The Grays Read Online Free Page B

else.
    “We want you to continue your father’s work,” Crew said. “If you pass this small test.”
    “It’s urgent,” Langford added. “You’ll need to start this afternoon.”
    Crew pushed the agreement back at her.
    “But . . . what did he do?”
    “Please help us,” Crew said. His voice was still as soft as ever, but the desperation in it was somehow terrifying.
    “What if I . . . can’t?”
    He smiled then, very slightly.
    Suddenly she knew that she would not walk away from this. She could not live the rest of her life in ignorance of what her dad had done, knowing that she had passed up this chance.
    He had been killed, though.
    She grabbed the paper, signed, then thrust it back.
    Colonel Langford took it, folded it once, and slipped it into a manila envelope. “You’ll get a copy countersigned by the Secretary of Defense,” he said.
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Lauren, you have a very unique ability,” the big man said, “inherited, we believe. That first test you took, you passed. You were the only person to have done so in the forty years it has been administered, in one form or another, to every military recruit in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia. The only one who even came close. But we weren’t surprised, given who your father is.”
    That sort of sounded . . . whoa. “Did you say, uh—what’s that?”
    “You are one in many millions, Lauren. You have inherited an absolutely unique skill from your dad.”
    What in the world could this be? “I have to tell you honestly, I have no unusual skills.”
    “I want to warn you, you’re going to have a very extraordinary experience. I want you to understand that it will not be in any way pleasant or easy. I won’t pretend that there is no danger, because it must be obvious to you that there is great danger. What’s more, we’re not going to be able to help you. You have to do it on your own. And you are on your own.”
    “But, uh, you said there was a list, Colonel Langford. And you were going to . . . you were going to the next person if I didn’t sign.”
    “I lied. And you will, too, many times. It will be a big part of your job.”
    “If I’d said no—despite Dad, absolutely and finally no—what then?”
    Crew said, “We would have had to say something dramatic, like the survival of the human race might depend on you.”
    The words hung in the air. Unbelievable. Crazy, even. She didn’t know whether she should be scared or what. Finally, the whole idea just seemed so overblown that she burst out laughing—and it was the only sound in the room, and it stayed the only sound in the room. She looked from one deadly serious face to the other. They actually were not in any way kidding.
    But she was a girl, she was twenty-two, and, while she liked being both things, neither suggested that she had any sort of amazing mission in life. “This is too weird,” she said slowly. “I mean, are you telling me I’m some kind of outrageous, like, freak?”
    Langford cleared his throat. “You know nothing about your father’s work?”
    She shook her head.
    “You’re what we call an empath. You can hear thought and you can transmit it to others who can hear it.”
    “Yeah, Dad used to say that. He read science fiction, too. Arthur C. Clarke kind of thing.”
    Crew handed her a yellow pad. “Write down the first thing that comes to mind.”
    She took the pad, thought for a moment, then scrawled the first word that came to mind. “The name of my dad’s barber,” she said. “Adam.”
    Now Langford pulled an envelope out of his pocket. “The person you will be working with cannot speak. His brain is so entirely different that, without a person like you, we can only exchange the most rudimentary ideas. At present he is terribly upset, but we have succeeded in getting him to transmit the name we call him to you.”
    He handed her the envelope.
    In it was a note scrawled on a piece of paper that smelled