Chapter 17

“It’s been forty minutes.” Ava walked to the round table in the operations room and laid her palms down on the flat surface. It shuddered under her weight. “Where are we on this?”

The surrounding officers didn’t flinch at the clipped tone of her voice. They had been with her for the past half hour, since she’d shot in like a bullet in a blur of blue and yellow. Now they stood at command, ready to move at a moment’s notice.

“Still no signal, but we’re working on luring it out,” reported one of the more senior officers—Bromwell, Ava thought his name was. “It seems the camouflage masks the creature’s bioreceptors, and if it somehow managed to camouflage the civilian as well…”

Gwen, Ava wanted to say. Her name was Gwen.

“…and so our best bet is to lure it out using ultrasonic sound waves recorded from the young Mantipodis.”

Ava frowned. “We can assume the mother wants to trade. That’s why she took G—the civilian. She wants to trade the thing most precious to her for…” Ava cleared her throat, cutting herself off. Gwen Knight was dating Ava Eisenberg, not Swiftwing. “If the Mantipodis realizes that we don’t actually have her baby, she could become unstable, volatile.”

“We won’t let that happen.” Captain Fernandez walked in. “Protecting the civilian is our first priority.”

“Then we do the trade,” Ava pushed back. “Properly.”

“At the risk of endangering the public?” One of the younger, female officers spoke up. “If we release the junior Mantipodis and we’re unable to secure a capture of the mother, then we have two class-five AOs loose in LA.”

“So we’ll make sure that we capture them,” Ava said. “After we make sure that Miss Knight is safe. What we’re doing is wrong. We’re keeping a mother from her child, and we’re facing the consequences of our choices. We need to make better choices. We need—”

“Swiftwing.” Captain Fernandez crossed her arms over her chest. “Could you come to the armory for a moment?”

Ava sighed. She didn’t need the captain’s placating, or her assurances that they knew what they were doing. What she needed was Gwen safe and with her. Ava couldn’t forget how small Gwen had looked, slung over the Mantipodis’s shoulder. She couldn’t shake the feeling that if she had responded faster, if she hadn’t been so caught up in her head and her heart, she might have been able to stop the abduction. She couldn’t shake the guilt that she had brought this terrible thing on Gwen.

She followed Captain Fernandez through the exit and into the armory. “With all due respect, Captain, I know you need to think of the greater good, but I—”

“I’m not going to argue with you.”

Ava stopped in mid-rant. “You’re not?”

“No.”

“Oh,” Ava deflated. “Oh. So, why…”

“Because you looked like you needed a breather.”

Ava nodded, not trusting herself to say anything.

“You know, if any of my officers had this level of emotional involvement, I’d keep them off the mission.” Ava started to argue, but Captain Fernandez held up her hand. “I’m not going to stop you from helping, but I need you to know that you’re here because I say so. I need you to follow orders. No going rogue because you think you know better. Understood?”

Ava swallowed and exhaled deeply. “Understood.”

“Swiftwing, Captain.” They both looked to the door as a uniformed officer announced herself tentatively. “We’re ready.”

Ava shared a last determined look with Captain Fernandez and steeled herself. She would get Gwen back. There was no alternative.

By the time they reached the cold, sterile basement corridor, officers had secured Norman and placed a hood over his head—presumably to discourage any further secretion. He struggled initially, and then calmed once they cleared the perimeter.

They took an ops van and a medical van, and it took more than an hour for the vehicles to reach the desert. Ava flew above, ears attuned to every sound. She heard the grainy rustle of a sidewinder snake against the cold night sand, and the low hoot of an owl as it watched a mouse scurry under a rock, searching for cover. Still there was no Gwen. Not a breath, not a heartbeat. Ava willed herself to be calm, to focus. But then, a sudden, high-pitched whine from the baby Mantipodis in the black ops van stopped her in mid-air.

The van swerved and Ava squinted, finally making out the shape of a cave in the distance.

“Are you seeing that?” Officer Bromwell’s voice came through her earpiece, and Ava nodded to no one before answering.

“Yeah, but I swear it wasn’t there before. I would have noticed it.”

“The camouflage isn’t physical, it’s psychic. That’s how the Mantipodis manages to conceal things around her. She’s not the one altered—”

“Our minds are,” Ava surmised.

“Neat trick,” the captain came through the walkie-talkie. “Come down here and we’ll discuss how to proceed.”

Ava shot down with a whoosh, and landed in a billow of sand and dust beside the two vehicles, which had stopped a fair distance away from the newly revealed cave.

“Why now?” Officer Bromwell hopped out of the van. “Why reveal herself?”

“I think she can hear him.” Ava squinted into the distance. “She wants us to know where she is.”

Bromwell brought his walkie-talkie up to his mouth and waited for the scratchy static to quiet before he said, “We’re go for the trade.” He waited for a response, and then nodded at Ava. “We’re all set. The snipers will be ready to—”

“Wait.” Ava blinked. “Snipers?”

“Armed with tranq darts,” Bromwell explained. “We’ll take Norman to the cave, lure the mother out, and then you’ll go in and get the civilian.”

They walked the Mantipodis baby toward the mouth of the cave, two agents at each side, helping its fat body amble along. By now, his cries were loud enough for everyone to hear. To Ava, they were almost deafening.

They took his hood off, and a screech echoed from inside the cave.

The rest happened almost too fast even for Ava to keep up with. The mother Mantipodis was barely at the cave entrance before she was hit with tranquilizer darts from two sides. The cave seemed to flicker for a moment, as if threatening to disappear right before their eyes, and Norman pierced the still night air with a cry so poignant that Ava felt her heart clench in a weird sort of pain.

The mother staggered for a few steps as the drugs kicked in, and then fell with a heavy thump that shifted the sands. She hadn’t even hit the ground before Ava scooped up a blanket from one of the medical personnel and zoomed past the sedated alien into the cave. She followed the sound of Gwen’s breathing, moving through tunnels and archways.

Ava stopped just short of her destination to gather herself, to take a breath. Gwen was slumped against a wall, her arms wrapped around her knees, thin satin robe skimming her thighs, and Ava was grateful for the blanket.

“Gwen?” she asked softly. Gwen’s head snapped up at the sound, and the change in her face was immediate and unmistakable, eyes brimming with tears that she blinked away. Ava approached slowly, tamping down the urge to run and scoop Gwen into her arms.

Gwen shook her head and bit down on her lips. Her voice, thin and raspy, asked, “Is it gone?”

“She’s gone. You’re safe now.”

Gwen attempted to stand, and then Ava was by her side, helping her up, throwing the blanket around her shoulders. Gwen was cold and trembling, all thin human limbs and goose-pimpled skin. “Is that oka—”

She was cut off by the fierceness of Gwen’s arms around her neck. Ava swallowed back a sob of relief and buried her hands in Gwen’s tangled hair, sticky with alien goo. “I’m here,” she breathed into Gwen’s neck. “I’m here.”

“Took you long enough,” Gwen replied, and Ava could hear the hint of a humor in her voice.

“I’m sorry.” Ava pulled back, her eyes flickering over Gwen’s face, taking in the mascara tracks down her cheeks, the crystallizing alien extract in her hair. There was a purplish bruise on her collar bone that, Ava realized with a stomach flip, was the result of her own fervent ministrations hours earlier. “Are you okay? Did it—?”

“I’m fine,” Gwen answered quickly. “A little underdressed for an abduction, but—”

“I’m sorry,” Ava said again. “I should have—”

“Don’t.” Gwen was stern. “There was nothing you could have…you’re here. I knew you would be.” Gwen reached out to brush the hair from Ava’s forehead, causing Ava’s eyelashes to flutter. “Now…” Ava looked at Gwen expectantly. “Take me the hell out of this—oh.”

For a split second, Gwen looked almost as confused as Ava, but then her eyes rolled back in her head until they were just a gruesome sheen of white. Ava caught Gwen before she fell, almost weightless in Ava’s arms. The panic choked her. It swelled up in her stomach and made her dizzy.

“I’ve got you.” Ava’s voice cracked as she held Gwen close, flying out of the dark cave as fast as she dared.

“Help!” Ava yelled the second she was out, going straight for the medical van.

The med staff extricated an unconscious Gwen from Ava’s grip, and she watched them cover her face with an oxygen mask, feeling her throat close up in fear.

“The toxins are moving fast. Her body is mimicking organophosphate poisoning.”

“What can I do? Can I fly her to the hospital?”

“No. Get her to the helicopter,” an officer yelled out, and the med team was quick to move. “There’s a team waiting at Clinton.”

Ava took a breath and attempted to swallow down her panic, hazarding one last look at Gwen before the helicopter took off.