The Trials

by Stacey Kade

  “You’ve seen Adam,” I said to Ariane lightly. “He’s the first test case. That’s pretty much as good as it gets. Though, you’re right, the asshole personality is definitely an unwanted side effect.”

  But she wouldn’t take the joke, her mouth a flat, unhappy line. “It is changing you. I’ve never seen you so quick to fight.”

  “Maybe because I would have lost before,” I pointed out.

  “You don’t need this,” she said. “You don’t need to—”

  “I don’t need what? The ability to actually make a difference? To help? To be something other than a useless lump of human?” The frustration in my voice came through loud and clear, even to me. My whole life I’d been second best, doubted, unable to do anything right. But Emerson had changed all of that. “Right now, I admit, I’ve still got the training wheels on, but give me a few more months and I’ll have it down.”

  “Down for what?” she demanded. “What will this do for you, except make your life more difficult and possibly shorter?”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “This is the first time I’ve had the chance to contribute in some way.”

  Backing away from me, she raised her eyebrows, the rest of her face a careful blank. “Is your ego so fragile that you cannot accept help in a situation that you never should have been in in the first place?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” I shot back.

  “This has nothing to do with helping me,” she said. “This is about you risking your life to become something you’re not.”

  “Yes, because you’re so comfortable with who you are,” I muttered, and immediately regretted it.

  She stiffened. “Maybe not. But I am who they made me. I wouldn’t choose it.”

  I was tired suddenly, of this fight, of fighting with her. After all of this, with everyone else after us, we were going to turn on each other?

  I met her gaze straight on. “And I wouldn’t choose who I was, either. That’s the problem.”

  “But I would,” she said softly. “That guy, he made me laugh. He showed me a world I didn’t even know existed. French kiss cookies and Puppy Chow and Rachel Jacobs covered in shaving cream and shrieking. Having a life, being normal.” She edged closer, touching my chin. “When I was stuck in the house, hiding behind my father’s Rules, that was all I ever wanted. It was like everyone else lived in a different reality than the one I was in. And I couldn’t get there, just had my face pressed against the glass, watching. Until you came up to me in the hall that day, looking so tired and angry. You wanted my help, wanted to bring me into that other reality.” Her eyes were shining with emotion, gratitude, love—I couldn’t pin it down, nor did I want to. It was rare enough that I didn’t want to diminish it by trying to classify it.

  “I hate to break it to you, but I’m not sure you got an accurate picture of regular life. Rachel coated in shaving cream wasn’t exactly a weekly event,” I said, my voice gruff.

  “No?” she asked, her mouth curving with amusement. “That would have been too much to hope for, I guess.”

  I reached out and pulled her toward me, her forehead resting against my collarbone. Her breath fluttered through the thin fabric of my T-shirt where the hoodie was unzipped, and I could feel it against my skin. It made my heart beat that much faster. She was here and real, after weeks of wondering if I’d ever see her again. I wanted to keep this moment under glass, preserve it forever just like this, but I couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stop the doubts from eating at me.

  I bent my head over hers. “But the thing is, normal is just another word for average,” I whispered in her ear, running my hands down her arms, careful of the fragile bones beneath. “Another word for nothing.” That was it, my deepest fear: that my father was right about me.

  She moved back, narrowly avoiding a collision with my jaw. “No, it’s not,” she said firmly. “Everyone’s version of normal is something different. And if you think it’s so bad, then consider what lengths people go to pretend to be normal.” She looked down, her pale lashes like snowflakes on her flushed cheeks. “For some, it might even be their highest aspiration.”

  And by tearing it down, I was tearing her down, spitting on what mattered to her, what she valued.

  “Okay,” I said. “I get it.” I wasn’t sure I could believe it for myself, but I understood why she did.

  Her shoulders relaxed a little, and she eased in under my chin, resting her head against my chest.

  I fought the urge to lift her up and pull her onto my lap, just to have her closer. “Ariane, even if you get to Ford, then what?” I asked. “You save all the people they’ve set out as targets, they’ll just set up and start over.” And kill Ariane for messing up their plans.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I’m still trying to figure that part out.”

  I waited for her to straighten up and remind me that we were in public and in no position to be taking a time-out, but evidently the connection that simple touch afforded was comforting to both of us.

  But then she shifted, pulling away from me with a swiftness that spoke of urgency.

  I tensed. “What’s wrong?”

  “He should have been here by now,” she said, her brows drawn together in concern.

  It took me a second to click out of the moment and understand what she meant. Adam. He should have arrived at the alleyway not long after we got here.

  I twisted in my seat, making sure to keep a hand on the counter for balance. She was right. Adam wasn’t out there.

  My chest tightened with anxiety as I ran through scenarios for his delay. Traffic accident, sudden relapse from the virus in his system, the Committee figuring out that we’d tricked them.

  Or, worse.

  “What if Ford found him?” The words spilled out before I could stop them. Adam had been more than confident in his ability to take on Ford and Ariane, before he’d been sidelined, despite everything that I’d told him. He wouldn’t have run from a fight, no matter how outmatched he was. An impulse I was beginning to recognize in myself. Was that volatility a side effect of the treatment, perhaps? I pushed that thought away.

  Ariane frowned. “She wouldn’t see him as competition. She’s looking for you. That’s who she believes is representing St. John.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Are you honestly telling me that if they somehow crossed paths, she wouldn’t take the opportunity to eliminate him, just in case?” And Adam’s arrogance almost guaranteed that he’d underestimate her and lose.

  Ariane bit her lip, thinking, though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

  “It’s a huge city,” she said. “The odds are against it. But if Ford saw him, she would likely—”

  A low hum filled the air, cutting out only to return a second later. It took me a moment to identify it. The phone in Ariane’s pocket, pressed between us. I could feel it against my leg, a vague tickle that I would not have likely even noticed in other circumstances.

  She took a step back, fumbling in her pocket to pull the phone free.

  A list of texts lit up the home screen.

  “I didn’t think to check it until now,” Ariane murmured. “I didn’t feel it before.”

  “Running for your life does tend to take up a lot of attention,” I said.

  She looked up from the phone just long enough to roll her eyes at me.

  Though I was looking at it upside down, I could tell that all the messages came from the same blocked number and contained the same demanding, condescending tone.

  Keep moving. What are you doing?

  Why are you stopped? You’re nowhere near your target.

  Remember what’s at stake, 107.

  Clearly, Dr. Jacobs had mastered the art of the nasty-gram. But it was the last one that really caught my attention.

  The others are closing in. You’re going to lose!

  “They’re tracking the targets too.” Damn. No one had ever said anything about that. But then again, they’d a
lso kept the whole multiple targets thing to themselves as well, so the lack of transparency on their part wasn’t really a surprise.

  It was a problem, though. That meant Jacobs would be able to tell when Ariane wasn’t making progress, or whatever he deemed as acceptable progress. I pictured two glowing dots on a computer screen, moving closer or farther from each other. This morning, Ariane had pretty much done nothing more than go in very large circles. And if they had a contingency plan, some kind of backup in place in the event of rebellion or a hybrid gone wild—I pictured military snipers positioning themselves on nearby rooftops—then she might be in very real danger.

  “Ariane, I think we might need to keep moving,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to the buildings across the street. I couldn’t see the roofline because of the angle, but suddenly it felt ominous that it was hidden from view. Like maybe we’d walked right into conditions ripe for a trap.

  But Ariane didn’t seem to hear me, focused on the messages still. “‘The others,’” she said slowly.

  “Yeah, I don’t…” I stopped as her meaning filtered through, and I felt a sudden stab of cold. “‘The others,’ as in more than one. More than Ford.” That could only be one person. Crap. “Adam.”

  “He has your phone and vitals tag,” Ariane said with a nod, letting me know she suspected the same thing. “And he saw the contents of the packet, the pictures of Carter.”

  I shook my head, even though the sinking feeling in my gut told me more than I wanted. “He was just supposed to be out there, moving around, pretending to be me, so they wouldn’t realize I was with you.” It had been Justine’s call to use him as a decoy instead of bringing in someone else on our secret.

  “Jacobs could be lying,” she said. “Just to motivate me.”

  It was possible, but all I could see was the look on Adam’s face when Emerson told him that I was going to the trials in his place. It was the same expression I’d seen from him every time I’d failed at using my new abilities or simply not succeeded as quickly as he had. Disgust. Envy. Hate.

  “No,” I said. “Adam’s got something to prove, and I think he’s using us to do it. He wants to be their guy. Badly.” I shook my head. “If he accomplishes the mission while I ‘fail’…”

  “He’s hoping the Committee will honor success over anything else, including that you were chosen as St. John’s official candidate,” Ariane said. “Actions speak louder than words.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Which means Carter is in danger.” Her expression was grim. “Along with our plan.”

  “IF ADAM FINDS CARTER AND kills him, we lose our connection to Ford and whomever she’s hunting,” I said, trying hard to focus on the practical, the logical, against the wave of emotion inherent in the thought of Carter, with his shy smile and his iPad and his desire to keep attending school, dying.

  My chest ached at the idea of impending loss; there were so few of us. Living, anyway. We were like a small, oddly shaped family. No branches on our tree, just strands of DNA binding us, like the old-fashioned paper dolls for which our project had been named. Always tied together by our similarities, unable to escape them.

  “But I’m more worried about what Ford will do,” I added.

  “I thought you said distance keeps them from actively connecting,” Zane said.

  “Yeah, but if he dies, if the bond is completely and permanently severed, I can’t imagine that she won’t sense that,” I said. Even if it was just an absence where previously there’d been…something. If so, she’d certainly recognize the feeling; she’d lost other members of her group. Nixon. Johnson.

  “You’re afraid she’ll lose her shit,” Zane said.

  “I think if Carter is gone, she’s got no reason to keep from lashing out,” I said. When Nixon died, she threw SUVs around and killed at least one of Laughlin’s security team. With Carter, the last member of her family and her motivation for trying to succeed, I could only imagine how much worse it would be. I wasn’t sure any human would be safe around her at that point, let alone one who had been designated as a target.

  Whomever she’d been assigned would die, and it would be ugly. There would also likely be additional civilian casualties, anyone who got in Ford’s way once she’d pulled herself together after the temporary disorientation from Carter’s death.

  So, no, this particular row of dominos could not be allowed to fall, never mind that I had no idea how to stop it.

  I squared my shoulders. “Did Adam say anything else to you when he looked at the packet?” I asked Zane. “Anything that might tell us where he’d be going to find Carter?”

  “I didn’t even know the target was Carter,” Zane reminded me, his mouth tight. “Not then. Just that it was a guy.”

  I let out a slow breath, anxiety crawling over my skin like an itch that I couldn’t scratch. I wanted to be moving, to be doing something. But taking action now, without a plan in place, would be useless at best and reckless at worst.

  The situation was spinning out of my control. Which was, of course, an illusion, because it had never been within my control. But at least in the beginning I’d been expecting a direct confrontation, honor in a death I chose, one while fighting rather than one of futility.

  That was still an option, I realized with sudden grim clarity and a sinking feeling.

  In a logical evaluation of our situation, our objective against available information and options, we were, in the common vernacular, screwed.

  We didn’t know where to find Adam, Carter, or Ford. We didn’t even know whom they’d selected as a target for Ford, but it had to be someone who meant something to me.

  And no matter how I approached that particular problem—find Adam before he hurt Carter so I could stop Ford before she reached her target, all without running out of time—I couldn’t see a way through.

  But there was, as my father had always taught me, more than one way to view a problem. If I couldn’t achieve my objective with the information I had, then maybe it was time to reevaluate my objective.

  What could I do?

  We did have one piece of solid intel: I had the location of Jacobs, Laughlin, St. John, and the Committee.

  I imagined them all lounging in some suite within the hotel, drinking and eating whatever luxuries room service could deliver, with occasional glances toward the computer(s). In reality, based on Dr. Jacobs’s texts, they were likely hunched over laptops, watching the blips of our various tracking devices on-screen, like it was some kind of important sporting match.

  That image rekindled the fury in my gut. They were using us, and even worse, using us against each other. It wasn’t even a fair fight.

  Maybe it was time someone brought that unfair fight to them.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, I don’t like it,” Zane said darkly.

  I blinked up at him, startled. “I didn’t think you could hear me that clearly—”

  “No, not from your thoughts. It’s on your face,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  I sighed. “Zane—”

  “No,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “The last time you had that look, you pretended to be Ford and sneaked into Laughlin’s facility, otherwise known as certain death.”

  Either he could hear more than he realized, or he was just getting better at figuring me out.

  “You’re thinking about going back to the Manderlay, aren’t you?” He stood, swaying before catching himself. “No. Hell no.” He shook his head. “The second they see you start that way, they’ll have someone on you. You have to know they have a contingency plan. Jacobs is already threatening it.” He gestured to the phone in my hand and the messages on it.

  “I can ditch the vitals monitor,” I protested. “Make someone wear it and then put the phone in someone else’s bag—”

  “And maybe get that person killed if they send someone to shoot you from a distance because you’re not following orders and tracking down your target?” he demanded.


  “What else would you have me do?” I asked, trying for calm. One of us had to be.

  He raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, maybe take time to consider that throwing yourself on this particular bomb isn’t the way to go?” He glared at me. “You’re always so quick to sacrifice yourself.”

  “Says the guy who endured multiple doses of an as-yet mostly untested virus that changed his DNA, to enter a competition where he might die,” I shot back. Staying calm was not so easy when I could feel his agitation, and my own frustration was growing. Why couldn’t he just let this go? Accept it as part of the deal, a price that had been agreed upon before I was born, to be paid in the future.

  “Yeah, and look how pissed you were with me for that,” he said. “And you want me to just throw my hands up and say ‘Oh, well’ while you walk in to your own execution?”

  His expression softened and he reached out and touched my cheek, his thumb brushing over my mouth. “How am I supposed to do that?” he asked in a pleading tone that sounded like he genuinely wanted me to help him find the answer.

  I forced a swallow past the sudden lump in my throat. “I know it’s not fair, but I can’t put my personal feelings ahead of—”

  He dropped his hand, his face shuttering. “And why the hell not?” he asked. “You’re a person too. Don’t you get to choose what you want? Why does it have to be you?”

  “Because there’s no one else!” I shouted, and immediately regretted it when the bubble of low-level noise in the coffee shop shattered into shocked silence and I felt the few other customers staring at us.

  “Or maybe you just think you deserve it,” Zane said quietly into the void.

  I blinked at the unexpected tears that welled in my eyes.

  “You are more than someone’s experiment, more than Dr. Jacobs’s brain child,” he whispered fiercely. “You have a right to want things for yourself, Ariane, to see yourself as a person. How do I get you to believe that?”

  I turned away from him, unable to hide how closely his words had come to striking the vulnerable center I tried so hard to hide. “What do you want me to do?” I asked again.