HIGGINS TELLS ME I can go.
“Just like that?” I ask. We’re in my room at the WMC. There are paper ribbons taped to the air vent above my bed. They sway gently, but I don’t feel any breeze. Outside, the sky is already creeping toward evening, turning the milky gray of summer dusk. I feel sweat sliding down the back of my neck, dripping between my shoulder blades.
“You don’t have anything else you’d like to share, do you?” Higgins says. She has a folder on her lap. Beside her, on the room’s only table, is the tape recorder—a thing the size of a VCR, with wide buttons that she presses so hard her finger bends backward. She hasn’t opened the folder once. It’s so thin I’m not even sure there’s anything inside it. Would it matter if there was? She gives me the feeling that she already knows everything she wants to know; she just wants to hear me say it.
But what is there to say? I could have told her about the man on the Hill. The … the Bug Man—my brain won’t stop calling him that. I just haven’t figured out for myself yet if he really exists. That memory is fuzzy, blurred by rain and smoke and a concussion. I don’t even know if I really saw Kimberly out there. My mind could have made the whole thing up.
If he is real, though … if I did see him scoop Kim up and carry her off into the woods … then I have to tell someone. It just can’t be Higgins. It’s clear that she’s only here to tie up loose ends. That plane landed at TerraCorp yesterday morning. Dad and I watched it. And then I watched it crash. The one and only time there’s ever been a plane landing at that compound, and it gets knocked out of the sky less than six hours later, before it can make it back out of Windale airspace. But Colonel Higgins doesn’t know that I know that part. She just knows that whatever the reason was for bringing that plane into Windale, it was a mistake. If she really does want to help us find Kimberly, it’s only because Kim’s a witness, a victim, just like me and Charlie and Sonya. And she has to make sure we won’t go spinning this the wrong way.
Maybe she doesn’t want anyone to know that the plane was ever at TerraCorp.
“Gabe?” Higgins is standing near the door, folder and tape recorder in hand, carrying them like a briefcase. The reels are still turning, like fast-moving clocks.
Finally, I look at her. “No. I don’t have anything else I want to share.”
“Okay then. Sergeant Hollis has one more test to run, and then you’re free to go home with your parents.” She smashes the STOP button on the recorder, and it’s suddenly a lot quieter without the steady whir of the winding tape. “Please know that we’re very sorry that this happened to you. And about your friend. I’m going to do everything in my power to rectify this situation.”
“I’m sure you are,” I say. There’s a bitterness in my voice that I can’t help. A vision of Kimberly being picked up and carried off by a black-clad stranger distracts me.
I can feel Higgins watching me for a moment. Then the door groans softly, and it’s the creaking leather of the Bug Man’s gloves, giving me a thumbs-up.
Sergeant Hollis comes in. Higgins nods at him before she steps out, lugging our conversation with her. I can only stare at my feet, dangling off the side of the bed.
“How are you feeling, Gabe?” Hollis asks. He sets a small plastic case on the table where the tape recorder was.
“It still hurts to breathe,” I reply. Every breath rakes hot coals down my throat and into my lungs. But my airway feels a lot wider than it did earlier today, and despite the pain, I can breathe without the oxygen.
“It’ll be a while before that part gets better, unfortunately,” Hollis says. “How about the arm?”
My left arm is tucked against my body, held by a sling. My shoulder is sore, and my fingertips still feel somewhat tingly, but it’s no worse than my lungs. Or my head, which is heavy and aching and filled with a bunch of scary thoughts.
“It’s okay” is all I say to Sergeant Hollis.
He nods, opens the case he brought in with him. The lid swings up toward me, so I can’t see what’s inside. He’s fiddling with something, though. “I have a teenager, you know,” he says. “She’s a little younger than you. A sophomore, back home in Lexington.”
“Kentucky?”
Inside the case, Hollis’s hands move, and something metallic clicks together.
“Unless there’s another Lexington that I don’t know about.” Hollis grins. His arm is gyrating, twisting something out of sight. Screwing something into place, maybe. “She can be kind of a handful.” For the first time, I notice the subtle Southern lilt in Hollis’s voice. “Anytime she says that something is just okay, I have to really dig down deep to get the truth. You know?”
Hollis’s arm swings up from behind the top of the case. In his hand is a shining steel syringe about the size of a baby’s arm. At the end of it is a needle as long as a pencil and as thick as the spokes on a bike wheel.
“Whoa,” I say, breathless.
“I know,” Hollis says, coming around the table to the bed. “It’s kind of intimidating. But I promise it’ll be painless.”
“What … what’s it for?”
He pulls back on a peg that’s jutting from one side of the syringe. A slot opens along the tube, and Hollis peers inside for a moment before twisting the peg and sliding the slot back into place in one precise, fluid movement. Like he’s loading a rifle. Even the way the metal pieces lock home sounds the same.
“I’m going to put this little guy in your arm,” Hollis says. His voice is smooth and chipper. He’s a new man now that Higgins isn’t here to make him nervous. “It’s going to inject a small vial, kind of like a pill. The outer shell of the vial will dissolve and release a chemical into your bloodstream. If you or your friends were exposed to any kind of radiation or harmful biowaste during the crash, this chemical will react with that stuff.”
“Radiation?” I ask. My heart is kicking up. “Why would there be any radiation?”
Hollis smiles indulgently, but this close, I can see one of his eyelids twitch. “The plane that crashed was coming from an army base in Washington State where some, uh … unique scientific studies were being done.”
“Kind of like TerraCorp?” I say, trying to keep my voice level.
“Right.” Hollis’s smile turns icy in a second. “But in Washington State. According to the manifest, there wasn’t anything on board the plane that you should worry about. But the plane itself, or even the pilots, may have been exposed. So as a precaution…” He waves the enormous needle, showing perfect rows of teeth in a smile that does nothing to make me feel better.
Not to mention that he’s lying right to my face. Which seems totally pointless because plenty of other people in Windale must have seen that plane land at TerraCorp yesterday. I can name one right this second: Clark Webber. Two more: Rebecca Conner and Mel O’Connell, my dad’s deputies. What are they going to do? Convince the entire town to lie for them? To pretend that none of this happened, even when Kimberly is still missing?
Hollis wobbles the syringe again. “In a couple days, you’ll have to come back and do a urine test. If the chemical in this vial reacted to anything in your body that doesn’t belong there, we’ll be able to see it and get you the proper treatment. Like I said, though. Just a precautionary measure.” He shrugs and takes a last step toward me, until his knees are almost touching mine.
On instinct, I scooch back farther on the bed. “C-Can’t you just use a Geiger counter or something?” The panic is back in full force. Suddenly, I couldn't care less about where the plane came from or where it was going. I’m too focused on the needle.
“Not exactly,” Hollis says with a dry laugh. “Not for what we’re looking for. Now do me a solid and stay very still. Okay?”
“Did, uh … did you ask my parents about this?” I’m stalling. The scratchy hospital blanket under me is balled up in my good fist, the one that’s not dangling from a sling.
“We did. Your dad signed off on it.”
Bullshit, I think.
“Sonya’s dad, too?” Even though Dr. Gutierrez works at TerraCorp, and maybe knows more about what’s going on here than any of us, there’s not a chance he’d put Sonya through something like this.
“I’m not sure I’m allowed to share that information with you,” Hollis says, getting impatient, his arms dropping to his sides, the needle waving around in his hand like he forgot it was there. “But if it makes you feel better, then yes, Dr. Gutierrez signed an authorization form for his daughter as well. In fact, this test was his idea.”
I go still. “Really?”
He nods. “He wanted every box checked in regard to the safety of you kids.”
I don’t know what to say to that. My chest is still heaving, fanning the flames in my lungs, and my heart is racing. But I’ve known Sonya’s dad almost as long as I’ve known Sonya. Charlie and I jokingly call him the mad scientist from time to time, even though he’s quiet and caring and has always been around to help the four of us out if we need it.
“Okay,” I say. I hold my right arm out to Hollis. The fingers on the end of it are trembling.
“Great,” he says.
When the needle goes in, I can feel the cold metal inching up the inside of my arm, almost all the way up to my elbow. Sergeant Hollis squeezes a trigger at the bottom of the syringe. The tube shutters and hisses, then the mechanism inside it retracts. Hollis pulls the needle out of my arm, a sword withdrawing from a fleshy sheath, and covers the puncture wound with a cotton ball and tape.
“All set,” he says.