  “Nothing good.” Jett shot me an apologetic look as he snapped his laptop shut, and then his fingers drifted to the spot on his arm again. “We need to be in and out as fast as possible.”

  No one said anything more about the lab thing as we piled out of the SUV. We were parked in an ordinary public lot and our vehicle looked like all the rest, blending nicely in a sea of other SUVs, minivans, and sedans. But even so, I hoped there weren’t cameras out here, already keeping an electronic eye on us, because if there were, we were screwed.

  “Okay. New plan,” I said as firmly as I could, and before I had the chance to change my mind. “I’m on Team Two now.”

  “What? No . . . ,” Jett sputtered, getting out the same door I had, right behind Natty.

  But Simon put his hand on Jett’s shoulder to stop him. “Why?” he asked, his copper eyes probing mine.

  As far as I was concerned, there was no question. “Because Team Two is going after Tyler. That puts me on Team Two.”

  I thought Simon might throw a fit, extolling the dangers of marching into the lion’s den or some other such crap, and I braced myself for it while Thom opened the back hatch and started sorting the gear. Instead, after a few seconds of staring at each other like that, like we were in a silent standoff, Simon just . . . shrugged.

  And that was it.

  “Okay. So, Jett—I mean, Team One—you take Thom and Natty.” The two teammates in question exchanged a look, and I tried to decide if I could decipher any hidden meaning there, something to tell whether or not there really was something more than just leader and devoted follower between them.

  Simon flashed Jett a wry smile. “Sorry, you’ll have to make do with a regular flashlight,” he added. “Willow and me’ll take Kyra. We’ll wait out front ’til we get word that the coast is clear.” Then his eyes dropped to the key card in his hand. “You sure this thing’s gonna work? Those of us on Team Two are counting on you.”

  Jett practically beamed back at Simon. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BOOM!

  The explosion wasn’t so much a sound, the way I’d always imagined an explosion would be, but more like a vibration. Except that wasn’t exactly right either. It reminded me more of thunder, that deep booming feeling that seemed to center somewhere in my chest or belly and was trying to rumble its way out, jangling my bones and my teeth, and making my skin scream. My eardrums seared like someone had stabbed them all the way through with just-sharpened icepicks.

  The whole thing lasted only milliseconds, even though it seemed like forever, especially since so many things went through my head at once, like: Where had the blast come from? Had Jett caused it, or were they in trouble because they’d walked into some dangerous NSA booby trap? What if we were all walking into traps?

  And where was Team One now?

  My eyes had gone wide and I was buzzing with excess energy. I knew this was what my science teacher meant when he explained fight-or-flight, which meant I was on high alert for attack. But the weird thing was, I felt numb at the same time, and that confusion was making it hard to focus on any one thing. Just when I thought my head might finally be clearing and I was about to tell Simon we should make a run for it, I saw this plume of black smoke rising from behind the building, and every light inside the facility shut off all at once as it went entirely black.

  Behind the glass entrance, sirens blared to life.

  “That’s our cue!” Simon shouted above the alarms as he pulled out the key card Jett had given him. But instead of using it to access the security panel beside the door, Willow pulled out a long, metal crowbar-looking thing and smashed the glass entrance to smithereens. When I didn’t follow right away, Simon asked, “You coming?”

  “Wait! That was the plan? No one mentioned an explosion!” I knew I was yelling, but I couldn’t help myself. From inside my head, my voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.

  Simon grinned and lifted his finger to his lips. “Don’t worry. We got this. Jett knows what he’s doing,” he said, a million times more quietly than I had.

  So Jett’s part of the plan was to draw them away from the front entrance by blowing up the back one? Subtle, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut. The increasing pressure behind my ears made my skull and teeth ache. Whatever did the job, I supposed.

  But even as I thought it, I could already feel my body reacting to the assault, curing whatever in my head felt . . . broken. Healing me.

&nbs
p; I wasn’t sure whether “our cue” had been the sirens or the smoke or the brain-jarring blast itself, but I wasn’t about to be left behind, so I ducked through the hollowed-out frame. My feet crunched over broken glass as I hurried after Simon and Willow. The siren sound was louder, and there was some sort of generator or emergency lighting system that had kicked on, bathing the entry in a ghostly red pall that made everything seem super creepy.

  “Which way?” Simon asked Willow.

  Willow grunted and pointed down a deserted hallway. I wondered where all the people were. Scary-cute name or not, the Daylight Division was part of the NSA, after all—the dreaded Tacoma facility—shouldn’t there be an army guarding it?

  As if my thoughts were being transmitted along the earsplitting sirens that cut through the air, Simon told us both, “We won’t have long before they figure out the detonation was just a diversion. We need to hurry.”

  Hurrying wasn’t a problem. Now that we were in here, I felt trapped. That sledgehammer sensation in my chest was no longer from Jett’s distraction, but was exactly what it was supposed to be—my heart trying to crack a rib. Simon hadn’t explained in detail what would happen to us if we were caught, but he’d explained enough and my imagination had filled in the rest. In my mind, there was no amount of self-regeneration that could undo the damage Agent Truman and his buddies had in store for us.

  We reached a doorway, and again there was an access panel, and again Simon ignored it, choosing not to use the key card he still clutched in his hand. He pulled something from his backpack, and I watched as he affixed a small piece of what looked like Silly Putty—that gooey gray stuff that came in a plastic egg and that my dad and I used to stretch and bounce and roll over the newspaper comics and then stretch some more—to the panel. Yet even without being told it wasn’t Silly Putty, because of course it wasn’t, I took a few steps back at the same time Simon and Willow did. Simultaneously we all covered our ears and ducked, and my heart continued to punch my chest.