by Stacey Kade
Two more days.
“107,” DR. JACOBS SNAPPED.
His voice over the sudden pop of the intercom jolted me awake. I sat bolt upright, my heart pounding in triple time.
I blinked rapidly, trying to reorient myself, the rush of adrenaline making me shaky. I was in a cell at GTX, just like usual. Well, the usual for the last three weeks, anyway. My eyes were gritty, and my neck had a painful kink.
I tugged at the collar of my tunic, which was damp with nightmare-induced sweat. In the dream, I was being chased by an unseen enemy, while Zane, a pale spectral vision with a blood-soaked shirt, watched in the distance. And no matter how hard or fast I ran, I couldn’t seem to get any closer to him, nor could I shake my pursuer.
Nothing like your subconscious to be as subtle as an anvil to the skull.
“I said, how soon can you be ready to go?” Dr. Jacobs sounded brusque, annoyed even, at having to repeat himself.
I looked for him at the door first but found him instead at the observation window above me, his forehead pinched with irritation. I wondered how long he’d been trying to wake me.
“Go?” I repeated dumbly. “Now?” The trials weren’t until tomorrow. I hadn’t been asleep for that long.
“How soon?” he asked again, through clenched teeth.
“I don’t know…fifteen minutes?” I shook my head, trying to clear it. What was going on? This was odd.
“Excellent,” Jacobs said. “I’ll make the arrangements. In the meantime, please be clean, dressed, and ready to go as soon as possible.” Strangely, his words were clipped, completely devoid of the arrogant, anticipatory triumph I’d expected from him on the day before his “great victory.”
I frowned up at him.
He avoided my gaze. Like that would help him. The trouble with creating an alien/human hybrid that can sometimes read minds is that sometimes that mind is yours.
“You’re upset about something.” More than just my unwillingness to be conscious at his command.
…Laughlin behind this. I’m sure of it. Why else would they…Security will be almost impossible and 107 has run before…He must have told them…otherwise, why select such a location…
“They changed the venue. No,” I amended, listening more intently to his thoughts. “The venue isn’t what you thought it would be.” Interesting.
“Enough, 107,” he said sharply. “I have clothes for you.” He nodded at someone to his left, and a tech appeared at the door, watching me with open trepidation written on his face and shrieking at me from his brain.
I remained still as he opened the door and hurled a pile of clothing—bra, underwear, socks, jeans, and a shirt—and a pair of shoes in my general direction before pulling the door shut again.
“There’s a meeting this afternoon for all the participants and their companies to make sure everyone has an equal understanding of what is expected of them and what will constitute a fair win,” Dr. Jacobs said, his mouth puckered as though the words tasted sour.
How complicated could it possibly be, I wanted to ask. Wasn’t pretty much the only rule, “Kill or be killed”? But those words lurched to a stop on the tip of my tongue as the ramifications of this meeting’s existence sank in. My plan had been to win the competition while looking for the opportunity to end everyone involved in it, one by one and over weeks or months if necessary. But if I understood Dr. Jacobs correctly, all the major players would be in the same room today.
My heartbeat increased until I could feel my pulse in my fingertips. Was that even possible? Could I finish this before it even began? Taking on multiple opponents at once made it riskier, but if I got it started, maybe Ford and Carter would join in.
I fought the urge to grin.
“—both know, it’s a dog and pony show, a chance to look at you and the others up close while you all run through your ‘tricks,’” Dr. Jacobs said with distaste, drawing my attention back to him. “But we can use that against them.”
Oh yes. Yes, we can. Well, I could. I wasn’t sure what Dr. Jacobs had in mind.
“I’ve had to make some adjustments to my original plan.” He sounded miffed. “So we’ll discuss additional strategy details…later. Just be ready.” He paused. “I need you on my side for this one, 107.” He glared down at me as if that would help impress the words upon me.
I nodded quickly, obediently. I’d come this far and done so much with everything working against me, I needed this opportunity. Whatever he needed to see/hear/feel to take me to that meeting, I was willing to do.
Jacobs gave me a curt nod before snapping off the intercom and stalking away from the observation window.
Legs shaking with repressed relief and giddiness—I might really have a shot at ending this all today!—I moved to the other side of my narrow room and gathered up the clothing the tech had tossed in to me.
It was only after I touched the jeans that I realized they were mine. From my old life. Jacobs must have sent someone to my former house, the one I’d shared with my father for ten years.
A house that GTX probably owned, now that I thought about it. But even knowing that, it was still home to me. The first place I’d ever felt safe.
I couldn’t stop myself from picturing it as it probably looked right now.
The grass in the front yard had to be overgrown, likely prompting comments from the neighbors. Our breakfast dishes from that last morning, still in the drying rack, probably had a fine layer of dust. My backpack with all my books still on the floor of my bedroom, weeks of homework collecting at the school office, never to be retrieved. The bathtub with its slow-drip faucet, still dripping. The stacked packages of blue contacts beneath the sink, no prescription, just color.
I wondered if my father had been able to retrieve the photo albums of his daughter, the original Ariane, before leaving town. I hoped so. I wanted to think of him having those with him, wherever he was.
Would GTX send movers? Someone to go through our stuff and pack it up so they could destroy it or sell it? Maybe they already had.
A powerful ache started inside me. I wanted to be home, sitting across the breakfast table from my father, talking to him about my day.
But that home, that life, was gone. And so was my father. I’d hated him for what he’d done, for lying to me for all those years, secretly reporting on me to GTX. But now…now I could see it another way. He’d saved me the only way he could. Teaching me what it meant to be human even as he’d encouraged me to own my distinctly nonhuman abilities.
He would have hated my plan, hated who I’d become to accomplish the goal in front of me. He’d warned me, told me to cut ties and run, but I hadn’t listened. At least, not well enough to save myself or Zane. So this was all that was left.
I stroked one finger down the velvety softness of the denim in my hands. By complete chance they’d brought my favorites, my Luckys.
I’d worn these on my first “date” with Zane to the activities fair. The beginning of a sequence of events that led me to this time and place.
It seemed appropriate that they were also part of the end.
Whenever I’d thought about the trials, I’d always been far more preoccupied by what they would be instead of where.
In my head, the setting was always dark, vague, anonymous. An old abandoned warehouse or an empty hangar on a military base of some kind, perhaps. I’d never paid much attention during my imaginings. The spotlight, sometimes literally, was always focused on us, dueling or punching or levitating stuff in front of an unknown audience, hidden in the shadows.
But if I had considered it, I would have said that an isolated location, in a low-res area with a perimeter that could be easily secured, seemed only logical. No witnesses, plenty of time to clean up, and room for lots of plausible deniability.
In short, absolutely nothing like downtown Chicago.
But from my seat in the very back of a GTX van—the security team accompanying me was not taking any chances—it looked like that’s wh
ere we were headed.
We’d left the interstate behind to enter a grid of congested one-way streets. Madison, Monroe, more president names flashed by my window, reminding me of Ford and Carter. And Nixon.
Nixon. The memory of his hand on mine, seeking reassurance, as we headed into Laughlin’s facility, made me flinch inwardly. The recollection was paired, as always, with the image of Nixon on the ground, his eyes staring up at the sky unseeing and the pool of blood spreading beneath his head.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to blot out that horrible picture.
A horn blared, and my eyes snapped open. The van jerked to the right suddenly, nearly toppling me over.
The security guy at the wheel cursed under his breath. I watched as a cab shot over a few lanes, still honking at everyone in his way.
We were most definitely heading deeper in the city. Why?
I sat forward in my seat. “Where are we going?” I asked, speaking for the first time since I’d been escorted from my room up to Jacobs’s office and then down through a service elevator to the waiting van in the GTX parking garage.
All four security guys ignored me, except for a slight tensing of shoulders in the one nearest me. Two rows of seats away. Clearly my reputation preceded me. Their thoughts were buzzing with anxiety and anger, making them difficult to read.
I tried again. “Where is Dr. Jacobs?”
Again, silence.
The driver was torn between watching me in the rearview mirror and trying to pay attention to the cars around him. “I’m just going to keep asking,” I said, using that flat tone that so many humans—well, the ones who knew the truth about me—interpreted as threatening.
“He’s already on location,” the driver said curtly. “Because of the delay.”
Ah yes, the delay again. The fifteen minutes I’d suggested as the time I required had stretched into an hour and then two and then more before anyone had shown up to retrieve me.
It was already late afternoon. The sun was a bright orange blaze in the west, reflecting off mirrored high-rise windows in bright flashes as we passed.
Had we missed the meeting? Was that Jacobs’s brilliant plan? Just not show up?
I forced myself to inhale and then exhale to a count of ten. Staying calm and alert was my best bet.
Watching out the window, I counted off blocks and turns, memorizing our route. It kept my brain occupied.
When we drove past the sweeping entrance for the Manderlay Hotel, I didn’t think much about it, except to note that it looked like something out of a movie. The bustling valets and bellmen in red coats, the flags flapping on poles overhead, and the limousines idling in the drive.
But then the van slowed and pulled into the attached parking garage. The Manderlay? Seriously?
I moved to the edge of my seat. Maybe we were going somewhere else, another building that used the same garage.
But no, the driver was following the signs inside for hotel parking.
What the hell? The Manderlay looked expensive. Luxury, even. I would have felt better pulling up to a former meat-packing plant full of rats and tetanus or something.
This just didn’t make sense: a fight to the death in a place that turned down your covers and didn’t bolt the remote to the bedside table. I could understand why Jacobs would pick a nice place for the duration of the trials. Laughlin, too. And the as-yet-unknown military contacts who would be judging the trials. (Jacobs called them the Committee.)
But why bring me here? I was missing something, some important detail or fact that would make it all click. It made me uneasy. If one of my assumptions was wrong, then my read of the entire situation—and my plans, accordingly—might be wrong.
The driver parked and cut the engine.
I stood up, my head bent to avoid the roof, but before I could start for the van door, the guard closest to me, the nervous one, held up his hand to stop me. “No,” he said loudly, as if speaking to a stupid but large puppy. One with sharp teeth.
I raised my eyebrows. “I am fully fluent in English and four other languages. There’s no need to shout. I am more than capable of understanding basic human speech.”
He twitched at the word human but otherwise ignored me. I couldn’t resist tweaking him, though. “For example, no, bù, nein, nyet, la.”
No longer fearing for my life made me bold in ways that were probably not so good for my survival.
He glared at me as he climbed out of the van with his buddies.
I made him uncomfortable, which meant I’d need to keep an eye on him, if he was sticking around for the duration. Someone that edgy might be more likely to shoot first and never ask questions. Maybe I could use that to my advantage.
I watched as the four of them did a visual sweep of the area.
Apparently, someone was worried I’d die on the way to my death match. Interesting.
The guard nearest me gave a nod toward me through the van’s tinted windows.
As soon as I stepped out, the four of them positioned themselves around me, two in front and two in back, and led the way through the garage to a set of doors marked LOBBY.
Really? This should be fun.
Beyond the doors, the smell of new carpeting and fresh paint in a recently redecorated walkway filled my nose, making it hard to breathe until I adjusted.
The walkway had a few other people in it—families, a few couples, some of them heading toward the garage, others ahead of us in the trek to the lobby.
We earned curious glances, but nothing more. My hands weren’t bound, and I was dressed in my regular clothes. If anything, I probably looked more like the privileged child of someone important—progeny worth protecting, coddling even. Oh, hello, irony.
As soon as we reached the polished black-and-white floor of the lobby, my escorts took a sharp left at the koi pond in the center of the room, heading for a narrow hallway tucked to the side of the massive mahogany registration desk.
At the end of the hallway, we went through a set of swinging wooden doors and ended up in a significantly less posh section of the hall. Linoleum floors, thick yellow paint on the walls, the faint smell of old food, and rolling carts full of folding chairs stacked on either side. A service corridor, most likely.
One short trip up in a battered and small elevator to the third floor, and we’d arrived. To where, exactly, I wasn’t sure. But Dr. Jacobs was there waiting, as the doors rolled back.
He reached in, past my guards, and hauled me out, his hand tight enough to bruise my forearm. “What took you so long?” he hissed at me, flecks of spit landing on my cheek.
“We stopped to sightsee,” I snapped, pulling my arm back. As if I’d been even remotely in control of our arrival time.
He released me, shaking his hand as if touching me had in some way contaminated his skin. I’d never seen him this agitated. Normally, the angrier he was, the more pleasant he got. When the man smiled, it was absolutely terrifying.
But this…this reaction was something else.
As the guards exited the elevator and fanned out in what proved to be another service corridor, I studied Jacobs, rubbing my forearm. He wore an outdated suit (that still screamed money) beneath his pristine, white lab coat, his cheeks were flushed, and his forehead was damp with perspiration.
Either he was coming down with a deadly disease (fingers crossed!) or this was Dr. Jacobs being nervous. I wanted to enjoy his misery, but if he was worried, I wasn’t sure what that meant for me. His thoughts were too jumbled and buzzy with adrenaline for me to read.
He reached into a white plastic bag resting on an abandoned room service cart behind him, pulled out a bundle of bright red fabric, and thrust it at me.
I took it reluctantly. Unfolded, it proved to be a sweatshirt with UW–MADISON in big white letters across the front. The letters were soft around the edges from wear, and the cuffs were ragged. This was definitely not new.
I glanced at him in question, and he held up an equally battered backpack.
Not mine. This one was dark blue with a tiny, yellow Minion figure dangling from a keychain attached to the hook strap at the top. From the shape of the bag, it appeared to be full of books or something equally weighty. That was…strange.
“It’s not ideal, I realize,” Dr. Jacobs said. “But it will have to do. We had a fully detailed and tailored navy uniform all ready for you, but the location was not—” He cut himself off.
Ah, the venue change from this morning. Evidently Jacobs had assumed we’d be at a military base of some kind. That, or he’d gotten bad intel. Either way, that explained his foul mood and the delay while he scrambled for a Plan B.
“Just put it all on.” Jacobs dropped the bag at my feet, where it landed with a solid thud. “These, too.” He fished a small, familiar-looking package from his lab coat pocket: tinted contact lenses, the same brand I’d worn every day for years.
He tossed them at me, and I caught them automatically.
But when I hesitated, still trying to piece together what was going on here, Jacobs waved a hand at me, as if that would cause some kind of magical transformation, instant wardrobe shift, and I felt a flash of anger.
I’d crossed a lot of lines in pursuit of my goal, and I’d given up a lot of things; rather, I’d had them taken from me. Freedom, individuality, basic human rights (assuming I was entitled to them). Changing my appearance on command was a relatively small straw by comparison, but it felt like the last one. I was not a toy, not a lab monkey to be dressed up and paraded around for the mockery and pleasure of others.
But I was so close to the end, just minutes away from the meeting that would change everything. What was one more violation if it got me closer to my objective?
Gritting my teeth, I turned my back on Jacobs and the guards. I pulled the sweatshirt over my head first. It smelled faintly of bonfire smoke and spicy deodorant, but not unpleasantly so. And it was about three sizes too big; my arms swam in the armholes, and the hem dropped halfway down to my knees.
I ignored the backpack at my feet for the moment and concentrated next on carefully tearing open the packaging on the contact lenses. I was used to doing this at the bathroom counter with a mirror in front of me, so it took me an extra few seconds to figure out how to juggle the packages and then get the lenses in my eyes without a guide.
