Free Adaptation by Malinda Lo Page A

get out of there. Yet the sight of Dr. Brand walking away from the Jeep made Reese uneasy, as if something was unfinished.
    Agent Forrestal turned on the Jeep’s engine, and Reese started at the sound of it.
    “You okay?” David said.
    She tried to shrug off the weird feelings. “Yeah. I just can’t wait to be home again.”
    As they drove down the dusty road away from the hospital, Reese saw a couple of other buildings nearby, marked with signs identifying them as BUILDING 3—PLATO and BUILDING 2—PLATO . In the distance were more structures, some with curved roofs that reminded her of airplane hangars; others with windows flashingin the sun. They were all beige or tan, their walls blending in almost perfectly with the surrounding desert, as if they were meant to disappear into the background.
    It was a quick drive to an airstrip, where a single small plane was parked, its door already opened into a short stairway. Another man in a black suit, whom Agent Forrestal introduced as Special Agent Daniel Menzel, helped load their suitcases inside. Then David and Reese climbed in. At first she could barely see because the interior of the plane was so dark compared to outside. She fumbled her way into the seat behind David—there only appeared to be about six of them—and squinted as her eyes adjusted. She reached to pull up the window shade, but her fingers touched only glass. There was no shade. All the windows were painted black.
    “The location of this facility is classified,” Agent Forrestal said. She glanced up, and his face was a dark shadow framed by the bright sunlight coming through the door. “That’s why the windows are black.”
    She pulled her hand away from the glass, and despite the desert heat, a chill snaked down her spine.

    California smelled of dry grass and oak trees, a scent that immediately made Reese remember summers at her grandparents’ house in Marin, hiking around Phoenix Lake as her mom argued good-naturedly with her grandfather about criminal law. Her eyes watered as she inhaled deeply, homesickness now throbbing like a drumbeat inside her as she climbed down from the plane.
    They had landed at an airport, but it didn’t look like a regular airport. It wasn’t until they were herded into a black town car and began driving away that she saw the signs for Travis Air Force Base. Reese had never heard of it before, but after they left the base and turned onto the freeway, she realized they were north of Oakland. She gazed out the tinted windows as they drove south toward San Francisco. Nothing seemed to have changed. There were the rounded brown hills in the distance, dotted with gnarled live oaks; the bay, gray and windswept; the sprawl of Oakland; and then the Bay Bridge, with traffic just as backed up as always.
    But as they left the Bay Bridge behind and the freeway curved up in a concrete ramp over the edges of the city, she saw an electronic billboard mounted on the side of the ramp with a message scrolling across it: 9 PM CURFEW ENFORCED WITHIN SAN FRANCISCO CITY LIMITS. VIOLATORS WILL BE ARRESTED .
    “Hey, look at that,” she said, pointing it out to David. “That’s crazy.”
    David leaned across the seat toward her to look out the window. “I didn’t think anything happened here. Did Dr. Brand give you those magazines to read too?”
    “Yeah, but they didn’t focus on San Francisco.”
    Agent Forrestal glanced over his shoulder from the front passenger seat. “It’s a precautionary curfew. There was rioting in Fremont and parts of Oakland, and the city of San Francisco wanted to prevent any further outbreaks of violence.”
    “How long is the curfew going to last?” Reese asked.
    “No idea. It was eight PM at first; they raised it to nine PM last week.”
    They exited the freeway at Cesar Chavez, and at the bottom of the ramp traffic barriers were piled up on the side of the road, as if they had only recently been pulled aside. It reminded Reese of Las Vegas: the