IT ONLY takes half a minute. Scott Held and his followers might not want to believe it, but they all know that nobody human could see what I can see. Only a filthy, hideous kime could do that. Rowan steps out of the way but stays close, letting me know he’s there for me. I stare them down. “Well?”
And that’s when my dad comes pounding through the gate, sparing just one quick glance for the bent iron bars. He doesn’t seem interested in the frog chimeras at all. Just how much did he know before I came here?
“Ada! Ada, thank God you’re safe. What unbelievable cruelty—they told me you were dead, sweetheart. I knew it couldn’t be true.”
He’s been coming closer while he’s talking, and now he reaches to pull me into his arms. I step back before he can catch me.
“Ms. Stuart lied to you,” I say. “But you lied, too. Did you know Dr. Jacoway? You’re both biologists. Did you ever meet him?”
“Dr. Jacoway?” He looks stunned, and really sweet, with his golden-brown skin and warm gaze and his glasses tipped at a slant. I don’t think I understood how badly I missed him and my mom and my home until this moment. All I want to do is give in, hug him tight and sob while he carries me to the car. But I can’t. “I studied under him. Many years ago.”
“He’s dead,” I say. “Scott Held crushed him to death with his truck. And he was murdered because he wanted to protect the kids here. Not because he’d done anything wrong.” Dad stares at me. “You ran past his body, and you didn’t even look.”
“I was desperate to reach you, sweetheart. Once they made that outrageous claim, that you’d been killed in an accident—I wasn’t sure what they’d try next. I was sure you were in danger.”
He steps forward again, and again I dance out of reach. My hair keeps blowing in my face, and when I push it back, my cheeks are slippery with tears. I didn’t even know I was crying.
“I was. Gabriel over there tried to murder me, twice. And the second time Ms. Stuart was ready to sit back and let it happen.”
I know they’re both listening, but I won’t look at them. They’re no better than Scott Held; just like him, they’ll crush anyone in the way of their plans.
And right now I can’t look at my dad, either. I love him, but I understand too much. I know what he’s done. I turn my head toward the violet sky, the black trees pitching like waves. Bats like shining ribbons swoop after insects.
I need to cry for hours in someone’s arms, but they won’t be his.
“That’s just what I was afraid of. So you can see—Ada, you accuse me of lying, and I did. I would have said anything, done anything I had to, to get you out of here!”
“Maybe you should have thought about that,” I say, “before you sent me in here to be your spy.”
The crowd has been pretty quiet. I guess for them, watching this is as good as TV. But now there are some reactions: surprised huffs and murmuring. My dad glances around. Like he was counting on me to keep that part secret and not embarrass him.
Like that matters more than all the kids who could have died tonight. More than Dr. Jacoway, lying there with his rib cage crushed and his mouth wide open. I can’t see him well—there are too many people in the way—but I can see his ruby glow starting to dim to a dull brick red.
“I never wanted it to be you, Ada,” my dad says at last. The same words he used in his email. “But my bosses, my—associates—all impressed on me how perfect you were for the task. So beautifully human-looking that no one would question how you’d passed undetected for so long.”
So it was never a secret that I’m a chimera—at least, it wasn’t a secret from everyone. It’s a crazy thing to realize. Maybe I was only free all those years because his associates were waiting for me to be old enough to be their pawn. Maybe during all those doctors’ visits they were studying me, and I never even guessed. There’s a much bigger game being played than I ever realized. If there’s some kind of conspiracy, how deep does it really go? My breath is heaving, and I must look stunned.
I guess he doesn’t notice how much understanding this hurts me, because he just keeps talking.
“But then, if you came under suspicion—if they thought you were a human plant—you could easily prove your true nature.” I think of Ms. Stuart, fake-casually asking me for that demonstration in her office. She’d wondered that exact thing. “And then, there’s your extraordinary vision. It’s unique, as far as we know.”
There it is again. I wonder if he wanted the same thing Ms. Stuart did: for me to find the blue, and find a way to help him use it. Harness its power, like it’s just some weapon and the first side that gets hold of it will win. I can see how people who’ve never experienced the blue for themselves might get that idea, and how amazing it would be to control the force that made all of us. But nobody can use it; it has its own ideas. That doesn’t seem to occur to either of them.
And they can’t use me, either.
“Why did you agree to send me, though? What did they promise you? You said something about leaving Long Island, but that—you wouldn’t have agreed just for that?”
He flushes. The heat of his blood rising in his cheeks makes them shine like lanterns. That’s enough of an answer. Right; being stuck in the quarantined zone has been devastating for his career.
“The whole test,” I say. “The Popsicles. You were in on the plan before that happened. You helped set me up. And you let me believe I was contagious, but you knew that wasn’t true, either.”
“Ada,” he says. “Ada, listen. I wanted what was best for you. For our whole family. Staying inside the quarantine—it’s stifling. I wanted a better future than that for you.”
“And what about Marley and Corbin?” I ask. “They got caught too. Ripped away from their families. Why? Just to make the whole bust look more realistic?”
He doesn’t answer that. Not directly. “Marley? We’d been watching that girl for years. I posed as a pediatrician to study her personally, once; such a fascinating case. She’s only thirty-seven out of forty-six. Barely human at all. It’s astounding that she was able to pass for so long.”
The answer that matters to me isn’t in his words. It’s in the tone of his voice. There’s a thin, sharp edge of contempt.
I’m forty-five out of forty-six, and I guess that makes me almost good enough. Almost a real daughter. But not quite so real that he wasn’t willing to trade me for his freedom. I see. I completely understand, and I wish more than anything that I could squeeze all my love for him out of my heart. Crush it and throw it on the grass and tell him to his face that I hate him.
But I can’t. And I don’t. I love him, and I just wish he’d done a better job of loving me back.
He reaches toward me again. “Ada, come along. I understand you feel strongly about the choices I made, and you have every right to be upset. Let’s talk about this at home.”
His voice has softened so quickly that it’s like he threw a switch. He knows how to say all the right things. He’s smart that way. But Ms. Stuart is pretty good at that too.
Rowan, out of everybody—he’s the only one who recognizes just how awful this is. He leans closer and curls a flipper on my shoulder.
“Dr. Lahey? You’re welcome to visit here—I mean, if Ada wants to see you. But there’s no way we’ll let you take Ada against her will.”
My dad scowls at him. “And who do you mean by we? You and the people who tried to murder her?”
Rowan shakes his head. “They don’t count anymore. And anyway, you know that’s not who I meant.”
As the night gets deeper, the tall greenish army blends into the darkness more. But as I look around, I realize they’ve moved to stand in a ring twenty feet from me and Rowan. They’re guarding us. My dad stares at them and then turns around, probably checking to see how many of Scott Held’s people he can call on for support.
The answer is almost none. They’ve been getting up off the ground in ones and twos, staring around disoriented, and then wandering off. Why would anybody stay to fight over a kime girl like me? Back through the gate, back into cars. Hot exhaust plumes scarlet from their tailpipes. Even Scott Held is climbing back into the cab of his truck and slamming the door. His mouth is bent in a disappointed sneer.
My dad turns back to me. There’s such a strange look on his face: regret and longing, but also something more calculating, like he’s about to lose something he wants intensely. And I think I can guess what it is. He still needs me and whatever I know to persuade his bosses to let him leave Long Island.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, just to make sure that’s clear. “I still love you and Mom. But I would never do what you asked me to do. You expected me to betray everybody here, and you don’t even know who they are.”
Like Soraya. If she’s my sister, my twin, then she’s also his daughter, in a way. And he might not even know she exists. It feels like too much to explain right now, though.
But maybe he’ll visit. Maybe I’ll be able to forgive him. And once I know I can trust him again, maybe I’ll take him to meet her.
“Ada,” he says. The look in his eyes is brighter now. Hungrier. “Ada, did you see it?”
Is that all he cares about? “I’ve seen it. We’ve—communicated, a little. But I don’t know what it is.”
“No one knows. Not really.” He smiles ruefully. “We don’t know what it wants, or why it chose Long Island as the site for its newest experiments. We can only guess. If you ask me, I’d speculate that it’s the reason for all the sudden jumps in the evolutionary record. I’d say it’s the vital intelligence of Earth itself. The will to life, bubbling over into a sentient being. Imagine what we could do if we could master that!”
He looks around at the frog people, and I know what he sees in them.
Potential. Power. Anyone who can conduct the force that made them could choose the future for our whole planet.
“It wouldn’t let you,” I say. “It does what it wants to do.” I don’t think he believes me, though, any more than Ms. Stuart would. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth, though, before you sent me here? You could have explained. You could have told me you needed a spy in here, and asked me how I felt about that. Instead you put on this huge act.” It’s still sinking in.
Every word he said was a lie. Even when he said, Our daughter is staying with her family, he was just waiting for me to contradict him and insist on coming here instead. He was so sure he could predict every last thing I would do. He was counting on it.
But he was only right about some of it. At first I went along with his script just perfectly, but then I started to slide off into choices he hadn’t imagined.
“Why didn’t I tell you? Because I knew that, unless your initial reactions were completely authentic, you’d give yourself away. You’re such a fundamentally honest person, Ada, dearest. You’re such a terrible liar.”
I’d thought I was done being surprised, but he’s smiling in a way that lets me know he means it.
He reaches out one more time and strokes my cheek, and now I don’t pull away from him. But I don’t go to him, either. I need more time to get past the bitterness before I can treat him like he’s really my dad again. Dr. Jacoway died because of all the lies my dad told. I can’t just ignore that.
Even though he’s crying now. “Ada. You really won’t come with me? I can arrange to keep you unregistered. We can explain to the school that the lab made a mistake and that you’ve been cleared. No one will ever suspect you aren’t entirely human.”
I don’t care anymore who knows what I am. That’s not the point at all. If it’s safe to let me live around humans, if he’s so sure of that, why should any of us stay shut away from the world?
“I won’t leave here,” I say. “Not until all of us can, without anybody trying to hurt us. And not until there’s some kind of justice for Dr. Jacoway! Do you think that’s ever going to happen?”
Rowan lets out a long huff of air, like he’s been holding his breath all this time, and pulls me into a hug. The fur on his shoulder is thick and warm, and soon it’s damp with my tears.