She didn’t answer him, her gaze guarded as she pulled the child closer, chucking her chin towards the tents. A man in an old Army jacket and a maroon beanie sat across from them. He looked at the two of them suspiciously. “Who wants to know?”
“My name is Jericho. I just wanted to ask him about something. I’m—We’re—not here to cause any trouble.”
The man stared hard at Atticus almost like he could sense he was a predator, or maybe he just didn’t know why a guy like him would be hanging out under an overpass. Atticus had tried to dress down in jeans and a sweater, but his jeans cost three hundred dollars and his sweater was cashmere. Jericho had laughed, saying he just screamed money. It didn’t feel like a compliment. It felt stupid and frivolous standing in this place.
Finally, the man said, “Purple tarp on the right.” He flashed a knife. “Don’t start nothin’ and there won’t be nothin’.”
“Noted,” Atticus assured him.
When they got to the purple tarp, Jericho called out, “Hey, Benny. You in there? It’s Jericho. We met a few times at the coffee shop. You talked to my friend, Seven, yesterday. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
At first, there was silence, but then there was a rustling sound and a voice said, “Who’s your people?”
Jericho and Atticus exchanged confused glances. “Our people?” Jericho asked.
“Your parents. Your folks. Who raised you?”
“Antonio and Mei Navarro,” Jericho said, once more giving Atticus awhat the fucklook.
The flap of the tent burst open, and a grizzly middle-aged man with a tuft of white hair and a missing front tooth stepped out, shielding his eyes from the sun like a vampire. Atticus could see why. The man’s pupils and irises were obscured by severe untreated cataracts. There was no way he could see more than a foot in front of him. “What is it you want?” He narrowed his eyes at Atticus, looking him up and down. “You one of them doctors?”
Atticus couldn’t help his surprise. “What?”
He tugged on his dirty coat with one gloved hand. “You one of them doctors from that charity? Helping Friends or something?”
“I’m not a doctor,” Atticus lied, since it was clear the man didn’t trust doctors.
Jericho tilted his head, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Benny, do you remember talking to my friend Seven yesterday?”
Benny frowned as if trying to remember. “I think so.”
Jericho kept his voice calm and neutral, hunching his shoulders in, either to ward off the cold or make himself seem unintimidating. “He said you had a scar on your stomach. Would you be okay showing it to us?”
Benny’s spine stiffened and he looked around, even though Atticus was certain all the man saw was amorphous blobs of color. “Is this a trap?” he whispered, leaning closer.
“A trap?” Jericho echoed.
Benny nodded, eyes sweeping the area directly behind him. “Are you one of them?”
“One of who?” Atticus asked.
Benny’s tone became conspiratorial. “The lizard people.”
The man appeared to suffer from some kind of delusional thinking. Schizophrenia, perhaps. Paranoia for sure. Atticus shook his head. “Um, no. We’re definitely not lizard people.”
“That’s what a lizard person would say,” Benny reasoned.
He wasn’t wrong. Atticus doubted any reptilian creature would tell the world they were inhuman. But Atticus didn’t know how to prove he wasn’t something more than human. Luckily, he didn’t have to. Benny lifted his dirty blue sweater, revealing a wicked ten-inch scar that came from poorly approximated stitches. That was a hatchet job.
Jericho immediately looked to Atticus, askance. He nodded. It was most definitely a surgical scar. Was it from the same person who’d given Mercy her surgery? Hard to say. The water had left her skin far too compromised to compare the wound pattern. They needed more information.
Atticus dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “We’re not one of them but…we’ve seen them around. We know they’ve done things like this to other people. Did they do that to you? The lizard people? Did they give you this scar you told Seven about?”
Benny hesitated, once more swiveling his head around as if to make sure he wasn’t being overheard. “They come at night,” he rasped. “They come at night and take you to their spaceship and they do terrible things to you. Poke you with needles. Keep you in rooms with no doors.”
Rooms with no doors? Atticus could have just written it off for what it seemed—a mentally ill man forgotten by the system—but something about his story rang true.
“When did they take you?” Jericho asked.
