Inheritance

masses seem to think I’m stupid. You think it’s because of the blond? Maybe I should dye my hair black. I think I’d get more respect as a brunette.”

Reese laughed. “I like the blond.”

Amber grinned. “I know.”

Reese felt her face warming up and she busied herself with her breakfast, even though she could barely taste it anymore. What was it with people saying I know in response to things? To change the subject, she asked, “Why are you using a laptop? Don’t you have more advanced computers or whatever?”

“It’s easier to use human technology to access the Internet. It’s built for it, you know?”

“That makes sense.”

“Hey,” Amber said, her tone turning serious again. “I really hope those pictures didn’t screw things up with David. Was he upset?”

Reese’s spoon clattered against the bowl. “Upset? He broke up with me.”

Shock flashed across Amber’s face. “What? I’m so sorry. Do you want me to tell him nothing happened?”

“No,” Reese said sharply. “I think it’s best if you guys never talk to each other about it.”

Amber flushed. “Oh. Does he hate me?”

“I don’t know.” It felt wrong to discuss this with Amber—as if she were betraying David all over again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Amber’s gaze lowered. “Okay.” Her cheeks were tinged pink, and she looked worn out and sad. That made Reese ache as if it were all her fault.

Reese pushed her bowl away and said, “Can I ask you something?”

Amber looked up. “Sure, what?”

Reese almost winced at the hope in Amber’s eyes. “Is the adaptation chamber in this ship?”

Amber was clearly surprised by the question. “Yeah, why?”

It’s that easy, Reese thought. She could have asked about this weeks ago. “I want to see it. Will you show it to me?”

Amber seemed uncomfortable. “I don’t know if I should do that.”

“Why not? I was in it, wasn’t I? I have as much right to see it as anyone. More.”

Amber considered her for a moment, then glanced around the empty dining hall. “Okay. I can bring you when you’re finished with your breakfast.”

Reese took another sip of her coffee and said, “I’m done. I’m not hungry.”

Amber bit her lip. “All right.” She stood. “Let’s go.”

Reese followed Amber out of the dining hall. They walked down a corridor that Reese had never noticed before, and paused in front of a door with a plaque on it that Reese could not read. When Amber touched the plaque, the door slid open to reveal a room with three large, clear tanks on the floor. Two of them were empty, but the third contained a thick, gel-like substance that glowed with a faint blue luminescence. Inside the tank, suspended in the gel, was an oval pod the length of a human body.

Reese crossed the floor toward the pod. The walls of it were made of a material with a golden sheen that looked smooth and hard as an eggshell, but Reese knew it was pliable. She recognized it. She remembered being cocooned in this device, a gelatinous liquid cradling her, making her feel weightless. The smooth, curved walls had sealed shut around her until all she could see was the red-veined golden interior. Had she been in this very chamber? She raised her hand to touch the edge of the tank, and then halted. Her skin crawled. “Is there someone inside?”

“No,” Amber said. She walked around to the other side of the tank. “It’s empty. This one is set up because we’re testing it.”

Reese reached out to touch the tank. It was cool and hard, and a buzz of electricity swept across her skin. “Was I in one of these?”

Amber nodded reluctantly. “Yes.”

“Which one?”

“You were in this tank, but I don’t know if you were in this particular chamber. They’ve all been removed for cleaning and stuff, so I’m not sure which one was put back in for the test.”

Reese stared down at the pod through the glass walls of the tank. She remembered the slow, underwater- like beep from her dream. “What happened the night of the accident? Did you guys bring me to this ship? How did I get to Project Plato?”

“I wasn’t there, but from what I’ve been told, the military found you and David. There are security sensors all around Area 51, and when you guys crashed, you tripped a lot of alarms. The military didn’t want to bring you underground, so they took you to Project Plato. My mom was working. When she saw how seriously you were injured, she knew you’d need the adaptation chamber. She did the surgery at Project Plato, but she also called the ship. Right before dawn, the ship came and they transferred you and David into the chambers. The military didn’t know. They were dealing with the June Disaster that week—a lot of protocols were skipped over or ignored because of the fallout from that.”

The gel surrounding the chamber had tiny bubbles in it. Reese asked, “So why did they move us back to Project Plato? Why didn’t they just let us wake up on the ship?”

“They had to move you. There were records that put you and David at Plato the night that you crashed. My mom had to account for your whereabouts to the military liaisons. You couldn’t just disappear after getting that medical treatment.”

Reese spread her fingers over the glass of the tank. Her hand cast a faint shadow over the pod. “Didn’t they—the military or whatever—realize that David and I weren’t there? They never checked our rooms?”

Amber came closer, brushing against the opposite side of the tank, and Reese glanced up to see the vertical line in Amber’s forehead again. “You have to understand, things really were messed up with the June Disaster. It was literally a disaster for your government. They were involved in this giant cover-up operation that involved a zillion different components—rerouting traffic, the Internet, clean-up crews—and they let things slide at Plato. They didn’t have time to check up on two random kids who’d had a car accident. It didn’t seem relevant to them. By the time they sent someone to check, my mom had transferred the two of you back to Project Plato. You were still unconscious.”

Amber’s words slid like ice down Reese’s back. “What do you know about the cover-up?” she asked.

“I don’t know the specifics,” Amber said quickly.

“Was it about the birds?”

“Yes.”

“What did the government do to those birds? And why?”

“I don’t know. I just know that your military was doing these crazy experiments on livestock—birds and other animals too—using Imrian DNA. My mom might know more about it. But after the planes started crashing, they had to cover up the fact that it was their failed experimentation that made those birds attack the planes. All that confusion saved your life.”

Reese felt sick to her stomach. “My life isn’t worth the lives of the two thousand people who died in those plane crashes.”

Amber seemed upset. Her fingers gripped the edge of the tank. “Why not? You’re exactly what we’ve been working so long to create. You and David, both of you.”

“David and I were in a car accident. An accident. We could have been anybody.”

Amber’s eyes were hard and bright. She leaned over the tank toward Reese. “There are no coincidences.”

Reese’s eyes narrowed at her. “Your mom said that at the press conference. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nig tukum’ta nu nig tukum’ta,” Amber said in Imrian. “There is no coincidence. It means that you’re alive for a reason. My people have been working on this adaptation procedure for a really long time. Everything that happened to put you and David in that car in Nevada on that night in June—the debate tournament, your government’s secret project with the birds, the plane crashes—it all points to you and David. You