Project Paper Doll: The Trials

by Stacey Kade

  But she pushed against me gently, and I released her, setting her on her feet.

  “No matter what happens, it was worth it,” she said. Then she pushed me out of the way, and the doors opened slowly out into the hall.

  And that should have been my first clue that even if she wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, she had a better idea than I did.

  The floor shook with the boot steps of black-uniformed men in tinted face shields and unmarked body armor as they poured through the doors. Not the police anymore.

  One of them pulled Rachel out into the hall, “rescuing” her presumably. “Get down, get down, get down!” Their shouts overlapped one another, making it hard to understand the individual words, but the gist was clear.

  Ariane knelt on the ground, her hands raised above her head, offering no resistance. She looked so small and vulnerable. And they didn’t seem to care, surrounding her and blocking my view of her until I caught just flashes of her pale hair in the gaps between them.

  “It’s not her. You’re looking for that one,” I shouted at them, pointing at Ford’s body.

  But that caused only more angry shouting and more guns pointing at me until I sank to my knees as well.

  “That boy is my patient. He’s in my care. Do not harm him,” Emerson shouted from his position near the wall.

  “I’ve got three dead and two injured,” one of the men in the center of the room said into his radio. “Hostiles are contained.”

  Did he mean Ariane and me? I guess, considering we were the only ones currently being threatened with weapons, three guys on me and about six on her.

  “She’s not hostile,” I snapped. I couldn’t say the same for myself; I was feeling a little angry and misunderstood at the moment.

  The lights sputtered overhead.

  “Zane. Don’t.” Ariane’s voice came through loud and clear.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. Don’t—”

  But I didn’t get to hear what she was forbidding me to do because as quickly as the strike team had flowed in, the six surrounding Ariane had her up on her feet and moving out of the room.

  “Hey!” I protested. “Where are you taking her?” I tried to stand, but the business end of a rifle suddenly two inches from the end of my nose convinced me otherwise.

  A familiar figure came through the doors then. Justine, looking much thinner in a dark suit, her dark-red hair sleek and smooth in a knot at her neck. It took me an extra second to recognize her without her “hassled average mom” disguise.

  “Justine.” I sank back on my heels in relief at the sight of a familiar and theoretically friendly face. “Where are they taking Ariane?”

  She ignored me, listening to the man reporting in to her and surveying the room and the damage.

  “Justine!” I bellowed.

  And this time, she glanced in my direction, her forehead wrinkling with annoyance, as though I were the neighbor’s puppy left unattended and barking on the porch all night long.

  “Where are they taking her?” I demanded.

  She stared at me, as if she’d never seen me before. “Taking who?” she asked.

  Cold seeped into my skin. She’d set this up. She’d gone to my mom to orchestrate that news story, to push us out of hiding and to make the Committee/DOD run. She probably wasn’t even “here,” officially. And if this wasn’t official, then that would make it even easier for Ariane to disappear. Forever. “You know who!” I shouted.

  She returned her attention to the man on her team, as if I didn’t exist.

  No. Just no. Not after all of this. “Justine! You have to tell me. You can’t lock her up. You can’t just take her away! She has rights!” Except…did she? Did any of us these days, let alone someone who wasn’t entirely human?

  “If I may?” Emerson approached the guys guarding me, who were getting a little twitchy with my shouting. Not that I was going to stop. They wouldn’t, most likely, shoot me just for being loud. The paperwork would be a bitch. “I’m his physician,” he added.

  Justine gave a nod, and they let him approach, though they didn’t withdraw. None of them even asked why I would have a doctor here, which should have struck at least one of them as odd.

  “Not now.” I glared at him. “They took Ariane!” As if he hadn’t witnessed it himself. But I certainly hadn’t heard him protesting.

  “Zane.” Emerson squeezed my shoulder and then handed me a wad of tissue from his pocket. “Wipe your nose, calm down, and listen.”

  I hadn’t even realized my nose was bleeding again. Damn it. I snatched the tissues from him and cleaned up my face.

  “You’re not going to be able to help her if you’re dead or tucked away in a cell that they’re doing their best to forget exists,” he said quietly.

  He smiled placidly at the armed men surrounding us.

  “These gentlemen are just doing their job,” he said in a louder voice. Then he muttered, “So just shut up for now and wait for your moment.”

  He was, unfortunately, right. And I had to figure he knew what he was talking about, as he was the only one who’d successfully struck a deal with Justine. And he’d survived.

  With an effort I gritted my teeth and swallowed my protests, even when Justine, after a final look around the room, walked out, followed by the men guarding me.

  Before I could get to my feet, though, EMTs were rushing in to tend to Dr. Jacobs and the injured GTX guard, and there were lots of angry Chicago police officers with them.

  Better to stay down, then. I wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

  So, I waited, impatience burning in me, for the right moment, the one that would be mine.

  Six hours later—after I was mysteriously released from police custody to my mom—I realized that Emerson St. John’s seemingly sound advice made a rather large and risky assumption: that there would ever be a more advantageous moment.

  And there were no such guarantees. Ever.

  “ZANE! COME ON, MAN, YOU’RE going to make me late for class!” Quinn pounded on my bedroom door impatiently.

  “In a minute,” I said, not bothering to look up from my laptop. I had time for one more e-mail. The best thing was that once you figured out the Homeland Security address formula—firstname.lastname@dhs.gov—you could e-mail any DHS employee whose full name you knew.

  Last month, after I got back from my treatment and recovery at Emerson’s lab, I’d started out looking for a reference to Justine, any Justine. When I couldn’t find her, I’d begun e-mailing every valid address I could find at that domain with a condensed version of the story, then asking if the recipient knew anything about Justine or Ariane.

  Most of the e-mails went unanswered. Some of them came back with very carefully worded threats. I’d even gotten several “anonymous” phone calls, warning me to stop.

  Right. I’d taken those as signs that I was getting closer than they wanted me to be. That, or I was just annoying them. Which was fine. If I had to be the irritating mosquito and risk getting swatted to get their attention, so be it.

  It was December now, and I’d last seen Ariane over two months ago. With every day that passed, it felt more and more like I’d never see her again. Life had returned to almost normal, and sometimes it seemed like I’d made her up. I didn’t even have a picture of her.

  “Now, asshole!” Quinn said with an extra thump on the door for emphasis. “Let’s go, or you can find your own way.”

  The funny thing was, even with the irritation in his voice, I could tell he wasn’t really angry.

  Since Quinn had come back to live in Wingate after the incident with GTX and Dr. Jacobs, he’d mellowed considerably. We’d talked a little about what had happened, but mostly he seemed to be trying to forget it and move on. He was taking classes at New Century Community College and working at Dick’s Sporting Goods in his spare time. His arm had healed, but his scholarship to Madison was long gone. And he actually seemed much happier. It
had occurred to me that as hard as my dad had ridden me as a “failure,” Quinn probably hadn’t had it much easier as “the success.” No room for mistakes. No room to breathe. No wonder he’d flunked out. The pressure alone must have sucked.

  So we were getting along a lot better. That, however, did not mean I wanted to push him too far. It was a long walk to school, and Trey was on Rachel duty this week. She needed someone to drive her since the bank had repossessed her car.

  “Okay, okay,” I shouted.

  I hit SEND on the last e-mail, grabbed my backpack where it hung behind me on the desk chair, and then headed for the door before doubling back for my coat.

  It was supposed to snow today. Again. And one of the lasting side effects of Emerson’s viral experiment was that I still had trouble regulating my temperature. When it was cold, I was freezing.

  Quinn was waiting at the table in the kitchen when I got there, his foot jiggling with impatience.

  After opening the pantry cabinet I grabbed the last foil-wrapped package of Pop-Tarts from where I’d hidden it behind the oatmeal my mom had purchased and sent home with me. I stuffed them, wrapper and all, into my mouth, while I shrugged into my coat.

  My dad watched from his perch at the island, coffee mug in hand. “Did your mother buy that for you?” my dad asked, his mouth tight with disgust. “You look like you’re about to go shovel manure.”

  I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders. “Well, it’s called a barn coat, I think,” I said, after taking the Pop-Tart package out of my mouth. And yes, it had been a gift from my mom, who was doing her best to make up for lost time and the fact that her place, an apartment on the other side of Wingate, was too small for me or Quinn to join her right now. But as soon as her role as a witness in Dr. Jacobs’s trial was over and she could find another job (maybe), that would change, she hoped. I thought that was a little overly optimistic, but she was trying, so whatever. I wasn’t going to crap all over her dream.

  “Because you wear it in one or because you smell like one?” Quinn asked, pretending to consider the question seriously.

  “One more crack about my coat, and I’ll leave it in your car so that girl in your Poli Sci class thinks it’s yours,” I said around a mouthful of strawberry Pop-Tart.

  Quinn immediately held his hands up in surrender, his key ring looped around his finger. “Not cool.” Then he got up and led the way out the door.

  “Bye, Dad,” I said, more out of habit than anything else.

  He grunted in response but made no further attempt at communication, critical or otherwise.

  Ever since GTX had faltered in the public eye, he’d seemed smaller somehow and almost bewildered, a man in a changed world without any idea how to adjust. He’d lost his guiding star. And he blamed me for it, unquestionably. But he had at least tried to help me, cooperating with the news report about my “abduction.”

  That being said, it didn’t make up for the fact that he’d pretty much left me for dead in a parking lot, and we both knew it. So there really wasn’t much he could do or say in retaliation.

  And frankly, it was better that way.

  But if home had gotten a little better since I’d come back, school was worse.

  How had I accumulated so many memories of Ariane in such a short amount of time? I saw her everywhere, my heart picking up an extra beat every time I caught a flash of pale hair or heard a laugh that sort of sounded like hers.

  It was never her.

  On my first day back at school, I’d used the last of my waning abilities to pop open her locker. Ariane’s official story was, I guess, that she and her father had moved away unexpectedly. The school hadn’t needed her locker and there was no one to claim her stuff, so the office just left everything there.

  Her locker was, as far as I could tell, exactly how she’d left it. No personal items at all, unsurprisingly. Just textbooks in a neat line, with matching folders and notebooks, and maybe a hint of dust and lemons.

  I’d stolen one of her notebooks, which was filled with a careful precise script that I recognized from sitting behind her in class, and the one note she’d written me all those months ago.

  I just had so little of her.

  According to Linwood Academy High School, when I’d called them pretending to be the parent of a concerned friend, Ford, Nixon, and Carter had transferred to a private school in some small European country. Never to be heard from again, of course. That was the official story for their fate.

  I was swimming in official stories these days. Or just plain gaps in information. No one had ever reported the discovery of Carter’s body or Adam’s.

  Based on what I’d heard last from Emerson, Adam’s family was still searching for him, and I hated that. But I didn’t know what either of us could do without pulling the entire house of cover-ups down around our ears. Emerson agreed.

  So I just kept doing what I could—going to school, sending e-mails, waiting for my freaking moment, whenever or whatever that was.

  Quinn dropped me off at school with just minutes before the first bell, which was how I preferred it these days. I didn’t want to be hanging around the parking lot, trying to pretend everything was okay.

  My morning classes were, as usual, endless. I lived for the moments between when I could check my e-mail on my phone, even though I knew that odds were against my ever hearing anything useful. I had to keep trying.

  Reaching lunch every day felt like an accomplishment. But I wasn’t the only one suffering.

  Rachel was sitting alone at the table today. Pretty much every day now.

  “Hey,” I said, setting my tray down next to hers.

  “Missing your little girlfriend? Looking for an easy substitute?” she asked as I sat down.

  I just waited, staring at her. She still snapped at people, but it was more like an automatic defense mechanism. She had no ground to stand on, and she knew it.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, dropping her fork in her wilted salad.

  If my dad was sort of lost without GTX, Rachel was even worse off. She’d have rather pretended that the last few months hadn’t happened, but that wasn’t an option.

  The company still existed, but her grandfather was no longer in charge. Bedridden and partially paralyzed from the bullet that had damaged his spine, he would never be in charge again. Prosecutors were still trying to decide if he was even fit to stand trial on the ethics charges being brought against him, thanks to my mom’s very public allegations.

  So, yeah, the shine was definitely off GTX and the entire Jacobs family.

  Rachel hunched her shoulders a little tighter. Her sweater, in her characteristic red, looked too thin for the weather. Her tan had faded. No one to take her on expensive vacations to warm places anymore.

  “How’s everything going?” I asked.

  “I wish everyone would stop asking me that,” she said, but the heat was missing from her tone. “It’s going crappy. How else should it be going? My grandfather”—she said the word like it tasted gross—“is a sicko perv criminal, my father is useless, and my…” She trailed off and shook her head.

  For a second, I thought she was going to mention Ariane. Her sister. Or her sisters, if you counted Ford. That, too, had to do a number on her head.

  But instead, she said, “My mom is coming home next week.”

  I looked up from my pizza, startled. “Really?”

  “My grandfather is the one who pulled strings to put her away in the first place, and without him around to keep pulling…” She shrugged. “Besides, my dad has no clue what to do without someone telling him. I think he’s hoping she’ll be able to boss him around.”

  I imagined Rachel in that huge, empty house without anyone checking on her now. Her grandfather had been the only relative to visit her fairly regularly. Now that her dad was laid off, another casualty of the fallout from this scandal, he should have been there more often, but somehow I doubted it. They still had the house only because Dr. Jacobs had bought i
t through an LLC separate from his other enterprises—the one saving grace he’d provided his granddaughter.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t.” Rachel waved her hand, and the bangle bracelets on her arm gave off halfhearted chimes, as if they couldn’t be bothered anymore, either.

  She retrieved her fork from her salad and stabbed the lettuce with more force than was necessary.

  Guess that conversation was over. It had lasted longer than most of the ones I had with her, or anyone else, these days.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket surreptitiously to check e-mail.

  “You know that’s never going to work. She’s gone,” Rachel said, gesturing at my phone with her fork.

  I ignored her.

  “I’m serious, Zane.” She touched my arm, a quick, fleeting brush almost as if she was afraid I’d shove her away.

  I looked up to find her frowning at me. Genuine concern looked strange on her face, like she was sitting on something uncomfortable.

  “How long are you going to keep that up?” she asked. She knew, if only in general, about what I was doing because I’d been forced to ask if she’d heard anything while I’d been away.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. That’s why you’re glued to your phone twenty-four-seven and you barely leave your house anymore.”

  “I’m recovering from severe trauma and memory loss, remember?” I asked tightly. That was my official story. Yeah, I got one, too. I’d been “found” in the conference room along with the injured and the dead, which only lent credence to my mother’s claims of kidnapping. Jacobs denied it, of course, but Laughlin was too dead to do the same, so most of the blame for my abduction and the mass shooting landed on him.

  My weeks of mental and emotional “recovery,” as well as my continuing memory loss, had been officially documented at a facility I’d never seen. Emerson had handed me the paperwork on my way out of his lab. But no one had even bothered to ask for it yet. More of DHS’s influence, I was sure.

  Rachel snorted. “Yeah, okay. You’re crazy if you think anyone believes that.”

  “Whatever,” I muttered.