Inheritance (35 page)

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 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.”

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
susum’urda
.
That’s really central to our society, and all our leaders thought it was important for humans to be able to do it—if humans were going to be the future of the Imria. That’s what Project Plato was really for, at least on our end: to research human biology and develop a way to give you that ability. Now that you and David have shown that the adaptation chamber works, we want to share it with the rest of humanity. That’s what Akiya Deyir is here to do, to start the process of spreading this ability throughout humanity.”

Amber fell silent, and at first Reese simply stared at her. Everything that Amber said was so mind-boggling that Reese could barely keep it all straight. Finally Reese asked, “Is Akiya Deyir going to tell this whole story at the UN? The fact that you guys manipulated us like guinea pigs for millions of years?”

Amber winced. “I don’t know. It’s really complicated.” She crossed her legs and leaned forward. “If they go public about it, it completely upends your belief systems. Practically every single religious system. Evolutionary theory—at least as it applies to humans—is wrong. Some Imrians think it would be better if we start implementing the adaptation procedure first, so that humans can better understand why we did what we did.”

“What is there to understand?” Reese said, disgusted. “You guys treated us like lab rats. I think humans can understand that. Clearly we are descended from you.”

Amber sighed and shifted in place. She was wearing faded jeans that had a hole in one knee, and she hooked a finger in the hole and pulled at the threads as she spoke. “I get that. I do. But a lot of the Imria aren’t ready to face what would happen if they told humanity the whole truth right now. They believe that they
created humans, and humans are their responsibility—their children. They think this adaptation procedure is going to help you grow up or something.”

Reese watched the hole enlarge. The skin of Amber’s knee peeked through. “You keep talking about the Imria as if you aren’t one. Are you saying you don’t buy their argument?”

Amber stopped messing with the hole and leaned back against the wall. “Not completely. I was born here; I grew up here. Sometimes I feel more like a human than an Imrian. I see what they mean, but I’m not sure they’re right.”

“Your mom doesn’t think they’re right either.”

Amber’s eyebrows drew together. “How do you know that?”

“She gave an Imrian DNA sample to David’s dad. That’s how we found out that humans are descended from the Imria. We wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t done that.”

“Yeah. Well, there’s been some disagreement among the Imria here about what to do. My mom—obviously she decided to do something about it.” A strange expression passed over Amber’s face, as if she were realizing something.

“What is it?” Reese asked.

“Nothing.” Amber gave Reese a small smile. “So, that’s about it. That’s everything, I swear.”

Reese shook her head in frustration. “That’s not everything. You guys need to tell the truth.”

“I can’t convince them,” Amber insisted. “They don’t listen to me anymore.”

“Then let me talk to your mom. David and I both need to talk to her—and to Akiya Deyir.” Amber looked doubtful, and Reese moved to sit on the edge of Amber’s bed, facing her. “You can’t
let them go through with this lie. Even if it did work, and somehow the scientific board that David’s dad put together decides to sit on their research—which I seriously doubt will happen—our abilities aren’t—” Reese cut herself off. She had promised David that she wouldn’t tell anyone about their abilities without discussing it with him first, and she had almost spilled it all to Amber.