Free Foretold by Carrie Ryan Page A

the truth?”
    Kaleigh and Kyle exchanged glances. “We get a timeout,” they sang in unison.
    “I just don’t understand,” Mrs. Conrad said, looking perplexed, “why they would make up something like
that
?”
    “Because they didn’t follow instructions,” the colonel said. “And they knew they were going to get in trouble. I told them to wake me up if the weather got bad and they wanted to come inside. This morning when I woke up, I found the two of them snoring away in their beds, and the tent that I paid over two hundred dollars for blown halfway down the street, along with the sleeping bags, which were another sixty dollars each. Which is why,” he added, narrowing his eyes at the kids, “they’re not getting their camping equipment back until they’ve shown they’re mature enough to handle the responsibility.”
    I’ll tell you the truth: I’ve always thought Colonel Conrad was a little hard on those kids. They’d only just turned six, after all.
    But I understood his frustration. I’ve heard a lot of whoppers come out of kids’ mouths over the years.
    And a spaceship landing in the backyard sounded exactly like something my sons would have come up with in order to get out of having to put away their camping equipment.
    Still, I had to ask.
    “Your father’s right, children,” I said to the twins. “It’s never good to lie. We all know that spaceships are imaginary. So, when you were camping in the backyard last night, did you
really
see a man?”
    They looked at one another in that way that twins do sometimes—like they’re communicating telepathically—andseemed to come to some kind of silent agreement. Finally, Kaleigh spoke.
    “Yes,” she said solemnly. “We saw a man. He said what Kyle said.”
    Her mother and I exchanged glances. “That you were destined for greatness?”
    “Yes,” Kaleigh said. “He said that’s why we’d been selected.”
    “Selected for what?” I asked.
    Kyle answered brightly, “To do great things, of course. That’s why he gave us these!” He held up his arm with a big grin, showing off the nevus on his bicep. “Pretty cool, right?”
    Colonel Conrad rolled his eyes and muttered, “I can’t believe I just wasted the whole morning on this. You take them home, Alecia. I need to get back to the base. We’re testing those C-5s today.”
    It was Mrs. Conrad who, after her husband was gone, demanded that I remove her children’s nevi, even though I explained to her that they weren’t a cosmetic problem and there was little chance they’d ever become malignant.
    But she insisted. Mrs. Conrad is every bit as stubborn as the colonel, in her own way.
    I’ve never been fully able to explain what happened after that. All I can say is that Kyle and Kaleigh Conrad were the last patients I ever saw. I closed up my practice the second they walked out the door, and have spent the past ten years sitting in this house, afraid that my mind was slipping away … until this morning when my wife called me downstairs to show me what’s been playing over and over again on every single news channel on TV.
    Now I know I didn’t imagine what happened in my officethat day. So I hope you’ll excuse me, but I don’t have time for talking. I’ve got ten years of living to make up for.
Interview of KC Conrad
RESTRICTED ACCESS: EYES ONLY
    Look, I may only be sixteen years old, but I’m not stupid, okay? I have the highest grade point average in my class. So I’m just going to say it one more time: I invoke my right to counsel.
    And even though my brother probably didn’t say it out loud, he invokes his right to counsel, too.
    So … you guys are just going to ignore that?
    Fine, whatever. You want to waste my time, I’ll waste yours. I’m not going to tell you anything except what you already know. My name is KC Conrad. And no, I’m not going to tell you what the initials stand for. Like you don’t already know.
    Just like I’m sure you already know that I’m