“That’s why you’re still alive, kid. You’re gonna explain it to me.”
“And what do I get in return?”
Cort flashed a mirthless and insincere smile. “Anything you want. I’ll write you a blank check.”
“What you will do,” Noah interjected, “is guarantee her safety. And if I have even a moment of doubt about whether you’ll keep that promise—”
“Stay out of this,” Cort leveled his venomous gaze at Noah. “You’ve caused enough trouble for one lifetime. But you know, you’re right. She was just defending herself. You’re the one who’s really to blame for all of this. We let you get away with it fifteen years ago, because we thought you could handle it. I guess we know better now, don’t we?”
“You’re wrong about her.”
“She’s dangerous,” Cort insisted. “She’ll turn on you the first chance she gets, and then we’ll all be screwed.”
He turned to Jenna. “Here’s what’s going to happen, little girl. You are going to start talking. If I like what I hear, you get to keep breathing. You’ll be taken to a secure facility — I won’t tell you where — and that’s where you’ll spend the rest of your life. How long that might be will depend on how good your information is. That’s as close to a guarantee as you’re going to get.”
“Everything is going to be all right.” Jenna realized that Noah was speaking to her. “I know you’ve been through a lot. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you, but now I am. We’ll get through it together, okay?”
Cort let out a low growl of displeasure.
“Okay?” Noah asked. “You trust me?”
Jenna didn’t know how to answer. Was this another trick? Were Cort and Noah working together, playing some kind of good-cop/bad-cop game? She couldn’t tell. She would never be able to tell. These two men were as skillful at deception as they were at violence.
Listen to your gut, but make up your own damn mind.
Her gut told her that she had no choice but to trust him.
You have to live.
Yes. I think I do.
She held his gaze. “Aren’t you worried about what I might do?”
“Should I be?”
“You tell me. You’re the one who said I was a ticking time-bomb.”
“That’s not what I said…” He inclined his head, ceding the point. “But I do know a thing or two about defusing time-bombs.” He managed a wan smile. “I said that to get you away from Soter, but I don’t believe it. Nobody is born evil. The universe doesn’t work that way. Those others — the clones — might have your DNA, but they aren’t you. Soter raised them to be what they are. I raised you.”
“Nurture wins over nature?”
“Exactly. I’d like to think I raised you pretty well.”
She nodded. “I trust you.”
“Tell him what you know.”
Jenna faced Cort and took a deep breath. “For starters, you’re wrong about what’s going on here. This isn’t some Cold War Soviet disinformation campaign, and what’s happening right now has nothing to do with the Russians.”
“So, what then?” Cort asked. “Aliens?”
Jenna nodded, and with more certainty than she felt, continued. “The messages Dr. Soter received came from an extraterrestrial intelligence that wants to take over the Earth. They think that we’re a disease, and that if they don’t step in, we’ll make the planet unlivable. They want the Earth for themselves, but before they can take over, they need to get rid of us, and what better way to do it than to have us destroy ourselves. The things that have been happening — what you told me the others like me are doing — that’s just the first step.”
“You were here for what, half an hour?” Cort’s demeanor remained skeptical, but his question was sincere, and Jenna wondered if the Agency he worked for had not already secretly reached the same conclusion. “How do you know all this?”
“The second transmission received by Dr. Soter contained an entire human genome, which he used to create…us. What you call ‘clones.’” Jenna paused. She would have to choose her words carefully now to avoid raising questions she wasn’t willing to answer. “Our DNA includes instructions from the aliens, and the message itself contains the trigger to bring our memories of those instructions to the surface.”
She turned to Noah. “Remember what you said? ‘It’s like a switch gets thrown.’ Something hardwired into our DNA. You were right on both counts.
“Soter hoped that the DNA transmission contained instructions for creating a human ambassador — someone who could communicate with the aliens. He thought that we would be able to read the part of the message that he could never decipher. When it didn’t work, when the clones read the message and…changed…he thought it was some error in his gene sequencing. Back to the drawing board. But it wasn’t an error. The message activated those buried memories. It told them what they were supposed to do: start World War III.”
She paused, letting it sink in, and was surprised by how much she cared about Noah’s reaction. Not only had she just confirmed his original worst case scenario about the clones, she had also admitted to reading the message, activating the alien memories coded in her DNA. If he had any doubt about whether she was damaged goods, she had just removed it. Yet, if Noah felt that way, he gave no indication.
It doesn’t matter what he thinks, cautioned an inner voice. Her own voice, but also the voice of the teacher. They will fear you. They will try to kill you.
“So?” Cort asked. “Soter’s science projects blow a gasket and try to destroy the world. You’re not telling us anything we didn’t already know.”
“Aren’t you listening? These aren’t random actions. It’s the prelude to an invasion.”
Cort stared hard at her. “Let’s say I believe you. You’re one of them. Why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m one of them,” Jenna said, speaking slowly as if explaining a difficult concept to an impatient child. “I know what they’re doing. I know how they think. And…” She took a deep breath. “I know what’s going to happen next. If you want to stop them, you need my help.”
Noah nodded to Cort as if to say: See? Told you, but Cort just shook his head. “Sorry kid, but if that’s all you’ve got, you’re not worth the bother.”
He nodded to Trace.
“Cort!” Noah’s protest had a menacing air to it. “That wasn’t the deal.”
“There is no deal,” Cort said, shaking his head. “There never was, and you know it. This isn’t even my decision to make. There’s no other way.”
“There’s always another way.”
“Not this time.” Cort’s pronouncement had the finality of a guillotine, but then he added. “Look, I get that you think of her as your daughter—”
“She is my daughter,” Noah replied in a quiet voice.
He moved so quickly that even Jenna was startled. In the blink of an eye, he was behind Cort, gun drawn and pressed up under Cort’s jaw. Cort dropped his crutches in surprise, letting them clatter loudly on the floor.
Trace and the other two gunmen brought their weapons up, aiming in Noah’s direction. Jenna did not doubt that they were expert marksmen, capable of hitting what little of Noah’s form was visible behind his human shield, but doing so would almost certainly result in Cort’s death. She wondered if that mattered to them. Would they be willing to sacrifice their leader to make sure Jenna was dead?