Project Paper Doll: The Trials (14 page)

Wait, was she telling me they had the remains of the ship from Roswell? I felt light-headed suddenly. That was where I’d come from. Well, that was where the DNA donor that Jacobs had used
to create me had come from. Supposedly. That ship, or whatever was left of it, might tell me more than I’d ever known about that part of my heritage. Even if it didn’t, just touching
it, being in the same room with it, would be more of a connection to those beings than I’d ever had before. It was a gray area, no pun intended, in my life that I’d never thought would
be further defined.

And here it was, being offered up with zero fight. Mine for the asking.

I needed to sit. I pulled the seat out across from Justine and collapsed into it.

Zane reached over and grabbed a chair from the table behind us and sat next to me.

“Why?” I asked, my voice cracking.

Justine smiled, a gleam of excitement in her eyes. “We recognize that whatever information can be gleaned from what was left behind might be valuable in the event our…visitors
return, not to mention in the further advancement of our own sciences. But the technology appears keyed to their genetic code, a portion St. John wasn’t able to successfully implement with
his virus.”

“So Zane and Adam don’t have it,” I said slowly, “but you’re hoping I do.”

“Yes,” Justine said, turning her hands palms up, as if to say, “It’s that simple.” “All you have to do is say yes.”

But looking down at her empty hands, I couldn’t help remembering, from my early “learn to be human” studies, that the handshake had originated as a way of proving that you
weren’t holding a weapon. Which only meant that people had to find other ways to hide their intent to harm.

“So, you want to, what, take me away from all of this and stash me in a basement somewhere, surrounding me with stacks of paper and a broken-down spaceship?”

“No,” Justine said. “In exchange for your willing assistance, we’re prepared to offer you a life, free from their overview. You’d be able to live on your own, go to
school, if you wish. You’d have a new identity, of course, and a protective detail.”

I fought to keep the shock from showing on my face, the faint pinging of alarm in the back of my head growing louder. Another of my father’s lessons—be careful of someone offering
too much and not asking for enough in return. There’s generosity and then there’s sleight of hand. Look at this over here, so you don’t notice what we’re doing over
there.

“What about
your
overview?” I asked.

She waved a hand dismissively. “I assure you, you’d find it quite innocuous. We’d assign an agent to act as your guardian until you are of age. And you’d be required to
check in on a regular basis with your findings. Other than that?” She shrugged. “Your life is your own. We have no interest in holding you prisoner.” She gave me a tight-lipped
smile. “That hasn’t worked well for us in the past.”

A reference perhaps to Guantanamo Bay? Interesting that she would class me with potential terror suspects.

“Here.” Justine reached down into a briefcase I hadn’t noticed before and slid a blue file folder across the table to me.

Pages from a color printer spilled out. The first page was a real estate listing for a beach cottage, a rental with a for sale option, some place called The Outer Banks in North Carolina. The
second was a printout from a school website, featuring a low-slung brick building with a smiling bulldog as a mascot on the sign out front. The other pages appeared to be information about the
town.

“And Zane?” I asked, tracing my finger against the water in the picture of the adorable cottage. I’d never seen the ocean. But with this place, I could walk out onto a porch
and watch the waves roll in every morning. If there was a place on Earth the exact opposite of my tiny cell at GTX, this was it. Wide open, no restriction. Hell, there wasn’t even any land on
one side of it. Just blue, blue water.

“If you wish,” Justine said with that open-handed gesture again. “We can’t pull him right now without creating a connection between your disappearance and Emerson St.
John. But we’ll protect him, and once the trials are finished we can have him relocated to join you.”

Zane flashed a grin at me.
This
was what he’d been hiding, his reason for entering the trials.

I tried to return the smile, but it felt sick and crooked, hanging there like a broken mirror. So this Justine was offering me a new life, a new house, a new identity. Almost everything
I’d ever wanted, the only exception being that it came from someone else, rather than something I’d created for myself, which meant it could always be taken away.

Still, here was the easy exit I’d been hoping for my whole life. All I had to do was walk away. Dr. Jacobs surely wouldn’t hurt the surrogate who’d given birth to me if I
weren’t around to witness it. There would be no point in that.

But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that saying yes would be like stepping out onto a lake that wasn’t quite frozen through. Everything would seem fine, until the cracks sounded,
loud and sharp.

Then it would be too late.

A
LTHOUGH
I’
D TECHNICALLY ONLY KNOWN
Ariane for a month—on speaking terms, at least—I’d been in school
with her for years. And from that, I could tell she was quiet, thoughtful, deeply internal. Still waters, that’s what my mom would have said about someone like her (ironically enough, my mom
being the one who would know exactly
why
that was the case).

But I always got the sense that so much more went on inside Ariane’s head than you could ever read on the surface. And when I’d woken up in Emerson’s lab and realized that the
occasional pops of static and random words in my head were from other people thinking and feeling, my first thought had been of Ariane, that maybe now I’d get a chance to really understand
her.

But as it turned out, even reading minds, poorly as I did, didn’t help. Ariane was as much a mystery to me as ever, whether that was because I wasn’t good enough at hearing her or
she was just better at keeping her thoughts to herself.

At the moment, she was studying Justine as if the mysteries to the universe were written in the fine lines by her eyes or the long-faded freckles across the bridge of her nose.

Justine shifted uneasily under Ariane’s gaze. “I need a decision quickly,” she said. “We don’t have much time to get this arranged.”

Ariane remained silent, still just watching, and worry flickered to life in me.

“It’s a chance,” I whispered to her. “The best chance we’re going to get. You have to take it.”

Ariane turned to look at me then, sorrow and regret etched in her face. Then she straightened her shoulders, steeling herself, and returned her attention to Justine. “What do you really
want?” she asked Justine, her voice cold and calm.

Crap.
“Ariane,” I began.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Justine said flatly.

Ariane raised her eyebrows. “No? I think you do. My heritage might mean I could have some connection to the technology, but that’s assuming whatever you’ve managed to save
isn’t broken beyond repair. I might not be completely human, but that doesn’t mean I was born with an advanced degree in alien engineering.” She turned to me. “And as for
any documents they might have found, I don’t speak the language. I was born here, remember? And that’s if they even have a written language. Why would an advanced society rely on such
rudimentary methods?”

“You don’t know that,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. I needed her to see that while it might not be a perfect choice, it was, in fact, a choice.

“There’s more to it,” Ariane said with complete confidence and more than a hint of fire in her tone. “They’re offering too much for too little gain.” She
turned her attention back to Justine. “And what about Ford and Carter? What about the trials?”

Justine’s mouth tightened into an unhappy line. “They will continue as they are now. So will the trials.”

“You’re not going to do anything to stop what Laughlin and Jacobs have been doing,” Ariane said, folding her arms across her chest.

“That is not our primary concern,” Justine acknowledged, after a pause.

Disgust twisted Ariane’s expression. “I bet.”

Frustration flashed across Justine’s face, and she looked to me with a raised eyebrow, as if to say, “What are you waiting for?”

I stood quickly, my chair shrieking across the tile floor. “Can we have a minute?” I asked Justine, but I was already moving away before she nodded.

Ariane followed me without protest to the edge of the seating area, near where the line of waiting customers coiled.

“What are you doing?” I asked, as soon as we were far away enough to be out of Justine’s earshot.

She regarded me solemnly, her expression giving me nothing. “She’s offering too much for—”

“For too little, yeah, I know.” I waved the words away impatiently. “So what? I doubt they’re going to pit you against another alien/human hybrid and recommend killing
off the competition.” Okay, mainly because there weren’t any other alien/human hybrids, as far as we know, but the point still held. And there was always the frying pan into the fire
concern, but at a certain level of heat, it didn’t really matter, did it? Taking the chance was better.

Ariane avoided my gaze. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“Are you serious?” I raked my hands through my hair. “Look, I know this isn’t easy for you, that maybe you feel like you don’t deserve something more than whatever
half-life you’ve been able to cobble together, but you do. You deserve this.”

That seemed to light a fire in her. She stiffened. “Do you think I don’t want to say yes? Do you think I’m eager to turn her down?” Her eyes were bright with anger and
unshed tears.

“I don’t know, maybe!” I said, frustrated and working hard not to shout. I could feel the attention of the crowd a few feet behind us. Even if it’s conducted in whispers,
a fight is a fight, and everyone recognizes the universal body language.

Ariane’s expression softened, and something in her seemed to shift from questioning to acceptance. “We can argue about what I deserve or don’t deserve endlessly. You
don’t know everything that I’ve done, Zane.” She dropped her gaze to the floor.

“If this is about the entry qualification for the trials,” I said in a quieter voice, “you know that doesn’t count. Just because Jacobs forced you to—”

She looked up sharply. “He didn’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I…needed to be here to end this, so I did what I had to do to get in.” Shame and
regret colored her features, but she met my eyes, daring me to argue.

I eyed her skeptically. “You killed someone. Just like that.” I snapped my fingers. “Dead. Permanently.” It wasn’t that I doubted her ability to do exactly
that—she could, easily—but I
knew
her.

She hesitated. “He…is alive now,” she allowed, her jaw tight. “But that might not have been the case if my attempts at CPR had failed or—”

“That’s what I thought,” I said with no small amount of satisfaction. “You would never—”

She held up her hand, cutting me off. “It doesn’t matter. The truth is, even if her offer is on the level, it will last only as long as they want it to. I have no leverage, no
power,” she said slowly, calmly, as if speaking to a toddler in a tantrum. “The second they’re done with me or when someone new takes charge of their organization, I’ll be
turned over to Jacobs or sold off to the highest bidder. Or worse.”

I wanted to protest, but I could feel the truth of her words hanging heavy in the air between us. And yet, none of that mattered. “But, Ari, if you go along with it, even just for a while,
it’s safer than what you have right now. It’ll get you out of the trials. And it’ll give us time to come up with a more permanent solution. Please.” I could feel her
slipping away from me even as she stood there.

I edged closer and grabbed her hand, feeling her cool fingers in mine. But she didn’t respond. She didn’t pull away, but neither did she fold her hand into mine.

She took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky exhale. “I can’t. Ford and Carter—”

“Ford is more than capable of taking care of herself. I have the scars to prove it,” I said.

“It’s not just them,” she said. “You haven’t seen what I have.”

She glanced at Justine, who was unabashedly watching and likely doing her best to eavesdrop. “At Laughlin’s, he has a hallway. He calls it his ‘gallery.’” She
swallowed convulsively. “Glass boxes embedded in the wall, holding the bodies of all the hybrids who died before Ford and Carter. They’re just floating there, all their suffering on
display.” I felt ill. How close had Ariane come to being in one of those display cases? I imagined her pale hair swirling around her face, her eyes open and unseeing.

The image was so real, felt so possible, it sent a shudder through me, and I couldn’t stop myself from pulling Ariane toward me. She came willingly, wrapping her arms tight around my back,
her fists clutching at my shirt. The warmth of her body reminded me that she was here, that she was okay. But it all felt so tenuous.