Malinda Lo - Inheritance

“I don’t know,” her mom said, sounding resigned. “As long as that ship is here, probably. There’s nothing to stop people from coming to look, either. It’s created kind of a traffic jam out front, but as long as people keep moving, the police can’t force them to leave. It’s a public sidewalk.”

Reese went into the living room, pulling the curtains aside a few inches to look out. The normally quiet street was choked with traffic and pedestrians. Cars moved sluggishly down the block, and the sidewalks on both sides were clogged with onlookers. Some of them were even carrying signs, as if this was a demonstration. She saw one that said WELCOME, E.T. and another that stated I WANT TO BELIEVE. Others weren’t so friendly, declaring ALIENS GO HOME and ABDUCTEES DEMAND JUSTICE FROM ALIENS. A man carrying a sign that stated WE WANT FULL DISCLOSURE was watching the house, and when he saw Reese peeking out the window he pointed at her, his mouth opening in a shout she couldn’t hear. In a wave, other pedestrians near him turned to look in the direction he was pointing, and the sound of the crowd—muffled by the closed windows—crescendoed into a dull roar. Within seconds, dozens of people were surging toward the house, cars honking as some demonstrators rushed into traffic to get a closer look at her.

She stepped back in shock and tugged the curtains closed. She couldn’t sense the crowd’s emotions—maybe she was far enough away that she was shielded from it—but her heart raced as she heard a police officer speaking through a bullhorn, ordering people back. Footsteps came down the hall and her mom asked, “What’s going on? I heard something.”

“I looked out the window.”

“I should have warned you not to do that.” Her mom went to the curtains and peered through a narrow slit between the drapes.

Her dad came into the living room holding the telephone. “Reese, it’s for you. It’s David.”

“I didn’t hear it ring,” Reese said, taking the receiver.

“We turned off the ringer. It’s been ringing off the hook all morning with interview requests.”

Reese lifted the phone to her ear. “Hey, David.”

“Hey,” David said.

“I’m taking this upstairs,” Reese said to her parents. On the way to her room she said to David, “It’s crazy out in front of my house.”

“I know. I saw it on the news.”

She entered her bedroom and nudged the door shut. “What does it look like?”

“You’re basically surrounded within a three-block radius. They’re all looking at the spaceship.”

“Shit.” She climbed onto her bed and set her coffee mug on the bedside table.

“I went online to try to find out if the Imria have said anything, like whether they’re going to move their spaceship, but there’s no official news. Some people have some pretty insane theories though.”

“I read one last night about time travel.”

“That’s a good one. Did you read about panspermia?”

“Pan what?”

“Apparently there’s a theory that all life in the universe originated from one common source. Like, asteroids traveled the universe carrying life and they hit various places, including the Imrian planet and Earth, so that’s why the Imria look like us.”

“That’s… interesting. I guess that’s as good a theory as any.” She remembered what typically accompanied these theories online. “You didn’t read the comments, did you?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

“You did, didn’t you? You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Whatever, so there are trolls,” he said dismissively. “You’re not paying attention to them, are you?”

It was her turn to hesitate. She picked up the mug and took a sip of coffee.

“Reese.”

“David.”

He laughed, and it sent a tingle down her spine. She liked the sound of his laugh. She hadn’t heard it in a long time.

“So that press conference didn’t exactly work out the way we thought it would,” he said.

“No. Do you think we should try it again?”

“I don’t know. How do we know Agent Forrestal or someone else won’t shut us down again?”

“Well, this website, Bin 42, wants us to talk to them. Julian works for them.”

“That’s the one that put up the video, right?”

“Yeah.”

He was silent for a second. “We could do that.”

“What’s your hesitation?”

“Well, a lot of the stuff online was talking about how there’s no proof that we have these abilities. Maybe we should get some proof first.”

“How?”

“My dad says he can set up an academic review board to examine us.”

Reese remembered that David’s dad was a biochemist. “Your dad works at a pharmaceutical company in Menlo Park, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t he suggest that his company do it?”

“He doesn’t want any suggestion of bias, which there would be if he was involved. He has friends at UCSF who could put together a group of scientists.”

“What do you think about the Imrian offer to help us?”

“I don’t trust them. Why? Do you want to take them up on it? And what was the thing that Amber gave you, anyway?”

She glanced at the device on her desk. “It was a cell phone. She gave us a way to call Dr. Brand.” She suddenly remembered something. “Wait, do you still have my cell phone?” While she and David were at Blue Base, someone had put a report on it that laid out the military’s project to create supersoldiers with Imrian DNA. “I gave it to you so you could read that report, remember? That is totally proof.”

David exhaled, his breath sending static over the phone. “No, I had to leave it with my stuff and then the base exploded, so it’s gone.”

“Crap.” She heard a clicking noise and checked the receiver. Julian was on call-waiting. She’d have to call him back.

“Do you not want to do this academic board testing thing?” David asked.

“I agree we need proof,” she said quickly. “But do you think the testing is going to show us what we can do? That thing that Amber did when she touched us—how did she do that? We need to learn that.”

“I definitely don’t trust Amber,” David said, and there was a sharp tone to his voice that startled Reese.

“I know,” she said hastily. “I don’t either. But how are we going to figure out exactly what we can do? The government doesn’t know much about what happened to us. It would be great to have scientific proof that we’re not lying, but that might not explain how we can use our abilities.”

“I tried to—to communicate with you last night.”

She was taken aback. “You mean… telepathically?”

“I guess. It didn’t work. I couldn’t sense you at all. Not like I could when we were at Project Plato.” He paused. “That did happen, right? I’m not crazy, am I? Could you hear me then?”

“Yes,” she said. “At Plato, I could definitely hear you.” Their disembodied connection had been so strange and yet so intimate, as if their minds had met on some extra-dimensional plane. “It’s different when we touch, though.”

“Yeah. That feels more like I’m in your head. The time at Project Plato, it felt like I was talking to you on a really bizarre telephone.”

She sat up, putting her coffee down. “Wait. Was Plato the only place it worked for you? I thought we communicated telepathically yesterday too. In my room when Amber and Julian were here. You couldn’t hear me?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I can’t remember.”

There was a catch in his voice that made Reese think he was holding something back. “What is it? If you couldn’t hear me that’s okay. I don’t know how this works either.”