“Or that he was brainwashed by one.”
Genni frowned at both of us, and I realized she probably hadn’t heard much about the reaping, having been born into captivity long after it happened.
“The cop could be lying,” Lenore said. “He’s probably blaming this on cryptids to avoid a death sentence. What does he care if it causes a public panic?”
“He could be,” I agreed. But as I continued to scan the front page article, my doubt about that grew. “This says there have been five other mass shootings by cops this year, and three of those happened in the past month. All of them within a hundred miles of DC.”
Lenore peered around my arm at the paper. “I remember reading about a couple of those at the café. Did the other cops claim memory loss?”
“They killed themselves. All five of them. Evidently the food court cop was pointing his gun at his own head when another member of mall security shot him in the shoulder.” I looked up from the paper to meet Lenore’s gaze. “If he’d gotten there a second later, the killer would have been carried out in a body bag rather than arrested. And he couldn’t have claimed memory loss.”
“What if he’s telling the truth?” she whispered. “What if itishappening again?”
“No.” I shook my head, but I wasn’t sure which of us I was actually trying to convince. “The reaping was brainwashed parents killing their own kids. It was insidious. The surrogates had been embedded with the families for years—raised from infancy—and the parents lived to suffer the rest of their lives, knowing what they’d done.”
And suddenly, though I’d known the details my whole life, the true terror of the reaping hit home for me for the very first time, as my own child stretched inside me, reminding me of her presence and vitality.
Nothing could ever make me hurt her.Nothing.
Yet all those other parents probably would have said the same thing, before the reaping.
I could think of no greater agony in the world than knowing that some monster had used my hands to take my child’s life, and the knowledge that thefuriaewas entirely capable of that lit a match flame of terror deep in my soul.
What if she unleashed me on someone innocent?
What if she were already doing that very thing? I knewnothingabout her most recent prey.
I shook my head to clear it, refusing to borrow trouble when we had so much of our own already. “Besides, the surrogates were all rounded up,” I insisted. “They got caught.”
“And maybe they learned from their mistakes.” Zyanya sank onto the couch on my other side and read the headline. I hadn’t even heard her come into the room. “Maybe this is like the killer in that book. The one who threw his gun into the river.” She pointed to the shelf over the fireplace, at the worn paperback thriller we’d all read at least twice. “The surrogates are the killers. The cops were just the weapons. And until last week, they’d thrown all of them into the river.”
Frowning, Genni stood and took the book down from the shelf, as if reading it might explain what we were talking about.
“Oh my God.” Lenore covered her mouth with both hands. “There was also that teacher. With the milk cartons. She killed nearly her whole class. And a few months ago there was that nightshift nurse who injected something into the IVs of every patient on her floor, then shot herself up with something in the bathroom.”
“Authority figures.” My voice hardly carried any sound. “Instead of parents. The surrogates could be using authority figures this time. Anyone we’re supposed to be able to trust to protect us.”
“But how, if the surrogates were all arrested?” Zyanya asked.
“They weren’t actually arrested,” Lenore said. “They were just kind of...taken. And they were little kids.”
“Or maybe they justlookedlike kids.” I folded the paper and set it on what was left of my lap.
“There was a kid in the closet, wasn’t there?” Zyanya asked. “In that classroom? Didn’t you say he survived the milk box massacre because he was allergic?”
“Or maybe because he was a surrogate.” Lenore’s eyes widened as she caught on to Zy’s point. “There could easily have been kids on that hospital floor and there would definitely have been kids at the mall food court.”
I took a second to process what she was saying. That the surrogates could still be out there. They could still look like kids. And they could be using authority figures the way they used parents thirty years ago.
Or we could be jumping to conclusions just as paranoid and unfounded as the humans we’d seen gathered on the sidewalk in town, brandishing metaphorical pitchforks.
“I don’t know whether or not the surrogates still...exist,” I said. “But if they’re alive, they’re buried in a deep, dark hole somewhere. The US government wouldneverlet them see the light of day.”
“If they’re still locked up—or dead—how can this be happening?” Zyanya asks. “If it evenishappening?”
Lenore shrugged. “A second wave?”
I’d heard that phrase before. When the police discovered that I had no telltale cryptid features, they had postulated that I might be a surrogate—part of a second wave of attack, since I was too young to have been part of the reaping.
