Inheritance (3 page)

There were already 138 comments at the end of the post, but Reese didn’t scroll to the bottom of the screen. She saw a link in the sidebar to a video clip from the press conference, and despite the nervous twitch in her belly, she clicked on it.

There she was, standing with David on her front steps, their
hands clasped. Her hair was tangled, and there were shadows under her eyes. The clothes she wore didn’t fit well. The long-sleeved blue tee was lumpy on her, and the pants made her look hippy. The outfit looked better on David, but he also showed signs of exhaustion. His face was ghostly pale, and his hair had a cowlick in the back and was plastered down in front as if he had tried to tame it with water. Through her computer’s speakers, she heard herself talking, and her voice sounded like a stranger’s.

That was when Amber came down the stairs and turned Reese and David around. Reese couldn’t see Amber’s face in the video—it was obscured by the back of David’s head—but she saw Amber lean into her, whispering in her ear. A moment later Amber walked around them to talk to the reporters. In comparison to Reese and David, Amber looked like a movie star. She was dressed casually in a red hoodie and jeans, but Reese knew that it didn’t matter what Amber wore; what mattered was the way she wore it. She had a face that was made for the camera, with her big gray eyes and glossy lips. When she walked through the reporters toward the erim and the small craft, the cameras followed her until the craft took off. Then, with a jerk, the video turned back to Reese and David. They looked shell-shocked, and it took a minute before the press conference returned to the subject of what had happened to them.

After the video ended, Reese shut off her computer, but Amber’s face lingered in her mind’s eye. Reese didn’t want to think about her. She was still angry about Amber’s lies—angry and hurt. How could Amber expect Reese to believe her offer of help? She couldn’t believe anything Amber said, even if she said it by whispering in her ear. Reese remembered lying on the
beach with her, Amber’s mouth against her skin, breathing her name.
All of that was a lie
, Reese told herself, shoving away the curl of desire that awoke in her.
You can’t trust her. It’s over. You don’t feel that way anymore
. A nervous energy skittered through her limbs and she got up. She needed to get away from what people were saying online. She decided to get a drink of water.

She opened the door of her bedroom as quietly as possible and tiptoed down the stairs in the dark. The door to the guest room where her father slept was closed. In the kitchen she poured herself a glass of water from the filter and looked out the window at the backyard. Was the black triangle still out there? She opened the back door, stepping onto the brick patio in her bare feet. It was an unexpectedly clear August night, with no fog misting the air. The bricks were rough beneath her toes as she tipped her head back and stared at the dark sky. Few stars were visible, but she could see the triangular ship above, where white lights defined its three corners. It hung still and silent: a black ornament on a tree of night.

She thought about the question raised in the Bin 42 blog post. Why had the Imria returned? There was one possibility that made immediate sense to her. They came back because they wanted her and David. Why else would that ship be hovering over her house like an omen? It wasn’t a comforting idea.

Reese’s parents were sitting at the kitchen table with
a pile of newspapers when she came downstairs late Friday morning. “Good morning,” her dad said.

“How’d you sleep?” her mom asked.

“Okay.” Reese went straight to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup, adding milk. She heard the beat of rotors outside. “Are there still helicopters up there?”

“They’ve been there all morning,” her dad said. “The spaceship is still there, and people are still coming to look at it.”

She went to the back door and peered out the window. She couldn’t see the black triangle from this angle, but she could see a helicopter making an arc across the sky. “How long can they fly around up there?”

“I don’t know,” her mom said, sounding resigned. “As long as that ship is here, probably. There’s nothing to stop people from coming to look, either. It’s created kind of a traffic jam out front, but as long as people keep moving, the police can’t force them to leave. It’s a public sidewalk.”

Reese went into the living room, pulling the curtains aside a few inches to look out. The normally quiet street was choked with traffic and pedestrians. Cars moved sluggishly down the block, and the sidewalks on both sides were clogged with onlookers. Some of them were even carrying signs, as if this was a demonstration. She saw one that said
WELCOME, E.T.
and another that stated
I
WANT TO
BELIEVE
. Others weren’t so friendly, declaring
ALIENS GO HOME
and
ABDUCTEES DEMAND JUSTICE FROM ALIENS
. A man carrying a sign that stated
WE WANT FULL DISCLOSURE
was watching the house, and when he saw Reese peeking out the window he pointed at her, his mouth opening in a shout she couldn’t hear. In a wave, other pedestrians near him turned to look in the direction he was pointing, and the sound of the crowd—muffled by the closed windows—crescendoed into a dull roar. Within seconds, dozens of people were surging toward the house, cars honking as some demonstrators rushed into traffic to get a closer look at her.

She stepped back in shock and tugged the curtains closed. She couldn’t sense the crowd’s emotions—maybe she was far enough away that she was shielded from it—but her heart raced as she heard a police officer speaking through a bullhorn, ordering people back. Footsteps came down the hall and her mom asked, “What’s going on? I heard something.”

“I looked out the window.”

“I should have warned you not to do that.” Her mom went to the curtains and peered through a narrow slit between the drapes.

Her dad came into the living room holding the telephone. “Reese, it’s for you. It’s David.”

“I didn’t hear it ring,” Reese said, taking the receiver.

“We turned off the ringer. It’s been ringing off the hook all morning with interview requests.”

Reese lifted the phone to her ear. “Hey, David.”

“Hey,” David said.

“I’m taking this upstairs,” Reese said to her parents. On the way to her room she said to David, “It’s crazy out in front of my house.”

“I know. I saw it on the news.”

She entered her bedroom and nudged the door shut. “What does it look like?”

“You’re basically surrounded within a three-block radius. They’re all looking at the spaceship.”

“Shit.” She climbed onto her bed and set her coffee mug on the bedside table.

“I went online to try to find out if the Imria have said anything, like whether they’re going to move their spaceship, but there’s no official news. Some people have some pretty insane theories though.”

“I read one last night about time travel.”

“That’s a good one. Did you read about panspermia?”

“Pan what?”

“Apparently there’s a theory that all life in the universe originated from one common source. Like, asteroids traveled the universe carrying life and they hit various places, including the Imrian planet and Earth, so that’s why the Imria look like us.”

“That’s… interesting. I guess that’s as good a theory as any.” She remembered what typically accompanied these theories online. “You didn’t read the comments, did you?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

“You did, didn’t you? You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Whatever, so there are trolls,” he said dismissively. “You’re not paying attention to them, are you?”

It was her turn to hesitate. She picked up the mug and took a sip of coffee.

“Reese.”

“David.”

He laughed, and it sent a tingle down her spine. She liked the sound of his laugh. She hadn’t heard it in a long time.

“So that press conference didn’t exactly work out the way we thought it would,” he said.

“No. Do you think we should try it again?”

“I don’t know. How do we know Agent Forrestal or someone else won’t shut us down again?”

“Well, this website, Bin 42, wants us to talk to them. Julian works for them.”

“That’s the one that put up the video, right?”

“Yeah.”

He was silent for a second. “We could do that.”

“What’s your hesitation?”

“Well, a lot of the stuff online was talking about how there’s no proof that we have these abilities. Maybe we should get some proof first.”

“How?”

“My dad says he can set up an academic review board to examine us.”

Reese remembered that David’s dad was a biochemist. “Your dad works at a pharmaceutical company in Menlo Park, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t he suggest that his company do it?”

“He doesn’t want any suggestion of bias, which there would be if he was involved. He has friends at UCSF who could put together a group of scientists.”

“What do you think about the Imrian offer to help us?”

“I don’t trust them. Why? Do you want to take them up on it? And what was the thing that Amber gave you, anyway?”

She glanced at the device on her desk. “It was a cell phone. She gave us a way to call Dr. Brand.” She suddenly remembered something. “Wait, do you still have my cell phone?” While she and David were at Blue Base, someone had put a report on it that laid out the military’s project to create supersoldiers with Imrian DNA. “I gave it to you so you could read that report, remember? That is totally proof.”

David exhaled, his breath sending static over the phone. “No, I had to leave it with my stuff and then the base exploded, so it’s gone.”

“Crap.” She heard a clicking noise and checked the receiver. Julian was on call-waiting. She’d have to call him back.

“Do you not want to do this academic board testing thing?” David asked.

“I agree we need proof,” she said quickly. “But do you think the testing is going to show us what we can do? That thing that Amber did when she touched us—how did she do that? We need to learn that.”

“I definitely don’t trust Amber,” David said, and there was a sharp tone to his voice that startled Reese.

“I know,” she said hastily. “I don’t either. But how are we going to figure out exactly what we can do? The government doesn’t know much about what happened to us. It would be great to have scientific proof that we’re not lying, but that might not explain how we can use our abilities.”

“I tried to—to communicate with you last night.”

She was taken aback. “You mean… telepathically?”

“I guess. It didn’t work. I couldn’t sense you at all. Not like I could when we were at Project Plato.” He paused. “That
did
happen, right? I’m not crazy, am I? Could you hear me then?”

“Yes,” she said. “At Plato, I could definitely hear you.” Their disembodied connection had been so strange and yet so intimate, as if their minds had met on some extra-dimensional plane. “It’s different when we touch, though.”

“Yeah. That feels more like I’m in your head. The time at Project Plato, it felt like I was talking to you on a really bizarre telephone.”

She sat up, putting her coffee down. “Wait. Was Plato the only place it worked for you? I thought we communicated telepathically yesterday too. In my room when Amber and Julian were here. You couldn’t hear me?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I can’t remember.”

There was a catch in his voice that made Reese think he was holding something back. “What is it? If you couldn’t hear me that’s okay. I don’t know how this works either.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

His breath whooshed into the phone. “I didn’t like Amber. That’s all. I was distracted by that.”

She was surprised. If he had been distracted, did that mean he was jealous? She was unexpectedly flustered. “Oh. Um, well, we can try it again sometime when she’s not around.”

“You promise?”

She could hear the smile in his voice, and heat crept up her neck. “Yeah.”

“So… are you okay with my dad setting up that academic review panel thing?”

She had forgotten they were discussing scientific testing of their abilities. “Oh, yes. That would be good.”

“Okay. Well, let me call you back after I talk to my dad about it and I have more info.”

“All right. I’ll talk to you later.”

After they hung up she saw the voice-mail light blinking on the phone, and she remembered Julian. She called him back without checking the message, and he answered on the first ring.

“Dude, your house is on TV twenty-four seven!”

“I heard.” She picked up her coffee again. “I looked outside for, like, one second and the mob started rushing toward the house.”

“It’s insane,” he said, but he sounded more thrilled than scared. “I can’t believe you’re back and there’s a giant freaking black triangle over your neighborhood!”

“Whoa, calm down,” she said, laughing. “This is like your dream come true, isn’t it?” For as long as she could remember, Julian had been obsessed with UFOs and aliens. He probably knew more about UFOs than most of the people outside her house.

“Well, if you hadn’t been abducted and stuff, yeah.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

“Hey, I tried your cell first but it said the number was no longer in service.”

“Yeah, it blew up with Blue Base. Which totally sucks because it had information on it about the government’s supersoldier project.”

“You have to come on Bin 42 and talk about it—about everything,” Julian said excitedly. “David too.”

She hesitated. “I don’t know. We have to think about it.”

“What’s to think about? Isn’t it important to share the truth with the world? You can’t let the government get away with what they did to you.”

“It was the Imria who did this to me,” Reese objected. “They adapted me, or whatever they call it.”

“An adaptation procedure.”

“Yeah. That.”

“There’s more to it than that and you know it. The government has been covering up the fact that they’ve been in touch with the Imria since 1947. There’s definitely a cover-up going on about the June Disaster—there’s still been no real explanation
for why or how those birds went crazy. There’s all that Project Blue Base stuff you and David found out about. That lab report you guys found proves that the government was behind the June Disaster. You have to tell the world.”