*

Oh my God.

Wayne Hastings dropped the bullets. He left the note. He took the debris. He knew about the disc.

Was he going to turn us in, or was he one of us?

“What if he has something?” I gasped. “What if the alien gave him something, like it did to all of us?”

“Well, not all of us,” Arthur bit out. “I still have no sign of a gift, whatsoever!” A little dent divided his unibrow. “I’m the one who poked it,” he growled, “and you all get the powers!”

“Want to trade places?” I snapped. “You can have them.”

Arthur’s eyes darkened. “You think that’s possible?”

“Franny,” Sofía said. “What are you saying?”

“What if he’s building it?” I said. “The thing from Remy’s vision—the machine, or weapon or . . . whatever.”

“Oh my God.” She pulled her phone out and started typing.

Arthur shook his head. “We’re missing something. Something important. The E.T. isn’t here to hurt us. It chose us!”

“What are you doing?” Levi asked Sofía.

“What do you think? I’m calling the police!”

“No!” Remy snatched her phone.

“We have to tell someone!” she said. “For all we know, he’s building some kind of superbomb!”

My stomach tightened. I felt the hum quickening in me, the pressure building, the energy jittering under my skin. “She’s right,” I said. “This is all getting too dangerous. People could get hurt.”

“And if we announce what happened to you—to all of us,” Remy said, “we will get hurt. We’ll end up in test tubes.” He picked up his car keys off Levi’s desk and turned, appealing to the others. “We don’t have to tell anyone about the disc. All we need to do is take Wayne out of the picture.”

“And how do we do that?” Arthur asked, apparently enlivened by the thought that his self-imposed destiny could remain intact.

“We go to the station,” Remy said. “We show my dad the video of Wayne at the cave, and we lie through our teeth about everything else.”

Sofía grimaced. “We can’t lie to the police!”

“Remy says the world’s ending, and that’s your concern?” Nick said.

“It’s a start,” I said. There was no part of me that believed it would be enough. But it was a start. “We get Wayne taken out, and he can’t finish whatever he’s building. Or maybe the police will find it—disarm it.”

“I’m in,” Levi said.

Nick rolled his eyes. “Fine. But if this doesn’t work, we turn ourselves in.”

“Seconded,” Sofía said.

“Fine,” Arthur said bitterly, for once outvoted. “Maybe that is what it wants. To stop him. I guess it doesn’t matter how we do that.”

* * *

*

The Splendor Sheriff’s Department was a squat brown building at the edge of town and looked more suited to be the gift shop at a shoddy state park than the headquarters of a police force.

The sign was vaguely and inexplicably western, like a prop from a cowboy movie, but once we got inside, it was as quiet and sleepy as any small office. Wood laminate lined one wall, and the blinds were slatted open, the elongated ceiling fluorescents casting glares across the deep blue panes and washing out the already washed-out blue-gray industrial carpet.

When we came in, dripping, the officer at the front desk took her feet off the desk one at a time and rolled forward in her chair. “Remy?” she said, squinting at him, like she couldn’t be sure in this very, very offensive lighting. “You look like you’ve been swimming in that storm out there!”

At the sound of his son’s name, Sheriff Nakamura’s head popped out of the glass-walled office at the back of the station. He quickly tried to hide his own concern. “Is everything all right?”

Remy nodded. “Can we talk to you for a second?”

The Nakamura men studied each other for a moment. The corners of the sheriff’s mouth creased. He looked like he was bracing himself to discover we’d dumped several bodies in a nearby river.

“Come on back,” he said finally, lifting his coffee mug.

We filed past the three other officers. One was laughing on his desk phone, and another had a game of solitaire up. “Slow night?” Remy asked.

“You could say that.” The sheriff closed the office door behind us. “There was another surge down at the substation, but they called to let us know they didn’t need assistance.”

“Did you go anyway?” Remy guessed.

The sheriff arched an eyebrow. “I drove past. Didn’t see anything suspect.” He leaned against his desk and folded his arms. “Now why don’t you all tell me why you’re here?”

Arthur crossed his arms, a grumpy mirror of the sheriff.

“Wayne Hastings took the debris,” Remy blurted. “We have video evidence.”

The sheriff’s eyebrows lifted. He set his mug on the desk. “You have video of Wayne Hastings stealing debris?”

Remy shifted. “Well, no. We found the debris in this cave . . . behind the Jenkins House. So we set up a camera, and we caught him taking the debris out of it.”