by Malinda Lo
“So that press conference didn’t exactly work out the way we thought it would,” he said.
“No. Do you think we should try it again?”
“I don’t know. How do we know Agent Forrestal or someone else won’t shut us down again?”
“Well, this website, Bin 42, wants us to talk to them. Julian works for them.”
“That’s the one that put up the video, right?”
“Yeah.”
He was silent for a second. “We could do that.”
“What’s your hesitation?”
“Well, a lot of the stuff online was talking about how there’s no proof that we have these abilities. Maybe we should get some proof first.”
“How?”
“My dad says he can set up an academic review board to examine us.”
Reese remembered that David’s dad was a biochemist. “Your dad works at a pharmaceutical company in Menlo Park, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t he suggest that his company do it?”
“He doesn’t want any suggestion of bias, which there would be if he was involved. He has friends at UCSF who could put together a group of scientists.”
“What do you think about the Imrian offer to help us?”
“I don’t trust them. Why? Do you want to take them up on it? And what was the thing that Amber gave you, anyway?”
She glanced at the device on her desk. “It was a cell phone. She gave us a way to call Dr. Brand.” She suddenly remembered something. “Wait, do you still have my cell phone?” While she and David were at Blue Base, someone had put a report on it that laid out the military’s project to create supersoldiers with Imrian DNA. “I gave it to you so you could read that report, remember? That is totally proof.”
David exhaled, his breath sending static over the phone. “No, I had to leave it with my stuff and then the base exploded, so it’s gone.”
“Crap.” She heard a clicking noise and checked the receiver. Julian was on call-waiting. She’d have to call him back.
“Do you not want to do this academic board testing thing?” David asked.
“I agree we need proof,” she said quickly. “But do you think the testing is going to show us what we can do? That thing that Amber did when she touched us—how did she do that? We need to learn that.”
“I definitely don’t trust Amber,” David said, and there was a sharp tone to his voice that startled Reese.
“I know,” she said hastily. “I don’t either. But how are we going to figure out exactly what we can do? The government doesn’t know much about what happened to us. It would be great to have scientific proof that we’re not lying, but that might not explain how we can use our abilities.”
“I tried to—to communicate with you last night.”
She was taken aback. “You mean… telepathically?”
“I guess. It didn’t work. I couldn’t sense you at all. Not like I could when we were at Project Plato.” He paused. “That did happen, right? I’m not crazy, am I? Could you hear me then?”
“Yes,” she said. “At Plato, I could definitely hear you.” Their disembodied connection had been so strange and yet so intimate, as if their minds had met on some extra-dimensional plane. “It’s different when we touch, though.”
“Yeah. That feels more like I’m in your head. The time at Project Plato, it felt like I was talking to you on a really bizarre telephone.”
She sat up, putting her coffee down. “Wait. Was Plato the only place it worked for you? I thought we communicated telepathically yesterday too. In my room when Amber and Julian were here. You couldn’t hear me?”
He didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I can’t remember.”
There was a catch in his voice that made Reese think he was holding something back. “What is it? If you couldn’t hear me that’s okay. I don’t know how this works either.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what?”
His breath whooshed into the phone. “I didn’t like Amber. That’s all. I was distracted by that.”
She was surprised. If he had been distracted, did that mean he was jealous? She was unexpectedly flustered. “Oh. Um, well, we can try it again sometime when she’s not around.”
“You promise?”
She could hear the smile in his voice, and heat crept up her neck. “Yeah.”
“So… are you okay with my dad setting up that academic review panel thing?”
She had forgotten they were discussing scientific testing of their abilities. “Oh, yes. That would be good.”
“Okay. Well, let me call you back after I talk to my dad about it and I have more info.”
“All right. I’ll talk to you later.”
After they hung up she saw the voice-mail light blinking on the phone, and she remembered Julian. She called him back without checking the message, and he answered on the first ring.
“Dude, your house is on TV twenty-four seven!”
“I heard.” She picked up her coffee again. “I looked outside for, like, one second and the mob started rushing toward the house.”
“It’s insane,” he said, but he sounded more thrilled than scared. “I can’t believe you’re back and there’s a giant freaking black triangle over your neighborhood!”
“Whoa, calm down,” she said, laughing. “This is like your dream come true, isn’t it?” For as long as she could remember, Julian had been obsessed with UFOs and aliens. He probably knew more about UFOs than most of the people outside her house.
“Well, if you hadn’t been abducted and stuff, yeah.”
She smiled. “Thanks.”
“Hey, I tried your cell first but it said the number was no longer in service.”
“Yeah, it blew up with Blue Base. Which totally sucks because it had information on it about the government’s supersoldier project.”
“You have to come on Bin 42 and talk about it—about everything,” Julian said excitedly. “David too.”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. We have to think about it.”
“What’s to think about? Isn’t it important to share the truth with the world? You can’t let the government get away with what they did to you.”
“It was the Imria who did this to me,” Reese objected. “They adapted me, or whatever they call it.”
“An adaptation procedure.”
“Yeah. That.”
“There’s more to it than that and you know it. The government has been covering up the fact that they’ve been in touch with the Imria since 1947. There’s definitely a cover-up going on about the June Disaster—there’s still been no real explanation for why or how those birds went crazy. There’s all that Project Blue Base stuff you and David found out about. That lab report you guys found proves that the government was behind the June Disaster. You have to tell the world.”
He sounded so impassioned that she knew he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say. “We have to think about it. The fact that Agent Forrestal shut us down yesterday means this is serious.”
“I never said this wasn’t serious. It’s totally dead serious.”
“Then you should understand we have to think carefully about the repercussions—”
“But yesterday you wanted to go public! You were all, ‘We’ll tell the world and then nobody will control us.’ ”
“Actually that was your idea.”
“Which you agreed with! Are you saying you don’t want to tell the world anymore?”
“No. But there are a lot of things to consider. We have to prove that we have these abilities, for one thing. Nobody’s going to believe us just because we say so. And we have to figure out how to use our abilities too.”
“So you’ll go to the Imria, right? They did this to you, and they’re offering to help you understand the adaptation procedure. Why don’t you talk to them?”
“I don’t exactly trust them.”
“You don’
t trust the government, do you?”
“No.” She scowled. “I don’t know who to trust.”
“You can trust me. And I’m telling you, you have to come on Bin 42 and tell your story. You have to at least give me that lab report so I can post it online.”
“That report is just a piece of paper. The government could easily say it’s a fake, and who’s going to believe me over the president? Did you read what people are saying about me and David online? They think we’re just two dumb high school kids. We can’t overturn decades of government lies just by talking to a website.”
“Change happens one person at a time,” he insisted. “You could be that person.”
“Maybe, but one person against the entire United States government?” She remembered the National Guard troops standing across the street, the helicopters circling overhead, the police outside. The government was taking this very seriously. She hadn’t realized that when she and David rushed outside to talk to the press. Now she knew enough to be scared.
“I don’t think you get it.” Julian sounded frustrated. “Do you understand how big this story is?”
She couldn’t believe he had said that. “It’s not a story. It’s my life. Did you see the soldiers outside my house?”
“Whoa, okay, I’m sorry,” Julian said quickly. “I didn’t mean it’s just a story. I meant that it’s really, super important. The US government should not be able to kidnap its citizens. You can’t let them get away with that. And that’s not even getting into all this crazy genetic engineering they’re doing with Imrian DNA. They’ve been hiding this from the world for decades. That is not okay.”
“I know. I agree, and I want to make them own up to it. But I don’t know the whole story yet. David and I don’t know how our adaptation abilities work yet. We have a lot of things to figure out. You have to give us some time.”
Julian exhaled into the phone. “All right.”
“Let me think about things. I’ll let you know if we want to talk to Bin 42, okay?”
“Yeah.” He sounded disappointed. “So what’s up with you and David?”
She was startled by the change of subject. “What?”
“You were making out with him yesterday. What’s up with that?”
“I don’t know.” She was embarrassed. “Look, I have to pee. I’ll call you later.”
“Sure.” He had a teasing tone in his voice.
“Bye, Julian,” she said, smiling.
She hung up and went to the bathroom before returning downstairs with the phone. As she passed the archway to the living room, she saw Agent Forrestal standing in one corner. She halted in surprise. Her parents were on the couch, and a strange man was seated in the leather armchair. When he realized Reese had arrived, he stood, holding a folded piece of paper in his left hand. He had short dark hair, dark eyes, and a very white smile, which he flashed at Reese as he extended his right hand to her. He was dressed in a slightly rumpled gray suit. “Good morning, Miss Holloway. I’m Jeff Highsmith. I work with the Defense Department’s Office of Public Affairs.”
She crossed her arms over her T-shirt, conscious of the fact that she was bra-less in her oldest pajamas. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
Jeff Highsmith retracted his hand as if it was totally normal that she had refused to shake it. “I’m here to set up some interviews for you.”
Reese glanced at her parents. Her mom had her lawyer face on: closed off and expressionless. Her dad, on the other hand, looked extremely skeptical. “You shut down our press conference yesterday,” Reese said to Highsmith. “Why would you want us to do interviews now?”
“We didn’t feel that an impromptu press conference on your front steps was an appropriate way to present the extraordinary experiences you and your friend David have gone through. We’d like to offer you a bigger platform to tell your story to the world.”
She was suspicious. “How big?”
“Have you heard of Sophia Curtis?”
“Of course.” Who hadn’t? Sophia Curtis was a former war-zone reporter who had become a celebrity after being captured by Somali pirates during an undercover story on the trafficking of women. After her triumphant return—freed by US Navy SEALs—she launched a prime-time talk show in which she interviewed everyone from death-row inmates who claimed they were innocent to Oscar-nominated actors. She had a reputation for being fair, but more than that, she had one of the biggest audiences on television. It didn’t hurt that she was gorgeous and had married one of her Navy SEAL rescuers.
“Ms. Curtis is very eager to meet the both of you,” Highsmith said. “We think it would be best if she interviewed your families as well, just to get everyone’s perspectives. We’d like to do it on Monday. What do you say?”
Reese glanced at her parents. Her mom gave her a thin-lipped nod. Her dad looked irritated. “I can’t agree to anything without talking to David first,” Reese finally said.
Highsmith smiled. “Of course. I’m visiting David and his family right after I leave here. I can give you two a little time to think it over, but we’ll need your decision by two PM today so we can get things in motion.”
That was only a few hours away. She looked at Agent Forrestal, who was standing with his hands behind his back, his face blank. The rushed nature of Highsmith’s plan struck Reese as particularly suspect. And why weren’t her parents saying anything? She needed to talk to them alone, and it seemed that the only way to get Forrestal and Highsmith to leave was to agree to think about it. “Fine,” she said. “We’ll let you know by two.”
“Good.” He unfolded the paper he had been holding and showed it to her. Her stomach sank as she recognized the lab report she had stolen from Blue Base the day she and David had escaped from the underground bunker. “Before I go, you should know that I saw this on your coffee table. That’s no place for a classified document like this, so I’ll take it with me.”
The last time she had seen that paper was when David’s dad was reading it in this room yesterday afternoon. He must have set it down, and she had completely forgotten about it. “You can’t—” she began, but he slipped the paper into his breast pocket.
“I’ll do you the favor of not asking how you obtained this, and you won’t be prosecuted for theft.”
Reese felt helpless, and it made her angry. Before she could say anything more her mom stood. “We’ll be in touch,” she said, the words clipped.
“Wonderful.” Highsmith pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to Reese’s mom. “Here’s where you can reach me. I’ll expect your call very soon.”
*
“We don’t have any choice,” Reese’s mom said after Forrestal and Highsmith left. “Before you came downstairs, Agent Forrestal made it pretty clear that if we don’t cooperate, there will be consequences.”
Reese watched her pace back and forth in front of the curtained bay windows. “Like what?”
“They said if you continue to reveal classified information you’re in danger of being prosecuted for treason.”
The words sounded like something out of a spy movie. “Are you serious?” Reese asked, shocked.
Her mom stopped pacing and looked at Reese, crossing her arms. Her face was drawn. “Yes. They said you’re violating the terms of the nondisclosure agreement you signed after your medical treatment back in June. I think we could have contested it in court—you’re a minor—but then Highsmith saw that document on the table.”
“Cat, you’re scaring her,” said Reese’s dad.
“She deserves to know what she’s up against.”
Rick held up his hands. “I agree, but let’s not take this to the extreme.” He looked at Reese from where he was still seated on the couch. “I don’t want you doing an interview set up by people who are clearly not looking out for your best interests.”
“If she doesn’t do it, they might take her away again,” Cat said.
“You don’t know that,” Rick argued.
“
They said they only let her go because of the public pressure we applied—”
“And that public pressure will prevent them from taking her again.”
Cat shook her head. “Things have changed. The Imria have come back. The government has new priorities now, and I don’t think they include Reese and David.”
“Wait,” Reese interrupted. She hated it when her parents talked about her as if she wasn’t in the room. “Don’t I get any say in this? What if I don’t want to do this interview?”
“I don’t want you to do it either,” her dad said, surprising her. It was so rare that they agreed.
Her mom let out a frustrated noise. “Nobody wants this, but—”
“Why do they even want to do this interview now?” Reese asked, sitting down next to her dad. “Yesterday they didn’t want me to talk at all.”
“International pressure, I think,” her dad said. “The United States is facing a lot of criticism from around the world about how they’ve been handling this Imrian situation, and it didn’t look good yesterday when that agent stopped you and David from talking. I think the government wants to set you up with this interview for PR purposes, but they’re going to control it the whole way. Even if you’re interviewed by Sophia Curtis, I doubt they’ll let you tell the truth.”
“Then what would be the point of doing the interview? We should tell our story to Bin 42—”
“No,” her mom snapped. “You are not talking to that website. That would definitely put you in danger with the government, and I won’t let you do that. I should have stopped you yesterday before you went outside.”
“Cat—”
She turned to her ex-husband. “We’re going to do this. We’re going to take this interview with Sophia Curtis and play along with them. I need some time to figure out what else we can do, and it can’t hurt to give them something they want.”
“Mom—”
“I’m not sending her into that interview without someone to advocate for her,” Rick said, ignoring Reese’s interruption.
“I’ll be there,” Cat said.
“I mean a media professional,” Rick said. “I’m going to call Diana Warner.”