The Taking

I continued to rub the still-tingling spot where his blade had sliced me. My fingers were covered in sticky blood that settled into my cuticles and beneath my fingernails, making dark-red crescents. “You said we were ‘taken’ as part of some experiment; what did you mean by that? And how can you possibly believe it was . . .” I swallowed. I had to say it. “Aliens?”

I had the feeling this wasn’t the first time Simon had had to convince someone, and a look of patience settled over his face. He sat back and nodded. “I think you already know why, Kyra. We’ve been tracking your father’s online comings and goings for years. You don’t have to pretend he didn’t try to tell you this already.”

I closed my eyes and wished that were enough to block him out. How could any of this—anything my dad had said—really be true?

Yet how could I argue when I’d just witnessed my own body healing itself? Simon was right; no normal person could do that.

“When they take us, they don’t just take our temperatures, or poke and prod us, Kyra. They’re advanced—way more so than we are. They do things to us.” His eyes met mine. “We’re no longer like our old selves. Our bodies heal faster and age slower. We need less sleep and sustenance. I assume you haven’t eaten much either. That nothing tastes the same.”

He was right about the sleep, and the food, even if I didn’t tell him so.

I swallowed, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

I looked down at my hands. They were the same hands as they’d always been. I was exactly the same as I’d always been. I looked the same, sounded the same, had the same tan and bruise I’d had right before I’d vanished.

Which was weird. “If I can heal, why do I still have this?” I showed him my bruise, the one on my shin.

“You had it when you vanished, right?”

I nodded because I finally had him.

“Right,” he said. “And you always will. I can’t explain everything; I wish I could. Occasionally someone will come back with a bruise or a scar, and if they do, they’ll always have it.” He lifted his sleeve to show me a circular scar on the upper part of his left arm. “I still have this—from my smallpox vaccination.”

I examined his scar and then leaned over and looked at my bruise, trying to decide if it had changed, even a little bit, since I’d been back. It had been almost a week, and as much as I wanted it to be different, I was pretty sure it was exactly the same as the day I’d disappeared. “So, you’re saying it’ll be there the rest of my life?”

Simon nodded.

“Which is going to be, like, forever?” He didn’t say anything; he just lifted his eyebrows, which I took as Yes. “So are you invincible?” I couldn’t bring myself to say “we” because the whole idea was so . . . out there.

“Invincible? No. We can be killed, just not that easily. I mean, cut off our heads, and I’m sure we wouldn’t just”—he made air quotes to emphasize his next word—“‘heal.’” He grinned at me, letting me know he had a sense of humor about all this before continuing. “Certain poisons have been known to be lethal as well.”

“And diseases?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Don’t really know. So far, I’ve never seen any of the Returned get sick.”

“The Returned?” I echoed distractedly.

“That’s what we call ourselves. Those of us who’ve been taken and sent back.”

I thought about the way I’d woken up behind the Gas ’n’ Sip and tried to imagine there were others like me, who had been through the same thing I had. “But you said no one comes back after forty-eight hours. What about me? I was gone five years.”

Simon’s head dipped forward thoughtfully. “That’s why we thought you were gone for good. We’d all but written you off. Mostly, we were still tracking your dad’s activity because he keeps intel on the others who’ve been taken. He tracks when they go missing and from where, how long they’re gone, if and when they’re returned. He knows ages, dates, locations, genders, religions, family backgrounds . . . he even knows what their last meal was. He documents everything about them. He never gave up on you, you know?” My heart squeezed, knowing how easily I’d given up on him. “When we saw his post on one of his message boards that you’d come back, I left camp and drove all day to get here.”

“Camp?”

Simon leaned closer. I watched his hand, the one that had, just moments earlier, yielded the pocketknife, warily. But he stretched right over the top of me and grabbed something on the floor on the other side. “There are camps where there are others. Like us.” He held out a pack of Wet Ones wipes to me.

I took the container and popped the plastic top, pulling out one of the premoistened towelettes while I reflected on his words. “Is that where you live?” When he nodded, I inhaled and asked, “And what about them? Can they do this too?” I glanced down at my arm. I still wasn’t sure I believed him, but I couldn’t deny it completely as I wiped away the blood and there was nothing but unscathed skin beneath.

“Not quite as efficiently as you.” I was glad he didn’t say fast, because for once in my life this wasn’t a race I wanted to be in.

“So . . . how many more are there?”

“Of the Returned?” Simon shrugged. “Who knows. Hundreds for sure. But there could be thousands. A lot of us prefer to stay together. It’s safer. And that way we can network with others like us.” He raised his eyebrows as he kept explaining. “Some who come back prefer to remain in isolation. They move from place to place, never getting close to anyone, not even to other Returned.”