The Replaced

by Kimberly Derting

  This detonation wasn’t nearly as intense as the first one. In fact, I’d hardly heard it above the wail of the sirens, which were still screaming so loud my ears felt like they were bleeding. This explosion didn’t come with a rumbling boom or all the smoke, just a satisfying bang, followed by the even more satisfying sight of the heavy, locked door releasing.

  That was when things got real, and this ordinary-looking building suddenly became so much less ordinary and so much more frightening.

  “This is it, isn’t it? The central lab?” I eased past both Simon and Willow, not sure I’d have been able to stop myself even if they would have told me not to go in there.

  They didn’t even have to answer because it totally was—I would have known the place anywhere. There was nothing else it could have been. If my dad had been there, I probably would have had to wipe the drool from his chin—this place was like crack for any alien conspiracy theorist.

  It was like I was standing on a movie set . . . or a lot—an entire frickin’ movie lot.

  The ceiling shot all the way up—two or three, maybe even four, stories. The floor of this “central lab” was made from these enormous glass tiles that, in this light—the emergency light—seemed like they were tinted red, just like everything else around us. Suspended some ten feet or so above the glass-tiled floor, along one entire wall, was what appeared to be an observation chamber of some sort that was set behind even more glass. Inside, the chamber was pitch-black, but my eyesight was better than anyone else’s and I could see past the glass. I knew there was no one in there . . . watching us.

  There were too many things to look at all at once: sleek metal tables, like the gurneys that belonged in a morgue. Huge glass cylinders that were so big you could probably fit an entire grown man in them and still have room left over, which made me wonder if that wasn’t exactly what they were for: people. They had these giant tubes sticking out of them, some wide and some not, some attached and some not. There were shelves littered with bottles and beakers and rubber hosing, and things I couldn’t even make sense of because I’d never even seen anything like them before. Everything in here seemed to be made of steel or glass, and had that hospital-sterile appearance, but smelled . . . not quite hospital-y.

  I couldn’t quite place the smell, but it was off somehow. Like antiseptic, but not.

  I shook my head because that so wasn’t what mattered right now. This place . . . here . . . Simon had been right about it all along. My gut said we shouldn’t be here. None of us. They did things here . . . really, really bad things, I just knew it.

  If this was where they’d brought Tyler . . . my stomach plummeted because we were standing in a place no Returned should ever be.

  I spun in a circle, because another thought was crashing down on me. “Where is he?” I needed one of them, Simon or Willow, to tell me we hadn’t made a huge mistake coming here, that we hadn’t just been tricked by Agent Truman. The alarms and the red light pushed my fears to the surface. “You said he’d be here. You said we’d get him and bring him back with us.”

  I made a fist, suddenly wishing we were back at camp, and I could change my mind about the outcome of the standoff between Thom and Simon. I wanted Thom to smash Simon in his lying face after all. Maybe then, instead of ending up here, in the middle of this empty freak show of a lab trying to convince myself that I’d known this was a possibility all along, and telling myself to buck up, soldier, we could’ve just stayed back in Silent Creek, where we’d all have been safe. Safe.

  Safe!

  “Kyra . . .” Simon’s voice was slippery. “We haven’t looked everywhere—”

  “I’ll check the computer wing,” Willow said, hiking her backpack higher on her shoulder. “Meet me in the research chamber, near the east exit.” She took off, leaving me to wonder how we were supposed to know where these places were, but also filling me with renewed hope as the icy grip around my throat eased and I inhaled sharply.

  The computer wing and the research chamber—there were still places we could search for Tyler.

  Maybe, at long last, I’d get the chance to tell him I was sorry.

  Simon had turned his attention to the maze of large glass human-sized canisters, and even though I was desperate to find Tyler, my curiosity compelled me to follow him. That and the fact that I had no idea where the research chamber was.

  These canisters were enormous, towering above our heads, and we threaded our way in and around and under the tubing that stuck out from them.

  I nearly crashed into Simon’s back when he stopped directly in front of the last one—the only one that was covered by some sort of shiny, silver sheet. Beneath the wrap, there was a static-y hum that reminded me of a giant metallic beehive, buzzing with life.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper-accused when he reached for the thin casing, but already my skin buzzed like the tube, anticipating what might be hidden there.

  Just then, there was an abrupt hush. The alarms went suddenly and totally silent. Simon’s face, still frozen in shock or horror or . . . revulsion, stayed that way as we looked around us like stupid, startled rabbits.

  The absence of sound was a million times more disturbing than the shrill warnings had been. And when the red lights switched off too, and there was that brief moment when there was total blackness—just the blackness and the silence—I knew we were done for.

  It took a second, but then one at a time, and row by row, the white fixtures on the ceiling high, high, high overhead began switching on. The lights were blazing, so bright I flinched as if I’d just accidentally looked directly into the sun. And while I waited for my eyes to adjust, I found myself studying the floor and I realized that the glass tiles weren’t red at all, but were actually an eerie shade of blue.

  We heard shouts—a jumble of voices mingled with footsteps that were heavy and hollow—that could have been coming from above or behind, or right in front of us, for all I could tell. It was like being in a twisted version of a carnival funhouse. One where the end result was being strapped to a metal gurney and being dismembered.

  Beside me, I jerked Simon away from the canister or tube or whatever it was, deciding we needed to get the hell outta Dodge at the same time he whispered, “Run,” as he reached for my hand.

  I no longer cared that just seconds ago I’d wished he’d been punched in the face. I was like that, I guess—fickle.

  Blood rushed past my ears as he dragged me. I glanced behind my shoulder, and then up to the observation room and all around us, convinced that at any second we were going to be caught. Willow was already gone, and my fingers clung to Simon’s.

  The exits no longer seemed like viable options—we had no idea which direction they’d be coming from when they finally arrived. Ahead of us, though, there were several vents of some sort, giant grilles in the walls. Instead of waiting to find out if Simon had a plan, I let go of him and rushed to one of them. I tried to pry it off myself, but my hands were fumbling and awkward. The voices grew clearer, louder . . . sounding like they were right on top of us.

  “Here,” Simon said, coming in behind me. His breath was hot against my cheek as he leaned over the top of me, his fingers surer than mine as he removed the grate deftly. “It’s okay. Trust me.”

  I hated the way he said it, like he was my hero, but I didn’t have time to complain. Instead, I eased into the dark opening behind the wall, with Simon coming in right behind me. He reached for the cover, and within seconds, he’d managed to secure it back in place. Just as the central lab was swarmed with an army of footsteps.

  The only light came in through the vent openings, from the lab beyond. It was bigger back here than I’d expected, more like a hallway than a space behind the walls. I leaned my head against the wall, trying to slow my breaths and waiting . . . waiting to see if we’d been discovered. We stayed like that for an eternity. I was terrified that the slightest sound, the barest scrape of my hair or the rasp of my breath might give us away. And the entire
time my heart was ripping a hole in my chest.

  “They got away,” a man’s voice said from inside the lab.

  “You!” someone else shouted—an order, “Take a team to sweep the perimeter. Make sure they don’t get too far. But suit up, and be careful. These kids are dangerous. I don’t want any Code Reds on my watch.” My skin crawled with recognition. The voice . . . the man giving the order, I knew it. It was him . . . Agent Truman.

  “Sir, there aren’t enough bio-suits for everyone,” the other man responded.

  There was a pause, a heavy, thought-filled pause, and then Agent Truman answered, “So pick your best men and suit them up. We need to shut this down. And fast.”

  My eyes went wide as a flurry of activity came from inside the lab and then it grew somewhat less frantic.

  He was here. Agent Truman was here, right on the other side of that wall. My head swam as I considered just how close he was. How easy it would be for him to find me. To capture me.

  Not only that, they knew it was us they were after.

  “We have to go!” I half mouthed through the semidarkness. “There,” I said, pointing because Jett hadn’t been wrong about that human-flashlight thing. Here, I definitely had the advantage.

  Ahead of us, there was a staircase. I had no idea where it led, except down. But since our alternative was to turn ourselves in to those Daylighters in the lab, I figured it was worth a shot.

  The moment I started toward it, Simon reached for me, and, feeling somewhat smug to have the upper hand, I repeated the words he’d used on me back in the lab: “It’s okay. Trust me.”

  I half worried Simon would trip since the stairway was so steep and I was practically running down them. When we reached the bottom, I glanced around wishing I’d spent more time studying Jett’s blueprints.

  It was as if we’d entered a giant hamster maze, those colorful plastic ones you find at pet stores. Except instead of being plastic and colorful, like the hamster tubes, the ducts we were standing in were industrial and metal and supersized. We wouldn’t have to crawl on our hands and knees.

  It was the sound that made me realize what this was: the kind of ductwork that circulates air through office buildings, the constant whoosh-whoosh. And I was right, there were fans every twenty paces or so all along the corridor behind these enormous screened openings—even bigger than the one we’d crawled through. And when we rushed past them, which we did because the sensation of being sucked at creeped me out, the whooshing sound grew louder and my hair whipped my cheeks.

  I leaned close to Simon’s ear so he could hear me, and I still had to shout. “What now?”

  “Keep going!” Simon yelled back. “And if I give you the word, then whatever happens, don’t breathe!” He said the last two words super slow, making sure I knew this part was extra important.

  Like instructions: Don’t breathe.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. “What word?”

  He just repeated himself. “The word.” And before I could ask again, he shoved me. “Go, Kyra. We don’t have time for this.”

  Yes. Right. No time. The throbbing noise of the fans had me rattled, but I didn’t need to be reminded why we were running: I was sure that the others—not the good-guy others of our team, but the bad-guy ones—would be right behind us any second, and I hurried to get past the next vent.

  The tunnels felt endless, and there were several places where we had to make a decision to go left or right. I was the one who could see, but it was Simon who made the call. I got the sense that he understood this place, and the layout of it, far better than I’d realized. As if he’d not only studied the schematics, but that he’d committed them to memory.

  The ceiling never got lower, but the passageways definitely got narrower, and it was the narrow part I wasn’t thrilled with. I wasn’t crazy about narrow. It wasn’t that I was claustrophobic per se, at least not in the sense that I was going to have a full-on panic attack or anything, but I definitely wasn’t in love with confined spaces.

  I guess you could say I was claustrophobic-light.

  Just knowing that Simon was already blocking my escape route going back made my heart trip over itself whenever I spent too much time thinking about it. And the farther we went, the more reckless it beat as this awful feeling that these tunnels might never, ever end became something heavy and solid and real.

  Then something snared me, strong fingers seizing me, pinching the bones of my wrist, and I jolted backward. My breath caught hard in my throat. If Simon hadn’t been there, still blocking my exit, I would have fallen over for sure.

  “GO!” I shouted, trying to shove Simon out of my path, but I was already being dragged toward whoever had ahold of me.

  The man appeared then, coming out from where he’d been hiding, waiting for us, I was sure, in an opening in the passageways. I could see him as clearly as if it were daylight, and it was my second polar-bear moment of the day.

  “Gotcha,” he growled, looking more military than Agent Truman ever had, right down to the black grease paint smeared across his sharp features. He wasn’t suited up, which was a scary thought, because if this guy wasn’t one of Truman’s best, then I definitely didn’t want to run into one of the suited-up dudes!

  His eyes were a shade of blue so pale they were virtually colorless and downright chilling. I could almost imagine that even his teeth, if he were to show them to me, would be polar-bear sharp. He raised his hand and before I realized what was happening, there was a flashlight shining directly into my face.

  He might as well have set off a nuclear blast. I winced, taking several seconds to adjust to the sudden flare, and then I watched as behind that light, he cocked his head to the side, studying me with those frigid eyes of his. “It’s you . . . ,” he exhaled, forcing me to taste the sour combination of coffee and tobacco on his breath.

  “Simon, run!” I kicked at the guy, but the hand clamped around my wrist was strong, and the arm behind it was thick and muscular. The guy jerked me back before I could figure out a way to stop him. I pitched backward, my head slamming against the metal wall as I tried to find something to grip on to. Everywhere around me—the walls, the floor, and the ceiling of the ducts—was sheer and smooth. There was nothing I could grasp.

  “Kyra!” Simon called out to me, his voice filtering through my hysteria. He should be trying to run, I thought, but instead he said calmly, “The word,” and somehow, even above all that fan noise, I heard him.

  I knew he was saying something vitally-critically-majorly important, but for a split second I couldn’t quite grasp it. He’d just explained this, hadn’t he? “If I say the word . . . ,” he’d told me, then . . . what?

  I was supposed to do something . . . but no . . . I was supposed to not do something.

  Yes! That was it.

  I clamped my mouth closed and stopped breathing altogether, and at the exact same moment, that key card—the very same one Jett had given Simon earlier, the one Simon had made Jett assure him would work—landed with a clank on the metal duct floor right at my feet. It was plain and plastic, and it just sat there, doing what looked like a whole lot of nothing.

  I glanced up at the guy, the one with the death grip on my wrist. He looked blankly back at me and then down at the useless-looking key card. Only he didn’t have the instructions for “the word” and he was still breathing.

  I didn’t even know if anything was happening at first, or what was going to happen, but after a few seconds of looking back and forth between the card and the guy, I started to notice something: the guy—this giant behemoth of a man—was getting woozy.

  Even if I hadn’t been able to hold my breath for as long as I could—which was way longer than everyone else—what happened next happened crazy fast. Within seconds, milliseconds even. First there was just a whole lotta blinking, something the poor guy probably wasn’t even aware he was doing. And then I felt his hold on my wrist slipping, his fingers sliding.

  I di
dn’t react, mostly because I didn’t think I needed to. Like I said, it all happened so fast. And it wasn’t like in the movies, where you could see the steam or smoke or toxic fumes coming out of the key card—there was nothing to indicate anything had happened at all. Except the blinking and the loosened grip, and then the nodding.

  And then, when I thought maybe the guy was just going to fall asleep standing there like that, I reached over and prodded him, with only my index finger.

  That was all it took . . . he tumbled over, falling flat onto his back.

  The crash echoed up and down the walls of the ductwork like thunder. Simon bent over and took the flashlight, then grabbed my hand. “Let’s get outta here. And don’t breathe too much just yet.” Instead of Simon hauling me backward, away from the guy, we climbed over him, like he was a giant, slumbering mountain.

  The back of my head throbbed where I’d smacked it against the metal wall. I reached up to feel it. “What did he mean?” I asked Simon, who was dragging me along now that he had the flashlight and could see where he was going.

  “What did who mean?”

  “That guy? Back there, when he said ‘It’s you,’ what do you think he meant by that?”

  Simon’s delay wasn’t necessarily long, but it wasn’t short either. “Nothing, probably. Just that he found us, I guess.”

  He waved the light toward a ladder, its rungs welded to one of the sheer walls. “There, up ahead. See that? We made it.”

  “Wait. How do you know this is the place?” Simon stopped and pointed at a metal sign that was riveted to the sheer wall. Research Chamber, it read. The exact place Willow had told us to meet her, and I was impressed again. Simon had a serious grasp of the inner workings of this place, since he’d gotten us here through a bunch of tunnels in the near dark.

  I tugged at the back of his shirt. “What if they’re up there, waiting for us?” I’d only seen Jett give Simon one of those toxic key-card thingies.

  He didn’t seem all that concerned, and he pocketed the flashlight as he started up the ladder. “Only one way to find out.” Then he paused. “But if anything does happen, you need to save yourself. Find someplace safe and stay hidden. Someone—Jett or Willow . . . or someone will come back for you.” He shot me a pointed look over his shoulder. “I mean it, Kyra. Stay hidden.” He paused, waiting for me to agree.