The Hunt Read online

  Huh?

  To my surprise, Ariane nodded. “Rewriting the existing human code rather than trying to combine human and alien DNA to create a new entity.”

  “Something like that. Laughlin doesn’t consider him a threat in the trials, so I don’t know much about him.”

  “So, now you work with Laughlin’s hybrids?” I asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “What are they like?” Ariane asked softly. And I realized then we were talking about the closest thing she had to family on this world, maybe on any world, which somehow took a lot of the fuel out of my anger. My mom had lied to me, and my dad was a jerk, but I had them. They existed, providing a solid connection.

  My mom shuddered. “They are…not human.”

  “Neither am I,” Ariane said.

  “No, you don’t understand,” she said. “Before, it was better. The four who survived the start of adolescence—two from each of the last test groups—they were mostly quiet. Submissive, distant. They seemed to live more inside their own heads than out in the world. But that wasn’t enough. Jacobs, Laughlin, they’re trying to find the balance between independent thought and obedience, between humanity and all the accelerated benefits of your…other people.” She shook her head. “They need someone who can take direction and think for herself. Even the best plans can’t account for every variable. If a mission doesn’t go according to the specifications, they need an operative who can still get the job done.”

  “And Laughlin’s hybrids can do all of that,” I said.

  “Not exactly. Not all of them.” She grimaced. “When Johnson…when Ford took over for Johnson, things changed. The bond between them has always been intense. They should have been competitors, but it’s something in their genetic makeup from the alien side. They thrive in a communal environment. The survival rate increased dramatically once Laughlin realized that.” She glanced at Ariane, as if searching for some sign of the same in her. Or perhaps recognizing that it was a miracle she’d survived alone, isolated in her tiny cell. “But the consequence is that they’re more like one entity with separate bodies. They’re networked through their telepathy. When Johnson was in control, it was all right, but Ford is leading now. They don’t blend as well as one-oh…as Ariane. They stand out too much. And Ford doesn’t care. They make people uncomfortable, and they seem to enjoy it.” She lifted her hands helplessly. “I’ve done my best but—”

  “Your role is to help humanize them,” Ariane said.

  “Technically, I’m a consultant. But yes. They didn’t have the upbringing you did. They are lacking in human cultural references and experiences. Laughlin wanted to minimize emotional attachment. They were raised without caregivers, other than for their physical needs. The idea, I guess, was that they would find it easier to follow orders without the complication of feelings. But the trouble is, now they don’t relate to humans except as order-givers. Laughlin realized that would put them at a disadvantage during the trials, especially when compared to others who are more conversant in human conventions, more relatable.” She dropped her gaze to the floor, avoiding Ariane’s eyes. “He wanted to know what GTX had done to promote those qualities.” She paused. “I tried. I did. But with Ford…they hate us so much.”

  “Are you surprised?” Ariane asked with an edge. So maybe she wasn’t as okay with what had been done to her as she outwardly seemed to be.

  “We were only trying to—”

  “—completely disregard the ethical considerations of creating a life simply as a means to an end? Or how about the right of another living creature to exist unmolested and free of pain?” Ariane asked.

  Yep, definitely not as okay with it as she seemed. I looped an arm over her shoulder, and she stiffened at first and then relaxed into my side.

  My mom shook her head. “You’re probably right. That’s why you need to go. They’re clever. Sneaky, even. Unless Dr. Laughlin has given them strict orders, they will pursue their own…interests.” She lifted her hand to her throat, as if imagining fingers wrapped around it. Or if these other hybrids shared Ariane’s telekinesis, they wouldn’t even have to use their hands. “As I said, they’re not supposed to come here anymore, but—”

  “That’s why you thought Ariane was Ford,” I said, finally getting the last piece of the puzzle. “What does she have against you? Other than being human and one of her captors, I mean?”

  My mom winced, but she didn’t argue. “Johnson, the one who was in charge before Ford. She was…eliminated. She couldn’t adjust to the strain of outside life. She’d respond to thoughts instead of what people said. She’d forget to move things with her hands instead of using her abilities. She was too distant, too removed from the outside world.” Mara gave a helpless sigh. “She was attracting too much attention to the others at school.”

  “School?” I asked in disbelief. “You sent them to school?”

  “I had to do something,” she said defensively. “It’s fine. They have a cover story. They’ve been ‘diagnosed’ with a genetic condition that affects their appearance and their behavior.”

  I rolled my eyes. As if that was the real issue here.

  “And Ford holds you responsible for Johnson’s death,” Ariane said with the air of someone confirming something she already suspected.

  “She does, yes. That’s why you need to go home. Please,” my mom begged. “Wingate is GTX territory, and that offers you some protection. Dr. Jacobs is a flawed man, but he, at least, let me go when he realized that the work was not for me. Laughlin is not nearly as generous. He’s not above…extreme methods to induce cooperation. Hurting people.” She swallowed hard and looked up to the ceiling, blinking rapidly against tears, making me wonder exactly what she’d seen during her tenure with Laughlin.

  “I’m stuck here until the trials, working for him,” she said. “In exchange, he’s promised to leave my family alone.” She stuffed her trembling hands into her bathrobe pockets. “But if he discovers you’re here, he’ll send Ford and the others after you. You need to go home,” she pleaded.

  Which meant, much as I hated to admit it, my mom was in some ways as much a hostage as the hybrids she’d been hired to work with.

  I glanced at Ariane, who gave me a weary nod.

  “Wingate is not an option anymore,” I said.

  “I understand that your father is not the easiest man to—” my mom began.

  “It’s not him. Or, not just him.” I sighed. “GTX wants us.”

  “You mean Ariane,” my mom said.

  “No, both of us,” I responded.

  “I don’t understand,” she said slowly.

  Apparently, in the confusion and chaos of our arrival here and her misidentification of Ariane, my mom hadn’t had time to put it all together. That GTX wouldn’t just let Ariane leave town, especially not without her “father” in charge. That I’d been freaked out by my mom’s strange behavior, but not at the discussion of alien/human hybrids and experimentation or Ariane getting in through a door with seven locks. That we were comfortable with each other in a way that suggested more than a casual school acquaintance.

  I saw it the moment the ball dropped, and she figured it out.

  She paled. “Oh no,” she whispered, staring at me and then at Ariane. “What did you do?”

  I felt Ariane cringe next to me, hearing the inherent accusation in my mom’s words.

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said as calmly as I could. “It started out as a stupid prank, something Rachel Jacobs cooked up. Ariane and I were working together against her, and everything just sort of developed from there.” In spite of myself and the situation, I felt a sudden lightness inside at the memories of happier days, the activities fair, the Star Wars conversation, breakfast in the truck. She was the first person who’d really seemed to like me for who I was, not for who I could be or should have been.

  “The Rules,” my mom said desperately, as if she could just find the right thing to say, all of this would go away. “Ma
rk Tucker had a list of rules you were supposed to follow to keep this exact thing from happening.”

  That was the first I’d heard of it, but when Ariane was nodding, her face set in grim lines.

  “Don’t get involved, don’t trust anyone, don’t fall in love.” My mom shook her head. “I can’t remember all of them, but a lot of thought went into them for this reason.”

  That’s what Ariane had been battling inside herself the whole time we’d been playing against Rachel and getting to know each other? No wonder she’d had a panic attack getting into my truck that first time. Warmth and pride filled my chest. She’d had to fight hard to carry through with our plan, defying not only her adoptive father but also rules that had probably been drilled into her head for literally years—and she’d done it. That kind of strength of character only made me admire her more. I wasn’t sure I would have been able to do it if I’d been in that situation.

  “And you thought chaining her down with those rules was a good idea?” I demanded of my mom. “Who can live like that?”

  “The point was to protect everyone else,” she said, then turned on Ariane. “I cut off all contact with my son for eighteen months to keep him out of this mess, and you drag him back in? How could you do that?”

  “Mom.” I held up my hand, angling to keep her from moving closer. “She didn’t drag me into anything—”

  “I wasn’t dealing with a full set of facts, as you well know,” Ariane said hotly, finally goaded into defending herself.

  “—I am capable of making my own decisions,” I said.

  “You may not have known everything, but you certainly knew what you were,” my mom said to Ariane, as if I hadn’t spoken.

  The air went out of the room.

  Ariane stiffened, and I stared at my mom, unable to believe what had come out of her mouth.

  “What is wrong with you?” I asked, trying again to see the person I’d once thought her to be in the stranger before me. Where was the mother who’d scolded me for teasing Quinn when he’d gotten that huge zit on his forehead? I’d called it an alien horn. I’d gone on a whole riff with it, called him Xenar, asked him when he was going back to his home planet, when did he expect the horn to make a full appearance. Typical annoying little brother stuff. And if it had been a few years later, he’d have beaten the hell out of me for it, but at that point we were fairly close in size. So when it got out of hand, with Quinn screaming at me and his eyes all shiny with tears, my mom intervened with a lecture about treating people the way I wanted to be treated. I’d rolled my eyes during the entire speech, but it stuck with me. Mainly because I’d never actually expected to upset Quinn.

  Granted, that was just a temporary complexion problem (probably the last time Quinn would be less than perfect in anyone’s eyes) and this was something far more complicated, but didn’t that mean the lesson would be even more applicable in this situation? Unless, of course, my mom had meant to imply limits that I hadn’t even known about then by using the word people. It gave me an additional shock to realize that at the time of that conversation, my mom had already come and gone as a GTX employee, that she knew about Ariane and had left her to Dr. Jacobs’s schemes and devices.

  “Sweetie.” My mom approached me with her hands out as if she would touch my face, and I backed up, taking Ariane with me. “I’m sure you think this is a grand and romantic gesture, but there is no way this can end well, do you understand that? She doesn’t deserve what’s happened to her, but she’s not human.”

  I struggled to formulate a response that wasn’t just inarticulate yelling, but my mom moved on before I could.

  “What was your plan?” she asked Ariane. “Run for Canada and hope for the best?” If it was possible, I could feel Ariane getting smaller by the second, shredded by her words.

  “Do you think they won’t have thought of that?” my mom continued. “Do you think there’s a border crossing out there that doesn’t have your picture posted? You have no idea what you’re up against.” She threw her hands up. “If you’re lucky, you’ll end up back in the lab at GTX.”

  At the idea of Ariane being trapped in that tiny white room again—and that my mom would think that a best-case scenario—something in me snapped. “Okay, we’re done here.” I grabbed Ariane’s hand and tugged her out of the room with me.

  “Where are you going? Zane?” My mom followed us to the front door. “Wingate is your only—”

  “No.” I led the way out onto the porch, then reached back and slammed the door once Ariane cleared the threshold.

  “Come on,” I said, pulling her down the steps and across the grass to the van. She didn’t protest the pace, even though she had to take two strides for my one. “Keys.”

  Ariane handed them over without argument, and I knew I was in trouble, then. No questions about where we were going or what we were doing. This wasn’t good.

  I opened the passenger-side door and made sure she got in, mainly because I wasn’t sure she’d speak up if I drove off without her.

  I climbed in behind the wheel and pulled away from the curb with a screech of tires on the pavement, generating a reproving look from an old guy across the street out picking up his newspaper.

  Blowing out a slow breath, I let my foot off the gas a little as we left my mom’s neighborhood. Driving angry wasn’t a good idea right now. We couldn’t take the chance of getting pulled over.

  Turning back onto the main road, I picked left, randomly. It was the opposite direction we’d come from. And it was as good as any for the moment. The lack of a specific destination made me a little edgy, but there was nothing to be done about it for now. I didn’t have Ariane’s training, but it seemed to me the smartest thing to do was find somewhere we could blend in and hide until we could figure out a next step.

  “She’s right,” Ariane said after a few moments, her tone flat, emotionless. “I was being selfish. I could have left the motel without waking you up. But I shut the door. I wanted you to come after me, even if I couldn’t admit it.” Then her voice broke over a hiccup. “I wanted you with me.”

  Oh God, she was killing me here. I couldn’t look at her and keep my eyes on the road.

  “Listen to me,” I said as firmly as I could, “I’m here because I want to be. Until I met you, no one had ever put me first. Do you get that? Even with my mom, leaving my dad was more important than I was.” I glanced at her to see if my words were making a difference.

  She was shaking her head. “We have nowhere to go, no plan. You can’t stay with me. You shouldn’t.”

  This was my mom’s fault. Ariane might have left me behind before in an attempt to protect me, but now, it was more than that. My mom had said those horrible things, and Ariane had believed her. About her not being human, about it not ending well. Along with a strong implication that maybe she didn’t deserve to hope for anything more. All of it confirming what I suspected Ariane already believed.

  If I didn’t do something, she’d take the first opportunity to sneak away or, God forbid, offer herself up to Laughlin in exchange for my safety, just as she’d tried to do the other day at GTX.

  Ahead on the right, I saw bright and cheery signs for a mall, and beyond them a vast expanse of parking lot. Cars moved around the outer edge with purpose. Like ants surrounding a dropped sandwich, they were collecting around several early morning restaurants—McDonald’s, IHOP, and something called Walker Bros. Pancake House—within the mall complex.

  I made a snap decision and jerked into the turn lane, ignoring the blare of a horn behind us. “Let me ask you something—how shallow do you think I am?” I demanded, letting more of my frustration bleed through than I’d intended.

  Ariane looked at me, surprised, her eyes damp.

  “Do you really think if you sent me back to Wingate, I’d just drift into a normal routine?” Assuming, of course, that Dr. Jacobs would allow it. “Do you think I’d forget all about this? Do you think I’d just drive by GTX and not wonder if you were
in there, if they were hurting you?” My voice cracked, and I had to swallow hard to keep the words from getting stuck with the lump in my throat. “Do you really think that little of me?”

  Her mouth fell open. “Of course not, but—”

  “But what?” I challenged.

  “I’m trying to do the right thing!” she shouted, frustrated.

  “I’m sure that’s what they thought too when they gave you that messed-up list of commandments. Thou shalt not have a life. Always remember that you’re a freak and not deserving of anything resembling happiness.”

  She inhaled sharply.

  “I’m here, with you, because I want to be,” I said, trying to put my feelings into words, hoping they would convince her, if nothing else. “It’s not your job to save me.”

  Her silence spoke volumes.

  Weary suddenly, I pulled into a parking space, near a clump of cars on the far side of Sears—either employees getting an early start or overflow from Walker Bros. “I can’t make you believe that, though, and I can’t keep you from leaving. So, if you’re going to go, then fine.” I shoved the gearshift into park, turned the van off, and got up, staying half stooped to avoid the roof.

  “What are you doing?”

  I gestured to the parking lot around us. “It looks like it’s going to be busy as hell here in an hour or two. So I think this is as safe as it gets. Neither of us has slept in days, and I’m tired. We’re going to get some rest and then figure out what to do next, preferably before the van reaches a temperature hot enough to cook us alive.”

  Without looking at her, I headed to the back of the van. I unrolled one of the sleeping bags that had been hidden in the smuggling compartment and unzipped the edges to create a blanket, some small measure of comfort against the hard metal floor of the van.

  Then I lay down, tucked my arm under my head, and turned away from her, my heart beating too fast. It was a gamble to take this approach. I couldn’t convince her of anything; she had to reach the conclusion on her own. But would she?