The Replaced

Except this was a real-life person we were talking about, and I wasn’t sure I could flip the switch that easily.

“Well,” Griffin announced, “good news is Jett made amazing progress while you were off playing Rescue Rangers. Now that you’re back, he wants us to join him in the computer lab . . . so he can show us what he’s found so far. We can have him track Daylighter communications too. We wanna make sure they have no idea where we are, or that we ever even knew about the kid in Delta.”

My chest tightened at the mention of the boy, and the proximity of the agents. I choked back a healthy dose of guilt, trying not to imagine him strapped to a gurney, the same way Willow had been back in their central lab. I couldn’t help wishing we’d done more. Tried harder.

I had a moment of panic, though, as I reached nervously for Simon. “My eyes . . . how are they?”

His mouth turned downward as he leaned close, reassuring me with a whispered, “Can’t even tell in the light.” He nodded toward Griffin. “She didn’t notice.”

True. There was no way she’d have let something that significant slide.

By the time we’d reached the computer lab, I was disappointed Tyler hadn’t come out to meet me. That would have been the one consolation to this whole mess, to find him there . . . preferably all alone.

And, in a perfect world, without his shirt.

The alone part wasn’t so far off, however. In fact, when we got to the lab it was practically deserted. Last time I’d been in here, the place had been bustling, with about a half dozen or so of Griffin’s soldiers assigned to monitor radio frequencies, internet traffic, and online activity.

Now it was just Jett and Thom waiting for the four of us.

Apparently Griffin was just as baffled as I was by the absence of activity. “Where is everyone?”

“I cleared the place. What I’m about to show you needs to stay between us.” Jett turned to Nyla. “I think she should go too. We can’t risk it.”

Nyla looked like she might argue, but Griffin nodded toward the door—an unspoken order. Nyla stalled, her shoulders, face, and arms tense while her eyebrows drew together in an uncertain line, like she was pained by the decision. Ultimately, though, her need to obey Griffin won out.

When the door closed behind her, Jett took a seat, this time not at his laptop but at one of Griffin’s computers, and went to work. “Here . . . ,” he said.

I watched as the large monitor in front of him came to life, filled with the same NSA logo I’d seen that first day when Agent Truman forced his business card on me, the one with the golden firefly on it that signified his super secret-y Daylight Division. Jett entered a series of commands, line after line of code, as fluently as if he had full NSA security clearance.

I chewed the inside of my cheek while my eyes drifted to my watch, slowing my mind.

When the last of the files unlocked, and the screen in front of Jett, and all of the screens around us, began to fill with information, I took a step back, my eyes wide. There were files that looked like printouts and scanned documents—some official and some not so official. Pictures, old and new.

All about me.

It definitely wasn’t what I’d expected to see. All those images. All those memories. Like a blast from the past. My face, my name, my information. My birthdate, the address of our house in Burlington, my school and medical and Social Security records. My birth certificate with my teeny, tiny newborn footprints. Snapshots of me standing alone and posing for the camera on my first day of school, and then again with Austin on our way to Homecoming in the tenth grade. Portraits of me with my softball teams throughout the years.

And one photograph I didn’t remember being taken—of me on the day I’d returned—in the hospital in Burlington, with those orange and black ribbons I’d been wearing for our championship game still tangled through my hair while I’d been wearing the ugly blue hospital gown.

They all filled the screens. Filled up every last square inch of pixelated space in front of, and all around, us.

“What . . . is this?” It was like staring at an online homage to me. A This Is Your Life, my dad would have said, which was some old-fashioned TV show he always brought up whenever we busted out our family albums.

This was what the NSA—what Agent Truman and the Daylighters—had been hiding inside all those encrypted files? But . . . why? What was so interesting about me?

“Is there one of these on each of us?” It was the only thing that made sense: they were tracking all the Returned this closely.

Thom just closed his eyes, letting me know with a look that I was off the mark with my guess.

“So, what, then? What else was in the files?” I asked.

Griffin was apparently as clueless as I was. “Yeah. What are we missing? What’s so special about her?” I kind of liked the way she said “her,” like I was a bad taste in her mouth. She didn’t even bother looking my way.

Jett did, though. He glanced over his shoulder at me, and there was something in his eyes, those unusual, kaleidoscope eyes that clicked then. I recognized that look—it was the same one Natty had given me just after we’d raced out of the bowling alley, after . . .

He knew. I wasn’t sure how, whether it had been Natty or Simon who’d told him, but Jett for sure knew my secret.

I frowned back at him and shook my head. “It’s not . . . it . . . no . . .” I leaned over his shoulder, scanning the screens and the files for mention of it.