Through the window, I watched the employees moving around in the doughnut shop, giving myself time to think. “I’ll go with you to your mom’s house to make sure she’s okay,” I said finally. Beyond that, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—commit to anything. And if I could find a way to convince him to go back to some semblance of a regular life in the process, I’d take it. This kind of half-life, always running or hiding, wouldn’t be good for him, even if he couldn’t see that right now.
Zane gave me a curt nod and pulled his seat belt into place.
The difference between us now and an hour or so ago was marked and chilly. I tried not to let that hurt. It’s not as if I expected him to want to kiss me again. He’d fought to stay with me. That was enough, wasn’t it? I guess that didn’t keep me from wanting him to want to kiss me, foolish as it was.
“One more thing,” he said as I turned out of the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot onto the street.
“Yeah?” I asked cautiously.
“I get that you were leaving me to protect me,” he said. “But what you’re missing is that it’s too late. I’m already in, with both feet. I don’t need you to shelter me like I’m too weak to handle it. So stop it.”
The thing was, I wasn’t sure I could. Especially when I looked down and realized that those feet he’d referenced metaphorically were literally bare—well, socks only.
He’d left his shoes in the room when he’d chased after me, leaving himself vulnerable. And I had to wonder if that was the real metaphor to be worried about.
“Is that it?” Zane asked.
The sun was slowly coming up behind us, painting the street and the plain brick duplex ahead of us in pale blue light.
“Yeah,” I said. “1701B.” I put the van in park and checked the back of the grease-spotted receipt where I’d scrawled the address, just to be sure. We’d gotten lucky that his mother was listed in the phone book. I hadn’t realized how dependent I’d become on my phone until I didn’t have it. The third gas station I’d tried in Gurnee had had both breakfast sandwiches and a relatively recent phone book.
“It doesn’t look like much,” Zane said, which brought the total words he’d spoken in the last half hour up to about twenty. And six of those had been his breakfast order.
He’d gotten progressively quieter the closer we got to his mother’s house. But his leg was jouncing up and down with an excess of nervous energy.
He might still be a mad at me for trying to protect him instead of including him. He thought I counted him as someone lesser just because he wasn’t like me. That was, I suspected, thanks to his dad drilling that concept into his head for years. But now that we were here, any residual anger with me was taking a backseat to a growing uncertainty about seeing his mom.
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting at her home. Signs of a better life, the one his mother had felt it necessary to leave him for, maybe?
If that was the case, he was out of luck. The two-story duplex had all the depressing charm of a brick box. Square, dumpy, with black metal bars on the lower windows. The grass was dried out and crispy yellow, a sharp contrast to the miles of green lawn we’d left behind in Wingate.
The only sign of life was a small planter near the front door on her side. Red flowers of some kind flourished and spilled over the edge of the faux-cement plastic container.
I couldn’t help but think about how that must look from Zane’s perspective. She’d taken the time to plant flowers and care for them but not to make contact with her youngest son? The one she’d left the night before his fifteenth birthday?
I kind of hated her on principle for that.
“Do you feel anything?” he asked. “Is someone…waiting for us?” He meant GTX or one of the other companies.
I closed my eyes to focus. Zane, next to me, was the loudest source, due to proximity and his tangled-up emotions. I did my best to tune him out, pushing past to “hear” the others nearby.
Most of the time, I did my best to ignore the constant low-level buzz of thoughts in the back of my brain. I was a radio picking up dozens of stations at once, all of them chattering over one another. It gave me a headache if I paid attention to it for too long.
Fortunately, at just after six in the morning on a Sunday, almost everyone in the immediate vicinity was sleeping. The muted feelings and thoughts of dreaming humans had a distinctly hazy feel to them, making them pretty easy to distinguish.
A few people were up and moving already.
…out of coffee.
If I don’t wake Julie now, we’ll never make Mass.…
…just one more. If I can get one more, I’ll be okay. Just one more…
I grimaced at that last one, someone jonesing for another hit of something. This might not be the best neighborhood.
But I didn’t pick up any of the sustained tension and adrenaline that would inevitably accompany a GTX retrieval team lying in wait for me.
Which was a little weird.
I frowned. Surely someone had reported the encounter we’d had with Zane’s dad by now. I’d pulled the city name out of his thoughts. That’s how we’d known to head here. And surely GTX, with far more resources than a tattered phone book, would have easily been able to locate Zane’s mom’s address.
Then again, maybe that was why GTX wasn’t here. They knew I’d be on my guard, listening for them. So Dr. Jacobs would be forced to find another, sneakier option, something I wouldn’t see coming.
My stomach ached at the thought. I’d have to be so, so careful from now on, trying to outthink them outthinking me. And that sounded exhausting, impossible, and filled with pitfalls.
“No retrieval teams here,” I told Zane.
“What about my mom? Is she in there?” he asked, tilting his head toward the duplex.
“Someone’s in there. Just one person, I think.” My ability didn’t make distinctions between buildings.
“You don’t know if it’s her?”
I shook my head. “Most people don’t walk around thinking their names. Especially not when they’re asleep,” I said.
He made a noncommittal noise in response.
“What time does she normally get up?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation up and running.
His jaw tightened and he kept his gaze focused on the building. “I don’t know.”
Surprised, I looked at over at him before I could stop myself.
He dropped his gaze down to his hands in his lap. “She was always up before I was.”
The waves of guilt coming off him now were almost overwhelming. It broke my heart.
“Zane—” I said.
“Look, I know you didn’t have anything resembling normal when you lived in the lab,” he began.
I braced myself for whatever was coming next.
“But was there someone who took care of you, someone you didn’t want to let down?” He fidgeted with the cap from his orange juice bottle. “Besides your dad.”
Who had, after all, betrayed me, therefore nullifying any disappointment I might have caused him, I suppose.
I thought of the parade of technicians, scientists, and doctors, some of them far worse than others, traipsing through my little cell and the observation room above it. When I was very young, I’d had caregivers, all of them affectionate and loving and just the tiniest bit distant. With good reason, they were traded out on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on my level of attachment. Apparently, Dr. Jacobs had wanted to make sure I was capable of forming emotional bonds—a sociopath with my abilities was a frightening thought, even for me—but not to the point of actually enjoying the warmth and security of said bonds.
“No, not really,” I said quietly. The only exception might have been Mara, my favorite lab tech. She’d been kind to me, treating me like a person instead of an inanimate object, as the other doctors and technicians did. She’d even tried once to stand up for me against Dr. Jacobs, when he’d wanted me to kill Jerry, a lab mouse, a
nd I’d refused.
But in the end, Jacobs had won that round. I’d killed Jerry, and Mara had disappeared. I’d always hoped it was because she quit and went on to some happier life, rather than a more drastic alternative deemed necessary for maintaining project security. Just another day in my childhood as a science experiment—worrying about murders committed simply because of my existence.
Zane sagged in his seat, flicking his OJ cap into the bag of garbage at his feet. He now had shoes, at least. Knock-off Adidas. Another of my purchases, that one at an all-night Walmart.
I leaned over closer to him, careful to keep my hands to myself. I wasn’t sure how receptive he’d be to my touching him right now. “No matter what life experiences I have or haven’t had, I can guarantee you one thing. It’s not your fault she left.”
“You can’t even tell me if that’s her in there, but that you’re sure of?” He snorted. “Right.”
“I am,” I said. “Because nothing you could have done or not done would justify cutting contact with you.”
“You don’t know that. I was pretty awful to her.” He paused, as if he couldn’t quite make himself say the words. “My dad thought I was too much like her, so I did everything I could to keep her away.”
I straightened up. “Yeah, okay, so you’re oblivious sometimes and prone to choosing the path of least resistance—”
“Thanks.” He glared at me.
I ignored him. “My point is, you’re human. You may have made mistakes, but those aren’t who you are in here.” I risked reaching across the gap between us to tap his chest. “You fought for me when no one else would, not even the man who raised me. As far as I’m concerned, that makes you a pretty spectacular person. My very favorite full-blooded human, in fact,” I said with a wobbly smile.
He exhaled slowly, and his blue-gray gaze fixed on my face, as if searching for answers he desperately needed.
I wanted to reach out to touch him, to reassure him, to impart my certainty that he was worth so much more than he thought, more than he’d ever been shown.
But then the moment broke, and he looked away.
“Let’s just go,” he said unbuckling his seat belt. “Get this over with. If she wonders why we’re here so early, we can tell her we’re on our way somewhere else and just stopped by to say hi.”
I wasn’t sure anyone ever stopped by this early in the morning just to say hello, but whatever. Sitting here on the street for another hour or two, like a couple of easy targets, didn’t seem a particularly great option either.
“Okay,” I said slowly, freeing myself from my seat belt.
He shoved open the door and climbed out, not waiting for me.
But when I rounded the front of the van, he was there, and to my surprise he took my hand, his fingers slipping in against my palm.
He kept his gaze fixed firmly ahead, and I knew better than to react to it, even though my heart was dancing an overjoyed and relieved jig.
I clenched my teeth. If this woman hurt him again, I would have a hard time not hurting her back. I didn’t care how bad her marriage was, how much of a jerk Zane’s dad had been (and I could believe he’d reached epic jerk proportions), there was no excuse for what she’d done. Leaving? Okay. Completely abandoning her son? No way.
Never knowing either of my biological parents—genetic material donors, really, one human, one alien—was difficult enough, at times. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have them reject me.
Next to me, Zane took a deep breath. “We’ll just ring the doorbell and see if she answers. If she does…” His grip tightened on my hand.
I hated seeing Zane, normally so confident, knocked back on his heels like this. “You’ll say hello,” I said firmly. “Then she’ll take it from there, I’m sure.”
And she’d better freaking smile and welcome him with open arms.
At the base of the concrete steps leading to her door, Zane hesitated.
I pulled free of his hand and gave him gentle push. “Go. I’ll wait here.” The porch wasn’t really big enough for both of us to stand side by side, and besides, I didn’t want anything—like, who is this strange girl you’ve brought with you?—to interrupt the potential reunion.
He went up the steps, rang the doorbell, and stuffed his hands in pockets to wait, rocking back on his heels. I could feel the nervousness flowing through him.
“No one’s home,” he said over his shoulder. “We should go.”
I rolled my eyes. “Just give it a second.” I paused, then added, “Chicken.”
He glared at me, but he stayed on the porch, just as I’d figured he would. He was stubborn if pushed on something that mattered to him, a quality I was incredibly grateful for.
The sounds of locks disengaging on the other side snapped his attention away from me and to the door.
Please be happy to see him, please, please, please. I tensed, ready to…I don’t know, pull Zane back, to protect him from his mother’s indifference, if necessary.
“Zane?” Her voice, thick with sleep, held uncertainty and surprise.
“Hi,” he said, the word escaping in a quick rush of air, as if he’d planned more but that was all that came out.
She gave an inarticulate cry of joy. “What are you doing here?” Her hands appeared on his shoulders, pulling him closer.
That was a good sign. I tried to relax but found myself fighting against a small and surprising surge of envy. I was alone, but Zane wasn’t. He had someone to welcome him, to know and love him unconditionally, as family was supposed to. It only amplified the feeling of being alone in a much larger world than I’d ever anticipated.
This is a good thing, I told myself. He needed this after everything that had gone down with his dad. And it might mean that I had an ally in convincing Zane that his life was better spent not on the run with me, no matter how much I wanted him to come with me.
But then Zane bent down to hug his mom, and I saw her face over his shoulder, her eyes squeezed shut.
I’d half expected to recognize her in a vague way, a face glimpsed at a distance in the hallways at school or behind the wheel of a passing car on the street. Even though I hadn’t been allowed out often, Wingate was a relatively small town, and Zane and I were in the same grade.
But it was more than that, so much more. I knew her.
My breath caught in my throat. It had been ten years since I’d last seen this woman, and she had gray in her hair now and deep wrinkles, near her eyes and on either side of her mouth. But it was clearly, unmistakably her. It was almost as if thinking about this woman had summoned her into reality. Mara. Lab tech. GTX employee. Most definitely not dead.
I must have made some choked noise, because Mara’s eyes snapped open suddenly and focused on me.
The color drained from her face. She released Zane from the hug only to yank him toward the door to the duplex, putting herself between us as if she thought I might charge forward. “You’re supposed to stay away,” she hissed at me. “I’ve done everything he asked me to.”
Behind her, Zane frowned, confused. “Mom?”
I retreated automatically, my hands up in defense. I had no idea what she was talking about. He who? Dr. Jacobs? She was afraid and angry, both of which were pulsing so loudly through her mind I couldn’t track her thoughts.
“You have no right to be here, threatening my son!” she shouted at me.
I cringed, all too aware of the scene we were making—well, she was making it and I was in the middle of it. Did she think I was here to hurt her? Had Dr. Jacobs threatened to send me after her at some point?
I backed up, off the sidewalk, checking all sides, expecting the flash of black retrieval team uniforms across the sun-baked yard. But there was nothing. The street remained empty. No one sprang out from behind the desiccated bushes.
“Mom, what are you talking about?” Zane asked from behind her, his voice strained with worry. “No one’s threatening anybody.” He tried to push past her, bu
t she was determined, throwing an arm across the doorway to bar him.
“Where are the others, Ford?” she demanded, her gaze searching the yard and street behind me.
I gaped at her. The others? Which others? Her fellow GTX employees? And who or what was Ford?
I looked to Zane, but he seemed as baffled as I was. And a lot more freaked out. Of course he was; it was his mother who was behaving so strangely.
“Nixon, Carter, I know you’re out there somewhere,” Mara snarled. “Stay the hell away.”
And with that nonsensical statement, she pushed Zane into the house with enough force to send him stumbling and slammed the door after herself.
I stood there, the crash echoing in my head, and blinked in the sunshine as it crested over the roofs, and birds in the surrounding trees resettled themselves and began a frenzied fit of chirping. Otherwise, nothing moved, and it was quiet, except for the hum of traffic in the distance.
If this was an attempt to recapture me, it was possibly the weirdest, least-effective snare ever.
Ford, Nixon, and Carter. They were all former presidents. What that had to do with anything, I had no idea.
Was Mara crazy? Had she become mentally unstable in the years since I’d seen her? Her thoughts had been so corrupted with the bright clanging of fear, it was hard to tell. But that might explain her behavior today as well as her decision to abandon Zane without further contact.
But what about—
Ariane! A sudden spike of panic broke through the silence and into my head. Zane. Something inside the house had him freaking out.
I abandoned any further examination of the situation and raced up the sidewalk to the door.
“THIS WON’T STOP THEM, BUT it’ll slow them down some,” my mom assured me, locking the door. It was far from a simple process. Seven locks decorated the wood: three dead bolts—two of which were so new they were shiny—three security chains, and the little tab lock on the doorknob itself.
I watched in stunned silence, not sure what the hell was going on. “Are you okay?” I asked cautiously. Her hands were shaking as she set the last chain; it took her two tries to get the little hook into the slider bar.