“Or maybe he’ll just decide he likes her better,” Zane spoke up for the first time, his voice ringing out clear and with a hint of a sneer. “I mean, one of you is clearly the original and the other just an imitation. Which do you think he’d rather have?” Zane continued.
His words stole my breath. “Zane,” I whispered through gritted teeth.
But when I turned to glare at him in warning, he wasn’t looking at me; he was staring defiantly at Ford instead, as if challenging her to deny his words.
I tensed, waiting for the first sign of her attack, prepared to break free and intervene if necessary.
TRUST ME. Zane’s words echoed loudly in my head, his attempt to make sure I heard him.
I winced.
SORRY…
And to my surprise, he seemed to have picked up on something I’d missed. Because Ford didn’t attack. She simply watched him for a moment longer, as if he were a monkey who’d managed to hoot something that sounded like Shakespeare before lapsing into nonsense again, and then she returned her attention to me. “Why are you here?” she asked. “It is an automatic disqualification from the trials to attempt sabotage.”
“I’m not here to sabotage.” Well, not technically. “I just want to talk,” I said.
“There is nothing to discuss. We will meet in the trials and we…I will kill you, proving our…my superiority.”
That had been an odd little hiccup. Perhaps the interconnectedness went deeper than I’d realized. That was the first time she’d referred to herself as an individual entity rather than “we,” and she’d seemed to struggle with it.
Huh. I didn’t know what to make of that, exactly, but I bet I could use it. Surely, all three of them wouldn’t be allowed to compete as a single unit. That meant two of them would be left behind. Carter and the as-yet-silent one, Nixon, most likely.
“Is that what you want?” I asked. “The humans dividing you up, using you for whatever they want, however they want?”
Behind me, I sensed Zane’s spike of alarm at my words. But getting them on our side was vital, and if that meant drawing a firmer line between human and not for the moment, so be it.
And it seemed to be working. The three hybrids inched closer together, as though I was the one threatening to separate them. “Our fate is none of your concern,” Ford said.
And yet, she…they weren’t leaving.
“If we refuse to participate in the trials, then they lose control,” I offered, the words tumbling out as if speed would keep her from rejecting the proposal. “We could leave, do anything we want.”
A faint furrow appeared on Ford’s forehead, as if I’d said something that truly mystified her. “How are you here?” she asked. “What kind of supply did you obtain?”
What? I struggled to keep my expression blank, praying that the silence I heard from them went both ways. They’d done and said nothing to indicate otherwise.
Ford tipped her head to the side slightly, an inquisitive posture that reminded me of the raptors in Jurassic Park seconds before they moved in for the kill. “Did you wean yourself?” she asked rapidly, the speed of her words lending intensity where her expression did not. Whatever she was talking about, it was important. That much was obvious.
But before I could begin to work out how to respond, the door to the room opened, sending a wave of surprise through everyone. The power holding tight around me immediately disappeared, and it was a struggle not to stumble backward.
The teacher who’d confronted Zane and me at the school entrance—I’d dubbed him Mr. Coffee after the stain on his shirt—stuck his head in and scowled at Ford and the others. “What’s going on in here? Did you kick Kyle Wagner out of his practice time?”
Crap. If Mr. Coffee saw me, he’d realize there was one more strange-looking student than there should have been. That’d set off some alarms, I bet.
I turned my back to him swiftly, only to be confronted with my image in the huge mirror. Damn it.
Zane, figuring out my dilemma, took two long strides toward me, his arms out in preparation to pull me against him. Evidently, they’d freed him also.
I could almost feel the embrace already: his arms reassuringly tight around me, the warmth of his chest beneath his scratchy white shirt pressing against my cheek, and the steady thump of his heartbeat in my ear. I wanted it—all of it—badly.
But I made myself shake my head, and he stopped in midstep, hurt flashing across his face. My chest ached in response, and I longed to close the distance the remaining between us. But if this got ugly, I wanted him to be clear of the danger. Well, as clear of it as he could be when we were all in the same room.
So, instead, I lowered my chin, letting my hair fall forward to hide my face, and waited to see what would happen.
“Leave,” Ford said to the teacher. She sounded bored.
“Now, listen here, young lady, I told you I don’t care if your father is the CEO of…” He faltered, and I watched through the veil of my hair as the three of them turned as one. They stared him down with eyes so cold and dark, there was no humanity in them. I knew that for a fact. I’d seen (and consequently avoided) my own reflection often enough.
The teacher held his hands up, responding instinctively to a threat he couldn’t understand but sensed nonetheless. “I’ll report this to your father,” he blustered, a last-ditch attempt to save face.
I wonder who was playing the role of their “father,” whether Laughlin had cast himself or enlisted an underling. Either way, the hybrids didn’t seem particularly concerned.
They just kept watching Mr. Coffee until he caved and left the room.
When the door clicked shut after him, the hybrids swiveled as one to face me again, and Ford raised an eyebrow, as if to say, You were saying?
Turning to face her again, I fought the absurd urge to laugh even as chills raced up my arms. That facial expression was a particularly human one, something she must have absorbed unintentionally along the way, but seeing it on her only amplified her otherness.
I took a breath before responding, trying to think through my options quickly. Clearly, Ford thought I knew something or had something she wanted. But I didn’t. She’d mentioned supply and weaning off of it, whatever it was. A drug? One that had been given to them, and she assumed I’d been dosed as well? I could try lying, but I wasn’t sure how long I could pull that off, and that might cause more damage in the long run.
“I don’t have any on me,” I said, settling on something ambiguous but true.
The crinkle in Ford’s forehead returned, her version of a frown. “Then how are you here? How did you escape?” she persisted.
Wait, wait. I shook my head, trying to fit all the pieces into place. Laughlin kept them in line by dosing them, it sounded like. “I broke out,” I said bluntly, opting for oversimplification over losing them in details.
The three of them stiffened as one, as though an electrical charge had passed through them.
“What’s going on?” Zane whispered behind me.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back.
“You are not being treated with the enzyme,” Ford said in another of her statement/questions.
Once more, I hesitated before answering. I had a feeling this was, as the saying went, the $64,000 question (which had never made sense to me as a metaphor—it’s a relatively paltry sum to indicate great significance). “No,” I admitted.
Carter’s mouth fell open in surprise and stayed open as if he desperately wanted to say something, but at a signal I didn’t see or hear, he snapped it shut. Nixon’s distant expression remained unchanged. I wasn’t even sure if aware he was of what was going on.
But Ford just bobbed her head in that strange birdlike nod again. “We will see you at the trials when we…when I kill you,” she said, and turned to leave.
“No, wait!” I lurched after her. “Listen, we could go public. Force them to give you the…whatever you need.” I didn’t particularly relish the though
t of using the media as a defense when there was just one of me, but with four of us, we might actually have a chance.
“We have no interest in explaining ourselves to the humans,” she said dismissively. “By the time they have finished arguing among themselves as to our intentions, we will be dead. And that is only if they don’t decide to execute us immediately.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
But Ford was done talking. She started for the door, followed by Nixon, only for both of them to rock to a stop, as if yanked by an invisible rope. Only Carter remained where he stood, as if locked in place.
Slowly, Ford and Nixon turned, focusing their attention on the lone member of their party who hadn’t moved. A long, uncomfortable silence held for several seconds, the tension in the room building, as they stared at one another.
Huh. Apparently, they weren’t quite as “one unit” as Mara had seemed to believe.
Behind me, I heard Zane shifting his feet uneasily and had to fight the urge to do the same. The air was filled with expectancy. Something was about to happen. Bad or good, I wasn’t sure.
“You desire our cooperation in your endeavor for freedom?” Carter asked, his chin set stubbornly.
“Our endeavor for freedom,” I corrected cautiously. “And yes.”
“Good!” Carter said.
I blinked.
“Hi,” he whispered with a shy smile that transformed his narrow face. He did have dimples.
Whoa. He seemed almost normal by human standards.
I smiled back reflexively. They must have seriously recalibrated Carter’s human/alien percentages. Nixon had yet to even indicate that he was aware of our existence in the room, his blank stare focused somewhere over my head.
“We can’t live without an artificial enzyme, Quorosene,” Carter began.
“Carter,” Ford said sharply.
He ignored her, but at his sides his hands balled into fists, as if he were steeling himself against her displeasure. “It is how we were created. If we go for more than twelve hours without a dose, our internal organs start shutting down. Death follows. Painfully. It’s how they control us.”
“And how they eliminate us when we are no longer useful,” Ford added, her flat monotone a sharp contrast to Carter’s expressiveness. “You would do well to remember that, Carter. It’s a lesson Johnson never quite mastered, and they made her pay.” Her hand drifted toward her cheek and the line marked there.
It was a hash mark, I realized suddenly, my stomach lurching. Johnson. That was the name of the hybrid who’d been killed when she couldn’t fit in. So…Ford was keeping score? Tracking Laughlin’s sins, perhaps, and in a manner that must have infuriated him. I couldn’t imagine that someone so interested in making them blend in had been thrilled to see that she’d marred her face in that way.
Had they all been connected at the time Johnson died? It seemed likely. Had they felt the life slowly drain out of one of their own? What torture that must have been. I felt like throwing up, just imagining the helplessness they’d felt. No wonder they’d hunted Mara.
“We’ve been trying to break our dependence, or at least reduce our need so that we can build up a supply. But…” Carter’s narrow shoulders moved up and down helplessly in a shrug. “It has been difficult. If we had the opportunity to experiment with our limits more often, it might be possible, but we are monitored too closely.”
“She cannot help you,” Ford said, moving closer to Carter until he turned to face her.
“You don’t know that,” he said. “You’ve done your best for us, but that is a temporary solution at best.”
“It has worked so far,” Ford said. “I’ve done all that I can to—”
“What has?” I asked.
“If Ford cooperates, behaves herself, and wins the trial, Nixon and I stay alive,” Carter said, his mouth twisting in a bitter smile. “And I get to keep coming to school. But that’s only if Dr. Laughlin keeps his word. Do you trust him, Ford? I don’t.”
The two of them stared at each other, a silent standoff that dragged on for far longer than was comfortable. Clearly, telepathy was their primary method of communication.
I glanced at Nixon, who had shifted just slightly in the direction of Ford and Carter. Participating in the conversation, perhaps? I wondered if he was the cause for the rumors that Dr. Jacobs had heard and passed along to me, that Laughlin’s “products” weren’t able to speak. Ford and Carter didn’t have issues with speech, when they chose to use it, but either Nixon was the ultimate in “strong but silent” or he just didn’t talk. Whether through lack of ability or desire, I didn’t know.
“Fine,” Ford said abruptly, breaking off whatever discussion had been going on inside their minds. “If that is what you both wish.” She didn’t sound happy. “But we will not be foolish about it.”
“What you’re suggesting is too difficult, Ford,” Carter protested.
“That is the point,” she said, before shifting her attention to me. “You want our help? We need a supply of Quorosene or information on how to eliminate our dependence,” Ford said bluntly. “That is the price for our aid.”
My mouth fell open. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“From what we’ve been able to learn, it’s manufactured elsewhere. But Dr. Laughlin seems to keep a small amount in his office at Laughlin Integrated, just in case of an interruption in the supply,” Carter offered apologetically. Clearly, even though he disagreed with Ford, he wasn’t going to take a stand against her.
“Isn’t that where you are? Why don’t you just get it yourself?” Zane asked suspiciously.
For the first time, Carter seemed to hesitate, looking at the other two. “The price for disobedience is not worth the risk. As you have likely already deduced, only one of us will be allowed to compete in the trials, per the agreed-upon terms.”
Which meant Dr. Laughlin had two lives to hang over Ford’s head.
I grimaced. If their bond was as deep as it seemed to be, I understood Ford’s motivation, but I couldn’t help thinking that if Laughlin was anything like Dr. Jacobs, she’d just given him two opportunities to further control her.
“So, you expect Ariane to, what, break in and start nosing around?” Zane demanded.
“I don’t expect anything. How you accomplish the task is not our concern,” Ford said, talking to me as though I was the one who’d spoken. “You asked for our assistance. We are merely defining the parameters under which we’d be willing to provide it.” She sounded both annoyed and amused.
“That’s crazy,” Zane insisted.
No, it was a test (one that Ford obviously thought I would fail). I didn’t like it, but I understood her reasoning. Why should they trust me when they didn’t know me? I could just as easily be here trying to find a way to disqualify or discredit her. But if I could do as they asked, I would prove myself. And they’d have what they needed to rebel with me.
Or, quite simply, it could be a trap. One less competitor for the trials, plus some bonus points for being the ones to arrange my capture.
Either way, though, the bottom line was the same—they wanted me to walk into Laughlin Integrated and try to steal something that was most likely locked up tighter than they were now or I’d ever been.
Right.
THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWED FORD the hybrid’s ultimatum (Ford hybrid—it was testimony to how frightening she was that I didn’t laugh at that) was the longest of my life. With Ariane’s back to me, I couldn’t see her expression—not that I always had a lot of luck reading her anyway. But the thoughtful quiet in the room gave me chills.
Ariane wasn’t seriously considering their “offer,” was she? She couldn’t be.
“This is bullshit,” I blurted, panic lighting the fuse on the words. “You want her to take all the risk.”
Ford turned her attention to me again, and once more I couldn’t help comparing her to Ariane. They were eerily similar, but Ford’s gaze
lacked Ariane’s warmth and emotion. It was like staring into twin abysses. A whole lot of nothing. Ariane, as much as I knew she hated it, felt things deeply. With Ford, I wasn’t sure whether she was better at hiding her feelings or whether she just lacked them completely.
No, wait, that wasn’t true. She’d certainly demonstrated jealousy earlier. In some way she seemed to think of Ariane as an older sibling, one with whom she was forced to compete. I definitely recognized that emotion, even if she hadn’t shown it in a traditional manner. Ariane, an only child, both in her home and at the lab, hadn’t picked up on it.
So, maybe Ford was a broken toy, able to feel only the negative stuff. The bad things. That might make her even more effective as a soldier. Hate, fear, envy—those were pretty powerful motivators, weren’t they? Probably the source of most every war.
“We risk much simply by not reporting this contact to our creator,” Ford said, her expression flat, dead. “Would you rather we opted for that choice instead?”
So she’d moved on to threatening already? I stepped forward, fury and adrenaline pumping, prepared to move between Ariane and Ford, if necessary. I wasn’t stupid. Ford could stop me dead, literally, but it wasn’t right that she was taking advantage of Ariane being on her own. Someone had to call her on it.
“Your human is very valiant,” Ford said to Ariane, and somehow made it sound like an insult. “Is that an acceptable compromise? Being less than what you could be just to make him comfortable?” She sounded genuinely curious.
I couldn’t breathe for a second. It was like Ford had dug around in my head and found my worst fear, the very last thing I’d ever want Ariane to hear. And hell, who knows, maybe she had. “We are none of your business,” I snapped, trying to rally. But the heat burning in my face betrayed me, I knew.
“Zane,” Ariane said quietly, giving me a warning look in the mirror, one that said, Please shut the hell up before you make things worse.
That I could read just fine.
Whatever. I moved back into my corner, folding my arms over my chest. I hated this useless feeling, like a fist squeezing my heart. Ariane was on her own, and I couldn’t do anything to help.