Scan

by Walter Jury

  Christina shivers and takes a sip of wine.

  My mom drains the spaghetti, her movements fluid and relaxed. “Something like that. He’s probably concerned it would cause worldwide civil unrest if people suddenly knew there were aliens among us—even if more than sixty percent actually are aliens themselves. Everyone would assume they were human and would probably turn on anyone they suspected of being different. Imagine how ugly it could become. Innocent people would die. And of course, it’s impossible to rule out that the H2 want to use the technology for their own ends. They have a history of quietly—and at times, not so quietly—eliminating those who’ve challenged them. The scanner might make it easier to . . . preemptively strike. Or make sure there are no humans left in power anywhere in the world.”

  “But why would they do that? What difference would it make? Dad said they already have so much power. What else do they want?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out, Tate. Trust me.”

  I’m sure my expression tells her exactly how much I don’t trust her, but instead of pushing it, I take a different tack. “So did they invade all at once? How is their existence a secret?”

  “They arrived four centuries ago. Most of what we have is oral history. There were a few landing or crash sites, almost all in deep water near land, which appears to have been intentional. When the H2 came ashore, they were thought to be shipwreck survivors.”

  “Brayton said one of the Archers pulled actual wreckage from the Irish Sea.”

  She leans against the counter. “One of Fred’s ancestors was fishing for cockles during low tide in Morecambe Bay, and he witnessed a crash. They may have gotten off course, or they may not have accounted for the tide cycles, but the impact was devastating—there were no survivors, unlike many of the reported crashes. A day later, he found several small pieces of wreckage, the bits that hadn’t been washed out to sea by the high tide. It is those H2 artifacts that your father used to make the scanner.”

  “What, was there an instruction manual?”

  The corner of her mouth twitches upward. “Of course not. Your father experimented until he determined that this bit of technology could read the molecular structure of the skin to an insanely precise degree. When I last talked to him, even he wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but he’d done enough testing to be sure that was the basic mechanism for differentiating the two species. It was a surprising find—we weren’t sure why the H2 would have that technology when they arrived here or what its original purpose was.”

  “Wait—you said ‘this bit of technology.’ Were there other bits? How much did he have, exactly? What kind of wreckage are we talking about?”

  She shrugs. “That is something your father never revealed to anyone, not even me. I assume he has the artifacts in his lab somewhere, but you know how he protected his discoveries.” A shadow of regret passes across her face. “I know he would have shared everything with you had he lived long enough. He was waiting for the right time.”

  For a moment, my father’s death is a smothering weight that presses us into silence, but my mom shakes it off quickly. “We have no other concrete evidence of the H2 landing. Even though most H2 survivors blended into the human population, keeping their origins so secret that they were forgotten within a generation, their leadership—an organization called the Core—took a slightly different tack. They immediately began infiltrating human politics and power bases while the rest interbred with humans, most likely to help their offspring survive the microbial environment on Earth. I think the scanner reveals the result of that.” She eyes Christina, whose gaze is rooted on the ruby liquid in her glass. “There is no gradation or ‘hybrid,’ only human or H2.”

  Which explains why there are more of them than there are of us at this point. “But didn’t anyone notice the spaceships, Mom? Seems like those would make it hard to blend in with the locals.”

  She shakes her head. “Since they landed in the water, all ships were lost, and though modern technology should make it possible to recover them—and believe me, we’ve tried—the Core must have gotten there first, because nothing has been found. And only a handful of people actually witnessed the crashes, Tate. The rest of the world had no idea, and it’s not like camera phones and YouTube were around to broadcast the truth. As you can imagine, anyone who tried to warn others was eliminated by the Core. Farmers and fishermen were no match for such a sophisticated and organized group, so most of their stories faded into myth and legend. Not every family passed along the secrets, either—only a tiny minority. For the last hundred years, though, as technology slowly connected us, The Fifty were established and have worked together to ensure that we do not become extinct.”

  “But did Dad trust them?” I lock eyes with her. “He said I had to be careful with The Fifty.”

  Her fingers tap on the counter, a nervous kind of movement. “It’s a diverse group, and your father didn’t trust all of its members. But we have a common purpose, and that keeps us together.”

  “To regain control? To reveal the H2 for what they are?”

  My mother returns her attention to the simmering pasta sauce. I keep my eyes on her—I can’t look at Christina right now. If it was human against alien, would it be me against my girlfriend? My family versus hers? My stomach hurts with more than hunger.

  “Even if that was the strategy, it’s been impossible until now. These ‘aliens’ look like humans,” Mom says. “Those who tried to make others aware of what was really happening were branded lunatics, heretics, cultists. Without the scanner, it’s still impossible to prove that Earth is ruled by an alien species.”

  “It’s impossible to prove it with the scanner, then, if there’s no corroborating evidence,” I say sharply. “What would stop these Core people from discrediting someone who tried to use it that way?”

  My mom nails me with this intense stare. “The scanner is built from alien technology, and at this point, human technology is almost surely advanced enough to determine that it is, in fact, extraterrestrial. It’s the scanner itself, in addition to the information it provides, that would serve as corroborating evidence should someone decide to go public with it.

  “Is that all?” I ask.

  Mom frowns. “What do you mean?”

  I shrug. “The way they’re clamoring for it makes me wonder . . . You said they’d salvaged all their ships, except this one that Dad’s ancestor found. What if there was something on board that they’ve been looking for all these years, something that wasn’t on all the other ships they retrieved? Because shooting up a public school in the middle of the Upper West Side isn’t exactly a quiet suppression—they were desperate to get the scanner.”

  She stares at me for a few long seconds. “You might be right. If the H2 Core didn’t find it important—or threatening—Race Lavin wouldn’t have come after it. Especially not the way he did.” Her voice fades to a strained whisper, and for a moment, I think she’s going to cry, to finally show that my dad’s death is hurting her. Memories of his last moments crash over me. He had this look in his eye that said he had so many things left to say and do, so many things to teach me. It sucks the oxygen from my lungs, closes my throat. So when my mom, back to being smooth and cold, deftly changes the direction of the conversation, I let her do it. She asks Christina a lot of questions about ordinary, everyday things, and I can tell Mom’s trying to put her at ease. And it seems to be working amazingly well, because Christina’s cheeks are glowing and her movements have loosened up. She even smiles a few times, though her expression falters when she glances my way. I can’t really blame her.

  I eat mechanically, shoveling pasta into my mouth because it’s easier than talking right now. I keep my eyes on my mom. If she’d only give me a sign that I could trust her, that she cared about my dad, that his wishes matter to her . . . For a moment there, I thought I saw it, but now it’s gone again. Of all the people in the wo
rld, I should know where I stand with her, and that I can depend on her. My dad kept the truth from me for years, and I knew him a lot better than I know her. I’m relying on Mom now—for both my own life and Christina’s—and I wish I could use her as my anchor. God knows I need one. As we finish dinner, I ask her what the next step is. She tells me she has to call a few people and she’ll know more by morning, then changes the subject again. As she talks, I continue to search every blink, every smile, every movement of her face, looking for grief or regret.

  Nothing.

  By the time we’re clearing the table, I want to punch something. And I realize how badly I miss the Christina from yesterday, because she’s the one I could talk to about this. I miss the way she’d touch my face and tell me she’s all right, and I’m all right, and we’ll do this together. I need her to let me hold on to her right now. I need her to let me press my ear to her chest and hear her heart beat. But after everything that’s happened, I doubt she’d let me, and I’m not even sure it would help the way it did when I didn’t know the truth about who we are. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to be close to her, though, a desire that’s growing by the second.

  I scrub my plate and glass and set them in the dish rack. Christina stands with her plate but quickly sits back down again, blinking. “Whoa,” she says softly.

  “You must be exhausted. I’ve got something you can change into,” my mom says, and she strides down the hall.

  I sit next to Christina and hesitantly brush her hair away from her face. Her skin is so warm, almost hot. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” she says, her eyes slightly glazed. She looks like the day has drained her out, like she has nothing left.

  My mom returns, offering a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt. Christina takes them from her and slowly shuffles toward one of the bedrooms. I’m giving her only a few minutes, and then I’m going to check on her. She looks so unsteady.

  My mother’s gaze follows Christina until she disappears into a bedroom. “She cares about you a lot,” she says. “And she seems like a nice person. But you shouldn’t have roped her into this, Tate. She shouldn’t be involved.”

  “It happened kinda fast,” I snap. “They’d already seen her with me, Mom. They would have killed her.”

  Because I need something to do, I get Christina’s plate and glass from the table and take them to the sink. I dump the dregs of the wine into the basin.

  There’s a granular, white residue at the bottom of the glass.

  Something zings through me, too painful to label, too big for words. I lift the glass to the light and turn around. I catch my mother’s amber-brown gaze through the filmy crystal.

  “What did you do?” I whisper. She’s a chemist, after all. She has to know about twelve easy ways to poison someone.

  My mother steps forward quickly. Her firm, cool hands are around mine, and then she’s peeling my fingers away from the glass. “It’s going to shatter in your hand,” she says. “You don’t need another injury tonight.”

  “You put something in her wine.” It’s taking everything I have not to shake her.

  My mother nods, stone-faced again. “Diazepam. One capsule.”

  “You slipped her a Valium?” Part of me is relieved that it’s not ricin or coniine, because right now, I wouldn’t put it past her. But the rest of me is still pissed. “Christina’s not a child, Mom. And she’s not our enemy!” I realize as I say the words how deeply I believe them.

  “Don’t be naïve. Anyone could be our enemy now, Tate. With Race after us, with Brayton willing to kill to get the device for himself, it’s just you and me at the moment, and we need to figure this out—without an extra pair of eyes and ears.”

  She puts her hand on my arm, but I jerk away from her. “Me and you? What is that? You left us. You left me. How many times have I seen you in the last four years?”

  My mother shakes her head. “Your father had you on a very tight—”

  “Leash?”

  She flinches. “Of course not. On a schedule. Your preparation was very important to him, and we agreed it would be that way when we decided to have children. I didn’t always like it, but I respected it.”

  “I don’t want to hear this right now,” I say, waving my hands in front of me. “Stop.”

  “I wanted to see you more often,” she says, taking a cautious step toward me. “I wanted you to spend summers with me. I wanted to take you on trips, to go visit my family. He wouldn’t allow it.”

  “And you didn’t fight him, either.”

  “I couldn’t, not really.” She takes a deep breath. “I believed in what he was doing. I knew you’d have to be prepared. And obviously, I was right. So was he. And I knew he and Chicão and your other tutors, all of whom are from The Fifty, would be able to do that.”

  “Are you telling me that every single fucking person around me knew about all this, while I was intentionally kept in the dark?”

  She holds up her hands. “It was temporary and necessary, Tate. And think about what you’ve been through today. Do you really think you could have survived if your father and the others hadn’t trained you like they did?”

  “Maybe not, but here’s what else I know,” I say, jabbing my finger at her face. “I couldn’t have gotten through today without Christina. She saved my life three times. And I am not exaggerating, Mom. Three. Freaking. Times. So the way I see it, it’s me and her, and if you hurt her . . .” I pull my hand back and let it fall to my side as a fist, heavy and hot, ashamed that I’ve been doubting Christina so much, blaming her for something she has no control over, something she didn’t even know about.

  “I wouldn’t hurt her. That was never my intention.”

  “What was your intention?”

  She throws up her arms. “Honestly? Mostly to make sure she sleeps soundly tonight. To help her rest. She was practically catatonic by the time I picked you up. She looked traumatized.”

  She’s right about that part. “But you didn’t ask her permission. Were you going to try to drug me, too?”

  By the look on her face, I can tell that is exactly what she was planning. She wanted to sedate the kiddies so she could make her plans without our interference.

  I nod to myself. “All right. So much for it being just me and you. Looks like it’s really just you. So thanks a lot, Dr. Archer, for the rescue,” I snarl. “And for drugging up my girlfriend. I hope you have an awesome time tonight figuring things out by yourself. I’ll go put my jammies on. But don’t worry—I don’t expect you to tuck me in.”

  I pivot on my heel and stalk down the hall, and my mother doesn’t try to stop me. I find Christina in the third room on the right, curled up on one side of the double bed, huddled beneath a comforter even though it’s pretty warm in here. Her clothes from today are scattered on the floor, and I fold them and put them on the dresser. Then I kneel by her bed and carefully skim her hair away from her face. She’s breathing steadily, limp as a dishrag. Dreaming good dreams, I hope, free of bullets and blood and exploding Gatorade bottles.

  For a moment I consider climbing in next to her, but it doesn’t feel right like this. My mom deprived Christina of a choice tonight, and I’m not about to do the same, not when we have so much to sort out. I kiss her on the forehead, turn off the lamp, and go back into the hall. The bedroom across the way is empty. Like Christina’s room, this one is plain, no decorations, just a double bed, a set of drawers, a chair, and a lamp. I open the drawers and find myself a pair of sweats and a fresh T-shirt. I take a long, long hot shower, wishing the whole day would peel off of me and slip down the drain, just a dream, a figment of my imagination.

  By the time I emerge, the hallway is dark, and there’s no light coming from beneath any of the doors. I hear the faintest sound, though, and I follow it down the carpeted hallway, all the way to the last door on the left, thinking maybe I’ll eavesdrop to
make sure my mom’s not planning to dump Christina off on some street corner tomorrow.

  I put my ear to the door.

  It’s not a conversation I hear, but the sound is coming from my mom.

  The sobs are muffled, like she’s got her face in her pillow. They are quietly desperate. They are gut-wrenching. Unadulterated grief, bottled up until now, when she could break down in private, when she could let it out.

  She’s crying for my father. I hear her say his name.

  I lean away from the door, once again feeling like I’ve intruded upon something intimate, something too painful to share. I creep back to my own room, to my own bed.

  It takes me a very long time to stop shaking.

  THE SOFT BUT INSISTENT KNOCK PULLS ME FROM A thick, hazy sleep long before I’m ready. “Tate? Wake up, please,” my mother says through the door.

  I sit up, dazed, my eyes darting from brown carpet to paneled walls to generic dresser. It takes me several seconds to remember where I am. And that my father is gone. And that I am in a safe house somewhere in the woods of freaking Jersey, with my mother, who apparently has a fondness for slipping Valium into people’s drinks. Awesome.

  “Tate!” Her knocking gets louder.

  “Yeah?”

  She opens the door and pokes her head in, looking like she’s afraid I’ll start shouting if she comes in. “We need to go. Soon.”

  I swing my legs over the side of the bed. “What’s happened?”

  She’s already dressed, and her hair is wet, leaving dark streaks on the shoulders of her light blue shirt. “There are agents in Princeton.”