The Replaced

by Kimberly Derting

  Simon just rolled his eyes. “It’s Jett. Jett is Research and Development. Now come on, we don’t have time for this. The longer we wait, the more likely they are to have their security up and running.”

  “I got that part covered. I’m still in their system.” Jett pulled out his laptop. “I’ll log in remotely and buy you about three minutes. After that, they’ll override me and have their cameras up and running again. It’s the best I can do, so better get a move on.”

  We moved, all right. And three minutes were more than enough to get us back inside. But that wasn’t the hard part. The entrance was easy—the glass door was busted out and most of the personnel were still off searching for us.

  The hard part would be facing Agent Truman and his hazmat army.

  The harder part would be finding Willow and saving her ass.

  The hardest part would be getting us all out again in one piece.

  The light on the camera above the main entrance was off. As far as I could tell, it was only a matter of seconds before Jett’s hold on their system was up and we’d be surrounded. We stayed in formation, the way Simon told us—me in front, Natty right behind me, and Thom and Simon flanking her. We moved like we meant business and showed no fear, even though my blood was pumping hard and fast and white-hot.

  When we reached the central lab door, it was still ajar from Simon’s Silly Putty blast.

  “Ready?” I whispered. And then, because it didn’t matter whether we were ready or not, I swallowed hard and shoved the door open, hoping against hope we’d find Willow alone and the lab otherwise deserted.

  No such luck. Agent Truman was there, with no fewer than a dozen of his Daylight Division soldiers—only three were suited up in protective gear, and the rest were as exposed as he was.

  I felt sick with horror when I saw Willow, fastened to one of those gurneys. She wasn’t making it particularly easy on them, though, thrashing beneath the leather straps they’d bound her with. Her head banged against the slick metal, creating a crashing sound that echoed off the glass tiles and walls.

  “Her!” Agent Truman crowed triumphantly, pointing at me. “She’s the one we want.”

  When eight of those soldier-y guys descended on us, I held up my hands in surrender.

  But Natty made sure every last one of them was paying attention as she jabbed her gun right between my shoulder blades.

  It made sense I would be the one who got shot. Not just because it had been my idea to come back for Willow, but because I would heal so, so much faster than the rest of them. If Natty actually had to pull the trigger, an idea that turned my stomach because it meant exposing those soldiers who weren’t suited up to my deadly blood, I could potentially be up and running again by the time we had Willow out of her restraints.

  I managed to grin when I said, “Stand back or the girl gets it,” by which I meant me, of course. I could practically feel Simon rolling his eyes behind me.

  Despite my lame attempt to be funny, and my seriously poor timing, the mood in the room shifted as my meaning sank in. Those not in gear collectively rocked backward, as if just easing away might keep them safe.

  All except Agent Truman. He shoved his way to the front, casting me a vicious glare. “What do you think this is? A negotiation?” He glanced toward Willow before raising his voice. “We’re not offering a trade. None of you is getting out of here.”

  “We’re not here to trade,” I told him, keeping my arms in the air. I stayed focused, breathing evenly to calm my heart as I evaluated the opposing team. Sure, they looked fierce, but I reminded myself they were just people—regular-ordinary-average men who just so happened to be soldiers.

  Big, yes. Trained, no doubt. But still, just normal guys.

  We had something they didn’t: the ability to heal . . . and that whole toxic-blood thing.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Agent Truman intoned. There was something cagey in the way he moved, and my heart picked up a beat, and then another as I kept my eyes trained on him. It wasn’t just that he didn’t back away like the others; he was up to something. He put his hands up placatingly, and even his voice became somehow less threatening. “These guys haven’t done anything wrong. Leave them out of it.”

  These guys—it was a strange way for him to phrase it, since I was including him in my threat. But the guys in question looked relieved, like they were glad he was offering them an out.

  They didn’t want the dreaded Code Red, which was what they called it when someone was infected by our blood, any more than I wanted to take a bullet through my shoulder. I might heal, but it would still hurt like a mother.

  A few men backed up another step, but Simon must’ve sensed the same thing I did, that Agent Truman was up to something, and he called out a warning. “Don’t move! Everyone, just stay where you are.” When they all did as he ordered, freezing in place, I finally started to believe we might actually pull this thing off. Then he said, “Get her off that thing,” and Thom slipped past me, and past the guards, to Willow.

  No one stopped Thom. No one so much as lifted a finger when he unfastened the straps, or when Willow jumped up, sending the gurney crashing to the glass tiles beneath us.

  “You’re making a big mistake.” Agent Truman was still inching toward us, his face devoid of fear.

  “Seriously. Stop where you are,” I said, part of me hoping Natty would go through with it when the time came, but hoping almost as hard that she’d chicken out.

  We never got the chance to find out.

  Thom tried to warn us, Willow too, with their shouts of “Behind you!” and “Run!” But it was too late for warnings because suddenly Simon was tackled from behind. I recognized the soldier who took him down because I could never forget those eyes—ice blue. The same guy Simon and I had knocked out with Jett’s sleeping gas. He grinned down in Simon’s face. “Got you now, you little piss.”

  Natty was slammed from the side, and her gun toppled to the floor, skittering noisily across the tiles and coming to rest against one of the tall glass cylinders. In the sudden chaos, Thom went down too, hurled to the ground, and buried beneath a pile of bodies.

  Willow, who’d just gotten to her feet, had this strange faraway look in her eyes, like she was dazed, and I was sure I knew why: they’d drugged her. Just one more reason we had to get her out of here.

  I was the only one of our group still standing and able to fight.

  Now it was just me and him—Agent Truman.

  The back of my head ached. It burned and buzzed, and I tried to place the sensation.

  I looked back at Agent Truman . . . and past him, to the central lab. To the glass tubes and the gurneys and the soldiers who could ruin everything.

  Dread rippled through me.

  Agent Truman started toward me when the explosion happened. It wasn’t the ground-shaking explosion of pyrotechnics, but a sudden-unexpected-out-of-nowhere burst that sent glass torpedoing in all directions.

  I ducked my head instinctively. Shards of glass sprayed across the tile floor. When I glanced up again, I saw that it had been one of the human-sized canisters. It had spontaneously exploded.

  No, not spontaneously, I realized, when I caught Agent Truman’s incredulous eyes shoot my way.

  Me. I’d done that.

  My ability.

  “My suit!” one of the soldiers shouted. “It’s been compromised.”

  He’d been caught by a piece of flying glass.

  Agent Truman crossed the floor, his feet grinding through crushed glass, almost meeting me but not quite. I eyed his cast. I imagined myself on the pitching mound. This was it, my clutch play.

  Fast, like the wind-up release of a pitch, I reached behind my back and closed my fingers around the grip of the gun hidden in the waist of my jeans, just beneath my T-shirt. Even before my shoulder had whipped back around, my thumb found that sweet spot, the safety, and released it.

  I studied him, waiting to see what his game plan was, because everyone—pitcher
, batter, coach, NSA agent—had some sort of plan. I did. Agent Truman did.

  But my dad used to tell me, Whoever blinks first loses, so I waited for it.

  “Shoot me, and your friends here all die.”

  That was his blink. He was threatening me, letting me know I should give up because he didn’t want to die.

  I had him. “Who said anything about shooting you?” I pointed the gun at my thigh, and because I couldn’t stomach the idea of killing everyone in the room, I said, “This isn’t a bluff. This whole place is about to go Code Red in three . . . two . . .”

  And that was it. I had them. Not all of them, maybe. There would be two left, but two in uncompromised hazmat suits were better than a dozen. They knew it and we knew it too.

  Soldiers scrambled for exits as if we’d set the place on fire. Thom was released and grabbed for Willow, who wobbled slightly but kept her balance.

  I’d planned to say “I told you so” to that SOB Agent Truman when I pulled the trigger, but the last thing I remembered was the sensation of my leg being ripped wide open, and then everything going black.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Day Twenty-Seven

  Somewhere Along the I-5 Corridor

  THE INCESSANT TAPPING SOUND WOKE ME, BUT there was something else too. Something soothing and warm, like skin, fingertips, grazed my jaw.

  Nice, I thought. This is nice.

  I was curled on my side in the back of the SUV, and I blinked, trying to determine the sound in the darkness. It didn’t take long, though. It was Jett’s keyboard, a sound I’d grown more than accustomed to over the past few weeks. He might as well be dating that laptop of his.

  “Hey,” Simon said from above me, his voice hushed. And when he ran his hand through my hair, I realized those had been his fingers touching my jaw, and it was his lap my head was cradled on. “You’re back,” he said softly.

  I shot up, glancing out the windows into the night. “How long was I out?” I rubbed my head, then my face, doing a quick inventory as I tried to put the pieces together. My memory was still fuzzy. Everything was fuzzy.

  When I reached my leg, and my fingers traced the bloody opening where my jeans were shredded, I paused, everything clicking neatly into place. “Crap,” I whispered, my fingers diving into the opening to test the skin beneath.

  “Yeah,” Simon agreed, from right beside me, still using that too-soft voice he’d adopted, like I was in a delicate state. “You had us scared there for a while. You were out a good forty-five minutes.”

  My eyes flew wide. “Forty-five minutes?” That was forever. More sleep than I’d had since I’d been returned, at least in one stretch. Up ’til now, all I’d managed were half-hour naps, and those had been major victories, considering how few and far between they’d been. “What happened? How’d we get outta there?”

  “You definitely didn’t make it easy on us. It was bad enough she could hardly walk a straight line,” Thom explained from the driver’s seat, lifting his chin to indicate the way back, behind where Simon and I were. I twisted in my seat and Willow was there, sprawled in the third row, arms and legs spread wide as she snored away, sleeping off whatever Agent Truman and his Daylighters had used to sedate her. I envied that—her ability to sleep—even if it was drug-induced. “Good thing you’re not heavy,” Thom added.

  Jett, who was in the passenger seat now, stopped working on his computer. “All I saw was a rush of guys getting the hell outta the building, like it was about to explode or something. And then a few seconds later, Willow came out . . . carrying you.”

  I frowned, turning a skeptical eye on the snoring beast draped on the seat behind me. “This Willow? Bu—I thought you said she couldn’t walk a straight line.”

  From the other side of Simon, Natty leaned forward and shook her head. She wore a huge knowing grin as she, too, surveyed the slumbering giant. “Didn’t stop her. She wouldn’t let anyone else touch you.” Her smile widened. “I think you have a new admirer.”

  I turned to glance at Willow again. Her spiky brown hair, which had seemed prickly whenever she’d snarled at me, now swayed gently, giving the impression of downy feathers. It was her mouth, which dangled open while the most horrendous sounds poured out of her, that ruined the effect.

  It was as if she’d swallowed a bear and it was fighting to get out.

  A satisfied smile touched my lips, and I couldn’t help the swell of pride over my decision to go back for her.

  Still serious, Simon’s jaw flexed. “How’s your leg?”

  I prodded it, running my fingers over the skin, which had already closed around whatever wound had been there. There were sticky bits of debris that didn’t belong, and my stomach churned when I realized what they were: pieces of my own flesh that had been blown away in the blast of the gunshot. Gross.

  But there was no pain. Shocking, considering the way my jeans looked and the patches of blood smeared on my leg. There were flecks of dry skin and flesh that hadn’t been incorporated into the healing process. Seriously, I looked like some kind of war refugee.

  Except, I’d survived intact.

  “Fine,” I answered truthfully, because I did feel okay, all things considered. “I must’ve slept through the healing part.”

  “It was crazy . . . how fast it was,” Jett said. “We knew you could do that, but watching it—seeing it with our own eyes . . .” He looked around, finally landing on Natty. “Am I right?”

  “It was,” she agreed, “crazy.”

  I was glad I hadn’t been awake to see the looks on their faces, or to hear whatever they might’ve had to say about the whole thing. I didn’t need to be reminded I was the freak of the bunch.

  “Do you think anyone got hurt? Like, infected, when I did it?” Maybe I’d be better off not knowing—the whole ignorance-is-bliss thing—but I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

  “As far as I could tell, you cleared the entire lab with just the threat of the Code Red.” Simon reached over and patted my leg.

  “Yeah. Even the guy whose suit got ripped when that . . . thing, that glass, broke . . . he took off in time.” Natty’s face screwed up. “What was that all about anyway? What do you think happened?”

  I flashed Simon a pleading look, but he just shrugged. “Who knows. They’re just beggin’ for trouble with all that techno-crap they have. I doubt they even know what half that stuff is. They’re lucky they haven’t blown themselves up yet,” he told Natty, ignoring me altogether. “But whatever it was, it sure had them scrambling.” And then I felt it, the slight squeeze of his fingers on my thigh.

  He’d known all along it was me.

  “What about Agent Truman?” I asked. The last thing I remembered was his face as he stood in front of me when I pulled the trigger. I’d probably see that face every day for the rest of my life. It was forever branded in my mind.

  It was Natty who answered. “Yeah, so that was weird. He was the one person who didn’t run when the rest of ’em did. He just stood there, while you were bleeding and”—she frowned—“he just let us get away.” She turned to Thom and sighed. “For a minute there, we thought we’d lost Thom too. He was the last one out.” Tears welled in her eyes. “He stayed behind to fend off those last two guys in hazmat suits so we could get away.”

  Thom just smiled at her, his hand crossing back to squeeze hers. “You could never lose me.”

  My eyes widened, but I couldn’t get past what Natty had said about Agent Truman. “So Truman didn’t shoot at us?”

  Thom answered, “No. It was the weirdest thing. It was like he was frozen or something.” He shrugged. “Maybe he was shocked that you really did it. Think about it: the guy just got himself exposed. He was probably freaking out a little.”

  Freaking out. Hard to imagine Agent Truman would be worried about anything except whatever mission was at hand: namely, getting his hands—or hand, as the case may be—on us.

  “At least we don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Natty said. “
Did you see those dead eyes of his? Gave me the creeps.”

  I wasn’t as convinced as Natty. “I don’t know about that,” I said, hating that I felt even the smallest twinge of guilt over what I’d done to him. I mean, seriously, the guy had pretty much backed me into a corner—he’d strapped Willow to a gurney and was probably going to dissect her—and here I was actually feeling bad that I’d gone to such extreme measures to rescue her. I’d warned him. It wasn’t my fault he hadn’t been smart enough to run.

  Guilt sucked.

  “I wouldn’t count him out just yet,” I said with a sigh. “I doubt getting sick is enough to stop him from coming after us. We shouldn’t stop worrying about him . . . at least not yet.”

  “Can I just say I wasn’t sure you’d have the balls to go through with it?” This was from Willow now, resurrected from the dead and gripping my shoulder from behind.

  I had to smile at that. I couldn’t say I blamed her for doubting me; there was a point there where I wasn’t sure I could do it either. “Is that your way of saying thank you?”

  Another squeeze, just a slight tightening, and then she collapsed backward against her seat. “If that’s how you want to take it.”

  I was relieved. To have Willow back, to be away from that place, and even a small part of me, a secretly terrible part of me I didn’t want to admit to, was glad knowing that Agent Truman might not be a problem for much longer. Still, there was something bugging me.

  After everything we’d just been through, I should probably banish any lingering concerns to the darkest corner of my brain, but I’d never been the kind of girl who could ignore something once the question was niggling at me. Even when I was little, I’d always wanted to know why the sky was blue or birds flew south for the winter . . . to the point that I’d driven my parents crazy because “I don’t know” or “because that’s just the way things are” were never good enough answers for me.

  “So that lab . . . and all that equipment . . . ,” I started on a shaky voice, because maybe, for the first time, these were the kinds of answers I really didn’t want. “What exactly are they hoping to gain? From us, I mean. What is it they expect to find . . . from whatever it is they plan to do to us?”