Project Paper Doll: The Trials (22 page)

“Wow. It, uh, didn’t look this big in the picture,” I said.

Ariane looked up from her phone, where she’d been attempting to find out information for the layout. “It’s one of the biggest museums in the country, apparently,” she
said, sounding displeased, as if the museum had done this deliberately to aggravate her.

I fought the urge to laugh.

Ariane paid the cab driver, her actions awkward and uncertain, indicating the newness of the activity for her, and then we got out.

The museum, with its towering columns, sat in the center of an expansive lawn, the lake a bright blue pool to the east. All the skyscrapers that made up downtown Chicago had been left behind for
this vast openness that felt out of place in the middle of the city. Hundreds of people swarmed up and down the museum sidewalk and steps. In the grass, families were having picnics or eating bag
lunches. Crowds of elementary-aged school kids, tourist groups with cameras, and even groups of people on Segways flowed around us.

And that was just on the outside. This place looked so huge, I couldn’t imagine how many more people were already within.

“Any chance ‘Brittany’ could message her and suggest meeting up out here?” I asked.

“She just happens to be in Chicago the same day as Elise, the very next day after following her on Twitter?” Ariane shook her head, her mouth in a tight line. “It would be too
suspicious. And if she thinks Brittany’s…what’s the word?” She paused, flipping through her mental dictionary. “A creeper. If Elise thinks Brittany’s a creeper,
she might block me.”

It was funny sometimes, hearing slang come from Ariane. She used the words with such precision, unlike everybody else, like someone from another country who was still adapting. She’d been
living outside with the rest of us humans for ten years, but she’d spent her first few years in near isolation, with only adult scientists for company. And then just her father for the years
after that. Occasionally her unusual childhood showed, especially when she was stressed.

I was lost enough to notice and to find it kind of cute.

“So we’re going in?” I asked, forcing my attention back to the matter at hand.

“Not that way.” She gestured at the main entrance. “Admission for both of us will take almost half the money I have left. There has to be another way in.”

She headed off to the side of the museum with the confidence of someone for whom locked doors were no deterrent. It didn’t take long to find a loading bay and next to it a regular door,
which, when opened, led into a narrow hallway with offices at the far end.

“What about cameras?” I hissed.

She nodded, a tiny motion. “I’m sure there are. Act normally, move quickly, and try to find a way onto the main floor,” she said under her breath.

“If anyone asks, you’re Jan Peterson’s son and I’m your girlfriend,” she added.

Aside from the quick burst of warmth I felt at hearing her call herself my girlfriend, that statement raised more panic in me than it allayed. “Who is Jan Peterson?”

“Hopefully someone who works here,” she said over her shoulder as she started down the hall.

“Shit,” I muttered. “You’re kidding me with this, right?”

But she wasn’t, and in this very rare instance, luck evidently decided to give us a pass. Before I could ask what would happen if we encountered someone who actually
knew
a Jan
Peterson at the museum, she’d found a door labeled
MUSEUM FLOOR
.

A security badge scanner, a black plastic square with an ominous red light at the top of it, held a place of prominence on the wall next to the door. Well, that was a problem.

But Ariane ignored it, and with a quick motion of her hand by the door, the lock retracted with a loud snap.

I held my breath as she pulled the door open. The light on the scanner stayed red, but no alarms sounded.

Ariane’s enhanced skills and training were no match, though, for the sheer size of the museum and the number of visitors. As soon as we stepped into what turned out to be a small side
corridor, the noise crashed over us. When we reached the main floor, it got worse. It wasn’t anything bad, just people shuffling around in every direction possible, talking and laughing.

“Can we page her?” I asked as we merged into the crowd, trying to watch for Elise and keep from getting run over. “They have to have something like that here, right? For lost
kids and stuff?”

Ariane pulled her phone from her pocket, checking for Elise’s latest posted whereabouts. “Likely. But who will we say is calling?”

“I don’t know, her brother?” I asked.

“Is Adam his real name?” Ariane asked, looking up from her phone.

I paused. “Uh…”

“And what do we say when she arrives and finds that there is no phone call from her brother? Instead, there are two strangers who want her to call him for reasons that won’t make
much sense.”

I made a face. Fair enough.

“Come on.” She frowned at her phone. “It looks like they’re still near the aviation exhibit, if we hurry.”

And that began the world’s worst game of hide-and-seek. First, there was no hurrying at all, anywhere. It was like trying to run underwater. Second, Elise was a freaking ghost. She’d
post a picture or a status update, referencing an exhibit or display or, hell, a “cute” shirt she saw someone wearing (she wasn’t the most discriminating of posters), and
we’d arrive at the designated location, out of breath and surrounded by the irritated people we’d pushed past, and never catch so much as a glimpse of her. We were always a step
behind.

And Elise and her friends seemed to have the attention span of spider monkeys, leaping from one thing to another with no discernible pattern.

Under other circumstances this might have been fun, wandering the exhibits and people-watching, but with each passing moment, I could feel time slipping away and Ariane growing more and more
tense.

The text messages from Dr. Jacobs, which had shifted from berating to glowing encouragement once we’d actually started trying to find Elise, had stopped.

That couldn’t be good, but I was, at least, pretty sure that Jacobs wouldn’t have been able to resist screaming at Ariane if Ford or Adam had succeeded in eliminating their targets
ahead of her. Which likely meant they were having as much trouble, or more, finding their people. I doubted Carter had any kind of social media presence for Adam to use against him, and I was
pretty sure Ford wouldn’t know what to do with Twitter if it bit her (and biting Ford wouldn’t end well for anyone or anything).

We’d lost a lot of time at the beginning, but we now had more up-to-date information on Elise’s movements than the others would for their targets. We were okay, maybe even ahead of
the game.

But when I’d mentioned that, Ariane had not seemed all that reassured.

Or maybe she was still recovering from the exhibit we’d stumbled across upstairs. I was.

The Pre-Natal Development exhibit consisted of twenty-four fetuses and embryos, at various stages of development, in glass display cases. It was kind of creepy and weird and a little sad,
especially considering that, if they’d lived, some of those babies would have already died from old age. They’d been at the museum since the 1930s, according to the signs, but they were
still perfectly preserved. You could see their eyelashes, even. It was like they might open their eyes at any second and start crying to be freed from their glass boxes.

It had chilled me.

But Ariane’s reaction had been more severe. She’d frozen in place, oblivious to everyone around us. “It’s like this at Laughlin’s. He has displays of all the
previous models.…” Her voice had broken, as if she might start crying. And I’d never seen her so pale, the color draining from her face until she really was gray.

I’d pulled her out of there, her hand, thin and so cold, in mine. She’d been much too quiet ever since.

Now, at the start of our second hour at the museum, we were sitting on benches near the main entrance. Perhaps Ariane was following the principle that you were more likely to be found by
someone—or to find someone—by staying in one place. Or maybe she was taking pity on me. I hadn’t asked for that, but I was definitely grateful. The trials had only officially
started five hours ago (nineteen hours to go), and my whole body ached, and I had chills, off and on. The virus battling my still-adapting immune system. No nosebleeds in the last couple of hours,
but I hadn’t tried to use any of my new abilities recently, either.

I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did. If I’d been at the hotel, I bet that Emerson would have been hovering nearby with a worried frown and a thermometer in hand.

Unwilling to think about that too much, I shifted uneasily. “I still think we should consider paging Elise,” I said. “We can always walk away as soon as we see her coming. Then
at least we’ll have a visual on her. A chance to identify her in the crowd.” That was something else I was worried about. People in real life, three dimensions, could look very
different from flat photographs. If Elise’s hair was shorter or pulled back or something, I wasn’t sure that I would have picked her out of the crowd.

Before Ariane could respond, her phone chimed. She’d set it to alert her whenever Elise updated her feed. She clicked on the notification. “‘Heading to Millennium Park. Gotta
see the Bean. So excited!’ They’ve left. But they’re not there yet. Let’s go.” She bolted up as if the floor were spring-loaded beneath her.

I followed her outside to the cab stand, and when a yellow taxi stopped in front of us, Ariane lurched for the door, yanking it open.

“Take us to the park as you would take tourists,” she commanded as I pulled the door shut.

She sounded so stilted. I kind of doubted the driver saw either of us as natives, especially now.

“You kids are new to the city, eh?” he asked, glancing at us in the rearview mirror.

Ariane stared out the side window, studying the traffic and the taxis around us, leaving it to me to answer.

“Something like that, yeah,” I said. The TV screen embedded in the seatback in front of me flickered and sputtered, spitting out the occasional words “missing,”
“bioethics violation,” “Chicago,” “scandal.” Must have been the local news, though it was kind of early for that at just after two in the afternoon.

“Uh-huh.” The cabbie’s gaze flicked from me to Ariane, lingering longer on her than it should have.

I couldn’t blame him. Her knitted hat had slipped back, revealing more of her pale hair, but more than that, it was her posture that spoke of something other. Her back straight and formal,
she was rigid with tension, sitting forward in the cracked and worn leather seat as though she might be ejected from it at any second and have to scramble to regain her footing.

It wasn’t normal. At all.

I looped an arm over her shoulders and leaned back in the seat, pulling her with me.
HE’S STARING.
I focused on the words, putting effort behind them and trying to imagine them
floating through the air to her.
YOU NEED TO RELAX.

She stiffened and then sagged into me, her head resting on my chest, a deliberate act rather than one of true ease. I could still feel the steel rod of fear running through her. “I
can’t fail, Zane,” she whispered. “If we can’t find her, then nothing changes.”

“I know, it’s okay. We’ll find her, I promise.” A promise I had no business making, but what else was I going to say?

I tugged her hat into place. The wisps of hair that had escaped, now more than before, formed a halo of white-blond that framed her face, drawing even more attention to her unusual coloring.

Brushing the strands off her forehead, I tried to smooth them into place beneath her cap. But they refused to cooperate, curling and kinking in absurdly illogical directions, tangling around my
fingers.

I winced in empathy and attempted to free myself without hurting her. “Sorry. I was just trying to help, but I…I think it has a mind of its own.”

A startled laugh escaped her. “You wouldn’t believe how many hours I used to spend trying to get it to look…right.” She made a face. “Never quite managed
it.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said, my voice gruff. I felt like the biggest doofus saying it, but she deserved to hear it. I just wasn’t used to the whole giving or receiving
compliments; I hadn’t had much practice with it.

She looked up at me. “Thank you.” She reached out and touched my chin carefully, the tips of her fingers catching on the stubble. Then she stopped, turning her head to the side, her
gaze going distant. I recognized the look. She was hearing thoughts, most likely those of our driver.

When she turned to face me, her expression had shifted to something more calculating. “You’re right. He is curious. Perhaps we should give him a reason to turn his attention
elsewhere,” she said under her breath.

She raised herself up on her knees and pressed her mouth against mine, her tongue sliding over my lower lip.

Whoa. In the cab? With the driver right there…Oh, who cared?

I caught hold of Ariane’s waist, holding her steady against the motion of the car and pulling her closer.

She framed my face with her hands as she kissed me, and her breasts brushed against my chest in a way that sent shock waves through me.

I could feel the edge of her hip beneath my grip on her waist and, listening to temptation whispering in my brain, I slipped my thumb beneath the edge of her jeans.

Her breath caught, and she shifted abruptly, moving to sit in my lap. Which made things so much better and so much, um, harder.

I moved away from her mouth to trail kisses down the side of her neck. And she tipped her head back to let me. The skin of her throat was so soft, and she smelled so good.

God, if we could just have twenty minutes alone…

The cabbie cleared his throat loudly—we were getting a lot of that lately—and Ariane pulled away.

“Almost there. You’re missing all the good stuff.” He gave an awkward bark of laughter. “Or maybe not, eh?”

“The park is nearby?” she asked. Then she slid off my lap and onto the seat, as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened. Her cheeks were flushed and her breathing faster than
it had been, both of which sent an odd burst of pride through me.