Adaptation (33 page)

However much the sight of her pained Reese, she didn’t like what the look on Amber’s face suggested. What if Amber was imprisoned somewhere along with Dr. Brand and these other people? What would happen to Amber if Reese admitted that she knew her?

“Are you sure there’s no one else you recognize?” Brennan pushed.

Reese’s mouth was dry, her tongue like sandpaper. “I’m sure,” she whispered. “There’s no one.”

Reese headed straight for the restroom when she
returned to the medical bay. “I have to go,” she called over her shoulder to Agent Todd, but once she was in the stall with the door locked, she simply sat down and put her head in her hands. She couldn’t bear to be in that exam room right now, where she was completely exposed behind the glass walls. She needed to be alone.

Seeing the photo of Amber was more than unsettling. It scared her.

There were clearly two sides to whatever she and David had stumbled into because of their car accident. On one side was Dr. Brand and all those people in the mug shots, including Amber. On the other was Dr. Singh and Project Blue Base. There were some irregularities that she still hadn’t figured out—the men in black, in particular, seemed to move between sides—but it was
obvious that she and David were caught in the middle. Each side had an interest in them, but neither was telling them the whole truth. Everybody was lying, and now that she had denied knowing anyone in the photos besides Dr. Brand, she was lying too.

The even scarier part was that she wanted to do it to protect Amber. Her brain thought that was about the stupidest move she had ever made—probably unduly influenced by memories of making out on the beach—but her brain was powerless against the stubborn, feet-planted-wide instinct inside her that said:
Amber is entirely freaked out in that photo. You do not want to support anyone who did that to her.

A Klaxon blared, the noise shattering the quiet of the bathroom. Reese jumped up, opening the stall door. People were running past the frosted glass wall, and she heard shouting. The door slid open as she walked toward it. She saw several doctors sprinting through the medical bay, grabbing supplies as they headed for the exit. Two of them pushed a stretcher between themselves as Dr. Singh came barreling out of her office and followed. One of the last remaining attendants in the room typed something rapidly into a computer until the sirens abruptly ceased, and then he hurried after Dr. Singh, the door slamming shut behind him.

He had left the remote control that operated the exam-room doors on the U-shaped counter.

Reese hurried out of the restroom and grabbed the device, spinning around to scan the rest of the medical bay. The only other person she saw was David, who was standing in his room with his hands pressed against the glass. It looked like he was shouting something, but she couldn’t hear him through the
wall. She looked at the remote and then back at his room. There was a small plaque affixed to the glass that read
EXAM ROOM B
, and the remote had buttons from A to H, as well as Open. She pointed the remote at David and pressed Open B. The wall slid back, and David ran out into the medical bay.

“What happened?” she asked. “When did you get back?”

“A minute ago. I was just wondering where you were when the sirens went off and everyone started running for the exit. I think they forgot about us.”

“They’re all gone—” she started, and as if the same idea occurred to the two of them at the same moment, they both headed for Dr. Singh’s office. Reese opened the glass door with the remote and they went inside.

The desk, adorned by a plaque that read
DR. AMELIA SINGH
, was quite neat. There were two low stacks of file folders, a jar of pens, Post-it notes, a computer monitor, and a keyboard. Several tall filing cabinets lined the wall beside the desk, and behind that was a table outfitted with a printer. David went directly to the closest file cabinet and yanked open the top drawer. Reese began to sift through the files on the desk. They were labeled with patient names, but she didn’t recognize any of them. She opened one of the folders to see what it was about and found a chart listing a bunch of medical issues she did not understand.

“Crap, why didn’t I like bio more?” she muttered. She moved on to the next stack and noticed that on the corner of each chart were the words
BLUE BASE
, followed by a number like a serial code. “I think these must be soldiers in that project I read about on my phone. Did you read that document yet?”

“I only had a chance to look at it really briefly in the bathroom,
but yeah, I think these files are about that too,” he said, still riffling through the cabinets. “There’s a ton of them. Like, literally, hundreds of patient files.”

She shuffled the mouse attached to the computer, but it only turned up a login screen. Dr. Singh must have locked it before she left. Reese turned to the printer station and saw a stack of papers sitting in the output tray. When she touched them, they were still warm. She lifted them out. On the first page was her name.

“I found something,” she said, her heartbeat quickening. It was a report—written in normal English, thankfully—containing results from the various tests she had undergone since arriving yesterday. She began to skim the executive summary.

Report on Status of Clarice Irene Holloway

Dr. Amelia Singh

Blue Base Medical Lab

July 31, 2014

Examination of subject Clarice Irene Holloway, identified as patient 83 (PA83) from her Project Plato chart, reveals that injuries sustained during the car accident on June 20 were treated with experimental medical procedures not authorized for use on civilians.

David banged the filing cabinet shut and joined her, leaning over her shoulder.

“This says—oh my God, this is crazy,” Reese said.

Subject’s sample contains clear evidence of nonhuman DNA, potentially extraterrestrial (Imria). Further analysis is needed, but preliminary results suggest a successful hybrid procedure has been performed. It is recommended that subject be retained for additional testing that may provide information beneficial to Project Blue Base and future genetic enhancement initiatives.

As Reese flipped through the report, stunned, David shuffled through the rest of the printouts until he found a report on himself. “It’s the same,” he said, scanning the document. “It says the same thing as yours.”

The doors to the medical bay suddenly banged open, followed by the sound of frantic voices.

“Shit, give me your papers,” Reese said. She tried to stuff the documents back into the printer output tray, but she was too late. Footsteps pounded into the medical bay and through the open door into Dr. Singh’s office. Someone grabbed Reese’s arm, twisting it behind her and dragging her away from the printer. The papers fell on the floor in a cascade of sheets.

“This is why they should not have been kept here!” Dr. Singh shouted. “The medical bay is not equipped to contain prisoners.”

Reese saw David struggling nearby in the grip of a man in black—it was Agent Kowalski—and across the medical bay two doctors rushed inside with a man on a stretcher. There was an oxygen mask on his face and blood all over his abdomen.

“We’ll take them into custody,” said the man holding Reese,
and she realized it was Agent Forrestal. “But you should have locked your door—”

“It was an emergency!” Dr. Singh exploded.

Agent Todd came through the medical bay doors. “What is going on?” he demanded.

Dr. Singh turned on him. “Your charges broke into my office and accessed classified information—”

“Those reports were about
us
,” David cut in.

“And you won’t tell us anything,” Reese said. “What do you expect us to do, wait around until you decide what to do with us?”

Nobody answered her. In the background she heard doctors reeling off the bleeding patient’s stats as they called for various drugs and equipment. In the distance someone was screaming. The doors burst open, and the screaming came into the medical bay, emanating from a person strapped down to a second stretcher, his legs thrashing wildly.

Agent Todd said, “Let’s take them over to internal for now.”

“They need to be in containment,” Dr. Singh said. “You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

Agent Todd gave her a dark look. “That’s not possible right now.” He looked at Kowalski and Forrestal. “Follow me.”

Reese stumbled as Agent Forrestal pushed her along. “Where are you taking us?” she asked.

“Just move along,” he said, his hand squeezing her arm so tightly that it made her wince.

Powerless to resist, she followed Agent Todd out into the corridor. As she passed the screaming patient, she saw an ugly gash
in his side so deep, she glimpsed internal organs. She shuddered. He looked like he had been clawed open.

Once the medical bay doors closed behind them, the sound of the screams was muffled. She glanced over her shoulder; David was being shoved along by Agent Kowalski. Agent Todd led them down the corridor and back to the interrogation rooms they had used earlier. Agent Forrestal directed her into the same room where she had been questioned by John Brennan, and the door was pulled shut. She heard a lock click, and when she rattled the handle, it wouldn’t turn.

She backed away from the door and sat down in the chair. In the one-way mirror she saw her reflection: the color on her cheeks heightened, her hair a mess.

Nonhuman
DNA
, potentially extraterrestrial. A successful hybrid procedure.

Intellectually, she understood what the words meant, but they seemed to echo in her mind like meaningless syllables shouted in a vast cavern.
Extraterrestrial. Nonhuman. Hybrid.
They circled around and around like buzzards over a kill. Like UFOs dancing in the night sky. Julian would have a field day with this.

She groaned, running her hands through her hair and tugging it away from her face. She couldn’t seem to get a firm grasp on what she had read in that report. Maybe she was just too freaked out to allow herself to comprehend the words. It was easier to sit here, staring at her reflection in the one-way mirror, and make jokes to herself about aliens.

Because if that report was true, it meant she was no longer human.

The door opened, and Reese lifted her head from
her arms. She had fallen into a doze, but it was hard to sleep deeply with the overhead lights on. She was groggy and hungry and confused, and when she saw Agent Todd come into the interrogation room, she asked, “What’s going on? How long are you going to keep me in here?” She had been alone for hours, except for the five minutes they had let her out—accompanied, embarrassingly—to use the bathroom.

“I’ve brought someone here to talk to you,” Agent Todd said. “But this is entirely unauthorized, so you’ll need to keep this to yourself.”

His words swept away the grogginess. “What do you mean unauthorized?” she asked sharply.

“You’ll know soon enough.”

“Who is it?”

“Amber Gray,” he said.

Her heart seemed to stop entirely. “What?”

He held open the door, and Amber walked into the room.

The moment Reese saw her, it was as though every nerve in her body switched on, and she couldn’t tell if she was angry or frightened or hurt or all of the above. She stood up, her chair crashing onto the floor.

A hint of a smile floated across Amber’s face. “Hi,” she said. The fluorescent overhead lights made her skin look washed out and emphasized the dark shadows beneath her eyes. But on her, it somehow just looked like her eye makeup had smudged, more morning-after than imprisoned-against-my-will. She was wearing an ill-fitting orange jumpsuit with a serial number printed on the front right breast.

“You have fifteen minutes,” Todd said. “I’ll be outside.” He pulled the door shut.

Amber took a step toward Reese, but when Reese backed up, Amber stopped. The half smile on her face disappeared, and she looked away from Reese as if the sight of her were painful. “I’m sorry that I had to lie to you,” she said in a low voice.

The apology was so unexpected that Reese was speechless.

Amber turned her face back to Reese after a moment. Her eyes were sad and shimmering. “I really am sorry.”

Reese couldn’t look at Amber. She picked up the chair and set it upright. “Why did you lie to me?”

“I had to,” Amber whispered.

“Because I was an assignment,” Reese said in a flat tone of voice.

Amber shook her head. “No.”

“I heard you on the street with Dr. Brand. She told you to continue with your assignment. Wasn’t that me?” Her stomach clenched into tight little knots.

“No. It’s not what you think.”

“Then what was your assignment?” Reese snapped, raising her gaze to Amber’s face.

“I was supposed to—to keep an eye on you. Because—”

“You went above and beyond the call of duty.”

Amber flinched. She backed up until she banged into the door, and she slid down to the floor, knees bent. “You’re asking the wrong questions.”

“Oh, really,” Reese said, sarcasm twisting her words. “What am I supposed to be asking, then?”

“This isn’t about you and me,” Amber said gently. “This whole thing—it’s way bigger than just the two of us.”

Reese was stung. “I’m not saying—”

“Listen to me,” Amber interrupted. “I know you’re angry about what happened. I’m sorry. I really am. I would apologize a million times if I could. But you and me—we’re just at the end of a really long string of events that had nothing to do with us to begin with.”

Reese sat down. “What events?”

“I can’t tell you everything right now. But you should know that we’re here to help you.” The expression on Amber’s face pleaded with Reese to believe her.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Everybody who was in Nevada at the Plato facility. And me. We’re here to help you, but your government is going to kill us.”