This Town Is Not All Right
Page 13
His dad grinned. “Pretty neat, huh?”
“What do you do for the CIA?” Beacon asked.
“It’s top secret government information, but I’ve checked with Victor and received authorization to let you in on what’s going on here. Can you keep a secret?”
Beacon wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to hear what his dad had to say, but his dad didn’t wait for him to answer.
“I’m helping to develop an antidote for a new strain of disease caused by climate change. It will help people—children especially—survive when sea levels rise. With what happened to Jasper, I thought it was important. It wasn’t until I got here that I realized just how important this antidote really is.”
“This antidote . . . is this the same injection they gave Everleigh at school? The one they tried to give me?” Beacon asked.
His dad nodded.
“Did you know they were going to give it to us?” Beacon asked. “How come you didn’t tell us the truth about it?”
His dad didn’t reply to him, just moved on. He did that sometimes when he thought Beacon was being especially childish, not dignifying his behavior with a response. It made Beacon furious.
“The CIA recruited me because of my work for the CDC,” his dad continued. “They’ve gathered all the top people in infectious diseases to work on this. They need every brain they can if they’re going to get this project up and running in time.”
“What does any of that have to do with this place?” Beacon gestured around the suite. “Where are we? Why are we underwater?”
“I was getting to that. As you know, back in 1967, an aircraft landed in the harbor. Many people claimed it was an alien spacecraft. A UFO,” he said, making air quotes. After a pause, he added, “And they were right.”
Beacon’s breath stalled in his chest. Of all the things he’d thought his dad might say, that wasn’t it. He stood there, paralyzed, trying to remember how to breathe. Trying to make sense of it all.
“You’re—you’re saying aliens really do exist?”
His dad nodded. “I can see you’re overwhelmed. I felt the same way on my first day of work.”
Beacon swallowed, his heart beating too fast. “What happened after the crash?”
“Their spacecraft was irrevocably damaged. They lost all contact with their home planet. Without the right supplies, or the right technology or assistance, they had no way to get back home. They were essentially trapped. Can you imagine? Landing on a strange planet, with no way home? A planet full of people who would want you dead if they found out you existed? Humans haven’t exactly been shining examples of empathy and tolerance over the millennia. If the public found out that aliens were walking among us, they wouldn’t be in a hurry to invite them over for dinner, that’s for sure.”
“So they didn’t fly home then?” Beacon said. “After they crashed in the water? I thought satellites saw two vessels move from here to Russia after the crash before they disappeared.”
His dad laughed and shook his head. “You sure have done your research. That was the US military chasing off Russian vessels. We were protecting the ship. The UFO never left these waters.”
“Oh,” Beacon said. A thought suddenly occurred to him, and he went cold all over. “Am I inside the UFO right now?”
His dad nodded.
Beacon looked around, suddenly seeing the place in a whole new light. He’d never felt claustrophobic before now, but the walls suddenly seemed very close.
“So aliens have been on our planet since 1967 and no one knows about it?”
“Some people do. You know.” His dad nudged him with his elbow and gave him a conspiratorial little smile that Beacon knew was supposed to placate him. It only made him feel like he might bring up his supper.
“The government has been helping them to adapt,” he said. “Integrate into society. They’ve done remarkably well. I have trouble myself telling a Sov from a human.”
“A Sov?” Beacon said.
“Short for Sovereign. They didn’t have a name for themselves, but it turns out it was a royal ship of sorts that crashed. Someone started calling them the Sovereign, and it just stuck.”
“So they look like us?” Beacon thought they’d be long and thin and pale with slits for a nose, the way aliens on TV always looked.
“They do now,” his dad said. “In most ways. They don’t like to show their natural form, and we don’t press them to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beacon said warily.
“Their species is very unique. Normally, mutation takes place over the course of millions of years. But the Sov can adapt very quickly. Much more quickly than humans, or any other species on earth.”
“So they can look however they want?” Beacon asked. He wasn’t sure he liked that.
“Sure, I suppose,” his dad said. “But they choose to blend in. It’s easier that way.”
“How do we know we can trust them?”
He had to assume that the Sov were smarter and more advanced than humans if they’d figured out intergalactic space travel. If they could blend right in with humans, what was stopping them from a total takeover?
“For one, it’s been forty years since they landed here, and they haven’t killed us yet. But also because they’re helping us. A little exchange of favors.”
“Helping us how?” Beacon asked.
His dad scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t want to scare you.”
“That ship has sailed,” Beacon said.
His dad heaved a huge sigh and looked him in the eye. “I mentioned the antidote is to help us survive when sea levels rise, right? Well, that’s only half of the truth. There’s an environmental . . . threat coming,” he said, choosing his words very carefully. “Thanks to climate change, the planet’s been warming more and more every year, and that’s not going to stop. In fact, it’s expected to increase exponentially with each passing year. The warmer the planet gets, the faster the rate of evaporation from the ocean, the more precipitation we see, and as the atmosphere gets warmer, it can hold more moisture, affecting the intensity of the precipitation—”
“Cut to the chase, Dad,” Beacon interrupted.
“There’s going to be a collection of weather events that will, quite frankly, devastate our planet,” his dad said. “Storms, tsunamis, massive flooding all across the coastal regions.”
Beacon felt the air get knocked out of him, as if he’d been punched in the gut.
“When?” he gasped out.
“Not tomorrow, or even next week or next year. It’s not projected to hit for quite some time. But we’re doing everything we can to be prepared for when it does.”
Beacon pictured a giant wave swallowing Blackwater Lookout, and his chest tightened.
“What are we doing here if there’s floods coming?” he asked, his voice high and strained. He waved his hands around. “Shouldn’t we be moving inland? Ohio, Nebraska—why are we in this place?”
He could spit into the ocean from his bedroom window!
“That’s where the antidote comes into play.”
“How can this antidote possibly help us survive tsunamis?”
His dad raised his eyebrows, waiting for him to piece things together. He hated when his dad did that. It just made him feel stupid.
“I don’t know. Are the Sov helping us to breathe underwater or something?” Beacon asked.
Unexpectedly, a smile crossed his dad’s face.
“Really? How?” Beacon asked. “Is that why I’m in this gown?” He plucked at the flimsy green gown.
“It’s a chemical compound, hidden inside the antidote,” his dad said. “It alters our DNA makeup so that we don’t require oxygen to live. The simplest way to think of it is this: You know how humans evolved from primates? Over the course of millions of years, our genes mutated to
give us a survival advantage in our environment. Millions of years from now, we might have gills to help us survive our new water planet. But that won’t help us now. People will die. A lot of people. But the Sov, they have this ability to mutate quickly. In seconds,” he said, punctuating the statement with a brisk snap of his fingers that made Beacon jump.
“They’re creating a formula based on their own genetic makeup that speeds up human mutation. I won’t bore you with the finer details, but trust me when I say it’s science like we’ve never seen it before.”
“But . . . why?” Beacon asked. “Why are the Sov helping us?” Of all the wild stuff he’d heard, he knew that was a silly point to latch on to. But he just didn’t get it. He couldn’t see why a supersmart, advanced alien race would come all the way here from . . . wherever it was they came from . . . just to help. He’d seen enough sci-fi movies to know that aliens only came here for three reasons: to take over the planet, to make us their slaves, or for some human stew.
“I can see you’re still suspicious,” his dad said. “Let me try to explain. The Sov—they don’t experience time the same way we do. Where humans can see the past and experience the present, the Sov can also see a bit of the future. Not all of it, not the little day-to-day things, but certain”—he frowned, searching for the right words—“calamitous events, are visible to them. That’s how they know about the environmental disaster. But they’re not helping us out of a simple sense of benevolence, although I truly do believe that is a factor, too—they’re good people, Beacon. I mean, good creatures. You get the point.” He smiled, as if he expected Beacon to laugh. Beacon didn’t.
His dad cleared his throat.
“Further into the future—now, we’re talking millennia here—the Sov will be at war. Another species will attack and raze their planet, leaving no survivors. In exchange for their help now, the Sov would like ours later.”
Beacon didn’t really see how humans could be of much help. The Sov seemed so sophisticated. Compared to them, he really did feel like an ape.
“Think of how far humans have already come,” his dad said, reading his mind. “Now think of just how much further a couple thousand years could take us—we’ll be a pretty big asset then. At least the Sov seem to think so.”
Beacon sat there, taking it all in. He and Arthur had guessed that the vitamin injections weren’t what the school told them they were. But they never would have guessed this. Aliens in Driftwood Harbor? A government cover-up? Storms that would destroy the planet? An antidote that would help them to breathe underwater?
Everleigh could breathe underwater, he realized.
Beacon didn’t know whether to find that cool or creepy.
All of a sudden, he thought of Jane’s Gold Stars jacket shining brightly in the moonlight, right before she was toppled by a big, hungry wave. Of the way all the Gold Stars looked to her first, as if seeking approval.
“Jane Middleton is an alien, isn’t she?”
“She is Sov,” his dad confirmed.
Shock ricocheted through his body. And indignation.
“So it was her in the water that night?” Beacon said.
“I didn’t know it at the time, but yes, it was her. She was on her way to the lab. Most of the Sov take the passages, but some of them prefer to go through the water.”
“Who else is one of them? Are all the Gold Stars aliens?” Beacon asked.
“No, the rest of the kids are normal humans, just like you,” his dad said. “Well, they do have one superhuman ability, thanks to the antidote.”
He winked.
“Mutation won’t solve all the problems, of course,” his dad continued when Beacon didn’t react the way he’d hoped. “There will be issues with agriculture, not to mention the economy. We’ve got a multitiered plan in place, and we’re in preliminary preparations for underwater cities, just until the floods recede in a decade or two and we can rebuild.”
A decade or two? Living in an underwater city? Now Beacon really did wonder if he was dreaming.
“Have you had this antidote?” Beacon asked.
His dad nodded. “We all have—everyone who works here. We’re very lucky to be on the forefront of this. We won’t get left behind.”
“Did you take it by choice, or did they trick you, too? Force you to take it like they did to Everleigh—like they tried to do to me?”
“It was a choice. I’ll admit, I didn’t know the full extent of what the antidote did before we got here or how far along they were, but once the Sov showed me the truth, how could I not take it? How could I not let them give it to you? Knowing that I wouldn’t lose you two the same way I lost Jasper. I couldn’t say no.”
“Does all this have anything to do with why Everleigh is acting so weird?” Beacon asked.
“One of the benefits of this program is that the injection causes participants to behave in a more regulated manner,” his dad said. “The toxin dulls the part of the brain that encourages impulsivity and resistance, while promoting activity in the part of the brain responsible for benevolence and kindness. It’s especially effective on children.”
“Kindness?” Beacon said. “Is that why the Gold Stars chased me and Arthur like they wanted to kick our butts? Because they just wanted us to sign up for their bake sale?”
“The antidote isn’t perfected yet,” his dad said, and Beacon knew he must feel really guilty about everything when he didn’t even say anything about his attitude. “Sometimes we have to give top-offs.”
Nixon, he realized. That’s why his file had been full of injections. Why they’d noted incidents of bad behavior.
“None of this seems right,” Beacon said. “Maybe I wouldn’t mind so much if Everleigh seemed like Everleigh, just nicer. But she’s a completely different person. And you didn’t even ask us if we were okay with this. Shouldn’t we have a choice?”
“I feel badly about that,” his dad admitted. “After what happened with your brother, I thought putting all this on you would be too much. I figured it might be easier if you didn’t have to worry about any of that, at least for a while, until the shock of it all was less fresh. I can see now that I was wrong. But it’s not all bad, Beacon. Think about it—you’ll be safe now. We’ll all be safe now. You’ll never have to worry about drowning. I’ll never have to worry about losing another kid again.” There was a crazed gleam in his dad’s eyes that made Beacon feel off center, as if the world was shifting just slightly off its axis.
Beacon shook his head. “Dad, just how much of this do you really believe? Or is the antidote making you believe this?”
His dad frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He grabbed something off the metal side table beside the stretcher. When he turned around again, Beacon saw what it was: a syringe. He backed up.
“Do not come near me with that!” Beacon said.
“Beacon, you’re being unreasonable. This is for your own good.” His dad slid off the stretcher and stepped closer. “This will only hurt for a second.”
Beacon scrambled back, clattering into another tray. He hurried to put it between him and his dad. “What is this, Dad? Is this some kind of punishment?”
“What do you mean?” his dad said.
“For Jasper. He’s dead, and it’s because of us. We know that, and we’re sorry we did it, okay? We’re sorry we sneaked out, and we’re sorry we went into the water that night. It was a stupid idea, and we’re never going to stop wishing we hadn’t done it. But you can’t do this, Dad! You can’t just rip us out of our home and take us across the country for some—some freaky alien experiment, okay?”
He’d screamed the last part.
“It’s not your fault, Beacon,” his dad said calmly. “It’s neither of your faults.”
Beacon was shaking his head. He wanted to plug his ears, block out the words. They weren’t true.
“Yeah, well, where was your antidote before, huh? We could have really used it last year. Then maybe Jasper would still be here.”
There was a stunned silence, and Beacon wished he could take the words back. Just grab them from the air and stuff them back in his mouth.
He should have apologized, but he couldn’t get the words out. He was so full of emotion—anger, sadness, guilt, confusion, terror—that he thought he might combust. So he did the only thing he knew how to do.
He ran.
“Wait!” his dad called. But he was already gone.
He barreled into a dimly lit control room. A dozen men and women wearing sleek wireless headsets and black suits jumped up from the ring of state-of-the-art computers circling the surgical suite, confirming his suspicion that the mirrors hadn’t been mirrors at all, but windows.
“Stop him!” someone cried, pointing at Beacon.
Beacon ran. His bare feet slapped on the tile, his hospital gown flying out behind him. He didn’t know where he was going. Everything looked the same, long stretches of immaculate white halls and polished tile floors. Finally, he turned a corner and saw a set of metal swinging doors up ahead. Maybe it was the exit.
He slammed through the doors and stuttered to a stop.
Dozens of people were seated around rows of gleaming stainless steel tables. It might have looked like a scene in any cafeteria, with pizza and french fries dipped in ketchup stretched all along the tables, except that the men and women weren’t eating with their hands. He watched in mute horror as a large, gooey organ reached out from inside a man’s chest, which looked as if it had been cracked in two, and closed around a hamburger; the food dissolved with a hiss of steam before the organ sank back into the chest cavity with a loud slurp. The man—the alien—wiped his chest with a napkin before buttoning up his shirt.
All at once Beacon remembered the bloodstain on Jane’s shirt the day she stepped out of Nurse Allen’s office, and the time he could have sworn he saw her slip a cookie under her shirt at the Gold Stars meeting. He hadn’t been seeing things. She had been eating through her chest.