The Trials

by Stacey Kade

  I broke off then with a gasp. The sensation was more intense than I’d expected, echoing through me.

  He went still, his fingers just under the edge of my shirt where I could feel them warm against my waist, almost teasing with the lightness of his touch. And then he started to pull away.

  “Don’t…” I said, breathless.

  Zane immediately froze. “What’s wrong?”

  “No, don’t stop,” I clarified, impatient and pushing the words out, all muddied with desire and half-garbled, before pressing my mouth to his again.

  With his help, I wrestled his arms out of the hoodie sleeves and let the garment drop immediately to the bed and started tugging his T-shirt over his head.

  He lifted his arms to help me before his hands returned to my hips, hitching me closer, which drew sharp breaths from both of us. Resting my hands on his shoulders, I took in the sight before me. This intimacy, seeing this side of him for this reason, it changed everything.

  His skin was smooth under my hands and darker than mine; it would be difficult for it not to be. His chest and arms had curves of muscle from years of lacrosse that sent a shiver through the very human part of me. The gunshot wound that he’d survived only through Emerson St. John’s intervention had left a faint, puckered pink circle on his abdomen, barely visible above the line of his pants.

  Color rose in his cheeks at my scrutiny, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d seen him without his shirt before, or rather, with his shirt unbuttoned. But this was different. It felt different. We weren’t in a grungy bathroom, fumbling for a few minutes before someone or something interrupted.

  It was like being invited into this new world that I’d only caught glimpses of before.

  “This looks painful.” I touched his chest just below his collarbone, carefully outlining the triangle-shaped patch of raw skin where the vitals monitor had been attached, staying clear of angry redness.

  He grimaced. “Yeah.” His gaze flicked to the same spot on my chest, hidden by my shirt. “Bet yours isn’t much better.”

  I recognized the unspoken question for what it was, and my heartbeat sped up. A flare of anxiety went off in me. He’d seen me without my shirt before as well, but it had been in the context of bandaging an injury to my arm. Taking off my shirt in front of him now meant more. Intention was everything.

  I pushed my worry down and reached for the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head quickly before my self-doubt could get the better of me. He’d found me plenty human enough before, there was no reason for that to have changed just because everything else had.

  The heat in his expression sent a ripple of relief through me. His eyes were dark in the dim room, but it was more than that. I’d put that look on his face—my body, my skin, my not-entirely-human self.

  Zane reached up, slipping a fingertip beneath the strap of my bra and sliding it down my arm, away from the similar triangle-shaped injury on my chest. That light touch made me tremble and catch fire at the same time. I wanted to close my eyes to focus on it, but I didn’t want to miss anything.

  “Yours doesn’t seem as bad,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “Fast healer,” I reminded him, the words half-catching in my throat.

  He leaned forward, slowly, as though he feared I might stop him, and placed his mouth on the edge of it, his breath skating over the skin between my breasts.

  And that broke something in me, my fear or my willpower, I didn’t know which.

  I fumbled for his hand on my hip, dragging it up and beneath the stretchy fabric of my bra. The warmth of his skin against mine, the all-too-pleasant friction of his slightly rough hands against sensitive flesh, shattered the last of my functioning synapses and stole my breath.

  Zane inhaled sharply and then reached with his free hand to release the catch in the back of the garment.

  And then there was nothing between his skin and mine, and it was everything that I’d wanted. But long before I was ready to give up that sensation, he turned, carefully shifting me off his lap and onto the bed.

  I started to protest until he moved with me, crawling up next to me, his knee between mine.

  His mouth covered mine as he settled over me. The weight of him, which could have been suffocating or heavy or frightening, just felt right. It was Zane.

  Instinct surfaced in me again, and I pushed up against him with my hips.

  “Jesus, Ariane,” he gasped. “You’re killing me.” But from the way his mouth continued to wander over my collarbone and breasts, he meant that in a good way, I was fairly sure.

  “Don’t stop,” I whispered. I wanted this, wanted him, and I was so, so afraid that he’d change his mind. That I would be judged and found lesser, not enough. Or that he’d have an attack of good-guy conscience, worrying that I was making a decision under duress. When, in my life, hadn’t I been under duress? But this wasn’t about that. This was about what I wanted, what we wanted. A tiny piece of freedom of our own making. And I didn’t want to leave without this memory…

  “Ariane,” he murmured against my throat.

  …I wanted to have this to take with me, when I was gone. Maybe I wouldn’t have the memory for more than a few hours before I no longer existed. But I wanted it for those minutes.

  “Ariane,” he said again, more urgently, pulling himself up on his elbows, and holding himself over me until I looked up at him, my eyes stinging.

  He framed my face with his hands, brushing my hair away from my flushed face, his gaze searching mine. “I won’t. Unless you say so, I won’t stop. I promise, okay?” Even without being able to read my thoughts, he knew what I was worried about, and his eyes were asking the question that was really at the core of all of this, which was: Trust me?

  And I did.

  ARIANE WAS TUCKED UNDER MY arm, her skin bare against mine, and it was an amazing, unreal feeling. I’d never felt that close—literally or otherwise—to anyone.

  She was quiet, her breathing was slow and even, but the high from that moment kept me from completely dozing off.

  So I was mostly awake when she slid out from under my arm, taking care not to jostle me.

  She hadn’t been asleep, then. Her caution might have read as concern for my well-being, an attempt to let me rest. But there was a furtive quality to her movements as she got dressed.

  The faint clutch of dread that had started when Ariane first suggested her plan of splitting up grew more intense in my gut.

  I waited, but she didn’t wake me. Didn’t run a hand over my shoulder or whisper my name.

  That’s when I knew. She’d wait until the last second to tell me she was leaving, so I wouldn’t have a chance to ask many questions before she disappeared for good.

  I listened to the soft sounds of her feet on the carpet, hoping, praying I was wrong. But when the whispers of fabric moving gave way to the faintest squeak of hinges on the bedroom doors, I couldn’t stay still any longer.

  I sat up, fury making my pulse pound. “Were you going to tell me? Or just let me figure it out when you never showed up?”

  She froze in the doorway, the truth written in her stiffened posture.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said, turning to face me.

  “No, but you’ve got a good guess. You promised. No self-sacrifice.”

  “I promised I would try,” she corrected gently. “And I will.”

  But she didn’t believe she’d succeed. And that right there said it all.

  I should have known. I grabbed my clothes from the floor and got dressed, motions jerky with anger and hurt.

  After all we’d been through, together and separately, this was how it was going to end. Her death would facilitate my life (for a little longer, anyway) and perhaps I’d get a chance to prevent GTX and Laughlin Integrated from doing to someone else what they’d done to her and the others. But for the size and scale of the sacrifices we’d made, particularly Ariane, that payoff was a joke.

  It was just wrong.r />
  But I knew what she would say if I pointed that out—life isn’t fair or balanced, especially not where she was concerned. Because of who she was and the circumstances of her creation, she had even fewer expectations of the opportunities the rest of us took for granted. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, all of that.

  And maybe that assessment was accurate, but that didn’t mean it was right.

  Gritting my teeth in frustration and to keep all my angry but useless words in, I grabbed the remote from the bedside table, clicked on the television, and found one of the local stations, which was on commercial.

  “Zane,” she said quietly as she moved toward me, her hand raised in a pleading gesture.

  I braced myself in anticipation of her touch, her cool fingers against my skin, and she must have read that because she stopped abruptly.

  “It’s after six,” I said. “The news is on. I’m going to check to see if there’s more from my mom.”

  “I have to go, but I don’t want to leave it like this,” Ariane said, sounding helpless but resolved. “I don’t know what to say to make you believe. That’s why I—”

  “It’s back,” I said, nodding at the television, where the news had returned from commercial. I didn’t want to hear any more explanation, another round of rationalizing. I got it. This was for the best, and nothing I could say or do would convince her otherwise. But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t hate it with every cell in my body.

  I knew what she was looking for; she wanted me to be okay with it. To say that I understood and I was okay with the actions ahead of us.

  But I wasn’t. Maybe she was the more pragmatic, rational one of the two of us, or she was simply channeling that side of herself. Either way, I couldn’t give her what she wanted.

  We stood silently through an update on interstate construction and the resulting traffic congestion, an on-scene report from the site of a house fire with fatalities, and discussion of a suicidal jumper off the top of a building right near Millennium Park (the photo was not of anyone I recognized). No mention of a shooting or bodies discovered at the park, though. Either the reports hadn’t reached the media yet, or the Committee had worked hard to cover up their cover-up.

  “I want you to know that I wouldn’t change anything,” Ariane said, but I kept my eyes focused on the screen. “Not even the end. It was worth it. All of it. Especially you.” She was close to tears; I could hear it in her voice.

  Fighting the urge to turn and gather her up, I stared hard at the television through rapidly blurring vision as the anchor introduced another clip from the featured story coming up at ten.

  They cut to a shot of my mom seated in a molded plastic chair, the background dark, anonymous. I focused on the familiar gestures and intonations from my mother, strangely flattened out and stiff in front of the cameras. She was nervous. I could tell that much from the way she fidgeted before answering questions—shifting in her seat, tugging at the neck of her sweatshirt and then the too-short sleeves, which had been pushed up at the wrists.

  “I had no idea what I was getting into,” she said, her gaze distant as she answered the reporter. “I…We needed the money, and GTX was the largest employer in town. Maybe I should have been more cautious, but I never dreamed that they were…doing what they were doing.” She tugged her sweatshirt down in place, smoothing the front, which had been perfectly smooth to begin with.

  I frowned. That was…weird. Not her behavior—that I could write off as nerves. But she had never in her life worn a school team sweatshirt like that. She’d always dressed up more than other moms. Even when my brother had been star quarterback, breaking records left and right (except for my dad’s, of course), I’d never seen her in a Hawks shirt.

  So for her to go on television in a school sweatshirt now, for an interview that had to be one of the biggest, most important moments in her life, that made no sense. Let alone a shirt supporting…I squinted at the screen. Who the hell were the Mustangs?

  Of course, it could have just been a giant, convoluted “eff you” to my dad, who was no doubt watching all of this with the vein throbbing in his forehead like a separate heartbeat. Mom was calling his beloved GTX onto the carpet, very publicly.

  But as I stared at those red, looping letters, I couldn’t get past the feeling that the shirt looked familiar.

  “I’m going to go,” Ariane said. “The longer we wait…” Her words broke off in a pained sigh.

  But I couldn’t acknowledge it. Couldn’t agree to her leaving, even if in such a tacit manner.

  “Oh, they were very well aware of what they were doing,” my mom said on-screen, her chin lifting in defiance. “Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Laughlin were creating children to experiment on them.”

  Even though that wasn’t the whole truth, the damage from that bombshell wasn’t going to go away any time soon. God, my mom might even go to jail. So much for any kind of discreet ending to all of this. Justine was going to be so pissed.…

  Then it clicked. I knew where I’d seen that shirt before, why it looked so familiar.

  “Ariane, wait,” I said sharply. I turned to make sure she was listening to me.

  She’d just opened the French doors and crossed out of the bedroom, but she came back. Her hair swung loose around her shoulders; I’d been the one to pull the rubber band free from her ponytail. Or, rather, I’d tried and she’d had to help me. Her hair was both heavier and softer than I’d remembered and completely wild, but I’d loved seeing her like that, her white-blond hair a corona around her head and snaking down her naked shoulders, like the last piece of her public “I’m normal” persona had vanished.

  I knew, logically, that she was still the slightly strange-looking girl from my Algebra II class. Her skin was too pale, her eyes too dark, her chin too pointed, but now she was so familiar, so beautiful, it made my chest ache like someone had taken a wrecking ball to it.

  “Look at what she’s wearing,” I said, pointing at my mom as soon as Ariane was close.

  Ariane blinked at me, taken off guard by my sudden willingness to speak as well as the shift in topic. She glanced at the television. “Yeah, I saw that,” she said, her voice rough. “I have no idea who the Mustangs are, but—”

  “No—I mean, yeah, but that’s not what I mean.” I hesitated. “I think that’s Justine’s shirt.” I didn’t know what that meant or why she would do that, but it had to mean something, didn’t it? Were the two of them working together? How? Why?

  She frowned. “What?”

  I nodded rapidly, my certainty growing. “Justine wears stuff like that all the time. It’s like part of her ‘pay no attention to me’ disguise or something, I don’t know. But my mom never does, never did.” That may have changed a little once she’d left, but I kind of thought it might be too much of a coincidence that she’d choose to wear something like that for an interview of this magnitude. “And…I think Justine was wearing it earlier.”

  Ariane tilted her head to the side, her expression distant, searching her memory. But she’d been so preoccupied during that meeting, I wasn’t sure she’d remember. I did, but I’d had weeks of interactions with Justine, in which she’d dressed very similarly.

  I saw it the moment the scene fell into place in her brain. She stiffened, her hands balling into fists, and bright color flooding her cheeks. “Damn it,” she muttered.

  “Okay, but what does it mean?” I demanded.

  “Justine set us up is what it means,” she said, her expression grim. “You called your mom from her phone. But after we bolted and Justine couldn’t catch us, she was stuck.” Her mouth curved in a bitter smile. “When she couldn’t find us easily enough, she decided to drive us out instead.”

  “You sound almost like you admire what she did,” I said, troubled.

  “It’s clever.” She shook her head. “She used your mother to orchestrate all of this without revealing her own role in it. Which explains how Mara got the media to respond so quickly,” she added more to he
rself than to me. “She might have already had something in the works, talking to a reporter or whatever, but a story backed by an ‘anonymous’ government source is going to go a lot further than just that of a disgruntled ex-employee.”

  “Wait, so you’re saying Justine putting my mom on the news and exposing us was her way of trying to bring us in?” I asked.

  Ariane nodded.

  “Didn’t she know what they would do?” I asked in disbelief. “That the Committee would hit the panic button?”

  “Probably,” Ariane said flatly, then she shrugged. “Maybe. She might not have realized how touchy they’d be, but then again, she might also have been counting on it. She wanted to force our hand.”

  “Even if that got us killed?” I asked incredulously.

  “Nothing more effective to prove you’re the better option than to take away all the others,” she said. “Play her way, or die in the street. A remarkably powerful message.”

  “And the sweatshirt, that’s her signature,” I said, slowly putting the pieces together. “She wanted us to see it and know she was behind this.” I stared at Ariane. “That’s insane.”

  “No, it’s manipulative, brazen, and kind of genius,” she said. “She was counting on us being as good as Jacobs and the others claimed in order to stay out of harm’s way.”

  Fat lot of good Adam’s skills had done him. About the same mine would have done me. Which made sense, because the only person Justine was really interested in was Ariane. If I happened to survive as well, then, bonus. Jesus.

  “If we weren’t good enough to stay alive long enough to hear her message, then we likely wouldn’t have been sufficient to meet their needs.” She shrugged. “Or, that’s probably what she’ll say in her report, anyway.”

  Cold, efficient, and daring—all of which matched everything I knew about Justine.

  Ariane shook her head. “It doesn’t change anything, though.”

  An idea flashed at the back of my brain. “Does that mean if we could get to her, she’d be willing to protect us?” Protect Ariane was really what I meant. And that was something Justine would have had to consider before yanking the curtains back on this particular sideshow.