Reclaiming Shilo Snow Read online

  Miguel stayed silent as he kept pace, his warmth lingering around her even as the tension poured off him just as perceptibly as it was radiating off of her, especially the farther they made it past the machines. She could feel him. His body. His tattooed arms and chest and neck moving lithely beside her.

  It drowned out the awareness of her own heart’s nervous patter. She upped her pace and rechecked their bearings. At the back of the room, a thin door stood open and waiting. It led into a second room that was the same as the previous, with another door waiting as well.

  Good instinct, Sof.

  Only this one had entered had the pods like they’d encountered just before Heller had gone weird. The type that hung like giant vats of blue liquid from the ceilings, beneath low blue lights. Holding lifeless, Delonese beings inside—some full-grown and others the size of fetuses.

  Sofi ducked past them and refused to look up.

  Except . . .

  Except a face caught her eye.

  She slowed. “Miguel . . .”

  He was already staring at it. The Delonese face pressed to the glass was eerie—not yet alive but identical in every other way to the rest of the race. Its features frozen in time along with its limbs. Like Frankenstein’s creation simply waiting for animation.

  Sofi’s gaze followed Miguel’s ghostly arm pointing up at the large vats, to where tiny tanks were attached to the tops, like candy jars. Each one holding what was clearly a type of organ. A heart. A liver. Another that appeared to be a human spleen. They weren’t just attached to this vat but to all of them.

  Sofi’s spine went slick as her heart shriveled in her chest. She tried to speak but the words got lost. Even from here she could tell these parts hadn’t just been grown from human cells—they’d come out of humans. And were now being used for—what? She couldn’t tell.

  But they hadn’t simply been extracting DNA.

  She reached out a hand and pressed it to the glass—only to jump as an electric jolt surged through her body. With a small cry she yanked away, but not before she swore the alien twitched and an image seared into her brain. The picture of her cells being morphed and mixed with those of the alien, working all the way through its blood and rushing past its heart on up into its mind—with the suggestion of waking it up.

  She turned away.

  “Sof,” Miguel said quietly.

  Right. They had to keep going. She shook off the disgust enough to step toward the three closed doors lining the back wall of the room while trying to decide what it would take to destroy this entire planet.

  “Sof,” Miguel said again. This time more insistent. He wasn’t standing near the tanks anymore but in front of what appeared to be a blank wall a few feet away. It took a second to realize it wasn’t a wall at all but a thick window. And with Miguel outside of her ghosting perimeter, she could see him staring through the pane.

  She joined him and peered through the glass, only to utter a gasp. “What the—?”

  The window looked down upon an enormous room the size of a warehouse—and from it, other warehouse rooms branching off. And filling the entire space were the same perfect octagon blue cylinder vats as in this room, lined up in perfect rows, in perfect suspension from the high ceilings, full of thousands upon thousands of adult Delonese bodies, floating in unanimated status. The Delonese had created a lifeless army.

  “This is what they’re using all the disappearing kids for. They’re harvesting them to expand the Delonese species,” Miguel muttered.

  Sofi wanted to run. To lunge for the doors on the back wall and leave them behind.

  Instead, she turned and, clenching her teeth, strode over to the largest vat and lifted her hand. “Like heck they are.”

  Her fingers curiously felt that same shock again when she touched it. Strange. She pressed harder as the reaction from the glass-like siding began burning into her skin. A suspicion formed in her mind that whatever the Delonese had originally done to her was displaying in this bizarre connection. And it was one she could use against them.

  Her flesh stung and smelled as if it were charring, but she kept her palm in place until she felt the splintering. Suddenly that section of the vat cracked and began to leak.

  She jumped back just as the base exploded and the tube emptied its adult Delonese contents onto the floor and down the legs of her waterproof suit.

  If she couldn’t stop their warped crusade fully right now, she’d at least show them someone had seen and was unwilling to stay silent about the sins they were performing here.

  Miguel had the same idea apparently—just a different method. He held up his handcomp and was videoing the whole scene. He glanced at Sofi. “As soon as we get the chance, we upload this to Vic.”

  “And accept the reality that we’ll be starting a war that Earth may not survive.”

  He stared at her. “I assumed we both could live with that.”

  She nodded. There’d never been a question. Silence for the sake of compliance wasn’t something either of them had ever done well. They’d take Delon down one way or another.

  Sofi curled her fingers around her aching palm, then frowned. “We need to move,” she whispered. Whatever had happened when she’d touched the vat wasn’t just confined to her senses—something within her said the Delonese had felt it too—as if it were all connected to the medical room, the systems, and the space station. The soldiers’ voices were growing louder from beyond these rooms, clogging her earcom’s translator. She turned for the three doors.

  “You two there?” Vic’s voice erupted through Miguel’s hand-screen. “The Delonese have . . .”

  Miguel reached to scan the handheld over the second door’s sensor. “Say again, Vic.”

  “The Delonese didn’t just . . . They are—”

  Silence.

  “Vic?”

  Sofi ran her comp along the first door’s edge. When it wouldn’t open, she moved to try the second after Miguel’s failed, then the third. She glanced at her screen’s surface map, then switched over to the light display showing the Delonese—they were closing in from the hallway through which she and Miguel had come.

  Cripe. What were you thinking interfering, Sof?

  She dropped to her knees, working faster, typing code into her comp as Miguel tried each door again.

  “Did you guys hear me?” Vic’s voice suddenly crackled. “They’re bringing the whole thing down, kids and all.”

  Sofi looked up at Miguel as he moved to join her. “What—like they’re just going to crash it?” The dread in Miguel’s eyes matched the feeling in her gut.

  “I’m sorry . . . Can’t stop . . . K—”

  The signal was gone again.

  Sofi tried entering a different code. They had to get to the surface.

  The door dinged and swished and Sofi stood. Except it wasn’t their door, but one ten feet over that opened.

  She started toward it just as a group of Delonese stepped through. Miguel caught her arm and held them both frozen as the aliens took in the shattered vat and the Delonese body on the floor.

  “Ambassador Miguel and Girl-Sofi, we are aware you’re here,” the lead officer said after a moment. “Our sensors have revealed as much. You should know we have taken back full control of the shuttle with your friends on it—so you will show yourself or they will suffer.”

  Sofi’s eyes met Miguel’s.

  Even ghosted, she saw his thin expression turn from anger over what they’d just seen to fury over the threat to the others. She put her hand on his chest and shook her head. As if to say, Stay still. Stay silent. As soon as the guards walk far enough, we can lunge through the door. We’ll figure out how to save the shuttle and destroy these rooms.

  The Delonese stepped forward and lifted their guns. “Please be aware we will not ask again.” Then swung her direction as the door beside her and Miguel softly clicked. The guards scurried closer, cutting off their ability to run back the way they’d come.

  Trapped.
>
  Sofi’s chest began pounding again, stealing her breath and inflating her fear of being strapped down on one of those beds again. She grabbed Miguel’s hand just as he turned his ethereal gaze on her. He smiled.

  She shook her head. No. No, don’t.

  She put her hand on his chest, forbidding him, but it was already too late. The look in his eyes matched the pulse of his heartbeat, telling her to brace for something. Telling her he trusted her to figure out the puzzle to this place, and to the whole diablos world. Just like she’d figured out the puzzle to him.

  The next moment, with a green flash, the door she’d been working on beeped and the seal released. And opened.

  The Delonese soldiers narrowed their guns in her direction, lunging forward just as Miguel reached down to brush her cheek and whispered, “I told you I wouldn’t let them take you.”

  He shoved her through the open door and stepped forward five paces, far enough to pull outside of her suit’s ghosting function as they yelled—and he casually said, “Eh, mis amigos. Nice to see you.”

  6

  MIGUEL

  Miguel hit the ground so fast he hardly knew which one of the guards had shoved him. His earcom crackled as his back thumped against the slick, wet surface and the blue fluid from the broken vat sloshed onto him.

  They crouched over, demanding, “Ambassador Miguel, you’ll inform us of Girl-Sofi’s location.”

  “Ambassador Miguel, you’ll inform us of Girl-Sofi’s location.”

  “Amb—”

  He waved a hand. “Sí, sí, I hear you, but I can’t help you. She ran off looking for her brother.” Which was both believable and somewhat true. If that mattered.

  Two of them had already rushed through the doorway Sofi’d exited—good gad, he hoped she’d trusted him enough to have kept running.

  She knew how to do her thing. The best he could do was give her more time by doing his.

  And he knew how to do it quite well.

  He peered up at the faces hovering over him and flashed them the wide grin that could “slay a million hearts,” according to last week’s Enquiring magazine. “So, where are we at, boys? Friends? Lovers? Secret admirers? Come now, I won’t tell.” He lifted an arm, now soaked in that sterile-smelling fluid the lifeless Delonese had been floating in, and sniffed as if in disgust. “At the very least, how about you let me up? This beauty wash is doing nothing for my skin.”

  The Delonese nearest him gave a snort but glanced at the others before the tallest of the three nodded. “We are only allowed to comply with your request if you behave as Delon-Earth protocol requires, Ambassador.”

  “Gentlemen, please. I always behave,” he muttered, pushing himself to stand, while considering the merciful reality that his madre was dead, so she couldn’t hear such a lie come from her sweet hijo. The woman would probably drag him to the priest right then and there—no matter what these aliens threatened with their guns.

  “We have acquired Ambassador Miguel,” the tallest Delonese said into his handcom. “Lord Ethos, would you have us bring him now or wait until we’ve obtained Girl-Sofi?”

  Miguel’s gut tightened. Their obtaining Sofi was not going to happen—not in his mind, not ever. Not with what it might do to her. What they would most certainly do to her.

  Calmly, Miguel. You can’t save her if your head’s fogged. He checked his nerves and went to smooth his hair, then thought better of it. The sterile smell was more than one man could handle, and the thought of that liquid in his hair was appalling even to him. “If Ethos will see me, I’d suggest you take me to him sooner than later.”

  He casually tilted his gaze toward the large window, through which spanned the warehouse of bodies. “It would appear he and I have some political business to discuss. At least if he’d like to stay in my good graces.”

  The lead Delonese’s face didn’t even flicker an emotion. Just nodded. “Lord Ethos agrees. You will come.” Then turned his unblinking eyes on the other two, who promptly fell into alignment on each side of Miguel.

  “About your shell of a guy on the floor, by the way,” Miguel said just as they reached the med room door. “And you all wonder why your race can’t reproduce?”

  “I’d urge caution with your words in front of Lord Ethos, Ambassador.”

  “And I’d caution you against using my people as lab rats.”

  7

  INOLA

  Tick. tick. tick. tick.

  Inola stood forty stories above her city streets in her air-conditioned Corp 30 office and listened to the clock.

  It was an archaic timepiece she’d insisted on keeping, even though it’d meant getting the thing repaired regularly through the years. It’d hung in her daughter Ella’s room when Inola had married Ben. And it’d stayed there as Inola had counted down the years and hours until seven-year-old Ella’s last diseased breath, only days before Sofi’s fourth birthday and months before Shilo was born.

  Childhood cancer had been a merciless consumer back then. A ticking time bomb. The fact the disease had all but disappeared might be attributed to Inola—but the clock was a reminder that even the best intentions often come too late when one isn’t proactive enough.

  A good leader would always be looking ahead, scanning the horizon for what might come and for how to embrace or stop it.

  It’s what the Delonese lead ambassador, Lord Ethos, had done.

  And up until recently, Inola had highly respected him for it.

  Any individual who shot his people’s planet through a wormhole to land in the Milky Way and park right beside Earth’s moon had some clout. And any who did so as a Hail Mary for the sake of rebooting his dying species was her kind of person.

  So, if anyone was bound to assist him, it might as well have been someone with a sense of morality. These were kids, for heaven’s sake. And in exchange, she got access to some of the greatest medical cures ever seen.

  Originally it’d been simple. Look away as Delon took kids to extract a few cells, manipulate others, and send them home healed of asthma, bone disease, and a host of other things. Not to mention each individual’s altered DNA she could then collect samples from. In fact, the initial study had shown such promise, Inola had sent her own kids seven years ago, as part of the third group taken.

  Until every single child in all three control groups died within the second year, except for Shilo and Sofi—who, with no visible signs of enhancement, were deemed failures. Just living rather than dead.

  After that, she had allowed twenty orphans a year, from whom Delon could extract cells without adding any. All those children survived and made it home, with no memories to show for it—and in exchange the Delonese created one health cure a year that Inola’s Corporation could sell.

  They were doing good work. Merciful work. Giving the Delonese a chance at life and giving humanity the chance not to repeat the Delonese’s sterility mistakes.

  The only thing was . . .

  Seven years of Delon trying to reboot their race hadn’t worked. They were on the cusp, Lead Ambassador Ethos kept saying. But the countdown was on.

  They just needed more cells. More subjects. More kids.

  More kids. There’d been rumors lately of more kids gone missing . . .

  She turned away from the ticking clock—back to the office made entirely of gold titanium walls and bulletproof, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Manhattan hub. Before refocusing on the monitors that Jerrad and his two top-tier intelligence personnel had been silently studying.

  She tapped her fingers nervously on the table. “You’re telling me there’s absolutely nothing showing up about a shuttle issuing a distress alert near Delon?”

  The second officer indicated a group of reports scrolling on-screen. “The moment you called from the car, we pulled the feeds from every secure station available. These are from the past two days—and they’re as normal as you’d expect.”

  “I see that. And your meaning?”

  “Either the in
dividual messaging you didn’t know what he or she was talking about or had access to something we don’t.” Her tone made clear exactly how impossible she considered this. “You said the messages weren’t more specific?” The tech glanced back and forth between Inola and Jerrad.

  “Just that one of the shuttles had tried to leave and was pulled back. And its distress signal was activated.” Inola pinched the bridge of her nose and tossed a glance at the closed security door before lowering her own voice. “I assume you looked beyond the available feeds?”

  The officer gave a nod and respectfully dropped her own voice. “We hacked every defense and satellite we know of, including the United World Corps’. It’s not just that there are no reports. It’s that there’s not even any chatter.”

  Inola sighed and rubbed her cold hands. “So either the Delonese erased all evidence and intel right after one random person caught it, or . . .”

  The two officers looked at her.

  Or it didn’t happen.

  With a click of her tongue, she strode to the window to peer up at the small, pale planet in the cerulean sky. Of course, they could be right. The messages were most likely a hoax, just one of her political enemies messing with her, in light of today’s events.

  Except . . .

  She scanned the bright horizon. “What about Sofi?” She turned. “Could my daughter or that FanFight tech who went with her have done it? The guy, Heller?”

  The first officer looked at Jerrad, then back at Inola. “They could’ve wiped your server messages, yes. At least, Sofi could’ve. But Heller—”

  Inola waved a hand. That’s not what she meant. Of course they both could clean codes. Inola had seen it herself last night when she’d had Jerrad pull the online files Gaines hid behind new firewalls—or rather, Gaines had gotten Heller to hide, according to the virtual fingerprints uncovered.

  “I’m not asking if they’re capable with Earth’s tech,” Inola said. “I’m asking if there’s any indication of Sofi using Delon technology on a large scale in the past thirty-eight hours.” She waited, heart pounding in her chest, aware of what she was really suggesting.