Project Paper Doll: The Trials Read online

  There were three companies competing. I didn’t know who Dr. St. John would send, if anyone. (Jacobs didn’t seem concerned about him.) But I knew it was me from GTX and likely Ford from Laughlin Integrated. Laughlin and Jacobs had a history, hating each other for past sins and slights and using us to act in their stead in this grudge match.

  It was more than a contract at stake here; it was pride and ego. And those were far worse.

  Ford and I, sisters of a sort, would end up at each other’s throats, perhaps literally, vying to win. Ford, because she would fight until the end to save the only other hybrid we knew of, Carter. And I would kill to end this program, to destroy us all and the ones who’d made us. In fact, I’d already killed for that cause, as much as my mind tried to shy away from that memory.

  The only question was which of us—Ford or me—would succeed. And it had to be me. If I was going to die—and that was a certainty, only the timing was in doubt—then it needed to count for something.

  I pictured Ford on the ground, her face, identical to mine, turning red and then shades of purple, veins bulging as she struggled to breathe while I held her heart still in my mental grasp. Now that I’d actually done it—stopped a beating human heart—it was all too easy for me to picture.

  A wave of sadness washed over me. Even in trying to do the right thing, Ford and I would both end up hurting each other instead of the people who deserved it.

  I definitely didn’t wish Ford dead. She and Carter were the closest thing I had to family. I didn’t like Ford, exactly—she was difficult and strange—but I admired her. She hadn’t had it any easier than me, living in Laughlin’s facility and forced to attend school as part of a humanizing effort, all the while trying to protect her “siblings.” She’d never had a chance at true freedom, either. But the photo of a gorgeous lake surrounded by mountains—somewhere in Utah, maybe?—that she’d hidden away in the cubby where she slept told me that she’d dreamed about it, at least.

  “Not real people,” Rachel muttered defiantly, meeting my gaze with a challenge in her eyes.

  It took me a second, lost in my thoughts as I was, to put Rachel’s words in context.

  I stiffened. People were going to die, but they weren’t real people to Rachel. I wasn’t a real person.

  It wasn’t exactly a surprise she held that opinion. A lot of people involved in Project Paper Doll, including Zane’s mother, Mara, shared it. And yet hearing those words from Rachel sliced at me. I’d been in classes with her. She’d known me as Ariane Tucker before she knew I was GTX-F-107.

  I pushed myself up off the floor, ignoring my overworked muscles, and approached the door.

  “You think this is about aliens and hybrids and creepy crawlies made in a lab?” I demanded.

  Rachel pushed her chair back until it slammed into the bottom step leading from the hallway above, and then she jumped up, as if she might run. As if that would save her. “Stay away,” she said, her hands clutched tight around her phone, her life preserver of normal in the ocean of alien strangeness around her.

  I leaned against the glass door, pressing my palms flat on it, the lines on them the same as hers, as human as hers. “They’re going to use us as assassins, spies, and mercenaries,” I said, staring her down, knowing the fear and discomfort my too-dark and almost irisless eyes provoked in people. “Who exactly do you think we’re going to be killing and spying on, Rachel? Not other ‘freaks’ like us.”

  She stumbled up the first step and glared at me, hating me for making her afraid. “God, Ariane, okay. What do you expect me to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. Care about someone other than yourself. Or pretend, at least.” I turned away from the door and her beyond it, returning to my place on the shiny white floor, near my now-overturned cot.

  I waved my hand at the cot, flipping it upright easily and then lifting it up toward the ceiling again, and prepared to resume my physical training.

  Push-ups, maybe. My upper body strength was definitely lacking, my bones too fragile to support much of the muscle development. But every bit would help, especially against Ford, someone who was, in all likelihood, my exact match in strength and abilities. It would come down to some less definable element—surprise or willpower or cunning.

  I couldn’t let it be Ford. This had to end. Jacobs and Laughlin, they couldn’t be allowed to keep using us, taking from us.

  An image of Zane’s face, a smile pulling at his mouth as he leaned over me, flashed across my mind.

  “Did you know they’re having a memorial service at school on Monday?” Rachel asked, startling me. She’d been so quiet I’d assumed she’d stormed off in a huff to report me to her grandfather. Instead, a quick glance in her direction showed her back in her chair, albeit still pushed away from the door. “For Zane, I mean,” she added.

  My heart stuttered. I’d been expecting this or something like it for weeks now, ever since Dr. Jacobs, in one of his many attempts to elicit a reaction from me, had broken the news that no one could find Zane. But somehow the expectation hadn’t prepared me for the reality of hearing those words.

  I sat back on my knees and lowered the cot to the ground quickly before it could crash again. “What?” My voice sounded rough even to my ears.

  “Well, I guess it’s not really a memorial service,” she said in a considering tone. “Since they didn’t…they haven’t found his body.” She winced visibly.

  I stared at Rachel, making an effort this time to hear her emotions and thoughts as well as her words. Grief mixed with anger, cloudy and pervasive, pulsed through her. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  She ignored my question, staring holes through me instead. “His mom, she’s back in town now. I met her. She seems nice. She wants to have a funeral—Quinn, too—but they can’t do that, can they? I mean, what are they going to do, bury an empty casket? Maybe some of the blood the police scraped up from that parking lot?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

  My hands clenched into fists.

  “The hospital still says his body never got there. I mean, they have the record of the ambulance call and everything, but that’s it. Nobody seems to know what happened to him after that,” she said, lifting her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. Then her eyes narrowed. “But you do, don’t you?”

  I looked away. “No.”

  I didn’t, truly. But I had my suspicions, given the people involved. There was no way that Jacobs or Laughlin would risk police involvement, as there inevitably would be with a shooting death. No, it was better that Zane Bradshaw, an inconvenient victim/speed bump on the road to progress, just mysteriously disappear as a bureaucratic error, lost in the system. Perhaps even delivered to an accommodating funeral home and cremated “by mistake,” a discovery that would be made months or years from now. Or never.

  Or maybe Laughlin or Jacobs’s lackeys, whomever they’d charged with cover-up duties, had gone old school and simply buried him in a grave that some early-morning hunter or jogger would stumble over one day.

  My stomach lurched, and I rocked forward to my hands and knees, the imagined scene pictured too clearly in my head, the white of his shirt, now dull and dirtied, wrapped in tatters around bones.

  Bile rose up my throat. I coughed and choked it out, bright yellow on the pristine white floor.

  “So, see?” Rachel asked, watching me, satisfaction heavy in her expression. “I’m not the only one who’s selfish. You got Zane killed, and you won’t even help his family and those of us who really cared about him say good-bye.”

  Her words struck deeply, where I was most vulnerable. Because she was, after all, absolutely correct. I might not know where Zane’s body was, but I was definitely the reason he was dead.

  “Screw you, Rachel,” I said, wiping my chin and glaring at her through my tears. “I hope you get everything a real person like you deserves.”

  “Girls, girls,” Dr. Jacobs said in a scolding tone, catching both of us by surprise.

  He
stood at the top of the steps behind Rachel, having emerged from the private elevator or perhaps even the observation room behind my cell. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care.

  Rachel stood up immediately, scooping her bag up from the floor and slinging it over her shoulder. Then her hand shot out toward him, palm up. “Cash,” she said flatly.

  His smile was tight with irritation. “Good afternoon to you, my dear,” he said. “Manners do still count for something, you know.” But he reached into the pocket of his white lab coat to remove a silver, or more likely platinum, money clip.

  “Yeah? How about you save your lectures for the grandchild you didn’t try to have murdered?” She paused for a moment, pretending to think, tapping her finger against her mouth. “Oh, wait…there’s just me.”

  Rachel was holding tight to her grudge. Not surprising. Dr. Jacobs had once thrown her into my cell, hoping she’d annoy me enough that I’d kill her and therefore meet the entrance requirement for the trials. When a family member, the only one who seems to really care about you, is willing to have you killed to prove the worthiness and ability of his science experiment—namely, me—that’s probably not something you get over quickly or easily. Unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that he was still pretty much all she had.

  Dr. Jacobs paused counting out hundred dollar bills to give Rachel a sharp look.

  “You know, if you’d just give me access to my trust fund, we wouldn’t have to go through this,” she said. “You bribing me to talk to your toy, me pretending not to hate you.” She waved her hand in an airy gesture.

  “Not until you’re eighteen,” he said with a weary air that suggested this was a conversation that had taken place multiple times in various iterations.

  I pushed myself to my feet to snag the roll of toilet paper from my bathroom—a toilet, sink, and shower set up in the corner of the room behind a privacy curtain that was more of a suggestion of such than the real thing.

  I wanted, if at all possible, to get the floor cleaned up before Jacobs noticed. But I forced myself not to rush; that would surely draw his attention faster than anything.

  “I could hire a lawyer,” Rachel continued, snatching up the money he held out and shoving it into her bag.

  “Not one that’s better than all of mine,” he shot back. “It’s untouchable for the next fourteen months, Rachel. Get used to it, please.”

  “Whatever. I’m late to meet Cami,” she said, spinning off in a huff.

  I mopped up the floor as Rachel stomped up the stairs, her heels cracking loudly on the tile.

  “I’ve already made your excuses for your absence on Friday, as you requested.” Jacobs’s voice was muffled as he turned away from the intercom outside my cell to call after his granddaughter. “I explained your trip to Chicago has an academic aspect, and Mr. Kohler has agreed that a five-page paper on the architecture of the city should be more than enough to—”

  “Five pages?” Rachel shrieked.

  “Chicago? She’s coming with us?” I blurted, the wad of toilet paper forgotten in my hands. He was bringing Rachel to the trials? Since when had this top secret competition become a spectator sport? The thought of her smug face watching from the bleachers made me feel ill. I still didn’t know exactly what the trials would involve. Dr. Jacobs claimed not to know. The event was supposedly shrouded in secrecy, to prevent one competitor from having an advantage over another.

  Dr. Jacobs turned to me, startled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Rachel is accompanying her friends on a shopping outing.” He glared at me, as though I was the one revealing secrets.

  “Wait, you’re letting her out?” Rachel asked her grandfather, a beat too slow on the uptake. Was it just me, or had her face gone a shade paler?

  “It’s nothing for you to be concerned with,” Dr. Jacobs said, lifting his hands reassuringly.

  Rachel shuddered. “Just keep her away from Michigan Avenue. I don’t want her spoiling anything for us. Cassi’s always filling out those stupid giveaway cards. It’s about time she actually won something nonpathetic. They’re sending a car for us on Friday.” She paused with a frown. “I hope the driver knows to bring spring water—the carbonated kind, not that cheap regular stuff.”

  Then she turned and stalked off toward the elevator. I felt Dr. Jacobs’s attention return to me.

  I chucked the toilet paper into the tiny plastic trash can (white, just like everything else in here) and resumed my place on the floor, forgetting until I was in position that I’d already done sit-ups and my stomach was not in a forgiving mood.

  “That was more emotive than you’ve been in a while,” Jacobs said conversationally as I forced myself through another set of five.

  I didn’t know whether he meant my shouting at Rachel earlier or the vomiting on the floor, but I wasn’t going to ask.

  What he said sounded like a statement, but I knew better. It was bait with a bright, shiny hook buried inside. He’d been trying to get me to talk for weeks now, to open up, as he said.

  A horrible idea that brought to mind the image of my skull being cracked open with everything spilling out for further examination, speculation, and admiration of his handiwork.

  I gave a shake of my head, more to myself than him. No, damn it. My feelings and thoughts were mine, at least. The only things that were, in this place. And I was going to keep them.

  Instead, I lay on the floor, giving my abused muscles a break, and retrained my efforts on the other side of my new exercise regime. With barely any exertion, I had my cot suspended above me again, along with my initial stack of books, gathered and reassembled in midair. Once, something like this would have been difficult for me and the results unpredictable. The lightbulbs overhead would have blown and anything not bolted down would have been shaking and shifting.

  Not anymore. Amazing what grim, uncompromising determination would do for you.

  “Your improvement is quite impressive, particularly for such a short amount of time,” Jacobs said, after a moment. “Then again, I suppose that might be due to your newly acquired motivation.”

  I went still, and the books wobbled slightly. Was that an oblique reference to Zane’s death? If Jacobs had guessed my intention to raze Project Paper Doll to the ground, personnel included, I wasn’t sure what he would do. He needed me to compete in the trials but certainly not at the risk of loss, humiliation, and death.

  I let out my breath slowly, straining to maintain an impassive expression. Steady, stay steady. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to my cot and the books or myself.

  “Your desire to seek vengeance against Ford is understandable,” he continued. “And I certainly can’t argue with the results.”

  I relaxed. That was a logical assumption on his part. Of course I would blame the person who pulled the trigger on the bullet that had killed Zane. In Dr. Jacobs’s arrogant mind, that was the only reasonable response. No way would I hold him responsible. He hadn’t hurt anyone.

  Except me. Over and over again, in almost every way possible. He had vastly underestimated the depths of my anger and desire for retaliation.

  A grim smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. His loss. Or, it would soon be.

  Yes, Ford had shot Zane, but it had been unintentional, a by-product of her attempt at self-defense against Laughlin’s guards. Zane’s death was her fault only because she, like me, was a pawn in this game Jacobs and Laughlin were playing with us.

  “But we,” Dr. Jacobs said with a wink at me, as if we were somehow collaborating, “need you to be you. Everything that makes you special, not some flesh-and-blood robot.” He made a disgusted noise at the idea and then smiled at me as if I understood what he was talking about.

  Which I didn’t. Not at first. Robot? What?

  Then, suddenly, his meaning clicked. Oh. If I were too much like Ford, too obviously different, inhuman and nonemotional, his methodology wouldn’t shine through, demonstrating the obvious advantages of his technique (i.e., she walks, talks, even smiles jus
t like a real human, but she’s not!) over that of his competitor, Dr. Laughlin.

  And that, in turn, explained Rachel’s persistent presence. Rachel had the ability to crawl beneath my skin and set up camp, like a rash that would not go away. She irritated me, to the extreme. He’d been counting on her for that, to force me to react and dissolve the walls I’d put up around my feelings.

  He wanted to make sure that if he pricked me, I’d still bleed. Especially in front of the audience we would have waiting for us at the trials.

  And I’d fallen right in line with his plan.

  A fresh cascade of self-hatred washed over me, and I let my cot and books fall to the floor.

  I stood on shaking legs to turn my back on Dr. Jacobs’s gloating face. He’d won, yet again.

  “You’ll be pleased to hear that Private Zadowski is being released from the hospital today,” he said smugly.

  My breath caught in my throat at the name; a vision of that soldier’s face, young and unlined, growing purple from the effort to stay alive, was so bright in my mind.

  “Minimal permanent damage to the heart, despite clinical death, thanks to your resuscitation efforts. He’s going to be fine.” He paused. “You really are quite capable of amazing things, 107.” He sounded impressed, pleased, but there was a layer of smugness beneath it all, as if to say, “Of course you are. Because I made you.”

  Then he walked up the stairs and away from my cell, whistling, his shoes clacking happily on the tile floor.

  My fingernails dug into the vulnerable skin of my upper arms, the pain sharpening my focus and reminding me of my true purpose.

  Oh, Dr. Jacobs, you have no idea what I’m capable of.

  I lowered myself into push-up position on the floor and sent that second stack of books into the air, where they held steadily for the first time.