The Replaced

The way she said it, like we could be used as a weapon, made my skin crawl.

“And what do they get out of it, this trade? The aliens?”

Simon jumped in. “We’ve asked ourselves the same thing a million different ways. Thing is, we’re not even sure who they are exactly. Maybe our DNA has something they need. Or maybe, the way we use lab animals, we’re just guinea pigs to them. Maybe they’re doing all this weird shit to us, and then releasing us back into the wild.”

“And me?” I asked. “What does that make me? If I’m not . . . still me?” I looked at my hands again, my fingers, the lines running across my palms, because they looked so . . . so ordinary. Same as they always had.

Griffin sighed. “My dad liked to talk. He was one of those guys who liked the sound of his own voice, and when I was”—she exhaled again—“when I was one of his subjects, a captive audience, he told me one of the things both sides wanted all along was to create a replicate—an exact human copy. Not a hybrid, but more like an alien clone that looked entirely human. It was what they referred to as a Replacement. Made from the genetic material of the aliens but still containing all the memories and life experiences of the human they were replicating.

“My dad called it the ultimate scientific achievement. He said it would decide what truly defines life: heredity or history.”

I recoiled from her words. Her explanation. Especially since I was “the human” in question. “Life?” I had to ask. “What does that even mean? My heart is beating, my blood—even though it’s not the same human blood it was before—is still pumping. I’m breathing. Aren’t those the things that make me alive?”

“Are they?” Simon cut in. “Is it your genetics that make you the person you are? Or is it about who you are? The other things—the stuff your parents taught you about being a good person or that you throw a killer rise ball and win championships—all the things that have nothing to do with DNA or blood . . .” He reached out and tugged at my new fake brunette hair. “. . . or hair color?”

I thought about something Tyler had said to me, back when I’d first explained to him about the whole healing and aging thing, and he’d tried to convince me that neither of these things changed who I was: “It’s your memories and life experiences, your hopes and fears and dreams and passions that make you who you are, and none of those things have changed, have they?” and I wondered if that applied here too. If he’d still feel the same way now.

I wasn’t so sure.

“Who else knows?” I asked, suddenly wishing no one knew, not even me. I wanted to go away. To start over and never think about this, about how different I was again.

“Natty was here when we opened the file,” Thom explained, and he’d been so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was here at all. “She didn’t see the DNA report, but she already saw how fast you heal when we were rescuing Willow.”

I heard Griffin suck in a sharp breath. “Heal?” she repeated dazedly. “No one mentioned that.”

“Yeah,” Simon said. “She heals like”—he snapped his fingers—“that. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

Except, I remembered what Tyler said: that Griffin had told him he could heal faster than anyone else at camp. I wondered, then, was it a leap to read more into that? If we shared more than just being Returned?

I opened my mouth to ask Griffin what she thought, when she caught my eye and shook her head at me. The action was discreet and curt, but the message was loud and clear: I needed to keep my mouth shut.

Hadn’t she said the same thing to Tyler? Told him not to tell anyone?

I glanced around—at Jett and Simon and Thom—and tried to imagine who, in here, she didn’t trust. But I did as she instructed, swallowing back my questions.

Inwardly, however, they buzzed through my brain.

Did Tyler have any new and unique abilities too? Was there anything he could do the other Returned couldn’t?

And what about that other part—that thing where I’d been gone for five whole years? Was that because I was a Replaced and not just a regular Returned?

If that was the case, then where did that leave Tyler? I didn’t know how long he’d been gone, but it couldn’t have been too long. It certainly hadn’t been five years. Days at most. Yet when I’d come back, my memory had been whole, complete. His was a mess. Sure, he remembered things from before, but there was a definite gap, a missing chunk from right before he’d been taken . . .

. . . the entire part where we’d fallen in love.

It was the best part, if you asked me.

“Let me ask you a question.” Griffin’s eyes narrowed as her brief flash of concern over Tyler was safely tucked away. “How much control do you have over this telekinetic thing you have? Can you . . .” Her brows fell in a silent ultimatum. “. . . can you show it to me, so I can see how it works?”

I shook my head. “I wish. I have to be focused.”

Focused was putting it nicely. Angry, panicked, completely freaked out, all those probably made more sense.

Griffin nodded then, and I thought the gesture was for me, a kind of Okay, I get it.

But then the door opened and six of her soldiers stormed in all at once. They were armed to the teeth, their black rifles held at the ready, and suddenly the room that had been empty seconds earlier was busting at the seams.