Project Paper Doll: The Trials Page 5

  But as I stood reluctantly, the door to the hall flew open, startling everyone except Dr. St. John, who turned with an expectant smile.

  “Oh, good, you’re here,” he said to someone just out of sight. Then he stood and swung his arm out in a welcoming gesture. “Everyone, may I present Adam.”

  I made a face. Adam? Really? Naming with numbers (107) wasn’t particularly inventive, either, but Adam was such a tired cliché.

  Adam himself, though, was anything but, especially when it came to what I knew of alien/human hybrids. At a quick glance, I wouldn’t have thought him more than a normal human. In his early twenties probably, he was dressed in khakis and a bright yellow T-shirt stretched to its limits. He was broad and muscular, almost absurdly so. He actually had to turn slightly sidewise to fit through the door. He could probably have ripped the wooden cabinet off the wall without any additional abilities beyond his strength.

  Which made sense. As I understood it, Emerson St. John’s approach involved introducing alien DNA through a virus and rewriting portions of the human genetic code. Picking a fit human specimen was not only logical but probably necessary to ensure survival.

  Upon closer look, though, there was something…off about Adam. It wasn’t the same kind of “differentness” that people saw in me. His brown eyes were dilated, making the pupils strangely large. And he seemed paler than he should have been, but his cheeks were flushed pink with color.

  I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.

  Adam walked in and took a position behind St. John’s table, standing instead of sitting, as if waiting for instructions. I studied him, trying to get a read on what it was about him that screamed “wrong” to me. Other than the fact that if it came down to hand-to-hand, he would crush Ford and me. If he had even remotely the kind of psi abilities we had, we were severely outclassed.

  “And, of course, the primary advantage to our method is demonstrated in our special model,” St. John said proudly.

  I was too busy squinting at Adam to pay attention to St. John’s sales pitch, which was a mistake.

  Ford sucked in a sharp breath. I automatically glanced back and found her staring at the door. I followed her gaze. My body went cold as soon as I saw what she was looking at.

  Who.

  The person in the doorway, the “special model.” Like Adam, he was dressed in khaki and yellow. But he was taller, well over six feet with dark hair that was mussed and eyes that, when not so dilated, would have been a perfect shade of gray-blue.

  Zane.

  I stumbled backward, blinking rapidly, as if a trick of the fluorescent light was responsible for the mirage of the dead boy I loved.

  But, no, he was still there. He wasn’t looking at me, staring fixedly ahead. But it was unquestionably Zane.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Laughlin laughed. “Impressive, I must admit.”

  Next to me, Jacobs shot to his feet. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Our method can be applied to anyone,” St. John said, continuing his speech. “No need for the time-consuming process of growing personnel with special skills. With our formula, you can enhance anyone you want. Key contacts within an organization, informants, those with a personal connection to the target.” And with that he looked straight at me.

  St. John had done this intentionally. Why? What did it even mean to “enhance” someone? How deep did St. John’s process go? My thoughts were consumed by this shift in reality. I was afraid to move, to inhale or exhale with any degree of force, as if that might cause the sight of Zane to dry up and crumble away.

  “Assuming they survive,” Laughlin said dryly with a sniff. But he didn’t seem upset, more amused than anything.

  “This is unacceptable!” Jacobs shouted, his fists clenched.

  “Oh, don’t be a poor sport just because he outmaneuvered you,” Laughlin said gleefully. “Picked the boy up off the pavement, did you?” he asked St. John. “Smart.”

  “What is going on?” Melody demanded.

  I ignored all of them, the din around me fading into a faint hum, as I watched Zane. His chest was moving in and out steadily, and there was no sign of the bullet wound that had seemingly killed him.

  He was here. He was alive.

  The urge to see him close up, to touch him, swept over me, squeezing my chest. I lurched in Zane’s direction.

  Jacobs made a grab for my elbow, but I pushed him away before he made contact, sending him stumbling and crashing into his chair under the invisible force of my mind, the very ability he’d gifted me with.

  Then I shoved at our table, swinging it neatly out of my way. The fastest route to Zane was through the U, not around it.

  Chaos erupted then, with someone shouting for the guards, who piled into the room, moving around Zane like water flowing around a rock as they searched for the threat.

  And still Zane didn’t react. What had they done to him?

  “Stop her!” Jacobs’s shriek pierced the fog in my head.

  But I didn’t need to be stopped. I halted all on my own in front of St. John’s table, two feet from Zane.

  His face was pale, but his cheeks were flushed, just like Adam’s.

  “Zane?” I asked, my voice hoarse and scared sounding.

  He didn’t move, but his gaze flicked to mine for the barest of seconds. Any farther from him and I probably wouldn’t have seen it.

  He knew his name, at least. But that appeared to be it. The look he’d given me had held no recognition or significance.

  Knock, knock, knock, but nobody’s home.

  My knees wobbled, weak suddenly, as a huge, wrenching sob rolled out of me, catching me by surprise before I could stop it.

  Not that it mattered. The GTX guards were on me seconds later, pulling at my arms and shoulders, tugging me away.

  No. I fought out of instinct, breathing hard and fast through my mouth, like an animal in attack mode. I pushed back against every hand on me, throwing them off me.

  One of the men flew into Laughlin’s table, colliding with it hard and setting off a chain reaction. The glass pitcher and glasses hit the floor, and Laughlin scrambled out of the way, his assistants following with a shriek as the table collapsed.

  Then, without moving from where he stood, Zane reached out and righted the man without touching him, pulling him away from the table and the glass shards with telekinesis as naturally and easily as if he’d been born to do it.

  I froze, adrenaline thundering in my veins and air trapped in my chest.

  Oh. Oh no. What had they done to him?

  The GTX guards grabbed me again, but I didn’t fight this time, my mind reeling from the possible implications. Zane shouldn’t have been able to do that. What did it mean that he could? Was the Zane I knew still in there somewhere? Or was this some new version? Someone molded and fashioned to be like me, just to prove St. John’s point?

  “I think perhaps it’s best if we postpone the remainder of this meeting until it can be held without disruption,” Morpheus said with obvious disapproval.

  “Wait! That’s not necessary,” Dr. Jacobs protested immediately, with desperation and fury in his voice. “My product is perfectly stable. She was reacting only to this ridiculous stunt.” He threw Dr. St. John a glare that would have melted glass. St. John didn’t seem to care; if anything, he was amused.

  But when Morpheus nodded at the GTX guards holding me, they dragged me toward the door.

  Somewhere inside me, I was dimly aware that I was losing my chance, my opportunity to end Project Paper Doll in one fell swoop, but I didn’t care in that moment. How could I when I didn’t know if Zane was okay, if that person standing there wearing his face could even still be considered—

  TOMORROW MORNING. WEST ENTRANCE.

  The words boomed and echoed in my head as my guard entourage and I reached the doors. I flinched at the volume, costing me the extra second I needed to realize that I knew that voice.

  Zane. He wanted
to meet.

  Except as the guards opened the door and pulled me over the threshold, Zane gave no sign of attempting to communicate with me. No look in my direction, no wink or smile, no further attempt to think words at me loudly enough for me to hear them. Actually, I could get nothing from his mind, which had never been the case before. And certainly shouldn’t have been the case now, if he really wanted to “talk” to me.

  That’s when I realized that the message I’d received could just as easily be interpreted as a challenge: St. John’s special model calling out Dr. Jacobs’s product for a one-on-one elimination.

  My heart collapsed in on itself, extinguishing the tiny flicker of hope.

  A challenge was logical, far more so than any other explanation that I would have preferred. And recognizing that was like living through Zane’s death all over again. Only so much worse.

  Because, this time, as the conference room doors closed after us, he was standing right there, just a few feet away and completely unreachable all at the same time.

  THE SCAR ON MY STOMACH still burned and itched sometimes. But the fact that it was a scar and not a gaping wound with the accompanying destroyed muscles and organs—or worse, a stitched-up hole on my very uncaring corpse—was enough to keep my mouth shut with gratitude. Most of the time.

  But it always got worse when I was stressed. Like now.

  “He should have been back already,” I said, resisting the urge to dig at the raised edge of the scar as I paced the plush hotel room that had been assigned to me, twenty stories above the conference room where my fate as a trials competitor was being decided. I swore I could detect the tingling of little foreign cells zooming around beneath my skin, dodging my slower human ones. Emerson said it was my imagination, or possibly nerve damage that was still healing. I wasn’t so sure about either of those explanations.

  I felt different. And it wasn’t just the itchy/tingling scar or even the occasional unintelligible buzz of other people’s thoughts in my head. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t struggling to keep up, to be better. I just was. The abilities, the powers I’d gained, made me see the world from a new perspective, one in which I had more control than I’d ever dreamed.

  I could do things no other human on the planet—except Adam—could do.

  But that only made helpless moments like these, where I had zero control, that much harder to bear.

  Lifting my hand to direct my power, I took my frustration out on the room drapes, using my newly acquired abilities to jerk them back along the track set in the ceiling and let in the last of the daylight. But the tiny burst of satisfaction that came along with every demonstration of skill vanished almost immediately.

  “It’s only been fifteen minutes, bro,” Adam said from where he leaned against the opposite wall. He sounded, even looked, bored, but it was an act. He had almost as much at stake as me, and if you knew him well enough—as I now unfortunately did from living in close quarters with him at St. John’s lab in Rochester, New York—the forced nature of his relaxed position was screamingly obvious. Mainly in the way he kept flexing his fists and cracking his knuckles.

  “Dude has to justify you to everyone,” Adam continued with a smirk. “That’s going to take some time.”

  “Shut up,” I snapped, even though he was exactly right. Adam was the more obvious candidate to represent Emerson Technology, Incorporated in the trials in just about every way possible. He’d been recruited from the army. He’d had years to train and practice for these trials, not to mention the deliberate and gradual introduction of RSTS47—Emerson St. John’s DNA-altering virus—to his body over the course of many months.

  As opposed to dumping a whole bunch of it in at once and hoping for the best.

  That was what had happened to me, and Emerson’s impulsive actions had saved me. The bullet wound and the resulting internal injuries had been healed within days.

  The virus hadn’t been created for healing purposes, though; rather, transformative ones. So there were consequences. The least of which was simply that I hadn’t had a chance to master the new skills I’d acquired. (My show downstairs, pulling the guard to his feet, had been to demonstrate that I possessed the abilities, that I had the right to be present. That was it, which was good, because that was about all I was capable of. For the moment.)

  But Justine, Emerson, and I were hoping that the Committee—as Emerson called them—would be intrigued enough to allow my candidacy, even with the creative answer Emerson had come up with for my entrance qualifier.

  If not, Adam would be sent instead, and while I had no doubt about his ability to win the trials—or at least make a good show of it—I was significantly less sure of his capacity to accomplish our true mission here. Ariane didn’t trust easily. Or at all, really.

  And evidently, Emerson and Justine agreed with me. For now.

  “No news is good news at this point,” Justine said without looking up from her phone. “Jacobs is bound to strenuously object to your presence for the effect it will have on Ariane.”

  Her tone was flat, factual without a hint of empathy. But that was just Justine.

  Hers was the first voice I’d heard upon waking up three weeks ago. “I don’t care. You weren’t authorized for this.” She, whoever she was, had been pissed about something.

  A doctor? I had wondered vaguely. I hadn’t been awake, not entirely, my thoughts slipping away from me like those tiny fish in the lake up north, the ones Quinn and I had tried to catch in our hands when we were little.

  Quinn. Something about my brother. What was it? I couldn’t think. My head hurt, as if my skull had swollen to three times the normal size. More disturbingly, there was a low-level hum and buzz inside my mind.

  Then an image clicked into place behind my closed eyes. Quinn, his face pale, his arm in a makeshift sling. He’d been in the hospital? No, I’d been in the hospital. I remembered that, sort of. The smell of antiseptic; the cool, unfamiliar sheets rough against my skin; and the pain, an unrelenting throb in my left side.

  “You wanted a way to get to one of them, Justine. I’m giving it to you,” another voice, male and a little petulant, argued.

  “We had people working on it. Now you’ve just compounded the problem. This boy will have people searching for him.” A weird tug at my left arm suggested that by “this boy” the woman meant me.

  “The hospital records have been modified. They’ll think he’s dead,” the man, who’d turned out to be Emerson St. John, had protested.

  “Not without a body,” Justine had said, sounding like maybe she intended to make that happen.

  I’d opened my eyes right then.

  Justine looked like someone’s mom—a little soft through the middle, a rounded face, with dark red hair pulled back into a tight ponytail—and today, at the hotel, she was dressed like it. A sweatshirt that shouted GO LIONS in black and gold lettering, jeans that were too short at the ankles, and bright white Keds, their brilliance suggesting they were fresh out of the box.

  But that outfit, like her appearance, was pure camouflage. Justine “You Don’t Need to Know My Last Name” was a hard-ass connected to DHS. Department of Homeland Security. She had a badge and everything. Whether it was hers or legit, I had no idea. But motherly looks aside, she was about as comforting as a steel beam, and equally communicative.

  “And?” I prompted her. “Or…so?”

  She looked up from her phone, her mouth pursed at my willingness to question her. “So,” she said, emphasizing my word with clear displeasure, “if St. John isn’t back yet, that means they’re hearing him out, at least. The argument is still going on. And that works to our advantage.”

  The Committee had cleared the conference room of all candidates after the GTX guards had hauled Ariane away. Dr. Jacobs had been shouting about my presence being a stunt and insisting that I could not be considered a qualified competitor, all while Laughlin sat back and laughed.

  And now Adam and I were stuck waiting to hea
r the verdict. And not just us. Somewhere in this hotel, Ariane, Ford, and Carter waited too.

  Ariane had looked small and tired, like she hadn’t slept since I’d seen her last. She’d been trapped at GTX, forced to do God knows what.…

  Pushing that thought away, I stepped up my pacing.

  “Hey, if this is all too much for you, I’m ready,” Adam said with a shrug.

  I glared at him.

  “I’m just saying, any time you want to trade places, assuming you actually end up getting a place, that is…” He trailed off.

  “Gentlemen,” Justine said with mild annoyance, barely even looking up from her phone. Of course, she could afford to be calm about this. Regardless of which of us was sent in to the trials, she still had a chance of getting what she wanted: Ariane.

  The funding and the contract behind Project Paper Doll came from the Department of Defense, but the good people at Homeland Security, a separate department entirely, had other plans.

  Justine had made promises about Ariane’s future, talked of using her as an expert resource rather than a test subject. She’d hinted that Ariane was needed to help them with some equipment or documents recovered from the New Mexico desert.

  This was my chance to prove myself and make a difference. I wasn’t going to let it go without a fight.

  “I still say I can be pretty convincing when I need to be,” Adam said with a leer.

  He was trying to get under my skin, provoke a reaction. I knew that, and I still couldn’t stop myself. The buzz of power was like static electricity dancing over my skin. The room lights flickered in response. That was me, losing control.

  But then blood gushed down from my nose to my mouth, and the gathering power dissipated.

  Damn it. I fumbled in my pocket for a tissue. The process had been designed as a gradual one, intended to be administered over weeks instead of hours, as I’d experienced it. So my head ached now, almost constantly, with frequent nosebleeds when I accessed new parts of my brain that the DNA embedded in the virus had opened pathways to. (I’d spent a decent chunk of each week staring up at the inside of various diagnostic devices—CT scanners, MRI machines, and others I didn’t even recognize.)