The Replaced
Page 73
Not I, said the Fly, another of my dad’s stupid expressions that popped into my head, and for the first time in forever I wished I couldn’t hear his voice.
Not human? Not at all?
So, what, then . . . ?
“Nope. No way.” I shook my head, unwilling to even engage their level of crazy. “It’s not even possible.”
Griffin spoke up, playing the voice of reason. “Possible? Kyra, look around you. Think about who we are. Are any of us really in any position to question what is, and isn’t, possible anymore? And clearly you already knew there was something different about you.” She said it kinder, and even used my name, and almost made me believe she was trying to be nice.
“Different?” I shot back. “Different is having a weird eye color or needing to wear braces for an extra year. What you’re talking about doesn’t make me different, it makes me . . .” I threw my hands in the air. “I don’t even know what it makes me.” I wanted to pull my hair out because what they were saying was just . . . too much.
But.
Griffin wasn’t so far off with the whole who-are-we-to-question-what’s-possible thing.
And then there was that one thing, with the NSA guy at the Tacoma facility, that one down in the ducts, where he’d shone his flashlight on me and said, “It’s you,” all serious-like. And again, with Agent Truman, when he’d told those guys in the alley, “She’s the one we want.”
I’d figured it meant something, even while I’d tried to convince myself it was nothing.
“So, what does this all mean?” I finally said. “I mean, how and why and . . . how?” I felt broken as I held out my hands, palms up as if to say, how was I even standing there if I wasn’t me? “If I’m not human, then what the heck am I? It doesn’t make sense.” I just kept shaking my head, like some damaged bobble-head doll.
Simon reached for my hand, and even though my heart fully and completely belonged to Tyler, just like it had all along, I let Simon give me this—his comfort, and his strength—because I needed it. I needed it so damn much. “You’re more human than anyone I’ve ever known,” he whispered, and I almost smiled, because usually when people called each other human, they were explaining away making mistakes, so it should have been an insult, him calling me human like that. Except I knew he meant it in the best possible way, so I gave him a quick squeeze in return.
“My father used to tell me about how he first met them,” Griffin said, turning her gaze toward the ceiling, the sky. “Some called them the First Contact meetings, but my father, he just called it ‘the Meeting’ and we all knew what he meant. People think the president was there.” She shrugged. “Maybe he was at some point, but not for the first one.”
The room went silent while she talked; even the computers seemed to hum less noisily, as if her words had suddenly become a physical presence demanding to be noticed, something you could feel and see and taste.
“He said they struck a deal at the Meeting—those scientists, the ones like my dad, and whatever those things were, from wherever they came from. A deal?” She gaped, leveling her gaze on us. “Can you believe that? To trade people for technology.” She gave a peevish shake of her head. “It’s not like we had a choice in the matter, about whether to agree or not. People had already been taken and experimented on, even before then. The agreement only ensured that the government would be compensated—paid in the form of cutting-edge technology—for turning a blind eye to these abductions. They would benefit from this obviously advanced culture.” She stressed the word obviously, making her less-than-generous feelings known.
I felt like I was gonna be sick as I tried to process where I fit in all this. Whether I was supposed to consider myself part of this “advanced culture” now, or if I was still just plain old me.
I thought about how thickheaded I’d been when we’d gone through my dad’s things and I’d seen all those stories about government cover-ups, all the accounts of secret files and covert government agencies, and how I’d scoffed at the very idea. I almost felt stupid for being so close-minded.
“Sounds like your dad got exactly what he deserved.” I didn’t pretend not to know what Griffin had done to him. As far as I was concerned, anyone who was willing to let his own daughter be used as an alien-lab-rat in exchange for some cool gadgets had punched his own one-way ticket to hell.
Griffin didn’t comment one way or the other about her father. “In the end, the deal never worked out the way my dad, or the other scientists and politicians, wanted it to. The ‘technology’ our side was promised wasn’t delivered in the form of ray guns or X-ray glasses or anything like that. The scientists were promised alien DNA that they could experiment on, that they’d planned to learn from. Potentially even harness.” She grinned a wicked grin. “There was only one problem with their plan: we were harder to catch than they thought we’d be.”
I gasped, finally clueing in. “We are the alien technology?” No wonder we were constantly being sought after. Hunted.
She shrugged. “Think about it. Our metabolisms are slower. We need less food and sleep than normal humans, we age ridiculously slowly, and we heal spontaneously. Why wouldn’t we be valuable? What pharmaceutical company wouldn’t pay millions, even billions, to get their hands on a few strands of our DNA? Or even better, what government wouldn’t kill for an army of soldiers with lethal blood?”
Not human? Not at all?
So, what, then . . . ?
“Nope. No way.” I shook my head, unwilling to even engage their level of crazy. “It’s not even possible.”
Griffin spoke up, playing the voice of reason. “Possible? Kyra, look around you. Think about who we are. Are any of us really in any position to question what is, and isn’t, possible anymore? And clearly you already knew there was something different about you.” She said it kinder, and even used my name, and almost made me believe she was trying to be nice.
“Different?” I shot back. “Different is having a weird eye color or needing to wear braces for an extra year. What you’re talking about doesn’t make me different, it makes me . . .” I threw my hands in the air. “I don’t even know what it makes me.” I wanted to pull my hair out because what they were saying was just . . . too much.
But.
Griffin wasn’t so far off with the whole who-are-we-to-question-what’s-possible thing.
And then there was that one thing, with the NSA guy at the Tacoma facility, that one down in the ducts, where he’d shone his flashlight on me and said, “It’s you,” all serious-like. And again, with Agent Truman, when he’d told those guys in the alley, “She’s the one we want.”
I’d figured it meant something, even while I’d tried to convince myself it was nothing.
“So, what does this all mean?” I finally said. “I mean, how and why and . . . how?” I felt broken as I held out my hands, palms up as if to say, how was I even standing there if I wasn’t me? “If I’m not human, then what the heck am I? It doesn’t make sense.” I just kept shaking my head, like some damaged bobble-head doll.
Simon reached for my hand, and even though my heart fully and completely belonged to Tyler, just like it had all along, I let Simon give me this—his comfort, and his strength—because I needed it. I needed it so damn much. “You’re more human than anyone I’ve ever known,” he whispered, and I almost smiled, because usually when people called each other human, they were explaining away making mistakes, so it should have been an insult, him calling me human like that. Except I knew he meant it in the best possible way, so I gave him a quick squeeze in return.
“My father used to tell me about how he first met them,” Griffin said, turning her gaze toward the ceiling, the sky. “Some called them the First Contact meetings, but my father, he just called it ‘the Meeting’ and we all knew what he meant. People think the president was there.” She shrugged. “Maybe he was at some point, but not for the first one.”
The room went silent while she talked; even the computers seemed to hum less noisily, as if her words had suddenly become a physical presence demanding to be noticed, something you could feel and see and taste.
“He said they struck a deal at the Meeting—those scientists, the ones like my dad, and whatever those things were, from wherever they came from. A deal?” She gaped, leveling her gaze on us. “Can you believe that? To trade people for technology.” She gave a peevish shake of her head. “It’s not like we had a choice in the matter, about whether to agree or not. People had already been taken and experimented on, even before then. The agreement only ensured that the government would be compensated—paid in the form of cutting-edge technology—for turning a blind eye to these abductions. They would benefit from this obviously advanced culture.” She stressed the word obviously, making her less-than-generous feelings known.
I felt like I was gonna be sick as I tried to process where I fit in all this. Whether I was supposed to consider myself part of this “advanced culture” now, or if I was still just plain old me.
I thought about how thickheaded I’d been when we’d gone through my dad’s things and I’d seen all those stories about government cover-ups, all the accounts of secret files and covert government agencies, and how I’d scoffed at the very idea. I almost felt stupid for being so close-minded.
“Sounds like your dad got exactly what he deserved.” I didn’t pretend not to know what Griffin had done to him. As far as I was concerned, anyone who was willing to let his own daughter be used as an alien-lab-rat in exchange for some cool gadgets had punched his own one-way ticket to hell.
Griffin didn’t comment one way or the other about her father. “In the end, the deal never worked out the way my dad, or the other scientists and politicians, wanted it to. The ‘technology’ our side was promised wasn’t delivered in the form of ray guns or X-ray glasses or anything like that. The scientists were promised alien DNA that they could experiment on, that they’d planned to learn from. Potentially even harness.” She grinned a wicked grin. “There was only one problem with their plan: we were harder to catch than they thought we’d be.”
I gasped, finally clueing in. “We are the alien technology?” No wonder we were constantly being sought after. Hunted.
She shrugged. “Think about it. Our metabolisms are slower. We need less food and sleep than normal humans, we age ridiculously slowly, and we heal spontaneously. Why wouldn’t we be valuable? What pharmaceutical company wouldn’t pay millions, even billions, to get their hands on a few strands of our DNA? Or even better, what government wouldn’t kill for an army of soldiers with lethal blood?”
