CHAPTER 2
Reese entered her bedroom and flicked the light switch that turned on her bedside lamp. Her mom paused in the doorway behind her. “You’re sure you’re all right, honey? Do you want a glass of water or something before you go to bed?”
“No, I’m fine, just tired,” Reese answered, walking over to the windows to peek through the blinds. Many of the reporters had left after Agent Forrestal ended the press conference, but they had been replaced by other onlookers who gazed up at the black triangle as if they were waiting for a divine message. She could see some of them now in the light of the streetlamp, their camera lenses pointed at the night sky.
“Okay,” her mom said. “You know where to find me if you need anything.” She came into the room and kissed Reese on the forehead, her hand sweeping gently over Reese’s hair. “I love you.”
After her mom left, closing the door behind her, Reese sat on the edge of her bed and pulled off the shoes that the government had given her that morning. Ugly white sneakers, already scuffed along the toes. A surge of fury swept through her and she kicked them across the room. They bounced against her laundry basket. She sighed and took off the government-issue khaki pants and long-sleeved T-shirt, shoving them into her trash bin. Then she got dressed in her oldest, most comfortable pair of pajama bottoms—red-and-white plaid—and a roomy, faded Cal T-shirt and climbed into bed.
She couldn’t sleep. Everything that had happened that day kept replaying through her mind. After the abrupt end of the press conference, Julian’s parents had rushed over to take him home. David and his family stayed another hour or so, waiting until Agent Forrestal retreated to his tan sedan parked halfway down the block. When she hugged David good-bye in the front hall, she suddenly didn’t want to let him go. Her fingers dug into David’s upper back even though she was conscious of their parents waiting nearby. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, loosening her grip.
“It’s okay,” he whispered.
What they went through in Nevada had brought them closer together than Reese had ever anticipated. She knew David was only going to his home, but the idea of him leaving filled her with an embarrassing panic. She told herself she was being illogical—this was just some kind of posttraumatic stress thing. Besides, their parents were watching.
She pulled away before the burning behind her eyes manifested into tears. “I’ll see you soon,” she said.
He gave her a small, crooked smile. “Definitely.”
Now Reese turned onto her side, drawing her knees up beneath the covers. David had kissed her that afternoon in this very room. The memory of it made a warm thrill snake through her, quickly followed by a surge of self-doubt. One kiss didn’t necessarily mean there was going to be another—and it might not mean anything other than kissing. But she wanted it to mean something. She just wasn’t sure what.
She gave up on sleeping and turned on the light again. Across the room, the red and gold paint that covered one entire wall of Reese’s bedroom took on a darker, warmer hue. It was like being inside a womb: soft gold skin and streaks of bloodred. This was what she remembered of the adaptation chamber, which Amber had described as being similar to an incubator.
Reese remembered painting that wall in a possessed rush, knowing only that she needed to get this image out of her brain. She had dreamed of a pliable yellow room with bleeding walls ever since she woke up from the accident in that strange hospital in Nevada, and spilling it onto the wall seemed to be the only way to exorcise it. Maybe that had worked—she hadn’t dreamed of it since she finished the painting—but she still didn’t understand the full repercussions of what had been done to her in that adaptation chamber.
She climbed out of bed and pulled the khaki pants out of the trash. She had forgotten about the phone Amber had given her.
Dr. Brand was Amber’s mother, as well as the Imrian who had overseen Reese’s and David’s recoveries at Project Plato in Nevada. Could Reese trust Dr. Brand to tell her the truth? She was doubtful.
She put the phone down and moved to her desk, opening her laptop to go online. She needed to find out what was being reported about her and David’s abduction and return. Maybe that would give her some indication of who to trust.
As soon as she logged into the Hub, news feeds from around the world showed that the entire globe was focused on the spaceship hovering over her house. If extraterrestrials appeared over your city, would you run for your lives or run to take a photo? one article asked. Thousands of people have chosen the latter in the last twenty-four hours, flooding into a normally quiet neighborhood in San Francisco to catch a glimpse of the black triangle from another planet. Meanwhile, others have been stocking up on supplies and taking to the back roads— just as they did earlier this summer after the June Disaster. “I’ll be prepared,” said Tom Maynard, en route to a remote cabin near Lake Tahoe. When asked what he was preparing for, Maynard replied, “You want to talk about terrorists? That ship is scarier than all of those birds.”
Reese remembered the day after the planes were grounded, driving with Mr. Chapman and David down highways packed with people fleeing a threat they couldn’t identify. As far as she could tell, nobody had yet pinpointed the cause of that mass panic. Maybe it was only paranoia, amplified by the specter of terrorism.
She scrolled down the screen, scanning the other news reports. Nation after nation demanded to know why the United States had concealed its cooperation with the Imria for so long. Some called for a global summit; others called for economic sanctions on the US until it explained itself. Reese and David were the subject of plenty of interest, too, with many leaders asking that they submit themselves to an international scientific board for genetic testing. And in the comments at the end of the articles, things got nasty.
Strangers writing in broken sentences mocked Reese’s bedraggled appearance on television. Her hand holding with David caused commenters to speculate about their relationship. Some went so far as to guess how intimate she and David had been, writing things that made Reese cringe. Increasingly horrified but unable to stop, she kept reading as people criticized her for being too skinny, too fat, and for being desperate enough to hook up with a Chinese guy. The comments about David were equally awful. They made fun of his race, characterizing him as a nerd who only managed to land a white girl because of his new alien DNA. They called him names that Reese had never said aloud. There were some people who pushed back and flagged the worst comments as offensive, but the words that rang in Reese’s mind weren’t those of her supporters.
And then there were the posts about Amber. Perhaps because she had said very little and had previously been known as the heroic savior who prevented Reese from getting shot, most of the commentary about Amber was positive. But some of it was so full of lusty innuendo about what they wanted to do to that “hot alien chick” that Reese felt as if a bucket of scum had been dumped over her head.
She could brush off some of the nastiness—these people didn’t know her, and obviously some were trolls, but a few of the comments brought her up short. One person had written: There is no proof that anything these kids are saying is true. Telepathy? Fast-healing powers? These kids think they’re superheroes. Someone had responded: I’ll believe they’re telepaths when I see scientific evidence for it. Until then, why would I believe a couple of teens? She could see how people might doubt them, since she and David had provided no evidence of what had been done to them.
Another commenter stated: I don’t believe these Imrians are aliens at all. How could they be aliens when they look exactly like us? I think all the evidence points to time travelers. The Imrians must be humans from the future. Reese caught herself spending several minutes pondering the probability of time travel before she shook her head and moved on to another comment: This isn’t about aliens; this is about the government trying to contain a giant secret. They’ve clearly been developing advanced technology, and these kids are about to blow this wide open. Why do you think that MIB stopped the press conference?
She followed a link at the end of that comment to a post titled
