She puts an arm around my shoulders. “I don’t know if I can either.”
I stare. “You mean you haven’t…”
“Not since finding her.” She shakes her head. Looks down. “I’m terrified. I’ve lost loved ones before, Alec. It’s not real until you look. And grief is life-changing. I don’t want it to be real. I don’t want to change, to become more bitter, more vengeful.”
I’m silent. I would give anything to see her murderer dead. Anything to see them suffer the same fate she did. But I know it won’t happen. No one can trace the murder to anyone.
“But we both have to get up there eventually,” Lindsay says. “Would you like to do it together?”
I take a deep breath. Nod. “Together.
We stand, arm in arm, mother and best friend, and walk to the coffin. The body inside is a gruesome sight. Laced with cuts and bruises and gunshot wounds. Face marred with injuries deeper than her facial structure.
The police are right. She’s unrecognizable. She doesn’t even look human.
Lindsay makes an agonized sound and I can’t take my own pain. Tears are running down my face and I’m staring at the woman who stood up for me, time and time again.
“Thank you, Kate,” I whisper. “Thank you for being my friend.”
Kate
“Project Five is very defiant. Needs to be broken before experimentation.”
-Dr. Pelletier’s notes
Twenty-Four
A few days in the cage and a few things I am absolutely sure about.
One: I’m not the fighter I thought I was. Two: Even as a potentially insane wolf man, Zane knows how to fight. And three: the fact that I feel weak in his presence and the fact that he refuses to join in my crusade against Richard Glass does not make him any less attractive.
I wish I didn’t find him so irresistibly good-looking. It would make this all so much easier. I have to focus. I have to get out of here and stop Glass and stop the experiments.
It’s difficult when an insane and broken man is always on my mind. I wish he would come with me. I wish he would join me. I wish he didn’t think I was stupid for fighting. I wish for so many things.
I wish I could fight.
Zane works with me, all night, every night. Because I’m weak and rush too often and don’t know how to defend myself. That’s what he tells me. That I can’t do this.
Stop.
I do. Heavy breaths trailing from my lips and I’m on my hands and knees. I stand, step back. Stop fighting. I wipe the blood from my mouth.
Another thing I have learned: Zane does not take it easy because I am a girl. I have taken beatings. Split lip, bruising arms, sore muscles. The average day with Zane.
He studies my face. You’re distracted. Your eyes are all over the place. He starts waving his hands around, making his point with wild gestures. Inside the cage, outside the cage, on the wall, on the floor. Just not where they need to be.
Swallowing a smart response, biting my lip, pushing back stubborn pride and anger. I don’t like being lectured. I want to rebel, do exactly what he’s telling me not to do.
Not today, not here, not when he’s my only chance.
Try again, he says. Fists are ready and he’s holding himself like the warrior he used to be. Focused. Ready. Prepared to fight.
Don’t waste a moment.
I swing a leg forward to hit him in the side. Fail. Nothing ever works against Zane. He grabs my ankle, shoves my foot away, sending me stumbling for balance.
A fist for my cheek. Hastily, too quickly, I put up my hands to block my face from dark scarlet. His punch hits my forearm hard and I’m stepping back again, trying to balance against his force.
I lunge forward. Throw a punch.
He’s always ready. He always knows. He grabs my fist, pulls me stumbling closer. Again. I swing and he’s got both wrists pinned in one hand.
Trouble.
I look away. Because he’s beaten me again, because I’m so weak, because I don’t know what else to do.
I stare at the scratches on the wall behind him. The scars of his past. Scars that broke him. Destructive marks turning a brave man into a coward.
Fingers on my chin. Forcing me to look at him again. My heart shatters and I’m looking into those bizarrely blue eyes again.
Focus on me, he says, still holding my hands down, still keeping me still, still making me fight for the skills he knows I need.
Why? Why should I focus on him? So he can use my attraction to him against me. What’s the point? Prove he’s the better fighter. How is this supposed to help me? It isn’t. He just wants to keep my eyes away from the wall, away from the scars.
Focus.
Focus on what? On him? On his fighting? On what?
Focus on his weaknesses.
I study his face. Strong jaw. Hard eyes. Calm composure. He’s so put together, so at ease, a fighter through and through. The perfect soldier.
I shake my head. Not perfect. He can’t be. There has to be something I can use to his disadvantage.
Think. Think. Think.
Oh.
Every time I attack him, every time I move, he uses my own force against me. He—
Too late to figure it out. Zane releases my wrists with a shove. I hit the cage’s bars, spine striking metal.
Ruthless. Even if pride would allow me to ask him to stop, he wouldn’t. This doesn’t end until something is accomplished, until I learn how to defend myself.
A classic Kate move. I knee him in the gut. A classic Zane move. He throws a punch. I duck under his fist and swing my leg back up, kicking his jaw, sending him stumbling, smiling.
Zane reaches for me. But I understand him better now. He uses my strength against me, predicts everything. A master of chess. I have to act without thinking. I have to let myself go. Give him nothing to predict.
I duck under his arms. He turns. Swings again. An instinctive hand grabs his fist. Another fist from his other hand. I block it with a forearm.
He stops, rocks back on his heels, studies me. I back up, curl fingers around the bars of our cage, get ready for anything.
He jumps forward. I don’t know what I’m doing until it’s done. I lash out, kicking him in the chest with both feet, hands tight around the cage bars.
Stumbling back. A surprised grunt. Zane watches me. You have natural talent, he notes. It’s very impressive.
I smirk. “Yeah?”
Talent isn’t good enough.
A mystery. I’m standing. Smug, confident, at ease. Now, he’s lunging forward. Now, I go to kick him back again. Now, he ducks under my feet, grabs me, throws me to the ground. I land on my back, hard steel against my spine.
I grimace. Glare. I was doing good. Incredible. Perfect. But he knows how to use confidence against people, knows how to make their strength their weaknesses.
Stupid.
I lash out, leg swinging. He falls, my foot knocking his legs out from under him. He catches himself on his hands.
Close. Too close. Not close enough.
A push-up above my body, holding himself up, face inches away. He shakes his head. Who are you, Katherine McCallister?
I tear my eyes away from mesmerizing lips. Attraction is powerful when he’s so close. “There’s not a simple answer to that, wolf-boy,” I say, smirking.
He pauses, leans closer. When I move, step back into a corner. He’s coming.
Zane pushes himself up and crosses the cage, leaning against the wall, a smooth emotionless mask on his face and in his stance. Like nothing just happened.
I back up, sitting against the wall, leaning against cold bars. I don’t understand how he could possibly know that someone was coming but there was cold seriousness in his eyes as he mouthed the words. I didn’t dare argue.
Ten seconds after we’ve adjusted ourselves, Pelletier walks in the room with two armed men. “So,” Pelletier says, “You survived a night with the wolf.”
Hard, cold, deadly. I think that if lo
oks could kill he would be dead by now. My eyes are hard and lifeless and my lips are sealed by composure I didn’t know I had, didn’t think I was capable of.
It’s this cage.
I’m harmless in here and there are bars standing between me and my enemies and there is nothing else for me to do but be silent.
Pelletier sighs, turns to the armed men, nods at them. They open the cage and step inside, Pelletier behind them.
I steel myself. A gun at my head. No chance of escape. Not today, not when I don’t know how to fight an armed man, not when fighting could get me killed.
A glance in Zane’s direction and I frown. The other man is pointing a gun at him but it doesn’t seem to bother the mute. He sits there, relaxed, as Pelletier approaches him. Zane holds out his arm and Pelletier sticks him with a needle, filling the tiny syringe with blood. And then he turns to me.
I’ve always hated needles.
Clenching my jaw, watching Pelletier with arctic eyes, I sit against the bars. Pelletier steps closer, a second syringe in hand. I glance at Zane. He smirks, even though there’s a gun against his head. This must be a piece of the Zane that was a spy, not the broken mute. The man who would dare stand up against Richard Glass, without worry or fear.
I gasp. Stare at the needle in my arm. Watch the blood drain out of my arm, into the glass.
Pelletier smiles. Taps the glass syringe. Glances at a very serious Zane. “You know what he can do,” he says. “And with a little research, you’ll be like him.” He pauses, cocks his head, taps the syringe thoughtfully. “Well, not just like him. Better than him. Stronger, faster, stable.”
What makes you think I’m stable now? I’m not Zane, I’m not crazy, I don’t turn into wolf when I get too angry. But I am not a sane sort of person. I never have been. If they change me, I’ll be worse than Zane.
I glare. Say nothing. Clench my fists.
“You have a choice, Miss McCallister. Choose to be Project Five, of your own free will, and you will be able to see your mother again,” he says. “You fight it and you will never step out of this building.”
“No.”
Pelletier sighs. “Don’t be a fool, Katherine. Projects who rebel end up crazy. Cooperation is the only thing keeping you sane.”
“Insanity, it is.” I cross my arms. Stubborn. “I would rather be crazy than a coward.”
“You would rather keep your pride than let your mother know you’re okay?”
Am I okay?
I shake my head. “If she knew what was going on, she would understand,” I say, with a voice of ice. “I will not, in any way, make this easier for you. You chose me as your next Project, and you will have to deal with the consequences of that choice.”
I stand, meet his eyes, stand tall. “Don’t mistake me for someone you can manipulate, Dr. Pelletier. I have been down that road and I will not go back. If you want a cooperative experiment, pick someone else.”
Stunned silence. He’s surprised and frustrated and doesn’t know what to do.
I step closer. “Don’t you get it?” I whisper. “You thought I would be your perfect experiment. You’re an idiot. You can’t intimidate, you can’t threaten me. I’m not afraid of you.”
I shake my head. “And I am the most vengeful rebel you could have chosen. I will always choose insanity over control.
“You have a choice, Pelletier,” I say. “Make me an experiment and deal with the consequences of a crazy girl looking for revenge. Or let me go and pray I’ll leave you alone. Your choice.”
Flat eyes. “I will return, Katherine McCallister. And when I do, be prepared to lose yourself the way Zane has. You will be an experiment.”
“And you have made a dangerous enemy today.”
He glares. Turns, slams the door, disappears. Angry, frustrated, determined.
I lean forward, forehead on the bars, fingers curling around metal, a sigh escaping through a set frown. I will do it. I will become Pelletier’s worse nightmare, the experiment that escapes, that defeats Richard Glass, that brings down this whole place.
Crazy or not, I’m going to beat them.
Twenty-Five
Months pass.
Zane says it takes Pelletier months to plan out experimentation. He says they find an animal, pair human genes with the animal’s genes. He says he has to calibrate the genes so they’ll connect.
Good. I have no problem with this. I need Zane to teach me how to fight. Really fight. And that will take time.
I’m not excited to deal with insanity, either.
Sometimes, I wonder if that’s why Zane refuses to fight back. It wasn’t the experiment itself that broke him. It was the insanity that came with it.
It feels close. Like I’ve already lost myself to it. Like I’m already crazy. Like I will lose control at any given point. Not possible. I have not been experimented on. It will be a long time before that happens.
And my time in the cage passes slowly.
The routineness of life here makes everything blur together in slow motion, never moving fast enough, never changing, never more than an existence. By night, when the room is empty, Zane trains me. By day, he sleeps.
I don’t sleep. How could I, knowing what I have to prepare for, knowing wild insanity is so close, knowing I have to stop a man that my father couldn’t even stop? How could I sleep?
Besides, I still have nightmares. Every time I close my eyes, every time I fall silent, every time I let my guard down. Relentless. Unforgiving. Terrifying.
Today is no exception.
I wake up with a scream. A jolt of fear. A hand shaking my shoulder, snapping me out of the dream.
Opening my eyes, breathing hard, putting a hand over my mouth, I look at a troubled Zane. For a minute, I forget he won’t help me more than some sparring, forget I’m not supposed to like him. I don’t know how to not be attracted to him.
His brow is furrowed, eyes so intensely blue, mouth turned down in a frown I sometimes think is stuck in place. Breathing fast, hand on my shoulder, hair pushed away from his face, I can’t help but stare. He’s gorgeous and, oh, does he look good without a shirt on.
Nightmare? he asks, mouthing the words he will never speak.
I nod. “It’s been so long. I keep thinking I can make them stop, push them away with fearlessness, but they always come back.”
Zane is shaking his head. Fearlessness is impossible, Kate.
“I must be impossible then,” I say. “Because I have been fearless most of my life. Nothing scared me. Not until this mess.”
Zane offers a hand, pulls me into a sitting position. He studies my face. And starts shaking his head.
It makes me feel defensive. “What?”
It’s uncanny, he explains. You are so much like I was before they changed me. Defiant, angry, vengeful, oblivious to your own fear.
“It’s not that I’m oblivious,” I say. “I know when I’m afraid. But I refuse to feel it. Weakness is not something I want to see in myself.”
Blue eyes on fire, still shaking his head, Zane grabs my chin. I think I forget to breathe, think, and he almost smiles. You’re quite the young woman. Pelletier doesn’t know what he’s got himself into.
I can’t fight it. I grin. Because complacent is not a word in my vocabulary, because cooperation is not something I understand, because quitting is beyond my compression.
“I—”
Stop. Because Zane is putting a finger over his lips. Because he’s standing, stepping away, leaning against the steel wall. Because Pelletier is back.
I’m not ready. I’m not ready to go insane. I’m not ready to be an experiment. I’m not ready to attempt escape. I’m not ready to fight.
I stare at Zane, at the broken man who will not fight, at the fallen hero who cannot help me. What do I do? How can I survive this? Can I somehow stay sane enough to continue the fight against Richard Glass? I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
Zane meets my gaze with eyes tha
t seem far too steady for an insane wolf man. You can do it, he mouths. Finish what your father and his organization started. Escape, end the experiments, kill Richard Glass. If anyone can do it, you can. You are the last hope.
I’m leaning back against the cage bars. I have to escape. Whether they change me or not, whether I end up more crazy than Zane or not, I have to get out of here. I’ve been training for months with Zane. Long enough that I can hold my own in a fight. Long enough that I might even be able to kill Glass.
Pelletier walks in. “Have you changed your mind?” he asks, cutting straight to the point. “Or are you still determined to be a fool?”
“I will not willingly be a Project. Are you willing to risk making an even greater enemy out of me than you already have?”
“Tomorrow, it is, then,” Pelletier says. “Tomorrow morning, you become a monster. Make no mistake, Katherine McCallister,” he says. “You became a Project the moment you awoke in a cage.
“Prepare yourself, Miss McCallister. First thing tomorrow morning, your experimentation begins.
Twenty-Six
You won’t make it out before the experimentation.
I close my eyes, shutting away Zane’s words, avoiding seeing the words he mouths, words I don’t want to see or hear or imagine. Words are dangerous things. They change me, manipulate me, make me feel things I don’t want to feel.
“Why not?” I ask, voice raw, reluctant eyes on Zane again.
Because they know you will try. I remember the experiment. Pelletier will have several armed men with him tomorrow. You fight them and they’ll just knock you out and drag you into the lab.
I lean my head back with a sigh. Tired. Unprepared. Defeated. “So I will become the next experiment. It doesn’t matter what I do.”
Zane stands, crouches down in front of me. It doesn’t have to stop you. You’ll be stronger, faster, more able than anyone else. As a fighter, nearly unstoppable. But you have to keep yourself in check. Don’t lose yourself to anger or insanity. Control yourself and you will be practically invincible. This is Richard Glass’s Invincible Project. Use that supposed invincibility against him. Make him wish he’d never even considered using you.
The Invincibles (Book 1): Trapped: A girl. A monster. A hero. Page 11
