The Hunt

12

Zane

I STIFFENED, THEN TURNED, MOVING to step in front of Ariane, only to find a thin, weedy guy scowling at us a few feet from the doorway of the office, a stack of papers in hand. His white button-down shirt had a Florida-shaped coffee stain on the left side, and his ratio of hair to bald spot was definitely heading in the wrong direction.

“I’m waiting for an answer,” the teacher prompted, his expression distinctly sour.

I opened my mouth to say something—I didn’t know what, some kind of excuse—but then I realized he wasn’t even looking at me.

“Were you outside? You know you’re not supposed to leave the building during school hours,” he scolded Ariane. “Especially unescorted.”

I frowned. Okay, that was weird.

Ariane froze under his glare, and I remembered belatedly that she’d spent years trying to fly beneath the radar. Getting called out by an authority figure was probably new to her; I, however, had had years of practice in the fake obeisance department, thanks to my dad.

“It was my fault,” I began. “I had to get—”

“Sorry,” Ariane said. “I just needed some air.”

He jerked as though she’d poked at him with a stick. “You were with him?” he asked Ariane, pointing at me, his eyes wide with surprise.

Ariane’s pale cheeks colored slightly. “We were only outside for a few minutes,” she said, her tone stiff. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to get that she was taking his shock as a personal insult.

He frowned at her. “That’s no excuse,” he said, but his anger was muted now under something more like confusion.

Then he shifted his attention to me, scanning me from head to toe. “Where’s your jacket?”

The Linwood blazer that we couldn’t reasonably replicate, thanks to the oversize and douche-y crest on the breast of it? Yeah, we’d skipped those, thinking that no one would actually wear that once they got inside the building. But apparently we were playing by private school rules now.

“Probably left it in my locker,” I offered.

His mouth screwed up in distaste. “Funny.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Being out of uniform will cost you both a demerit.” His gaze skated to Ariane again. “I don’t care who your father is.”

Huh. Okay, that was kind of random.

I looked to Ariane, but she gave a tiny shake of her head. She didn’t know what he was talking about either.

The teacher reached into his shirt pocket and produced a pad of green slips.

On which he’d want to write names (or student ID numbers, possibly) that we couldn’t give him. Crap.

“That’s why we’re going to get them right now,” Ariane said, and then, before the teacher could protest, she turned and walked off down the hall.

I followed hastily. A quick backward glance showed him standing there with a scowl, but he wasn’t, thank God, chasing after us.

“What was that all about?” I asked when we were safely around the corner and out of sight.

“No idea,” Ariane said, sounding a little breathless. “He just kept thinking, ‘I never thought I’d see the day’ and ‘I deserve better than these damn kids.’”

Fantastic. This was getting better and better.

“Let’s find someone to ask so we can hurry up and get out of here,” I said grimly. At this point, I was beyond caring whether we succeeded or not.

Ariane cast an evaluating gaze around the teeming hall. Shining metal doors, some closed and some open, punctuated the polished wood walls. Evidently, we’d walked in during class change, or maybe Ariane was as good as I suspected she was and we’d landed right in the lunch hour.

Although the hall was full of people, it seemed eerily quiet. It took me a second to identify the missing noise. No lockers slamming. In fact, I didn’t even see any lockers. Or even books. Only students with iPads in hand.

It took everything I had not to gape. Seriously? No lockers, no books. Did they fly them to France for French class too? No wonder the cranky bald dude had gotten pissed when I said I’d left my jacket in my locker. He’d probably thought I was mocking him.

“Her.” Ariane pointed to a cluster of three or four girls who’d just emerged from a bathroom.

But I knew immediately which one she meant. Tall, blond, beautiful, her uniform skirt about four inches shorter than everyone else’s, revealing a lot more leg. But the key clue to her identity came from the adoring throng around her, girls leaning forward to catch her every word, their skirts rolled up to imitate hers.

I groaned. “Oh, come on, Ariane.”

Ariane raised her eyebrows. “She’ll know.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean she’ll tell us,” I pointed out. At least not without something in it for her. I knew that girl’s type. So did Ariane. Every school had a Rachel Jacobs—maybe more than one. And Ariane had unerringly zeroed in on Linwood Academy’s version.

“She’ll talk,” Ariane spoke with a grim certainty that was kind of alarming and reminded me what she could do if she put her mind to it. Literally.

“All right,” I said quickly. “How about if I try?” If this girl decided to cop an attitude with Ariane, I wasn’t entirely sure we’d make it out of this without lights exploding and windows breaking. Ariane wouldn’t hurt anyone intentionally, but I bet she wasn’t above scaring someone a little, if necessary. And we were already on thin ice. I doubted we’d get out of here unscathed if she went that route.

Ariane frowned but shrugged her assent.

I took a deep breath and crossed the hall against the flow of traffic, feeling as if a spotlight shone on my white shirt in the sea of blue blazers.

“Hey,” I said to the blond girl, eliciting a chorus of giggles from her flunkies.

She looked up from the tablet in her hand—it was flashing through a slide show of party pictures, in which she was featured prominently—and gave me a long, appraising glance.

“Hey,” she said in a warm tone, before closing the cover on her tablet with a definitive slap.

Oh, damn. Weeks ago I’d have been flattered and maybe a little tempted. Now this was just awkward. “Um, so listen, I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

“I would love to help you,” she purred. “I’m Lara, by the way.”

God, how did she manage to make that sound like she was offering much more than I was asking for? I was all too aware of Ariane behind me, silent as a ghost, across the hall, where she probably couldn’t hear what this girl was saying, but she could probably still “hear.”

“Great.” I resisted the urge to pull at my tie, which was feeling much too tight at the moment. “Thanks, Lara.”

Lara paused. “You’re new here, right?” She squinted at me with disapproval. “You’re not, like, a freshman?”

“No,” I said. A freshman, really? I would have been insulted, but I was too busy trying to keep up with the conversation so I’d have some hope of directing it. I probably should have known better.

“Okay, good.” She smiled, obviously relieved.

“I’m supposed to find someone,” I began.

Lara smiled and leaned close, obviously expecting this was the lead in to some kind of pickup line. Like, “I’m supposed to find someone, but now that I’ve met you, not just anyone will do” or some other crap. I don’t know. I’d never been particularly good at stuff like that even when I was trying to make it work.

“This girl, I think her name is Ford?” I said, blundering on.

She stiffened. “What?”

“Ford,” I repeated. Was she not going by that name here? That would be a problem. “It’s kind of a strange…”

Lara’s expression shifted from confused/annoyed to straight-up pissed in a fraction of a second. “Is this a joke?” she demanded, her gaze flicking between my face and some point behind me.

“No,” I said, confused. I turned to see who she was looking at, half expecting the cranky teacher who’d confronted us. But he wasn’t there. It was just Ariane and more Linwood students, a large majority of which now seemed to be heading in a single direction, probably to the cafeteria.

“Fuck you,” Lara snarled. “Help yourself.” Then she pushed past me to stomp off down the hall, in the opposite direction as everyone else. Her gaggle trotted after her, all wide-eyed and whispering.

What the hell? I shook my head and crossed the hall to Ariane, yanking at my tie to loosen it. Clearly looking the part was not helping as much as we’d hoped.

“She thought you were making fun of her.” Ariane’s voice held the lilt of curiosity.

“Yeah, I got that,” I said, my mouth tight. “But why?”

“I don’t know. She wasn’t thinking about that part of it. More just shocked that you’d dared to do it.” Ariane sounded both bewildered and amused.

Well, that was helpful. I raked my hands through my hair. “We need to get out of here and figure out another way. This is not working.” It felt as if there were a giant timer somewhere counting down the seconds until this blew up in our faces, and we were dangerously close to zeroing out.

I was watching Ariane, expecting her to protest, so the look on her face was my first clue that something was off. Her gaze moved from me to a point off to my left, her eyes widening a fraction of an inch and her lips parting slightly.

And for Ariane, that was as close to an expression of shock as you were ever going to get. It was roughly the equivalent of a normal person shrieking in surprise and clapping a hand over her mouth.

My stomach tightening with dread, I turned to see what had caught her attention. I thought I knew what to expect—that we’d found Laughlin’s hybrids. Or rather, that they’d found us.

But I was so, so wrong.

I mean, the hybrids were there. That much I got right away. They drifted down the hallway against the flow of traffic in a perfect triangle formation, two guys in the back and a girl in the front. Ford, accompanied by Carter and Nixon, though I had no idea which was which.

They were all blond, that shade of pale white that I suspected Ariane would also have if she stopped dying in the darker streaks to look more “normal.”

These three, though, didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about normal. They moved in a creepy unison, as if they were one entity with six legs. It wasn’t human. At all. Neither were their flat expressions and utter silence.

If anyone had had any idea that it was even possible for there to be aliens—or half aliens—among us, they would have picked these guys out immediately.

As it was, the other students gave them subtle but perceptible distance, moving around them like water around rocks. It was as if some part of their brains registered a threat that they didn’t understand.

But none of that was what had me reaching for Ariane, fumbling for her arm and locking my fingers on her wrist just to make sure she was still there.

I’d known that Ford would resemble Ariane. I’d been prepared for that, a girl who looked like Ariane in a vague, smeared way, like siblings or first cousins. Like if you squinted your eyes—or were half-crazy from stress and pressure—you might think they were the same person.

But Ford didn’t just look like Ariane. They were freaking identical. Not just the same out-of-control white-blond hair, pale skin, thin limbs, and small nose—we’re talking mirror image. Except Ford hadn’t bothered with blue-tinted contact lenses to hide the true color of her eyes. None of them had. Of course, no one here would theoretically be searching for them as escaped lab projects, so maybe they could get away with that. They were just weird-looking kids, as far as anyone else knew. Exotic, from another country, albinos. Or suffering from a rare genetic condition, as my mom had suggested.

Still, it was creepy.

I shuddered. Ariane and Ford’s shared features were a huge, screaming reminder that they’d both been deliberately and precisely created. Manufactured, for lack of a better term. It went beyond eerie, venturing into downright freaky and unnatural. Was this girl simply Laughlin’s version of the GTX “Ariane” model?

Suddenly all the strange behavior we’d witnessed since walking through the door at Linwood made sense. The teacher had thought Ariane was Ford. So had Lara. No wonder she’d been angry; she’d seen Ariane and thought we were making fun of her with my search for Ford.

Laughlin’s hybrids drew closer, and I saw the girl—Ford—notice us. Rather, notice Ariane.

She cocked her head to one side in that curious bird mannerism that I’d seen from Ariane countless times.

It sent a weird jolt through me. Some part of me responded as if it were Ariane, even knowing logically that it wasn’t, and the urge to reach out and pull her away from the others rose up before I quickly squelched it. Because an equally powerful urge was screaming at me to run.

Something about Ford was wrong. Her eyes were too hard, too empty, something. I couldn’t even say what it was for sure, or how I knew, except that maybe it was in how they moved. They were predators in a field full of prey. I’d never, ever felt that from Ariane. It was like seeing a version of Ariane with all the humanity and personality drained out.

I stood my ground but found myself blinking rapidly, as if that might help, as if this was simply a matter of double vision.

It didn’t; it wasn’t.

Ariane and Ford locked gazes, and I braced myself, not sure what to expect. Would we be slammed against the wall by invisible hands? Or, worse, would Ford summon Ariane forward and welcome her with, what, a hug or a handshake or some kind of secret alien greeting?

I envisioned them silently making room for Ariane in their midst, a quartet instead of trio, and the four of them floating off down the hall.

Just the thought of it made me feel vaguely ill, and I wanted to step between them to prevent even the possibility of that happening.

Instead, after a long moment, Ford’s gaze moved on from Ariane, returning her attention to the hallway in front of her.

As if nothing had happened. Which, I guess, technically, it hadn’t. But it was more as if she’d simply decided Ariane didn’t exist.

“That was…weird,” I whispered to Ariane, staring after them. None of them even glanced back; they just kept moving, in step with each other. “Wasn’t it?”

Of all the potential scenarios I’d imagined, that was not one of them. And the rush of relief that followed made me feel disloyal to Ariane, but I couldn’t help it. If they were going to ignore us—her—I could only see that as a good thing compared to everything else that might have happened.

When Ariane didn’t respond, I turned to glance at her, expecting to find her frowning at their backs.

But instead she was watching, transfixed, her body angled in their direction, as if they were magnets drawing her in.

Damn.