Inheritance

two were meant to have this procedure. You two survived it, and now you’re here. Alive. You’re important.”

Reese shook her head, a fuzzy panic coming over her. “No.” She backed away from the adaptation chamber. “Maybe your people don’t think there’s such a thing as coincidence, but I’m not Imrian. I’m human. And to me, this is all just one big giant accident, and now I’m here in the middle of something I never chose to be involved with, and—”

“Choice has nothing to do with it,” Amber cut in.

“We are not getting into some debate about free will right now,” Reese snapped.

“That’s not what I’m doing!”

“Maybe we’re having a cultural difference, then.” Reese crossed her arms and stood her ground. “Just tell me one thing. If David and I are so important to you guys, when are you going to tell us the truth about who you are?”

Amber took a step back. Her hands left condensation marks on the tank, like the handprints of someone trying to escape. “What do you mean?”

“David called me this morning and said his dad got the results back from the preliminary tests on our DNA. He said the results show that we—humans—are descended from the Imria.”

Amber’s face went pale.

“Is that true?” Reese asked.

“I don’t think it’s my place to say.”

Reese stared at her, dumbfounded. “It’s not your place?”

Amber gave Reese an anguished look. “It’s not like I don’t want to tell you, but Akiya Deyir made me promise—I mean, I messed everything up with you. They don’t trust me anymore. They want me to do what I’m supposed to do and shut up. I can’t tell you.”

Amber’s words echoed in the quiet of the lab. Reese’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. Amber had been so forthcoming today that Reese thought—she had hoped—that the time for secrets was behind them.

“I’m sorry,” Amber said. “I’ll ask my mom—”

“Amber, please,” Reese said in a low voice. “This is so important. Can’t you tell me the truth?”

Amber’s gaze faltered, her eyes flickering toward the door. Reese heard the whisper of Amber’s breath as she inhaled and exhaled. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Amber said, “Okay. I’ll tell you, but not here. They could come in at any minute. We have to go somewhere else.”

CHAPTER 28

Amber’s room was only a few doors down from the one Reese had been assigned. It had the same layout as Reese’s, but it was obvious that Amber had lived there for a lot longer—and she was much messier. Makeup and jewelry were scattered all over a shelf near her bed. Clothes peeked out from drawers in the corner. The bunk was unmade, the pillows pushed haphazardly against the wall. As the door closed behind Reese, Amber pulled a chair from the corner beyond the end of the bunk.

“Have a seat,” Amber said. She pushed aside the blankets on the bed and sat down, scooting up so that her back was against the wall.

Reese lowered herself into the chair and looked at Amber.

“Here’s the thing,” Amber said. “We do want to help you—I mean the Imria want to help humanity. That is totally our number one goal.”

“But?” Reese prompted.

“There’s no but. I want you to keep that in mind.”

“Why?”

“Because what I’m about to tell you might make you doubt that.” Amber paused. “So, David’s dad is right— sort of. Humans are descended from us, in a way. We’ve been coming to your planet for a long time.”

“How long?”

“We first discovered Earth about two million years ago.”

“Two million?”

“Um, yeah. Humans didn’t really exist back then. We—the Imria—were in a period of exploration at that time. We were trying to figure out how to deal with environmental changes on our own world, and we were sending out lots of probes across the galaxy to look for intelligent life. Earth was an amazing discovery. There were no humans, like I said, but there were plenty of species who seemed like they might develop into intelligent life. So we sort of helped a few of those species along, just to see what would happen.”

Reese’s mouth fell open.

Amber rushed on, waving her hands. “It was an experiment, and it wasn’t well thought out. Communication was very slow back then. It took forever for the explorers who discovered Earth to get in touch with our home planet, Kurra. The experimentation on Earth was never authorized by our leaders, and by the time they learned about it, it was kind of a done deal. So then we couldn’t exactly abandon Earth. We had a responsibility to make sure we hadn’t completely messed things up with the species we’d modified. Eventually it became obvious that one species in particular was evolving differently than the others, and that it was going to become the most intelligent species on Earth. That species became Homo sapiens.”

“How many times did you guys… modify us?”

Amber looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure. The historical records are really complicated and really old, and honestly, even our historians aren’t entirely sure. We’re talking about millions of years here. But after a while, we stopped intervening. Humans were obviously doing fine, and most of us didn’t want to interfere anymore. A lot of us didn’t think we had any business messing around with your societies, especially because humans at the time couldn’t always understand who we were. Sometimes humans thought we were… well, gods.”

“You mean those ancient alien shows are right?” Reese said in disbelief.

Amber made a face. “Not entirely. A lot of that stuff is bullshit. But… some ancient human societies thought we were gods. Not all of them. Some humans understood exactly what we were. It’s the same as it is now—or the way it was before we revealed ourselves last month. Some people totally believed in extraterrestrials, while others thought the people who believed in them were crazy. Anyway, my people decided it was best to leave you guys alone and wait until your societies developed the technology to be on equal footing with us.” Amber took a deep breath. “But a few things happened to change our minds.”

“Wait a minute,” Reese said, backtracking to make sure she understood everything. “You said the Imria came here two million years ago and found some species that you experimented on. So basically, you made us look like you?”

Amber hesitated. “Um, yes.”

“Are you saying that you created us?”

“Not exactly. Some species that could have evolved on their own already existed, but we pushed certain species in a different direction, one that wound up as Homo sapiens.”

“And if you hadn’t done that, humans might not exist in the way we do today.”

“Right.”

Reese rubbed a hand over her forehead. “Okay. So you said you guys left the planet. Why did you return?”

“For a couple of reasons. Our birth rates are really, really low. It’s not that we’re infertile. It doesn’t really matter if we’re fertile, because we use artificial wombs. They’re a lot like the adaptation chamber, actually. But even though we can have children, our birth rates keep declining. So, many Imrians have begun to believe that humanity—that your people are our best hope of surviving. That’s the first reason we decided to come back to Earth—to support humanity, to make sure you all survive.”

“But humans aren’t dying out. Don’t we have a problem with overpopulation?”

Amber gave Reese a nervous smile. “Yeah, that’s one of your problems. In the first half of the twentieth century, the United States developed the atomic bomb. We didn’t want you guys to destroy yourselves. That’s why we made contact with your government after the end of World War Two. We wanted to steer you away from nuclear weapons, and we also wanted to figure out why you guys had never evolved our ability of