The Taking (The Taking 1)

I turned away from the screen, unable to stomach the idea of anyone, especially people in authority, doing the things Jett was talking about. It was barbaric.

I inhaled, still trying to steady my stomach. “How old are you, Jett?”

He came back to the present then, dropping his sleeve and offering me a small smile. “Twelve when I vanished.” He counted on his fingers then, his smile growing. “But now . . . sixty-four years young.”

“So how did you escape?”

Jett lifted his chin. “My pops wasn’t the kind of guy you messed with, not even if you were a GI.” He closed out the image with a sharp click, and though I wanted to ask more about it, I got the feeling the discussion was over.

“What did I miss?” Simon asked, ducking through the doorway as he joined us. Willow was right behind him, and I wished she didn’t make me so uneasy. She just had that energy about her, like she was hoping a fight would break out at any second just so she could let off some steam.

Like punching was her hobby.

“I was just about to show her the Sats,” Jett said, turning to face one of the monitors.

“Sats?” I asked.

“Satellite images.” His fingers danced over the keyboard, and a series of images flashed up on the screen. At first it was like looking at Google Earth: generic images I’d seen searching the Web. But then they became more specific as he refined the shots, honing in, until I recognized the city . . . the street . . . the house he was converging on. The image was crystal clear; there was no mistaking it.

It was my mom’s house. The very house I’d grown up in.

Except that it looked so strangely different now, covered almost completely in plastic. Enclosed the same way my mom had wrapped the leftovers she’d set out for me. Surrounding the property, all the way around the yard, there was a tall chain-link fence that hadn’t been there before.

“Quarantined?”

It was Simon who answered me. “They’re probably searching for evidence as well as contaminants. I wasn’t lying when I said they’d do anything to get their hands on you.”

“Assholes,” Willow growled, reminding me that we had an enemy in common.

“What about my dad? Has anyone heard from him? Did they get to him too?”

Jett went to work on the keyboard. “We’ve been following the online chatter—his message boards and chat rooms, all the places he usually frequents. So far he hasn’t made an appearance. But we also haven’t heard anything on the police or No-Suchers’ frequencies to make us think he’s been taken in for questioning either. He seems to have gone off the grid for now.” A satellite picture of my dad’s trailer popped up, and it was like looking at my mom’s house. It, too, had been quarantined, tented in plastic sheeting and enclosed by a chain-link barricade.

This time I could read the signs that were hung on the fencing: WARNING: RESTRICTED AREA

And at the bottom of the sign, in bold red letters: USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED.

The whole thing—the signs, the fencing, the quarantine—it was all insane.

“So I never asked this, but when we were at the bookstore, Tyler and me, there was an agent who . . .” I stopped because it was hard to find a way to put the words together just right.

But I didn’t have to finish my thought, because Jett turned around to look at Simon—another silent exchange. They already understood what I wanted to know.

“He killed himself,” Willow answered before either of the two boys had a chance. “Shot himself. That’s how we knew you were in trouble; their frequencies blew up with word of an agent being exposed to a Code Red and offing himself.”

Code Red. So that’s what he’d meant.

I turned to Willow, who didn’t seem to have any qualms about answering my questions. “And Jackson?”

“Was that the other guy’s name?” She shrugged, and again I was struck by how easily they accepted all this. “They got him. He was exposed, too, I guess. Must’ve been fresh blood still on the floor when he came in to see what happened.”

I shifted on my feet. “How do you know he was exposed?”

Simon and Jett exchanged a look again, and again it was Willow who didn’t mince words. “We already got confirmation that he died.”

“Died? How?” I asked, ignoring both boys and turning all my attention to her now.

“How do you think?” she answered as if I were dense.

My voice cracked. “Already?”

Simon pushed past Willow to stand in front of me. “He probably touched it—the blood. If it made contact with his skin, it would have reacted more quickly.”

But that didn’t make sense. “It was on my clothes,” I explained. “Tyler . . . he touched me after I saw you. He should’ve—”

Simon interrupted. “It wasn’t fresh then. There’s only about a sixty-second window when contact makes a difference. Airborne’s bad, but skin contact’s worse.”

I don’t know if that was supposed to make me feel better, that Tyler would outlive Jackson because he hadn’t touched my blood within that sixty-second window, but it didn’t. Dead is dead.

I shook my head, not wanting to be like them. Not wanting to be okay with all this, to accept death so willingly. Already, though, I could feel the hollowness consuming me, and I wondered if this was how it started. The carving out of your emotions. If I would soon be empty, a shell. “There has to be a way,” I murmured, collapsing bonelessly into one of the chairs.