The Replaced

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 this 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.”