Flying (19 page)

And Lyle is completely cool and sympathetic and trying not to be too excited about the fact that extraterrestrial life is a reality, but I know he secretly is. He's just trying to tone it down because he's a good enough guy to know that the priority right now is finding my mom. And I love him for that, I really do.

After we have heated up pizza in one of the ridiculously large ovens, and after we have each eaten about half of an extra-large Veggie Delite, Lyle puts down his half-eaten piece and says, “Hey, you know I'm going to be here for you no matter what happens. Okay?”

The sincerity of it makes tears come to my eyes. “Okay,” I manage to say, as he pats my hand across the kitchen counter. “Okay. Me, too.”

“Best buds, forever, right?”

“Friends are friends. Pals are pals. But buddies sleep together,” I respond.

He wiggles his eyebrows. “Awesome.”

*   *   *

That night, I sleep in a bed I'm not used to, in a room that is just white walls. Lyle's room is next to mine. I miss him so much, but not quite as much as I miss my mom. Closing my eyes only makes me feel more disconnected from them and the rest of the world. How come sometimes the more you know, the lonelier you become? I mean, seriously, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do when my world breaks apart and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I stare at the ceiling. I try to swallow down the horror of how helpless I am and how alone I feel.

*   *   *

The next day is more of the same. More lectures about aliens and the government. More conspiracy theories that are real. We all gather in the big computer room. The crank caller's number had been blocked, but they managed to trace it to an apartment near where my father lives, which they are excited about, I guess. Brian and Aaron want to go alone and recon the place, but China argues with them that their job right now is to protect the compound and Pierce and us, that
he
should go because my mom is his partner, and so on. This argument lasts for pretty much ever and I have to put my head down next to the computer, bored and tired of all the talk-talk-talk. We need to act, honestly. We need to do something.
I
need to do something.

A voice, not Pierce's voice, rushes into my head, interrupting my own thoughts. One word, angry and determined:
Now.

Now?

The door to the room bangs open and freaking Dakota Dunham, who is so no longer attractive to me in any way, flies in, tearing at Brian with his hands, spitting acid stuff in his face, and taking him down before I can blink. Aaron shoots at him. The bullets sink in, but the alien/boy/thing just drops Brian, turns to Aaron, and smiles.

Another man appears behind him—blond, fair, and facially looking pretty much like a guy version of Pierce.

“Get out!” Pierce screams at me, pushing me toward the back of the room. Her hands are solid, forceful. Her hair whips around her head like it's alive. “China, take them!”

“But you—” he starts to say. His hand is on a gun. He is about to jump into the fight.

“I will handle this,” she insists. She leaps over a row of computers and starts toward Dakota the acid-mouth boy. “The children are more important.”

Children? She's calling us children?

Her thoughts are a blur of worry and anger. I can't get through them, but then one clear string of thoughts bursts through:
Must keep the girl safe. More important. Fight. More important. The weapon.

How can we be more important? I back up. I want to run. I want to close my eyes and wake up in my bed, which is even wimpier. Instead, I lift up a computer monitor and heave it at Dakota's face. It makes a satisfying thumping noise as it hits the side of his skull. Dakota pivots toward me, all disgusting, gross face and acid tongue and evil eyes. How did I ever think he was cute? Seriously?

“You little jerk! Get the hell out of here!” I scream, in what is one of the worst threatening voices of all time, more of a squeak, really. I grapple for another monitor. “What did you do to my mother?”

“Mana.” China yanks my arm, pulls me over a tangle of computer cables. Lyle is sprinting across the room in front of me, heading for a back door I didn't even notice during our tour of the compound. I guess they didn't actually show us everything.

Something/someone behind us yowls.

Something else shrieks.

Pierce!
I scream her name in my head as China drags me toward the door.

Go, Mana! Do not let China know anything about you—anything strange. Hide it. Promise me!

Pierce!

“We have to help,” I try to say, but China yanks me along so fast that I'm not sure if my words actually make it out of my mouth. I turn to try to see what is happening and if I can help. My bag is right in front of me. I grab it without thinking.

“Get down,” China says, all commanding, ducking while he runs, and pushing me down, too.

“Why?”

“Just get down!”

Something green flies through the air above our heads, just barely missing Lyle, who ducks at the last second. The green liquid hits the wall fizzing and searing, and burns it. Lyle reaches out and wrenches open the door. He turns his head to make sure we're still with him, and his eyes widen with shock or fear. Something bad is going on behind us. I start to turn my head to see.

“Go, Mana. Go!” China pushes me through the door and then barrels behind me, pulling Lyle with him. “Move!”

He crashes his body into the door, slamming it shut. He bolts it and then touches a keypad. We are in a long hallway again, concrete. Closed doors leading to other spaces interrupt the walls just about every five feet.

“That probably won't hold him,” he pants, motioning for us to run forward again. We do. “Keep running.”

We get two-thirds of the way down the hall when China yanks open a door that appears to be the same as all the others.

“Get in. Get in. Hurry,” he urges. His gun is no longer holstered.

Lyle and I bang into a room the size of an elevator. The walls are shiny metal, like cookie sheets or aluminum foil. It smells like popcorn for some reason, and for a hysterical moment I think maybe we are in a giant version of one of those metal Jiffy Pop popcorn bucket things that you cook over the burner of your stove, shaking it back and forth, back and forth.

“Mana? You okay?” Lyle's face is white with shock.

I shake my head no and he gives me a quick one-armed side hug. My bag smooshes in between us. China follows us into the room and presses buttons on a side panel. The door shuts. The room moves up like we're going to a different floor. I catch Lyle by his arm when we lurch sideways.

“Elevator?” I ask, panting or hyperventilating. “Are we in an elevator?”

China's face shifts into something serious. “Sort of.”

I lean against Lyle a little bit. He's not winded, but I can tell he's upset, from the way he's standing so rigidly. “What do you mean, ‘sort of'?”

China doesn't answer.

“China?” I am so not letting him off the hook.

“People tried to kill us back there,” Lyle suddenly spurts out. “Or a thing tried to kill us, I guess. I guess that's more accurate. Right? In the past forty-eight hours I've been almost murdered twice. Twice!”

China nods at me. “You might have to slap your boyfriend. He's getting a little hysterical.”

“I'm not hysterical,” Lyle goes, just as I say, “He is not my boyfriend.”

China just leans against the wall. “Right. So, it's like an elevator, but not. It's more like a transporter.”

“Like on
Star Trek
.” Lyle manages to sound normal again. I let go of his arm.

“Right.” China straightens up and stands, legs apart, facing the door. “We're getting off just about now.”

 

CHAPTER 13

Worry robs me of my ability to breathe. I think of Pierce, fighting there, alone with Brian and Aaron. I've seen what Dakota Dunham can do. They could be dead. They could be dying. I just met them and they are already gone. I don't even know anything about their lives or their families or their favorite kinds of ice cream or anything that makes them special or individual, or even if Pierce eats food or the nectar of certain rare flowers grown only in Switzerland. This lack of knowledge somehow makes their potential loss even more devastating.

I think all this as we wait for the doors to open.

“Any second now,” China says, almost sheepishly.

Lyle gives me big eyes. I take his hand and squeeze it. He squeezes back.

“Really … Any second now.” China groans. “It always does this. I always complain to Pierce and she says it's fixed. It's never fixed.”

His voice breaks a bit when he says “Pierce.” For a second, China has let his guard down. The door slides open. China barely surveys the scene to see if there are any evil acid-spewing drummers in sight. He just jumps out of the elevator/room thingy and motions for us to hurry after him.

We step out into a living room with a large, leather sectional sofa, a big flat-screen TV with three red Netflix envelopes in front of it, and a rattan-and-wire container that holds about one hundred old-fashioned CDs. A Bose stereo belts out Andrea Bocelli, this opera singer my dad's into.

“Where are we?” Lyle asks. He still holds my hand. It feels good. It's about the only thing that feels good as I take in my dad's apartment.

“You want to answer him, Mana?” China says. He grabs the thick, white remote for the Bose stereo system and turns the volume level down from thirty to a more decent eighteen. It's still loud, but you can hear people talk without having them yell. He takes a closer look at the display. “It's on repeat. It could have been playing for hours.”

“Earth to Mana. Where are we?” Lyle lets go of my hand and pulls on my sleeve.

“My dad's apartment,” I answer. “How … How did we get here?”

Lyle and I turn around and check out the door we just went through. The elevator is gone. “That's the door to my father's bedroom.”

I yank it open. It's not metal. It's not shiny. It's just my dad's bedroom. There's a white down comforter on the bed. His razor charges on the outlet in the wall by the foot of the bed. There's even the ironing board he never puts away, just hanging out by the bureau.

“Explain this,” I demand.

China straightens his spine, showing his exasperation in a somehow military way. “We were in a transporter.”

Lyle whistles. Again.

At this point, I'm not even surprised anymore. “You transported us here? To my dad's apartment? Why?”

China doesn't answer.

Lyle does, all brave and calm and inquisitive. “Is Mana's dad involved in this, too?”

“No.” China is rummaging through the remote controls. “He's not. But he's still close to Mana and her mom, and he has failed to appear at his workplace for two days.”

Lyle crosses the room in a flash, gets ahold of China's collar, and waggles him, which is so totally out of character that I freeze for a moment and watch. “You knew this? You knew Mana's dad was missing and you're only telling us now?”

Lyle never grabs people.

Lyle is stoic.

Lyle is calm in a crisis.

“Back off, grasshopper.” China shrugs him away like he's a fly. “I haven't exactly had a chance, have I?”

I slump onto the sofa. The leather is cold against the back of my head.

Lyle sits next to me and takes my hand in his. “Mana?”

I don't answer.

“I think she's in shock,” Lyle says, dropping my hand, standing up, and tromping back over to China. “You put her in shock.”

“And? You want me to elevate her feet or what? She's fine. She's much tougher than you give her credit for,” China answers. He puts down the remotes, picks up my dad's phone, and starts pressing numbers.

Lyle comes back over and pushes my head down between my knees.

“I am not going to faint, Lyle.”

His hand rubs my back in sweet, big circles. “I know. Just humor me, okay? You're looking pale.”

“Both my parents are … gone.” There is no other word for it. Gone.

I haul in a breath, smelling leather couch and fabric softener from my jeans. “They could be dead, Lyle.” The realization hits me so hard that I hiccup. “I'm all alone.”

His hand stops. “You're not alone.”

My head snaps up. My body follows. “How do you figure that, Lyle, huh? Both my parents are gone.”

He doesn't smile. He doesn't frown. He just says, “Because I'm here.”

China turns around to face us. There is something guarded in his eyes, and he just stares for a second. Tension makes him stand a little taller. He pulls his coat around him, zips it up, and pockets my dad's phone. “We should get going.”

“What? Why?” I stand up and pick up my bag from where I dropped it. “Why did we even come here?”

“I was hoping for a clue. Plus, the transporter was last configured for here, so it was easy,” he says. “Do you think your dad would mind if we got ourselves a quick snack?”

He strides into the kitchen and pulls open a cabinet that has glasses in it. He shuts it, tries another. “Does your dad have any chips or anything? I'm starved.”

I yank open a drawer near the refrigerator. “Crackers.”

“Beautiful!” China takes the package from me. “Wheat Thins? Those aren't crackers. They're like fake chips mated with salt.”

Lyle follows us in. “That's what I say.”

“I hate them,” China continues, opening the box anyway and shoving his hand inside.

“You guys are bonding over crackers?” This is unbelievable. “What about my dad? What about Pierce and Brian and Aaron? They could be dead.”

“Hopefully, they aren't. Um, I'm going to use your dad's bathroom, okay?” Lyle asks.