“Are you saying you’ve never tried it?” Mr. Hernandez asked.
“I’ve done it,” David said. “It was by accident. My mom, she—she’s my mom. She hugs me. I could sense her feelings, sure, but I didn’t really know what was going on. It was pretty confusing.”
“Did your mom know you were sensing her feelings?” Mr. Hernandez asked.
“No. Humans can’t—humans who aren’t adapted can’t sense that,” David asked.
Reese could practically see the gears in Mr. Hernandez’s brain turning as he thought about how to use their abilities for the benefit of CASS.
“You need to find out more about that,” he said. “Next week at your lesson, ask about it.”
There was a knock on the door before Jennifer Sims, the assistant principal, opened it and poked her head inside. “Alex? I’m sorry to interrupt—”
Mr. Hernandez stood up, swiftly pocketing the recording device. “That’s all right. What can I do for you?”
“Can I speak to you?” Ms. Sims asked, glancing curiously at Reese and David.
“Sure, but just for a minute. I’m in the middle of a meeting.”
“I have to get to soccer practice,” David said.
“I’ll be right back,” Mr. Hernandez said. “We still have to talk about your missed assignments from last semester.”
With that, he left, following Ms. Sims into the hallway. The door closed with a click, and David muttered, “This is taking too long. My coach is gonna kill me.”
Reese slid out of her chair and ran to Mr. Hernandez’s desk. “Watch the door,” she said.
“What are you doing?” David said in alarm.
At the desk, she grabbed Mr. Hernandez’s briefcase. “The door,” she said again. “Keep an eye on the window.”
There was a narrow rectangular window set in the door to the classroom, and she could see half of the back of Mr. Hernandez’s head. She knew she was taking a risk but she wanted to get something on him— anything—that could prove who he was. She rifled through the briefcase, finding only lecture notes and class seating charts.
“Hurry,” David said, moving toward the front of the room so he could see the window more clearly. “I don’t think he’s going to take long.”
She unzipped the inner pocket of the briefcase and found a set of keys on a San Francisco trolley keychain, a flash drive, and a tablet computer. She pressed the power button but was immediately confronted with a password screen. She put it back, frustrated. Mr. Hernandez didn’t even have a wallet in there. She pulled the sides of the briefcase apart, scrutinizing it for any other inner pockets she hadn’t seen. Next to the loops that held a few pens she found a plastic compartment made to hold business cards. She tugged out a few pieces of paper. There was a dry-cleaning receipt from a year ago, a card for an Italian restaurant in Washington, DC, and a folded piece of paper.
“I think they’re wrapping up,” David said, urgency in his voice. “She’s giving him something. You’d better stop.”
Heart racing, she unfolded the paper. It was a sticker about the size of a HELLO, MY NAME IS badge, except this was a temporary ID. Under a black-and-white photo of Mr. Hernandez was the name
“He’s coming back,” David warned her.
She shoved the ID, the receipt, and the business card into her pocket and made sure the briefcase was standing upright in roughly the same spot, then raced back to her desk. David barely made it to his seat in time. The instant he sat down, the door opened and Mr. Hernandez came inside. He looked irritated as he pulled out the recorder again.
“Where were we? Next weekend, you’re going to ask your Imrian teacher about using your adaptation with humans.”
Reese tried not to breathe too rapidly. The pieces of paper in her pocket felt like giant rocks.
Mr. Hernandez gave her a suspicious look. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I—we’ll ask.”
“I really have to get to soccer practice,” David said. “Is there anything else?”
Mr. Hernandez went over to his desk and opened the briefcase. Reese held her breath, but he didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He returned with the small plastic device that Reese had thought was a USB drive. He placed it squarely on David’s desk. “This is a camera.” He pointed to a tiny button on the side of the device. “Here’s the shutter.” Then he showed them a clear bump on the tip that looked like a miniature bulb. “That’s the lens. Just point and click, and make sure you’re a couple of feet away from what you’re photographing. We have reason to believe that the Imria have an adaptation chamber on board their ship. They’ve released several reports about the science involved in the adaptation procedure, but there are holes in the research. They’re not revealing everything. One of the major gaps is the way the adaptation chamber actually works. Your job is to find the adaptation chamber and photograph it from as many angles as you can. Then you’ll bring this camera back to me and my team will look at the photos and determine whether you need to take additional shots.”
David fingered the camera. “But we don’t know where the adaptation chamber is.”
“It’s your job to find out,” Mr. Hernandez said.
Reese stared at their fake teacher. “How are we supposed to do that?”
“I suggest you start by asking them.” He leaned on the edge of the desk nearby. “You’re their first successfully adapted subjects. You have more right than anyone to view the place where you were adapted.”
“You think the adaptation chambers where they adapted
He nodded. “There’s no other place they would be.”
She swallowed. David looked unnerved. If that was true, they had spent a lot more time in that ship than they remembered, and that disturbed her. Had Eres Tilhar visited them while they were unconscious? Had Amber?
“The General Debate of the United Nations begins on September fifteenth, exactly three weeks from today,” Mr. Hernandez said. “I’ll expect you to find the adaptation chamber and bring me those photos before then.”
CHAPTER 20
Reese knocked on Julian’s bedroom door, and when she heard him call “Come in,” she opened it. He was sprawled in his beanbag chair in jeans and a black T-shirt with some kind of decal on it, his laptop open. He didn’t seem surprised to see her, and she wondered if he had heard her arrive a few minutes ago. Her dad was downstairs, probably making awkward small talk with Julian’s mom, who had never really liked him.
“Hey,” he said.
She closed the door and pulled out Julian’s desk chair, straddling it. “What were you doing at Angel Island?” she asked.
He closed his laptop. “I’m fine, how are you?”
“Jules. What were you thinking?”
He set the computer on the wooden floor and looked out the bay windows, avoiding her gaze. “I had to do
