The Replaced

“Replace?” I repeated, finding it almost impossible to form even that single word.

Simon nodded, having the decency to look chagrined. “Yes, replace.” He hesitated, and for the first time in forever the leader in him vanished. He was just a kid when he met my gaze. Like me. “That’s what this whole abduction thing seems to be about. Genetic manipulation.” He swallowed, his brows lifting.

I shrank back. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I put my hands up to warn everyone to just . . . stay back! even though not one of them had moved so much as an inch. I needed a minute, or maybe a lifetime, to process what he’d just said because it was so are-you-kidding-me? When I finally tried to talk, I’d reached that hysterical edge where my voice had shot up about ten octaves. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that I’m . . . that you think I’ve got some kind of alien DNA in me?” My last few words were laced with so much disbelief there was no doubt what I believed. “This isn’t for real. You can’t be serious.”

“The proper term for it is hybrid,” Jett offered, like he was being helpful or something.

My face crumpled, and my stomach plummeted. “Dude, no. Not you too.”

But Jett just nodded. Clearly, I was the only one who wasn’t onboard with this insane theory of theirs. “That’s what the offspring of two species are called: hybrids.”

“But that’s not what we are. We’re not”—I used air quotes to show what I thought of it—“‘offspring.’ It’s not like we were up there doin’ it or anything.” I knew I sounded like a twelve-year-old, but I was way past caring about my maturity level.

“No,” Jett agreed, and the way his voice lowered, getting all serious, it struck me all over again that he wasn’t nearly as young as he looked. “There was no”—he made air quotes too—“‘doing it’ involved. At least as far as we know. This was done good-old-fashioned test tube–style.”

I shook my head, but Simon nodded his in unison. And so did Thom, Natty, Jett, and even Willow when I looked back at her. I was pretty sure I must’ve banged my head on something or been rufied or maybe I’d passed out again and this was all one big crazy dream.

Hybrids.

I let the word rattle around in my brain.

Up ’til now I’d been pretty open-minded, or so I thought. I’d accepted a lot: that I hadn’t aged a single day the entire time I’d been gone, that I’d been “experimented” on and now would age ridiculously slowly, that my blood was now toxic to everyone who wasn’t like us. But this . . . this felt like a whole different level of crazy. “Okay, yeah,” I said, my voice rising another notch. “I saw that movie once. Isn’t that the one where Jeff Goldblum accidentally turns himself into a giant bug by mixing his DNA with a fly?” I sounded unhinged; I knew that. But who wouldn’t in my place? My mom and I had watched that movie too—The Fly. The scientist whose teleportation experiments had gone horribly wrong, and in the end, he’d morphed into something half man and half insect, and begged the woman he loved to put him out of his misery.

Was that what we were? Some genetic mutation that belonged nowhere? Is that why Agent Truman and his Daylight Division were so desperate to get their hands on us?

“This isn’t a movie,” Thom added, ending his silent streak. I tried to remember why I ever thought he was the voice of reason. “You knew we were different, you just didn’t realize how different.”

“So you’re saying we’re not even human?”

Simon tried to reach for me, but I batted his hand away. I couldn’t stand the idea of being touched, not by him. Not by anyone. “We’re still human,” he said softly. “We’re alien-human hybrids. We’re . . . both.” He tried again, and this time I let his hand stay on my knee. “It’s what makes us—you—special. You need to believe that.”

I crushed my palms against my eyes until I saw white spots. This was insane. I couldn’t take any more of this talk about being some sort of . . . hybrid-whatever-we-were-supposed-to-be.

There was no way it was true.

Except, how was the idea that any of us was less than human any weirder than the fact that we’d been abducted by aliens and then returned? Besides, didn’t that explain the strange things we could do—that we’d somehow been altered?

I squeezed my eyes even tighter as guilt choked me. If that was the case, what had I done to Tyler? What had I subjected him to?

Turning away from everyone, I pressed my head against the window.

I traced my finger around the ragged and bloody tear in my jeans. I thought about Agent Truman and what he’d said when we were surrounded: “She’s the one we want.”

She, meaning me. That, coupled with the guy down in the air ducts, the way he’d looked at me with those cold blue eyes of his. “It’s you,” he’d said, like he recognized me, even though we’d never met.

It’s me . . .

What if that was it all along? What if this whole thing had never been about the rest of them—the other Returned—the way Simon suggested. What if Agent Truman had his sights set on me and me alone, and Willow had only gotten caught in the crossfire?

Agent Truman was still wearing that cast, after all; he’d been there that night at Devil’s Hole and had seen what I could do.

Me. What I could do, not the others.