by Melissa West
Jackson stands, shaking his head. “Brilliant, Alexander. Really brilliant.” He opens the drawer, exposing three rows of tiny squares. He pulls one out. “This is a video chip. The C stands for Chemist, meaning the building. IV is the floor and 3 the lab number. So this drawer holds the camera readings from that lab. Your dad took me through the Chemist lab yesterday. Lab 3 was blocked off, the glass in the door covered so no one could see inside. Why? There has to be a reason. I think it has to do with the war strategy, like maybe the Chemists are coming up with something. I don’t know what. But I’m hoping this chip” —he holds it out to me— “will give us a clue.”
“But why—”
“I’ll explain later; we’ve only got a few more minutes.” He loads the first chip into the T-screen. A lab. Chemists coming and going. But nothing unusual. He loads the next chip and the next, cycling through ten or more, all as boring as the first. I’m beginning to think it’s not here when he inserts the next-to-last chip. A lab fills the screen, but this lab is nothing like the rest. It looks like a bomb went off in the room. Jackson and I both lean closer to the screen.
“Do you—”
“Shh,” Jackson says. “Did you hear that?”
My ears strain, but I don’t hear anything at all. I shake my head, my pulse racing. He shoves another chip into the T-screen and types a series of commands I don’t recognize. REPLICATING flashes on the screen.
“Come on, come on,” he whispers. Finally, both the chips pop out. Jackson returns the video chip to the drawer, grabs my hand, and yanks me from the room. He rounds a corner and presses against the wall. Several seconds pass. There’s nothing. No sound. No light. Then a soft click…click…click echoes from the hall perpendicular to where we stand. It grows louder and louder, until I’m sure someone or something can hear my breathing or sense my fear.
I tug on Jackson’s arm, but he shakes his head. We can’t just stand here! I glance down the hall and back to Jackson, then the clicking stops.
“Go.” Jackson urges me backward.
“Go where?” I whisper, glancing down the hall behind me. There’s an emergency stairwell door at the very end, but we’d never make it without being seen. The clicking starts again.
“Go now!” he says. I race for the door, slam through it, and barrel down two flights of stairs before I stop to see where Jackson went. I look up, my heart pounding, to see him at the top of the stairs, watching the door. Thankfully, we were only on the third floor so the level I’m on should have an exit door to outside. I scan the open stairwell and sure enough, there’s an exit sign above a door on my left. I glance back at Jackson, unsure whether I should run for it or wait for him. He tilts his head to listen, and I do the same. We wait in silence for what feels like an eternity, then Jackson leaps from the top of the third-level stairs down to the ground level where I’m standing, his face filled with excitement.
“We did it!” He lifts me into the air. “That was crazy. Amazing. I can’t believe we weren’t caught. I can’t believe you came. That was so—”
“Hey! Put me down!” I wiggle out of his hold and then I hear movement at the top of the stairs and my blood turns to ice.
Jackson jerks around, angling me behind him.
“Hmph, you must have been pretty vexed to fondle a human,” a voice calls from the third-level steps where Jackson had stood just moments before.
It takes a moment for my brain to process that the voice is Mackenzie Story’s and that she just called me a human, which means she must be…
“Blast, Kenzie, where was the warning?” Jackson says. “I thought you were a guard or something.” He pushes open the emergency exit door.
“Time’s up,” Mackenzie says. “Ari’s parents are looking for her. She needs to get back.” Even though she says my name, she doesn’t look at me.
Jackson nods. “Ari, tell them you weren’t feeling well. Apologize—”
“For what?”
He shoots me an annoyed look. “People don’t ask questions when you admit you were wrong before they have to tell you.”
“But what about the chip?”
Jackson steps into the alley, motioning for Mackenzie to follow. “I’ll be at your house, normal time, chip in hand. Sound good?”
I glance at the time on my phone and cringe. “Fine. See you later.” And I turn and rush down the alley, hopping on the first tron I see, a more pressing fear on my mind.
My dad is going to kill me.
CHAPTER 7
I inch around the back of my house, hopeful that if I go in the back doors then my parents won’t realize I’ve come home. I climb the steps to my back patio, swipe my keycard, and wait for the door to click open. Nothing happens. I swipe my key again and wait. Still nothing. I’m about to panic when the door opens from the other side. My entire body turns to stone.
I start cycling through excuses in my head. Dad won’t let this go unless I have a full-proof reason for being late, but I don’t even have a bad reason. I contemplate faking illness when I see Mom standing on the other side of the door. She presses a finger to her lips and urges me inside.
“Ari Elizabeth Alexander,” she whispers, her tone hard, “we will talk about this in the morning, but as I don’t want to be up half the night hearing you and your father fighting, I suggest you go on to bed. He’s asleep. I’ll tell him you came in earlier. I will not lie to him again. Understand?”
I nod, feeling sick down to my core. I never wanted her to lie for me. I’ll have to be more careful from now on. I can’t involve her. I can’t involve anyone.
She walks around the stairs and turns right down the hallway to her and Dad’s master suite. I wait until I hear her bedroom door close and then jolt into Dad’s office, return his master key to Parliament, and take the stairs two at a time to get away from the danger zone.
I slip into my room, shaking my hands to stop them from trembling, and head to my bathroom to strip off my clothes, which somehow feel dirty even though I barely wore them. I splash water on my face and spin my hair into a messy knot on the top of my head.
My nerves are settling down, but still I’m too wired.
I stretch my arms over my head, close my eyes, and arch my back as I leave my bathroom to grab some pajamas from my closet. I have just stepped into my room when I hear the curtains sway by the window.
“Hey, I’m early,” Jackson says as he slips through my window and turns around. We both freeze. “I— You—”
“Get out of here!” I dart back into the bathroom, but there’s nothing in here but a hand towel and I’ve already dropped my old clothes in the laundry chute. This can’t be happening. He did not just see me… I clear my throat and draw a long breath, forcing myself to calm down. I peek my head out of the bathroom. “I need some clothes. Can you…?” I point to my closet.
Jackson looks as flustered as I feel but manages to get into my closet and pull out some mismatched pajamas. He closes his eyes and hands me a red tank top and some fluorescent green silk pants. “I’m sorry, I had no idea. I didn’t see anything. Well, maybe a little but—”
“Ugh! Just shut up! I’ll be out in a second.” I lean against the bathroom door. I am going to die. Right this second. Die. I throw on the clothes and storm out of my bathroom, my hands on my hips. “This is never to be brought up again, got it? You saw nothing. Nothing.”
A smile plays at his lips. “Nothing.”
I cross the room to sit in front of my T-screen. “Where’s the chip? I’m guessing that’s why you showed early, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Right.” He sits down beside me, and we both stiffen. His shoulder rests against my shoulder, his thigh against my thigh. I have to remind myself to breathe, breathe, breathe, because all I can think about is how he just saw me naked. I run my hands over my face and try to press the thought from my mind, needing more than anything to change the subject.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he says, studying my face.
“I’m not.”
Jackson rolls his eyes. “You know, no one can be the job all the time. No one. Not even you. It’s okay to show weakness. It doesn’t make you—”
“Thanks, but I don’t need a pep talk. And speaking of weakness, why do you cry during the Taking?” I ask. “Does everyone cry?” I know I sound insensitive, but I can’t stand the focus on me. I don’t need an evaluation into my mental well-being. I’m fine. At least before all of this craziness I was fine.
Jackson’s eyebrow quirks up. “Cry? What the…?”
“Yeah, I saw you crying that first night. That’s why I opened my eyes—a teardrop fell on me.”
He shakes his head, laughing. “Not sure what you think you saw, but we don’t cry.”
“Don’t be such a guy. You cried. It’s fine. I’m just curious if everyone does or just you?”
“Aren’t you listening? We don’t—Ohhh. Xylem.”
“What?”
“It was xylem,” Jackson says. “Basically, it’s like water inside the human body, what makes us Ancient instead of human. The xylem in our bodies activates during the Taking so we’re able to pull the antibodies we need from you. It moves throughout our bodies, so I suppose that’s what you felt. Xylem. It’s our liquid evolution.”
I try to process this. “What do you mean by liquid evolution?”
He releases a long breath, either considering how to explain or deciding if he wants to. “We haven’t always looked like you, Ari. Like humans. We’re not human. But xylem makes us look like you; it helps us duplicate your composition so we can survive here. It’s inside us, sure, but it also is us. Does that make sense?”
I shake my head, lost. “No. So you really aren’t…solid? You feel solid.” I reach out to touch his hand, then jerk back, my cheeks burning. “So you’re not on Earth all the time?” I ask, clearing my throat.
“No, we’re definitely solid now. We aren’t human, but our bodies are very human-like, thanks to the Taking—thanks to humans. But xylem still flows through us. And I stay here much of the time, but I have family and friends at home. I go back as often as I can.”
The mention of Loge brings a recurring question in my mind to the surface. “Jackson…what’s the real reason that your kind wants to come here? I mean, I know what they tell us, but is that the truth?”
Jackson seems to contemplate how much to tell me. “Our version of the history is different than yours. Even though our bodies are comprised of xylem, we still need water, and the water supply on Loge has dwindled slowly for centuries. When World War IV collapsed Earth, your surviving leaders contacted us, as they had since the beginning of time. The Ancients have revitalized Earth after every major destruction, terraforming the planet back to health. But this time, we needed something in return—we needed a new planet. But we never attacked. We came here peacefully and asked if we could coexist once our bodies acclimated if we rebuilt the planet. Your leaders agreed and so the truce was made. Of course, everything has changed now.”
“Because we aren’t keeping our end of the truce. I wonder why.”
“I don’t know. But our numbers are growing here on Earth. Eventually this is going to get bad. I just hope we can stop it before it does.”
“Speaking of numbers, what about Mackenzie? So she’s an Ancient, too?”
“Yes. She was sent to assist me.”
“Like making us invisible tonight.”
He smiles. “Something like that.”
I look down, picking at lint on my pants. “And you two are…involved or something?”
His eyebrows shoot up. “What? Kenzie and I? Noooo. She’s a friend. The rest is just part of the role to help us blend in.”
“Right.” I clear my throat, embarrassed that I asked at all. It doesn’t matter if they’re together or not.
We fall silent for several seconds, then I look up at him, the question leaving my lips before I’ve thought it through. “Jackson, why are you doing this? Why do you care? I just don’t understand.”
He sits back in the chair, his eyes trained on mine. “How can I not care? One species shouldn’t get to live over another. Why does death have to be the answer? It isn’t how I’m made, Ari. Orders or not, I can’t just sit back and let this happen. I’d never be able to live with myself if I did nothing. Zeus says the strategy will prevent a war, and I don’t plan on stopping until I find it.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Do you have the chip?” I hold out my hand.
He pulls it from his pocket and inserts it into the T-screen. We wait for the video to begin. The destroyed lab fills the screen. But it doesn’t look like a bomb went off as I’d thought before; it looks like a construction site. A giant, crumbling hole makes up the back wall. There are sheets and sheets of some clear material, leaning against the other walls, piled on the ground, everywhere. I’m not sure what the material is, but a few of the sheets are curled up at the corners. So it has the clarity of glass but the pliability of plastic. Definitely a Chemist invention.
“They’re building something,” Jackson says.
“Yeah, it looks like they’re expanding the room, but what’s up with the clear stuff?” I point to it.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
We watch the rest of the video, but nothing changes and no one enters the room. I lean back in the chair, propping my left leg up in the seat. “What now?”
“You’re training with Cybil now, right?” he asks.
“Yes, but—”
“Think you could sneak into the Chemist lab?”
I start to laugh, but he’s serious. He wants me to sneak into the Chemist lab, the most restricted area in Sydia. I hesitate a second, then say, “I’ll see what I can do. Cybil seems pretty cool. I should be able to get a little information out of her if nothing else.”
“I’ll keep my eye on it when I’m there, too. Maybe between the two of us we can—” He yanks the chip from my T-screen and turns around, his eyes locked on the door. “Did you hear that?” he whispers.
I shake my head, worry crawling through my mind. What if someone heard us? What if one of them heard us? Several seconds pass, and then Jackson jumps up and motions to my bed. “Get. In. Position,” he mouths.
I move to my bed as quietly as possible and slump down until I’m lying flat. I glance up at Jackson to see him cupping his eyes with his hands and pointing to my nightstand. I reach over and pull my patch from its case, the silver reflecting in the light from my bedside lamp. It looks so innocent in my hands. I lay the patch over my eyes, and it suctions to my temples, surrounding my eyes as though sewn into my skin.
And then darkness finds me. My vision, my mind, my body—everything wrapped in nothingness. I feel nothing, hear nothing, sense nothing. My lungs stop working for the briefest second, and it’s as if I’ve held my breath. No, like someone stole the very breath from my lungs. I have to fight off my body’s natural instinct to panic at the lack of air supply, but then one by one I gain back my ability to breathe, to feel, to hear, to smell.
Jackson is already above me now. I smell his scent mere inches from my body. But before I have time to think about Jackson, I hear a soft shuffle outside my door, hardly audible, almost as silent as the wind.
Someone is out there. Not moving, not advancing—listening.
CHAPTER 8
I trudge into our training room the next morning at five, already in my training clothes, prepared to suffer so I can beat Dad this morning. I feel like death, look worse, and want nothing more than to crawl back into bed and continue my dream from last night, which may or may not have included a certain boy from another planet.
I glance around the room, but it’s empty. Dad isn’t here yet. That’s never happened before. I take a few more steps into the room, and then decide to go back upstairs. Maybe he’s canceling for today, confirming prayers can be answered.
The elevator opens to a completely silent house, same as earlier. I walk around to the kitchen. Empt
y. “Mom?” I call. No answer. Hmm. I guess they both went to work early. I edge back to the stairs, still feeling uneasy, when I hear my phone buzzing from upstairs. I dart to my room and pull it from my nightstand.
Emergency at work. We’ll be home tonight. Love, Mom.
Okay…so no training today. Dad’s been missing a lot lately. I consider going to Gretchen’s, but I’m not in the mood for another fashion show. Plus it’s way too early anyway. I’ve already decided just to go back to bed when I hear a soft tap at my window. I ease over and pull the curtains back. It’s still dark out, the first signs of day not yet showing. I peer into the darkness and then bam, a fist collides with the glass right in front of my face. I jerk back, my heart pounding, to see Mackenzie staring back at me.
“Didn’t know you were so jumpy,” she says.
My mouth hangs open, my mind fuzzy on what to say. “What…?”
“Am I doing here? I came to give you a message. You may think this is some children’s game, but there is a lot at stake if you can’t keep your end of the bargain. There’s no time for feelings, only action. Got it?” She looks at me as though I’m a kid who’s just been caught doing something wrong.
I shake my head, completely lost. “Not sure what you mean, but feel free to get off my house.”
“Yeah, sure you don’t. I think I’ll have a little present for you today. Don’t be late.” And then she slinks back into the trees and disappears.
The rest of the morning passes in a daze as my mind continues to replay what she said and what she could possibly mean by a present.
I step off the tron and onto the auto-walk to school, deep in thought until I feel someone’s presence behind me. I peer around to see Jackson standing only a few feet away.