Untaken (30 page)

Doc sighed. “We’re working for the US military, Brandon. I didn’t want to break Gracie’s computer, and I don’t want to hold anything back from you, but the information we’re dealing with is extremely sensitive. We have enemies, enemies who would dearly like to know where we are and what we are doing. I should have explained myself properly, and for that, I’m sorry, but I was only acting in the best interests of our mission.”

“So you say. It was guys like you locked us up back in Massachusetts. Guys like you…my Dad.”

“I have read some of the reports out of Massachusetts,” said Doc with a frown. “And from similar facilities around the country. A regrettable farce which we’re still trying to clean up. Nothing to do with military intelligence. Nothing to do with intelligence of any kind.”

“You army guys are on a different side from those Center guys.” I had to say it again, to remind myself that it was the truth.

“Yes.” Said Doc. “The military currently operates alone, independent of what remains of the Government. We have access to information and resources that they do not. We’re trying to fix things, Brandon. Jake is a part of that; it’s people like him we need most of all. There are very few of them left, thanks to the idiots at your Center and their ilk.”

“At the Center, they locked people away. Quarantine, they called it. None of those people made it.” Thinking about the Center again made my stomach clench.

Doc patted my shoulder. “We aren’t the Center. Jake would be treated kindly. He is infinitely valuable to us, to the work we’re trying to do. He would be a hero, not a prisoner. As would you.”

“So what do you think Jake can do to help? He can hardly even talk. What’s so special about him?”

“Classified,” said Doc. “You’re just going to have to trust me on this one, Brandon.”

Gracie turned her head away when I joined her on the stoop, but I could still see her red puffy eyes and wet cheeks where she’d been crying.

The sky was an ominous shade of yellowish gray, and a freezing wind nipped at my neck and ears with icy little teeth.

“Maybe we could bust the window out,” Gracie said flatly, as I sat down next to her.

“Jeez, this step is cold. You’re gonna get sick sitting out here.”

“The step isn’t the issue, Brandon.”

“Okay, so you want to bust out a window. And persuade the kid to climb out before Terry and Doc come running. Then I guess we ask them nicely to get the car out for us and we drive off into the sunset. Although we’d need some sun, first.”

“We have to do something! We can’t just let them keep him shut up.”

“Doc said they’d treat him good. They said he’s real important. Jeez, don’t start crying again! They’ll take us with them. Look after us. There’s nothing to be sad about.”

“I’m not sad! I’m pissed. At you. Even you’re not dumb enough to believe those assholes are going to look after us. I can tell you don’t believe them, not really. They just want Jake. And they aren’t interested in helping
him
either.” She glared at me, the tears cutting through the dirt on her face.

“Well, what do you think they want with him anyway? What’s so special about Jake?” I said, trying to swallow my temper.

“You haven’t guessed?”

“What am I s’posed to have guessed?”

Gracie sighed. It was almost good to see her looking superior and impatient again. She wasn’t the kind of girl who cried.

“Brandon, do you remember what happened at the Mall?”

“You know I don’t.”

“There were Drones there. Not just one, but a whole, like, hive of them or something. You were passed out in the cart and they were coming down from the roof.”

“Hell, I’m glad I don’t remember. Not for nothing, but it almost makes me thankful for the busted head.” I smiled at Gracie, but she didn’t smile back. She looked like she was going to cry again. I patted her back awkwardly, and when she didn’t slap my hand away, I slung an arm round her shoulder.

The first snowflakes were starting to drift down from the sky, big chunky ones that looked set to stick.

“So how come we’re still alive? If all those Drones came. You’re gonna tell me it was Jake?”

“He told them to back off. That was the first time he talked. He talked to them and they did what he said.”

That was crazy. The kid was freaky, but he didn’t have superpowers or anything.

“That’s really what happened? It was pretty intense in there. You sure you weren’t…imagining things?”

Gracie snorted. “No, Brandon, that’s really what happened.”

“So you think Jake can talk to Drones. And Terry and Doc want him. So he can tell them about the Space Men?”

Gracie rolled her eyes. “Terry and Doc want him because he
is
one of the Space Men. Jeez Brandon, you sure are slow sometimes.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe. They believe it. Why else would they want to take him?”

“How would they even know?”

“Don’t you remember at the Center?”

“I don’t want to talk about the Center.” I took my arm off Gracie’s shoulder, and clambered up off the step. The cold had stiffened my legs; a new knot of pain was starting to throb nicely right between my eyes.

“Tough, Brandon, because I do. They made us fill out those forms, about whether we’d had any contact with the Space Men. And even when people lied they knew. They knew about your Dad. They saw the way those people acted, and they spun some bullshit about taking care of them. That creepy Doc has been watching Jake ever since we met them. And they have Jake’s drawings. They must have gone through our stuff while we were sleeping. I saw Doc with them after he smashed my tablet. They knew for sure as soon as they saw those pictures.”

My head was really throbbing now. Doc had asked me about the pictures, and I’d just told him. Blabbed everything. Confirmed the crazy idea that they’d gotten about Jake, who was just a little freaky, not a goddamn alien.

“So, Jake’s a Space Man. I guess my Dad was a Space Man, too? I think I would have noticed if I’d been living with some little grey man all my life.”

“Not all your life,” said Gracie. “Something happened to him, right? A Drone, I’m guessing. I saw it happen to my neighbors, The Novaks. The Drones grabbed them and I thought they were dead, but when the ships came they got back up. They walked over to the ships and the ships took them. The Drones didn’t hurt them, they
changed
them. There was something else at the mall, too. This guy, he had killed his friend, and then he hung himself. He left a note. ‘
They look like us but they’re not.’
“

“I don’t want to talk about this no more.”

“They changed people, then they took them away. But some of those changed people missed their ride. We saw what happened to them when the guys in charge caught on to what they were. Why the hell would it be any different with these army guys?”

“The Center guys were Government,” I told her. “Doc said the army guys are against them. And we know that’s true, we saw the army guys take over the center. We saw them shoot Treen.”

“The only truth is that they’re going to say whatever it takes to get you to go along with them. They don’t want to help us, they want to use us. They need Jake, but the two of us are only alive as long as we answer their dumb questions and don’t make too much trouble. Because if we get in their way too much, they’ll just shoot us. We’re the extras. Or did you forget all those people we were locked up with?”

“That was the suits. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb, Brandon. Jake trusts you. Those asshole friends of yours are going to kill him. Or worse. And when they do, I hope you remember that it’s all your fault.”

“So what do you want me to do, huh? You think I can help him? There’s nothing I’ve tried to do since this whole thing started that I haven’t screwed up. You guys are better off if I don’t help.”

“Doc’s not your Dad, you know. He’s not going to save you.”

The snow was falling harder, and I had to blink it out of my eyes. I wasn’t crying. Nothing to cry about.

“Brandon, where are you going?”

I didn’t reply. Out in the street, my boots left black footprints in the swiftly growing crust of snow. Gracie’s voice followed me into the snow, but the sound was already distant, muffled by the soft, shaggy flakes.

“Brandon! You can’t just run away! We need you!”

After a while, the snow swallowed her completely and I was left alone with my memories. I tried to push them back, to build a wall between me and those images—a woman with her hair missing and her head wrapped in bandages rocking on a bed. The smell of dirty linoleum and cafeteria food. The weight of my Dad’s body in my arms.

I screamed into the crazed whirl of the storm.

I told those lost people that they were dead, that I was done with them, but still they pressed in on me, snatching at my clothes with hands made of snow and ice.

Jake

he door handle wouldn’t turn. There was a word for that.

Locked.

The door was locked.

Jake wondered why he was Locked in this room. Why didn’t Brandon and Gracie let him out? Maybe something bad had happened to them. There were bad things that could happen to people. There was a word for that too.

Dead.

He’d heard Gracie screaming. He’d heard Brandon shouting. Now things were quiet.

What if Gracie and Brandon were Dead?

He could hear footsteps, but it sounded like the footsteps of the Bad Men.

Dog whined and pushed a slimy nose into his hand. At least Dog was not dead. Dog bit the man, Terry, and Terry kicked Dog, and now Dog walked with one foot held up as if it hurt her to put it down.

Everything was bad here.

Silver shapes whirled and spiraled before Jake’s eyes.

There was a window in the room, and Jake climbed on a chair to look out of it. Dog stood behind him, tail swishing back and forth on the rug, as though Jake were doing it for her amusement.

There were no stars to see, because something was wrong with the sky.

Pieces of it were falling down. Little pieces that shone in the light that spilled from the window.

The stars!

Could the stars be falling out of the sky?