I slumped back against the leather seat and nodded. Considering their previous modes of transportation, I had half expected this Janice Sheldon to haul me off to the local I.G.A. branch on a tandem bike. But no—she’d had a snazzy black SUV parked in a garage a few blocks away. It was relatively nondescript apart from those orange license plates that state vehicles have, the ones with no registration sticker. I guessed the I.G.A. probably didn’t need to pay a fee to the DMV like the rest of us schlubs.
She’d ushered me, smoothly but firmly, into the front seat of the vehicle. Shailene hadn’t come with us. “Reconnoiter with the others,” I’d heard Janice tell her before she closed my passenger door. “Start tracking. See if you can find signs of the other sentries.”
“What about Leslie?” Shailene had asked.
“We’ll find her. But don’t be distracted. Stick to tracking the sentries.”
Shailene had glared at me through the windshield for an instant, and I’d glared back. Then she’d nodded curtly, turning on her heel and disappearing back toward the street. Janice had gotten in the car, and that had been that. She hadn’t said much on the drive over here. But the place she’d taken me to was the last place I’d expected. Although, considering my luck these last two days, I really shouldn’t have been surprised.
Bayview University.
Janice pulled the SUV into a spot in the faculty parking lot behind the gym, and I remembered with a jolt that Shailene had called her coach. Was this Bayview’s cheer coach, then? Did I.G.A. agents usually take side jobs like that? It might explain a few things about the weird behavior of the cheerleaders around here. The I.G.A. was a government agency like the F.B.I. The International and Global Affairs bureau—I remembered vaguely that my dad had worked for them as a contractor when he’d first gotten out of college, way before I’d been born. They usually dealt with terrorist threats. Was some terrorist group making genetically engineered monsters or something? What, bombs weren’t good enough anymore?
As Janice got out of the car, I quickly slid my phone out of my purse. Fingers flying, I texted, Hey dad, did you ever know anyone named Janice Sheldon in Nevada?
I’d just pressed send on that when Janice opened my door for me. I wasn’t quick enough; she caught the movement of my hand tossing my phone back into my purse. “Ah, I’m afraid I’m going to need to take that,” she said, holding her hand out.
I blanched. “Seriously? I just wanted to let my roommate know I wouldn’t be back for a few hours.”
She smiled, one of those fake cheerleader smiles that I couldn’t imagine ever crossing Shailene’s face. “Sorry. It’s policy. You can have it back when the meeting is over.”
Reluctantly, I handed my phone over to her. Janice slid it into her jacket pocket and closed the car door for me. She guided me across the parking lot toward the athletics building. It was painted a deep red color, with the word Swordsmen scrawled in enormous letters along the wall under the high, domed roof. A silver-and-gold pirate’s cutlass pierced through the cursive letters.
“Right this way,” she said, leading me across the empty gym. Our shoes squeaked on the waxed wood floors, the sound echoing up to the ceiling. I followed her through a door and scoffed.
“The women’s locker room? Are you kidding me?”
She leveled her gaze at me and my jaw snapped shut. She flicked a switch next to the door, illuminating rows of red metal lockers. In between them and the shower stalls on the back wall was another door with a window in the center covered with dark brown blinds. “My office is in here,” she said, opening the door.
I followed her into the small room, which was barely big enough to hold one shabby desk. The wall over the desk was lined with plaques and certificates showcasing the Swordsmen cheerleaders’ accolades over the last several years. A framed photo in the center showed Janice with the squad from last year, holding up the regional championship trophy. Shailene was nowhere to be seen. Of course not, I thought. She’s a freshman, like me.
“I thought you said you were an I.G.A. agent,” I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “This looks like a P.E. teacher’s office.”
Janice sighed wearily, closing the door behind me. “You certainly are impatient.” She pulled a lanyard out from under her shirt. A key card swung from the end. Holding the card in one hand, she nudged the photo to the side. Beneath it, a small panel was embedded in the wall. She swiped her card, then pressed her thumb onto the digital display next to the slot. Before I could blink, the floor opened up, the desk dropped smoothly out of view, and a doorway opened in the wall.
My jaw dropped. “What the hell is this, Get Smart?” was all I could manage.
Janice rolled her eyes. “Just come on, Laura.”
I followed her through the door into a small, unfurnished room. The wall slid shut behind us, and then the floor lurched. I gasped, bracing myself against the wall. It was only then that I realized that the room was an elevator. We were moving, but I couldn’t tell if it was up or down. After a few moments, I decided it must be down—the trip was taking too long for a building that was only two or three stories tall at the most.
Then the elevator shuddered to a stop, and the wall slid open again. My eyes widened.
We definitely weren’t in the gym anymore.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
Janice smirked. “Welcome to the I.G.A.”
It was an enormous space, almost like a warehouse. And it was pandemonium. There were dozens—if not hundreds—of people here. Rows of desks were lined with computer monitors, some people seated in front of them working in silence, others with groups of two or three talking quietly amongst one another, looking over each other’s shoulders. It looked like the bridge of the Helicarrier, or mission control at NASA, or something. On the concrete wall in front of me was the familiar emblem of the I.G.A., a stylized globe overlaid with the organization’s letters in vaguely-1970s-looking text. My eyes slid over it unseeingly as I stared around at all the people here; then I blinked and jerked my gaze back at it, not sure if I’d read right. I.G.A.—I knew it was supposed to stand for International and Global Affairs. But that’s not what this sign said. There on the wall in solid gold (well, gold-colored, anyway) letters it read, plain as day: Inter-Galactic Affairs.
Excuse me, what?
Janice Sheldon was still smirking at me. “Speechless for once, I see.”
I glared at her. “As if. What is this place, really? This can’t be the I.G.A. I’ve seen their building downtown. It’s across the street from City Hall.”
“Ah, she is civic-minded,” Janice said, leading me between the rows of desks. I pursed my lips. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that I’d only been down that way one time, when I’d gotten lost looking for the opera house. I’d never been down that way before, but the Gam-Lams were all going to see Makeisha’s sister in The Nutcracker. “That’s our public office. This is our true hub of operations.”
I gave her a look as she stopped at one of the computer stations. “Under the Bayview University gym?”
The computer monitor lit up, prompting Janice for a password. She typed something in quickly, then leaned close to a webcam mounted on the top of the monitor. “Retinal scan match. System boot,” the computer said.
“Bayview University is administered by the I.G.A.,” Janice said once the computer had finished. “Our facility runs under the entire campus.”
I blinked once, twice. “What? Why? I’ve heard of state schools, but this is a little ridiculous, isn’t it? I mean, what the heck would the I.G.A. want a college for?”
“This is why.” She gestured to the computer screen. I moved forward, peering over her shoulder.
“‘Abductee Rehabilitation Program’,” I read. Under the bold header, rows of photos filled the screen, like a high school yearbook. Dozens of faces of people my age, maybe a little younger, maybe a little older. “Abductees? Like kidnapping victims?”
“Of a sort.” Janice wat
ched me, folding her arms and leaning against the desk as I scrolled down the page, trying to take in all the photos. “Anesidorans tend to favor adolescents for their experiments. Their bodies haven’t finished forming yet, so they take better to the modifications and implants.”
I stopped scrolling, my finger frozen on the mouse. Anesidorans—those bug things from the train station. Inter-Galactic Affairs. Did she seriously mean—?
“Aliens?” I said, my voice barely more than a squeak. “Alien abductions?”
Janice nodded once, slowly. “Now you’re catching on.”
I spluttered incomprehensibly. “You’re trying to tell me that all the kids at Bayview University are alien abductees?”
“Not all of them. Some are relatives of abductees. These experiments have been going on for the past hundred years or so since the invasion from Nibiru began. They modify the victims’ actual DNA. That means the physiological alterations are often passed down to the children and even grandchildren of abductees. Those kids need a support system, a way of learning to control their abilities.”
“The Xavier Institute for Gifted Alien Lab Rats?” I said.
Janice chuckled, and for the first time it seemed like she was laughing with me, not at me. I smiled back and turned away from the computer, trying to process this information.
“Okay, so you’re telling me that those things I saw at the train station were aliens. From—‘Nibiru’?” That word sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place why.
Janice nodded and gestured to a map on her desk. It looked like a chart of the solar system, but there was something abnormal about it. It took me a minute to notice what was amiss—there was an extra planet, way past Pluto. It was enormous, bigger than Jupiter. They definitely hadn’t mentioned that thing in high school physics.
“That’s Nibiru,” Janice said, gesturing to the circle on the map. “Also known as Planet X.”
“Okay, now I know you’re full of it,” I said. “Seriously? Planet X? Star of 1950s B-movies? That thing that all the crazy guys in the tinfoil hats are warning us about?” I realized that was where I’d heard the word Nibiru before. There was a billboard off the interstate that had been a particular favorite of mine as a kid, urging us that Planet X was on a collision course with Earth, and that if we didn’t repent by a certain date, we would all be doomed to eternal damnation. The billboard had been there for years, unchanged in every way except that the date of our supposed impending annihilation kept getting moved further into the future—conveniently, every time the previous doomsday passed.
Janice shrugged. “Would it be cliché to say that all the legends are true?”
I closed my eyes for a long moment, breathing in. “Okay. I’ll bite. So we’re being invaded by aliens from Planet X. And they’re abducting our teenagers for… what, exactly?”
Her expression grew serious. “They’re building an army. One that can destroy us from the inside out. They’re monsters, Laura. Pandora’s Box. It’s what they do.” She crossed her arms. “Every year, Anesidorans kidnap hundreds of children from all over the world. They don’t give them back willingly. The I.G.A.’s special operations unit rescues the kids we can, but it’s a tiny fraction of the total that are taken.”
I opened my mouth, but no sound came. It was impossible. But I had seen the proof with my own eyes.
“So the Bayview cheer squad?” I finally managed.
“They are our next generation of special operations agents. Our elite team.”
“And someone is targeting them?”
She nodded.
“But what does that have to do with me? I wasn’t abducted. I’m pretty sure I would remember if I was.”
“But you can see Anesidorans in their true forms,” Janice said. “Ordinary humans don’t have that ability. And Shailene says you saw our girls yesterday on the train, even though they would have been cloaked.”
I frowned. “So what does that mean? Someone in my family was an abductee?”
“I did a search on your name and I couldn’t find any indication of it. But based on your capabilities, I would say almost certainly—”
I only half heard her. My mind had suddenly fixed on my father—my boring, unassuming, white-bread dad—who had spent two years working for the I.G.A. in Nevada before dropping everything to move to Everett with my mom when they got married. Could he…?
Janice was saying, “We have a series of aptitude tests that I’d like to have you take, if you’re willing, that would measure—”
“Wait, hold that thought,” I said, lifting my hands, trying to process this all. “I have an idea, but—”
I was interrupted by the blaring sound of a klaxon. I flinched, throwing my hands over my ears. My first instinct was to dive under the nearest desk in case this was an earthquake alarm, but next to me, Janice merely unzipped her jacket, revealing a shoulder holster, and pulled out a handgun.
“What’s happening?” I asked, shouting to hear myself over the alarm. Around us, pandemonium raged as agents jumped up from their work stations, some trying to quickly shut down their computers, others drawing weapons like Janice.
“Unauthorized entry,” Janice said, looking to the elevator we’d come into the facility through. The elevator doors shuddered open. I ducked behind Janice as she lifted her gun.
My dad burst into the room.
“Dad!” I gasped at the same time Janice lowered her gun and said, “Gregg.”
I looked between them in confusion. My dad’s name was Phil, not Greg. But the look of immediate recognition confirmed the suspicion I’d had since Janice brought me here: my dad definitely knew a Janice Sheldon from the I.G.A.
“Stand down,” Janice called, and the agents around the facility hesitantly lowered their weapons. I scooted between my dad and Janice just in case, though, since the look on her face could only be described as murderous. “Now things are starting to make sense,” she muttered.
“Maybe to you two, but not to me. Dad, what are you doing here?” I asked.
He stepped forward, brushing past me and shoving me (I suppose you could say protectively, though that didn’t make me any less annoyed) behind him. “No,” he said, “the real question is, what is my daughter doing here? My dispensation specifically indicates that the I.G.A. was not to contact me or my family after my discharge.”
Janice glared back at him. “Your daughter has involved herself with I.G.A. affairs.”
He looked at me in alarm. “Laura?”
I shrugged helplessly. I was beyond lost at this point.
He turned back to Janice. “I’ll see to it that she doesn’t get in your way again.” He put his arm around my shoulder, guiding me back toward the elevator.
“Excuse me?” I said, ducking out from under his arm. My biggest pet peeve was my dad steering me around like he had when I’d been a toddler. He had no concept of personal space. “Would someone mind explaining what’s going on here?”
“They’re targeting her, Gregg,” Janice said. My dad froze midstep, half glancing at her over his shoulder. “There’s no way you can protect her on her own. All you’re doing by keeping her from us is putting her at risk.”
He set his jaw. “I’ll be the judge of that.” He pushed me into the elevator, and the doors slid shut behind us.
“Excuse me?” I whirled on my dad. “Would you mind explaining what the hell just happened?”
“You texted me, remember?” He folded his arms, seeming miffed that I wasn’t thanking him profusely for coming to my rescue.
“Yeah, I texted you, but a simple text back would have sufficed. I wasn’t expecting you to come bursting in here like a psycho. And how did you get down here so fast?”
“I was in the area.” I gave him an incredulous look, but he ignored me. “Janice Sheldon is bad news, Laura. The whole I.G.A. is. I don’t want them coming around you.”
“It wasn’t exactly their fault, Dad. Something weird is going on with me. There are these weird b
ug things—”
“Sentries.”
“Yeah, those. Wait. So you do know! Does that mean you…” I trailed off, unsure what to say. I was having one of those weird out-of-body moments where you hear yourself as someone else would hear you, and realize you sound like a complete lunatic. “Were you an abductee?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not getting into this with you, Laura. I can honestly tell you that I was not an abductee. I can also honestly tell you that, regardless of what you might have been told just now, the I.G.A. are not your friends. What have I always said? The most dangerous words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
I scowled. “Somehow I always got the feeling that was more about the Internal Revenue Service than about an invasion from outer space.”
The elevator doors opened back out onto Janice Sheldon’s office. Dad steered me out of this and back into the fortunately-still-empty girls’ locker room, which I realized was a really creepy place to put an apparently co-ed entrance to a secret government facility. I wondered if there was also an entrance in the boys’ room.
“Come on, Dad, this is ridiculous,” I snapped as we made our way back out into the main gym. “I’m an adult. Stop treating me like a kid. You don’t want me going around the I.G.A.? Fine. Give me a better reason than just ‘I said so.’”
“I can’t.”
I made a noise of exasperation from the back of my throat. “Then why am I supposed to listen to you? You’re not the boss of me.” I realized that sounded like an incredibly not adult thing to say, considering that I was trying to argue the case that he should start treating me like one. But I couldn’t think of a better way to explain it.
“You’re right,” he said, folding his arms and looking at me seriously. “I’m not the boss of you. You are an adult. But you’ve lived with me your whole life. Do you trust my judgment?”
I blinked repeatedly. This was an unexpected twist. “I mean, yeah,” I said.
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