The Replaced

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?”