Kimberly Derting - The Taking

Both camps had their own information networks in place, yet so far neither one of them had heard so much as a peep about anyone, anywhere , being newly returned. And that lack of news was . . . well, it was killing me.

“I wasn’t drawing. I was . . .” It didn’t matter. Natty didn’t need to hear that I was trying to write it all down so I could find a way to make some sense of it, because it would never make sense, even if it was on paper.

“You’re crying again,” Natty said quietly, and I blinked, wiping my eyes on my sleeve.

I was past being embarrassed over my outbursts, which were happening more and more frequently as I tried to cling to hope. “Sorry,” I offered halfheartedly.

She shrugged and picked up a slice of apple from my plate.

“Kyra!” It was Jett who’d come bursting into the dining room of the old mountain church house the Silent Creekers had taken over. “Kyra, come quick!” His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were overly bright. “There’s something you should see.”

I jumped up and reached for the hand Jett held out to me. We ran across the small courtyard to the temporary communications room Jett had set up using some of the equipment he’d brought with him.

Like everything else, the communications equipment for both camps was kept separate, and Jett had a no-share policy about his stuff. I was clearly an exception to that rule.

“Someone reported a Returned?” I asked, knowing I sounded desperate and not caring in the least. I wanted it to be true so bad.

Jett’s eyebrows lowered. “We’re not sure exactly,” he hedged, and my stomach dropped. “We intercepted a report of a teenage boy the No-Suchers picked up. They suspect he’s one of us.”

I frowned at him, refusing to let myself be crushed again. “So? That could be anyone. What makes you think it was him?”

“Here. See for yourself.” He handed me a laptop that was so bulky it felt like it could withstand an atomic blast.

I took it, my stomach doing crazy flips as I glanced tentatively down at the screen. I wanted to give myself just a few more moments of believing it could be Tyler before finding out it for sure wasn’t. Sometimes those few seconds of hope were worth the crash back to reality, and I didn’t want to lose that feeling—not just yet.

When I finally dared to peek, there was an email already cued up, and from the looks of it, it was definitely need-to-know information only. It had the word CLASSIFIED written all over it.

I skimmed the body of the email, my heart soaring with each passage I read:

On June 10 at 18:47 . . . Washington State Patrol reported an unidentified male between the ages of 16 and 20 years old at a rest stop just south of Olympia, Washington . . . subject was carrying no identification and refused to reveal his name to officials. Subject is currently being held at the Tacoma facility for my inspection.

“I don’t get it. This could be anyone.” I started to close the laptop, but Jett stopped me.

“Read who sent the memo.”

When I did, my stomach tightened, and I had to re-read the signature line several times.

It was right there, in black-and-white. Agent Truman was back, and he’d sent the email about a boy he wanted to “inspect.”

“Jett? What was he talking about? What’s the ‘Tacoma facility’?”

It was Simon who answered my question as he came into the room. “It’s exactly the kind of place we’ve been avoiding. And if that’s him, if it really is Tyler and he’s been returned, we need to get him the hell outta there.”

I turned to Simon then, wishing I could take back every second I’d avoided him over the past seventeen days, because now when I needed him most, he was right here for me. I was almost afraid to ask: “Can we do that?”

Simon pushed away from the wall, grinning daringly at me. “We can sure as hell try.”

“Kyra,” Jett half whispered from his spot beside me, and I whipped back around to face him.

He was pointing at the screen again, only this time it wasn’t the email he meant. “Look,” he breathed, his mouth hanging wide open.

It took me a second to process what had gotten him so worked up, but on the screen a message had popped open and in it there was only a single word, blinking at us.

Supernova16?

I stared at the message for several long seconds, my heart sliding into my throat.

Beside me, Jett’s voice rose excitedly. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

My hands shook as my fingers touched the keyboard.

What if it was a trap?

On the other hand, what if it wasn’t?

I had to know, so I tapped in the single word message and hit ENTER: Dad?