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I nodded. I tried to explain, but the words wouldn't come. I handed him the paper. He finished reading it.
"That's not...?" he murmured when he finished. "How...?"
"Okay, what gives?" Corey said. "Personally, I wouldn't care if the U.S. declared war on Canada. Doesn't seem relevant under the circumstances."
"This is relevant." I passed the paper to him and Sam.
They read the first few lines.
"How can they...?" Sam began. "That's not possible."
"Well, apparently, it is," I said. "They lost contact with our helicopter shortly after takeoff. Our flight disappeared. Search crews found the wreck last night."
"South of Vancouver Island?" Corey said. "Okay, my sense of location can be a little screwy, but that's not where we went down."
"It was found by a private search party," I said. "Hired by our parents' employer. Someone retrieved enough wreckage to move there and convince people that's where we went down. They recovered the bodies of the pilot and Mayor Tillson."
"I get that. But this?" Sam jabbed her finger at the middle of the article. "This is not possible."
Wreckage and two corpses wasn't all they found. They'd recovered Kenjii, too, apparently. That wasn't tough to fake--no one's going to test a dog. But the article said they'd also recovered DNA evidence that confirmed the death of the seven teenagers on board.
"But how the hell do you pull off something like that?" Sam said.
"They have our DNA," I said. "They must have made it seem like the crash was worse than it was, that there wasn't..."
"Much left of us," Daniel said. "Enough to provide DNA, but not enough to show our parents."
"Hold on," Corey said. "Isn't there one massive flaw in this logic? The search team belonged to the St. Clouds. They have our DNA. They could convince our parents we were dead. But the
y aren't the ones we're running from and they aren't the ones who found the wreck."
"They've cut a deal," I said.
"And cut us loose," Daniel murmured as he worked it out. "There are other kids in this experiment. Probably our whole class. This Nast Cabal discovered the experiment. The St. Clouds realized it. So they negotiated."
I nodded. "We 'die' and the Nasts get to keep us, if they can find us. The St. Clouds get the rest of the kids. They already had one project blow up on them. They weren't about to lose another."
"So they negotiated?" Corey said. "Using us?"
"Apparently that's all we are to them. Assets. Valuable ones, but not worth sacrificing the whole experiment for."
"So we can't go back to Salmon Creek," Sam said. "If we do, they'll just turn us over."
"The St. Clouds will. Our parents won't." I looked around. "Does anyone doubt that?"
Daniel said, carefully, "I'm not sure my dad wouldn't ... let them have me."
"I don't believe that." I wasn't so sure, but I certainly wasn't saying so. "But he won't be the one we'll approach. My parents would be best--I'm sure they knew nothing about this. Corey's mom is fine, too. And Mrs. Tillson isn't going to hand over Sam and Nicole to the people who killed her husband."
"Okay, so we still go back--" Corey began.
He stopped, wincing.
"Headache?" I said.
"Yeah, just hold--" He doubled over with a sharp intake of breath.
I grasped his arm. "Corey?"
