Untaken (41 page)

Away from the clearing.

I glanced back at the ship one last time. It didn’t seem like it was going anywhere soon. My weary feet puffed through the leaves as I tried to keep pace with Gracie.

“Where in the hell are you going now?”

“If he won’t come out, then we’re going in.”

“How are we going to do that?” I panted.

“I don’t know. But I know someone who might be able to find out.”

Gracie

he dawn was melting away into a bright summer morning by the time we got back to the cabin. I felt a huge flood of relief when I logged on and saw 6_Star’s user name under the “members online” tab. It was still going to be okay.

6_Star would help me figure a way out of this mess.

GRC97:
Hey, I need your help.

6_Star:
Good morning to you too!

GRC97:
It’s serious.

6_Star:
Sorry, I’m listening.

GRC97:
This is going to sound crazy, but can you get into *all* the stuff they know? Not just the emails, but the actual data?

6_Star:
I don’t know. Why?

GRC97:
I need to know how to get inside a ship.

GRC97:
Not one of the big ones, or the ones with guns, it’s one of the long silver ones.

6_Star:
W.T.F. What are you saying here?

GRC97:
No time. I just need to know HOW. Is there a door or something? I couldn’t see one.

6_Star:
I don’t know if they’d even know that. What are you doing? This sounds dangerous.

GRC97:
Find out. Please!

6_Star:
It’s not going to be easy to get into those files. It could take a few days.

GRC97:
We don’t have a few days. The little kid we’re with. He’s trapped inside a ship. It crashed in the forest, and he went in. He’s on his own in there. And those army guys are out there.

GRC97:
Shit. I just thought of something.

6_Star:
???

GRC97:
What if the ship is what they’ve been looking for?

6_Star:
…It makes sense :-( They never mentioned you guys in most of the emails. Just “the objective.” And they were talking about that before you ever met them.

GRC97:
Then we have to get rid of that thing before they find it. But first we have to get him out. OMG I don’t know what to do.

6_Star:
Calm down, okay? I’ll try to get in, search some keywords. If they’ve studied these craft there might be something, but it’ll be hard. Give me a couple of hours, okay?

GRC97:
Okay.

Brandon squinted at the screen. “You seriously think she can help?”

“I don’t know. But we have to try.”

Brandon sighed. “I wish you’d just let him alone. Look, I care about him, too. I love him. But he can’t stay here forever, we both know that. They’re never going to leave him alone. If he goes now, while there’s still the chance—”

“You just want to get rid of him. It’s too much trouble, I guess, to keep him safe.”

“No. You think if you keep him it will make up for all the people you lost. But it doesn’t work like that.”

“That’s crazy!” I wanted Brandon to shut up, but he kept right on going.

“And in ten years’ time, when he’s a man; or something that looks like a man but isn’t, what are you going to tell him? ‘Sorry you have to spend your whole life hiding. Sorry it’s too late to go home. We decided you belonged with us, so too bad about what you decided?’ Look, you’re the one who gets on my case for refusing to think about the future. About reality. Well, this is it.”

“So, what do you think we should do?” I asked. “Leave him there?”

“Let him decide. Let it be his choice,” said Brandon.

I couldn’t believe he was being so pig-headed about this. “We don’t know what his choice is,” I told him “He disappeared inside that thing. Who knows what’s in there? He could be a prisoner. He could be dying.”

“You know that’s not true,” said Brandon. “We both heard him.”

“We don’t really know what we heard,” I said stubbornly. When Brandon tried to take my hand, I folded my arms.

“I’m going back there,” he said. “I’m going to take some food and water and go wait there. When he makes his choice, I’ll be there for him, whatever he decides. I’d like you to come. If he comes back to us, then great, I’ll be happy.”

“Yeah, right,” I muttered.

“But if he decides to go, I want him to see that it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” I snapped. “I’m staying here until I know how to get inside that thing. Or at least until I know there
is
no way in.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He kissed the top of my head before I could react. Was he really going? I couldn’t believe it until I heard the kitchen door slam. Fine. Let him go.

Some people might have been happy just to sit around and let things happen to them, but not me.

It was tempting to camp out in front of the monitor until 6_Star came back online, but I knew that would just make the time crawl more slowly. My head felt hopelessly foggy and I suddenly realized I’d had no sleep for more than a day. There was no way I was going to sleep now, though. Not until I knew about getting inside that ship, one way or the other.

Dog had gone with Brandon, and the cabin was very quiet. I pushed open the door to Jake’s room. The window ledge was piled with a selection of the weird crap he liked to pick up. A fist-sized stone, a feather, an old Coke can, bleached white by the sun. The kind of thing any little kid would pick up and bring home. Hadn’t Liam and Mikey’s pockets always been stuffed with similar things? Hadn’t my own? I remembered the time my mom put my jeans through the laundry with a pocket full of seashells and busted the washing machine.

I knew that what Doc and Terry had said about Jake was true. I’d seen it with my own eyes at the Mall. He’d communicated with the Drones, the same way he was probably communicating with the ship.

But it was still Jake.

That he could be one of the creatures responsible for tearing apart my whole life was unthinkable.

You don’t know anything about him. You haven’t wanted to know. You’ve never just asked him what he felt. What he wanted.

There’d never been any point asking Jake, though! And even if he had been one of them, he wasn’t an invader. Not some big, bad-ass intergalactic villain. He was a kid. And he was too young to know what was best for him. I knew more about the world than he did. I knew what was best for him.

Just like Doc and Terry had thought they did.

Or the guys at the Center.

I groaned and rubbed my aching head. It was all such a mess!

Maybe Brandon was right about one thing: we should at least talk to Jake. Find out what was going through that crazy little head. But how were we going to do that without getting him out of the ship? Talking to 6_Star had
definitely
been the best plan.

6_Star was waiting for me when I logged back on.

GRC97:
Did you find it?

6_Star:
Maybe. Tell me what happened exactly, when he went into the ship
.

GRC97:
I don’t know, we weren’t there when he went in. We followed him through the woods. He made this crazy…trail thing. Then we found the ship and we knew he’d gone in.

6_Star:
You followed his trail? What do you mean?

GRC97:
There was this gap in the woods. It’s hard to describe.

6_Star:
So the trail Jake made leads to the ship? Is he on his own there?

GRC97:
…

6_Star:
Hello?

GRC97:
I never told you his name was Jake.

6_Star:
???

GRC97:
I never told you his name. I’ve never told you any of our names. Even mine.

6_Star:
I guess I got it from one of the reports. What’s the big deal?

GRC97:
I read the reports too, remember? They always call him Subject 135. They’ve never once used his name. The only way you’d know it is if you’d talked to them. Tell me you didn’t. Please.

6_Star:
…

6_Star:
We needed to get Jami real medical care. I didn’t have anything else to bargain with.

6_Star:
I’m sorry.

I ran down the stairs to get the gun, but the distant sound of trucks on the road already echoed through the quiet forest.