Inheritance

CHAPTER 34

“Reese, wait!”

Amber’s voice made Reese turn around halfway into the elevator to the parking garage. Amber was running across the landing outside the General Assembly Hall. The elevator door began to close and Reese put her hand out to stop it.

“Amber’s coming,” she said over her shoulder. Her mom, David, his dad, and Nura Halba were already inside. They were heading to the Waldorf for a special luncheon and had to take a car to get there. The elevator operator pressed his finger on a button to hold the doors.

“She’s supposed to go with Evelyn and the others,” Halba said, poking his head out to look.

Amber arrived a few seconds later. “Thanks. They told me I should go with you. They were held up by the press.”

“Do you know how long they’ll be delayed?” Halba asked.

Amber stepped inside. “No. There were a lot of reporters, though.”

“Are you ready, sir?” the elevator operator asked.

“Yes, thanks,” Halba replied, and the doors slid shut. Reese was glad she hadn’t been required to stay for the press conference. The response to Akiya Deyir’s speech had been chaos, with half the audience frozen by shock and the other half shouting a hundred questions at once. She had no idea how the Imria were going to deal with this, and though she knew she would have a part to play for the rest of her life, she was grateful for the temporary reprieve.

When the elevator came to a stop, they trooped out into the garage. It smelled faintly of gasoline fumes, and the fluorescent bulbs overhead gave the space a garish cast. As Halba went to request their vehicle from the valet, Reese asked Amber, “Why can’t we take the lander?”

“There’s nowhere to park it at the hotel,” Amber said. “We couldn’t get a permit.”

“You have to get a permit to park a spaceship?” David asked.

Amber shrugged lightly. “We’re trying to play by the rules.”

I wouldn’t have picked parking in New York as the right time to start, David thought to Reese.

Me neither.

David’s fingers worked at the knot of his tie, loosening it. “So what happens after lunch?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Meetings with diplomats, receptions, that sort of thing,” Amber said.

“Are we supposed to go to them?” Reese asked.

“Some, I think,” Amber said.

A limousine pulled up to the valet booth, and the driver jumped out to open the door. Nura Halba called them toward the vehicle, and Reese, David, and Amber turned to follow Reese’s mom and David’s dad into the limo. In the distance Reese heard a screeching noise, like brakes slammed on too sharply. She stopped, looking in the direction of the sound.

An explosion split the air like a whip crack through the stillness. The ground rocked.

Amber stumbled on her heels, falling against Reese as Reese banged into David. He grabbed her arm, saying, “What the hell?”

Sirens began to wail as emergency strobe lights flashed to life, sending bursts of white through the garage. Reese spun around, but she couldn’t see where the explosion had come from.

Her mom scrambled out of the limo, screaming, “Reese!” David’s dad was right behind her as a black-and-white police van careened through the parking garage straight at the limo.

“Mom!” she cried, starting toward the car.

David’s hand was still on her arm and he jerked her to a stop. “Get back!” he shouted, pulling Reese with him toward the elevator. She grabbed Amber, dragging her with them as David cried, “Dad, get away from the car!”

The van turned at the last possible second, barely grazing the limo’s front fender as Nura Halba, Reese’s mom, and David’s dad dived for the ground. The back of the van opened and several men in SWAT uniforms swarmed out. Relieved, Reese moved toward them. One of the men came directly for her and grasped her arm.

That was when she knew.

Inside the man was a cold, hard void, and she froze as she realized who he was—who they all were. They were from Blue Base, just like Lovick’s bodyguards. The man who had grabbed her bent her arms behind her back as easily as she might break a toothpick. With a ratcheting sound, her wrists were bound with a plastic strip, and the man half carried, half pushed her toward the van. To her left she saw David trying to struggle, but it was useless. He was shoved inside the van too, and deposited onto the bench across from her. A soldier inside the van covered her mouth with a strip of tape, then patted her down and pulled out her cell phone and handed it off to another soldier. It happened so fast that she hadn’t even had time to scream.

The soldiers began to climb back into the van, falling into place silently and efficiently. Reese heard Amber cry out in pain, and a moment later she was pushed into the van too. She had a red welt across her face, and her eyes were bright and angry. The soldier who had thrust her inside pulled the door shut while another bound and gagged her.

“Who’s this? We already have two of them,” barked the soldier next to Reese.

“The orders say ‘all the teenagers,’ ” said the soldier who had taken Amber. “Here’s the third.”

“Fuck it, take her too,” the first soldier said. He smacked on the metal grate between the rear of the van and the driver’s cab. “Let’s go!”

They roared out of the parking garage, the wheels squealing. Reese’s stomach lurched as she banged into the soldier beside her. She recoiled from the dense compactness of his body, all muscle and adrenaline, and the acidity in her stomach threatened to rise into her throat. She choked it down, trying to inhale through her nose, but the tape over her mouth magnified the false sensation that she couldn’t breathe. A buzzing sound filled her ears as her panic crested. She thought she was about to faint and she looked across the van at David, his face swimming in her vision. Then someone pulled a hood over her head, and she couldn’t even see.

She screamed through the tape, but it came out as a desperate gurgle. The van took a curve so quickly she slid onto one of the soldier’s laps. “Sit up,” he growled, pushing her away.

She sat up, her limbs trembling. She focused on breathing through her nose and through the black material of the hood over her head. The air was warm and smelled of sweat and the soldiers’ sour, metallic odor. She strained against the tie around her wrists; it cut into her skin like a knife.

Reese.

She froze.

Reese, are you hurt?

David. Relief flooded through her. No, I’m okay. Are you?

No. I’m fine. Don’t panic.

She choked on a hysterical laugh, the tape an impenetrable barrier against her lips. Don’t panic? The soldiers around them were silent. She could hear them breathing like well-oiled machines. In, out, in, out. Beyond that she heard the rough inhale of someone trying to breathe through a mask. Amber? But though she focused as intently as she could, she was unable to sense Amber at all.

I can’t talk to Amber, she thought to David. Can you?

No. Did you feel these soldiers?

Yeah, like pits of nothing. Fear shuddered through her. They’re from Blue Base.

They had to be sent by Charles Lovick, since we obviously didn’t give Mr. Hernandez the info they wanted.

Something beeped loudly, and Reese recognized the lead soldier’s voice as he said, “Retriever one, we have the quarry.”

A scratchy sound followed, and Reese realized the soldier was speaking on a walkie-talkie. A woman’s voice came through. “Base six. Exercise option one-zero-four. Repeat, option one-zero-four.”

“Roger that.”

“Report when finalized.”

She heard the crunch of a lock being opened. Someone asked, “Why one-zero-four? They can’t do anything.”

“We don’t ask questions. We follow orders.”

A soldier pulled her away from the wall. His touch made her cringe. There was something disturbing about him that went beyond the dense weight of his body—something unstable. Without warning, a sharp needle plunged into her shoulder, and she yelped. The drug flooded into her bloodstream in a thick, numbing rush, and then she blacked out.