The Hunt

13

Ariane

IT WAS LIKE LOOKING IN A MIRROR. I'd heard full-blooded humans use that expression before, marveling at the resemblance of their offspring or horrified at seeing their own worst characteristics reflected in someone else.

But I’d never experienced it. Until now.

In all three of Laughlin’s hybrids, I could see pieces of myself. The pale skin, the dark eyes, the minimal nose and disproportionately small ears. It was disconcerting and also somehow a relief. Family. Connection. Proof that I wasn’t alone.

Looking at Ford, the female, though, it went beyond all of that. She was…me.

It made my breath catch in my throat, and I felt the ridiculous urge to wave to see if she would mimic the motion, just as a dutiful reflection would.

Or maybe I was the reflection.

I shook my head. How was this even possible? The obvious answer, under normal (a.k.a. human) circumstances would be twins. But we’d been made, not conceived. And even if someone had created two identical “samples”—I hated that term—I doubted that either Laughlin or Jacobs would have been much in a sharing mood with a competitor.

Next to me, I could feel the prickling of Zane’s discomfort. He thought it was unnatural. And it was. We were. Humiliation churned inside me. This was just one more explicit reminder that I was not of his kind. That he and I were not the same.

I told you, Mara’s voice drifted across my memory.

Mara. Both she and my father alluded to GTX and Laughlin Integrated regularly spying on one another. So, perhaps, then, our shared looks were simply a sign of successful corporate espionage. I could easily imagine Laughlin or Jacobs driven to act on the information gathered or materials stolen. Out of scientific curiosity, maybe. Or, more likely, a case of thumbing his nose at the other guy. Anything you can do, I can improve upon.

I wondered which I was—the chicken or the egg. It didn’t matter, really. But it felt like it did. Was I, on top of everything else, just an imitation of someone else’s creation?

Upon closer inspection, we weren’t completely identical. Ford might have been an inch or two taller. Her hair was paler than mine, but I was pretty sure that was only because she had not dyed it. Her eyes were the same penetrating darkness that I saw before I put my contact lenses in. She was more me than me, in that respect.

As they passed, Ford turned her head to look at me. Meeting her gaze sent a shockwave through me. It felt like falling forward into open space with no way to catch myself and only a vague idea of where the ground might be.

From this angle, I could now see that she bore a small, dark line on her right cheekbone, like a single hash mark. It appeared almost as though someone had written on her face, but it was too precise and permanent-looking to be someone’s carelessness with a pen.

Before I could figure out what to say or do, if anything, she broke eye contact, and they continued down the hall without any further sign that they’d noticed my existence.

I automatically took a step after them and did what I would have done under any other circumstances—tried to hear what they were thinking. My ability was erratic, at best. I lived in a world of constant noise, usually a dull static at the back of my mind that I worked to ignore, but occasionally, when I focused—or when someone was a particularly loud thinker—I’d get something useful.

This time, though, I got nothing. Literally nothing. No static, no indistinct mumbles.

I frowned. It had to be a fluke, a momentary gap. They were well within my range.

I listened harder, focusing specifically on them as they walked away.

But no, nothing. And the texture of silence surrounding them was different; it wasn’t a temporary quiet, a lull in mental acrobatics, but a complete absence of sound.

In an overpopulated hall, teeming with the emotions and thoughts of the humans surrounding us, they were a blessed blank space on an ink-blackened page. A void of peaceful silence amid all the screaming.

The quiet curled up in my ears and lured me forward, like the pie aroma in one of the old cartoons I’d watched in the lab. I wanted to follow. I wanted to plunge inside that bubble of emptiness and roll around in the delicious lack of sound. It felt right in a way that I’d never experienced before.

I moved on reflex, chasing that sensation of quiet. But after a step or two, someone moved in front of me to block my path, barring me with his body.

Get rid of him, instinct ordered.

Annoyed, I prepared to shove at this obstacle that tried to stand in the way of—

“Ariane, stop! Please!” Zane’s urgent whisper broke through, his hand tight on my arm.

I started at the sound of his voice, blinking rapidly, and looked up to find him staring at me, fear and frustration etched on his features.

His mouth tightened, the corners turned down, creating harsh lines on his face. I’d done that. I’d made him look so frightened and severe. “The guards.” He jerked his head in the direction the hybrids had taken.

I leaned out cautiously to peer around him. Sure enough, two large men in dark suits were trailing Laughlin’s hybrids at a discreet distance. Likely the same men we’d seen following them into the school. Obviously, whatever cover story Laughlin had provided for them allowed for guards to be an expected presence. Maybe they were supposed to be the children of a high-profile exec or something. That would make sense with what the teacher had said to me about “my father” when he thought I was Ford. No doubt the guards reported to Laughlin on a regular basis, keeping tabs on the hybrids and their exploits.

And I hadn’t even noticed them. I’d come this close to exposing us to more danger. I might have been able to talk Ford and the others into an alliance, but Laughlin’s paid security detail—goons was the colloquial term, I believe—wasn’t likely to be as amenable.

My heart beating in a panic, I retreated behind Zane again, just on the off chance that one of them would turn around. Zane might be mistaken for a normal human Linwood student. I would not, especially given the look of their charges.

“Are you okay?” Zane asked, his breathing uneven and too quick. I’d really scared him. Scared myself, too.

Folding my shaking arms over myself, I nodded rapidly, trying to clear my head. “Yeah, yes.”

“What happened?” he asked.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I couldn’t hear them.”

He frowned, not understanding. “What?”

Of course not. He’d have no idea what it was like to live with an incessant rolling murmur in the back of his mind, an ocean of voices swelling to drown out your own thoughts.

“You know I can hear thoughts.”

He nodded.

“Some people I can hear better than others, but I can get something from everyone.” I shook my head. “It’s a constant noise.” I paused, trying to think of how to explain it in a relatable way. “My father once threw a television away.” Actually, he’d smashed it to the floor first in a rare fit of anger. “He’d tried to fix it, but something in it was just broken. It emitted a high-pitched buzz whenever text appeared on the screen.” Which, given his news-watching tendencies, was pretty often. “It drove him crazy.” I gave a tight shrug. “It’s like that. All the time.”

Zane winced.

“I’ve learned to live with it, but I never imagined…” I heard the wonder in my voice and hated it, the weakness.

The smooth tone that indicated a class change sounded overhead, startling me. The students remaining in the hall scrambled in all directions.

Zane took my hand, his palm warm and reassuring against mine. “We need to get out of here,” he said grimly, and started down the hall, back toward the main entrance, pulling me along with him.

It took me a second to shake off the last vestiges of shock and twist free. “No, we can’t.”

He stiffened. “Look, I don’t know if you’re aware of what almost happened…”

I flinched at the censure in his voice but forced myself to ignore the emotion and focus on the salient strategic point. “Nothing has changed. Gaining their cooperation is still our best option.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “They completely ignored us. I think we should take that as the first bit of luck we’ve had in forever and get the hell out of here.”

“And do what? Go where?” I argued. “Besides, we’re here. They know we’re here. Retreating would send the wrong message.”

“And what message is that?” he asked, his mouth tight. “That we’re smart enough to leave while the leaving is good?”

I shook my head. “That we’re vulnerable, weak. Open to attack. It’s a basic principle of predator and prey. Running only confirms that you don’t believe you have the strength to win.”

“How about the ‘sitting duck principle’?” he hissed, tipping his head at a point behind me in the hall. I glanced over my shoulder and found a pair of teachers watching us with suspicion.

Zane was right; we couldn’t stand here, obvious targets, in the hallway. We’d be caught by the humans for sure. We needed a chance to regroup, rethink. Some place out of sight where no one would notice that we weren’t quite up to snuff as Linwood Academy students or that there seemed to be two Fords running around today.

“Come on.” I caught at his hand and tugged him deeper into school, away from the teachers.

He came along with me, not quite dragging his feet but making it clear that he was going against his better judgment.

I concentrated on the rooms beyond the hall, hidden behind heavy and polished wooden doors, listening to try to find an empty one. But with so many minds nearby, it was easier said than done.

“Here.” Across from a glass-enclosed courtyard filled with more of the brightly colored flowers and grass that appeared too green to be real, I found a “quiet” room and shoved the heavy wooden door open.

I stopped dead on the threshold, Zane bumping into my back and grabbing carefully at my arms to keep me from stumbling forward.

The room wasn’t like anything I’d seen at our school. First, the entire left wall was mirrored. Second, the space was virtually empty. Unlike almost every square inch of Ashe High, which had been occupied to beyond capacity, this room held only a few rows of chairs and a baby grand piano.

And a startled kid—young, swimming in his school-required blazer—seated on the piano bench.

So much for empty. But it was probably the best we were going to get.

I stepped inside and Zane followed, letting the door swing shut behind.

The kid at the piano saw us in the mirror. He froze, and then spun around to stare at us, his face pale and his throat working, as if he were trying to find words.

“Do you mind—” I began.

He nodded hastily, as if his head was loose, and gathered up his music, spilling half of it on the floor as he bolted out the door. I was beginning to think that Ford might have a reputation equal to or greater than that of Rachel Jacobs when it came to evoking fear and dislike among the populace.

“Now what?” Zane asked. He jerked at the knot in his tie until the slippery fabric pulled free from his collar.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m working on it. The guards seem to follow them to classes, but surely they don’t sit in the actual classroom with them. If we could just find a way to get a message to Ford or one of the others—”

Zane sighed and sank into one of the plastic chairs across from the piano, dropping his tie onto the seat next to him. “Ariane…” He shook his head. “You’re assuming that they’re even capable of that kind of functionality.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You saw how they were.” He leaned forward, as if pleading for me to understand. “The way they moved.” He shuddered. “It wasn’t normal.”

“It wasn’t human,” I said carefully. “But that’s not the same thing, is it?”

His mouth tightened. “What if you didn’t hear their thoughts when they walked by because there wasn’t anything to hear?” he asked. “She didn’t even react to seeing you.”

“She looked at me,” I argued, realizing even as I did how weak that sounded. “Beyond that, their choices were limited if they are under orders to be discreet,” I said. “Besides, not reacting causes confusion in the enemy and—”

“But, see, you’re assuming all kinds of things about their orders and nothing about them,” he said. “My mom said Laughlin controls them. If he’s in control, there’s not much for them to think about, right?”

“You think they’re just…shells.” Empty living bodies, responding only to programmed stimuli. Just the idea made me feel queasy.

“It’s possible, isn’t it?” Zane persisted.

I nodded reluctantly. “Anything is possible.” GTX and Laughlin Integrated had made that more than clear. But that theory—living robots, operating only on command—didn’t mesh with Mara’s experience as she’d relayed it to us. She’d seemed convinced that they hated her. Empty vessels don’t hate. And they don’t stalk, either. So either Mara was mistaken about what she’d experienced (one more vote for her being perhaps less than the best source for reliable information) or these hybrids had very, very good game faces.

My initial inclination had been toward the latter, but now, after Zane had raised the question, I couldn’t completely dismiss it, much as I would have liked to.

I bit my lip. “It was a strategic response.” Or nonresponse, rather. “It had to be.” And I could prove it. All I had to do was figure out how to engage them in a situation where they would be free to speak or otherwise communicate.

“Are you sure?” Zane asked quietly. He held my gaze, those familiar blue-gray eyes warm with sympathy.

Frustrated, I could feel the ache in my jaw from clenching my teeth too hard. What did he want me to say? No, I’m really not sure, but this is the last hope I have, so I’m clinging to it for all I’m worth? I opened my mouth. “I—”

The lights flickered suddenly overhead and then went out, the only illumination now coming from the windows set high in the back wall. Zane leapt to his feet, as though his chair had shocked him. He glanced up at the lights instinctively and then over at me.

I shook my head, adrenaline lighting me up on the inside. I wasn’t doing it. Which meant, unless the school was suffering from an unexpected power loss, they were coming. Guess they’d decided to take matters into their own hands.

“Yeah, pretty sure,” I murmured in answer to his earlier—and now likely forgotten—question.

I turned to check the door—still closed—my chest thundering with a heady mix of anticipation and dread, which felt oddly familiar, almost comforting.

Facing Zane, I said, “Get to the corner. It’s more defensible.”

“And origin of the phrase ‘backed into a corner,’ in case you’ve forgotten,” he muttered. “This is so not a good idea.” But he did it anyway. He trusted me. God, I hoped I was worthy of it.

I moved to the center of the room, putting myself between Zane and the entrance. “Keep your eyes on me,” I said to him. “Don’t watch the mirror.” In the dim light, the mirror could easily be used as a source of confusion or distraction. And with two of us who looked alike already, adding reflections to the mix could make this go downhill quickly.

“Got it,” Zane said grimly.

I should have been feeling the same—determined, resigned, frightened—but I couldn’t help the strange thrumming of excitement in my bones. You are not made for a normal life. Mara’s words echoed in my head.

I ignored them and tightened the scarf around my neck, double-knotting it so it wouldn’t come loose. If nothing else, I needed Zane to know and trust that I was me and not Ford.

I’d just lowered my hands when the door opened, startling me even though I’d been expecting it.

Ford entered in the lead, the two boys behind her. As soon as they cleared the doorway, though, they spread into the same formation they’d held in the hall: Ford in the front, the other two on either side and slightly behind her.

Facing them, I now had a better view of all three. Ford resembled me as much as I remembered; there’d been no mistake about that. The line on her face looked somehow embedded—a tattoo? Could it be a number one, something to do with her model or version number? But to put it on her face…I shuddered. Neither of the others had a similar mark that I could see.

The guy to her right was considerably taller. His thin frame topped out at close to six feet, still shorter than Zane but surprising for one of us. Ha. Like I knew anything about “us.” But based the Internet research I’d done at home in Wingate, the “grays,” our alien forebears, were usually understood to be quite diminutive. More like the other boy, the one on Ford’s left.

He was the smallest of the three, but he appeared young as well. Perhaps he was the newest hybrid iteration? That would make him Carter, if they’d been named in succession. That left the tall one as Nixon. Carter appeared almost cherubic. His hair had a rebel curliness to it, nothing like the uneven chaos that Ford and I shared or the straight, fine hair that Nixon had. Carter also looked like he might have dimples. If he, you know, ever smiled. He was also the only one carrying an iPad, like the rest of the human students.

“Your human thinks too loudly,” Ford said bluntly, startling me with the suddenness of her voice in the otherwise silent room.

The squeeze of power surrounded me, thicker and heavier than I’d imagined. It was like being encased from the elbow down in thick but mildly pliable plastic. There was also a faint and disconcerting sensation of movement, warm and fluid against my skin, as if it were alive. I could flex my muscles but not move any of my major limbs. Which, of course, was the point.

“Don’t struggle,” I said to Zane, who gave a strangled laugh. He’d probably figured that out before me, having witnessed me doing the same thing to others. I was the one new to it.

“That would be for the best,” the boy—I couldn’t think of him as anything but that due to his size—advised in an apologetic tone. “It will be easier for everybody if you remain still. We don’t want to hurt anyone unnecessarily.”

“Speak for yourself, Carter,” Ford said without even glancing at him. The cold flatness in her voice sent a chill through me, as did Carter’s immediate submission. He dropped his gaze to the floor and closed his mouth firmly, as if making sure no further words would escape by accident.

Crap. “You can’t kill us,” I said. “Discretion has to be part of your mission standards.”

Ford raised her eyebrows. “True. But that’s only a problem if we are caught killing you.”

A good point that I hadn’t thought of. Very literal and logical.

Zane muttered something under his breath about ducks, and I could feel sweat gathering at the back of my knees.

“Oh, I’ll make sure you’re caught,” I said with a shrug that I hoped conveyed ease, confidence, instead of the horrible, creaking tension in my shoulders. It was like balancing on the edge of a cliff, not sure which way the wind was going to push you—toward solid ground or into stomach-dropping, life-ending nothingness. Not that, of course, any kind of wind was going to move us anywhere with them holding us down.

It was taking every ounce of self-will I had not to struggle against the power binding me. I didn’t need my hands to fire back at them. Knock them over, throw them together in a heap, find and stop their hearts. The power buzzed eagerly in my head and under my skin, building in an automatic response to the threat.

But fighting back would (a) confirm that this was indeed a fight, which I was trying to avoid, and (b) give them an idea of my strength.

My logical side was whispering that that would be a very bad idea. The fact they didn’t know how strong I was—or wasn’t—might be the only thing holding them from an all-out attack. They didn’t want to take the chance of a mission failure. In this case, it was better to let them wonder whether I could beat them rather than to try and prove that I couldn’t. As hybrids, we knew nothing about one another’s capabilities, and that same ignorance that had put Zane and me in danger walking into the school might now save our necks.

“Yes, you are the GTX superior specimen. So we have heard.” Ford’s dark eyes were fixed on me, her gaze boring through my head.

I frowned. “I—”

“But there are three of us against you and a human.” The sneer in her voice, if not actually showing on in her expression, was quite obvious.

I sensed Zane bristling behind me and prayed he would stay quiet.

“You are still so confident?” Ford said.

“Yes,” I said, even though it had sounded more like a statement than a question. But no sense leaving any doubt on the table.

Ford cocked her head to one side, like a bird examining an unknown object.

With a jolt, I recognized the movement as one I used as well. But viewing it from the outside, the foreignness of it sent a chill through me. It screamed NOT HUMAN. No wonder Zane had noticed something off about me, despite my best efforts. Had we inherited that gesture from the alien species from which we’d been made, something buried in the DNA that survived even after it was comingled with the human cells?

I wondered what, if anything, the three of them knew about our genetic donor. My father had always said that a body—alive or dead, he’d never been clear—from the Roswell crash in 1947 had been the source. But I had no way of knowing if that was true. They likely didn’t have any more information than I did, but I felt a pull toward them, a tug of kinship. We were, essentially, four orphans from the same family. If we could compare notes…

“Perhaps we should turn you over to our creator instead for examination and analysis,” Ford said. “He would welcome the opportunity to deconstruct a superior specimen.”

So, no family gabfest, then. Ford’s tone had gone flat again, but I suspected she’d used the word superior in sarcasm. She was really hung up on that whole idea—someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to convince her that I was the real deal. I guess that answered my earlier question of who came first.

“Perhaps our creator would reward us,” she added with enough of a speculative lilt to make my stomach cramp with dread.

I hadn’t given much consideration to the idea that she would sic Laughlin on me; I’d been counting on her hatred of him to rise above everything else. But her desire for advancement and/or preservation of her unit might be stronger. I had no way of knowing what her “home life” at the lab was like.

“Or maybe he’ll just decide he likes her better,” Zane spoke up for the first time, his voice ringing out clear and with a hint of a sneer. “I mean, one of you is clearly the original and the other just an imitation. Which do you think he’d rather have?” Zane continued.

His words stole my breath. “Zane,” I whispered through gritted teeth.

But when I turned to glare at him in warning, he wasn’t looking at me; he was staring defiantly at Ford instead, as if challenging her to deny his words.

I tensed, waiting for the first sign of her attack, prepared to break free and intervene if necessary.

TRUST ME. Zane’s words echoed loudly in my head, his attempt to make sure I heard him.

I winced.

SORRY…

And to my surprise, he seemed to have picked up on something I’d missed. Because Ford didn’t attack. She simply watched him for a moment longer, as if he were a monkey who’d managed to hoot something that sounded like Shakespeare before lapsing into nonsense again, and then she returned her attention to me. “Why are you here?” she asked. “It is an automatic disqualification from the trials to attempt sabotage.”

“I’m not here to sabotage.” Well, not technically. “I just want to talk,” I said.

“There is nothing to discuss. We will meet in the trials and we…I will kill you, proving our…my superiority.”

That had been an odd little hiccup. Perhaps the interconnectedness went deeper than I’d realized. That was the first time she’d referred to herself as an individual entity rather than “we,” and she’d seemed to struggle with it.

Huh. I didn’t know what to make of that, exactly, but I bet I could use it. Surely, all three of them wouldn’t be allowed to compete as a single unit. That meant two of them would be left behind. Carter and the as-yet-silent one, Nixon, most likely.

“Is that what you want?” I asked. “The humans dividing you up, using you for whatever they want, however they want?”

Behind me, I sensed Zane’s spike of alarm at my words. But getting them on our side was vital, and if that meant drawing a firmer line between human and not for the moment, so be it.

And it seemed to be working. The three hybrids inched closer together, as though I was the one threatening to separate them. “Our fate is none of your concern,” Ford said.

And yet, she…they weren’t leaving.

“If we refuse to participate in the trials, then they lose control,” I offered, the words tumbling out as if speed would keep her from rejecting the proposal. “We could leave, do anything we want.”

A faint furrow appeared on Ford’s forehead, as if I’d said something that truly mystified her. “How are you here?” she asked. “What kind of supply did you obtain?”

What? I struggled to keep my expression blank, praying that the silence I heard from them went both ways. They’d done and said nothing to indicate otherwise.

Ford tipped her head to the side slightly, an inquisitive posture that reminded me of the raptors in Jurassic Park seconds before they moved in for the kill. “Did you wean yourself?” she asked rapidly, the speed of her words lending intensity where her expression did not. Whatever she was talking about, it was important. That much was obvious.

But before I could begin to work out how to respond, the door to the room opened, sending a wave of surprise through everyone. The power holding tight around me immediately disappeared, and it was a struggle not to stumble backward.

The teacher who’d confronted Zane and me at the school entrance—I’d dubbed him Mr. Coffee after the stain on his shirt—stuck his head in and scowled at Ford and the others. “What’s going on in here? Did you kick Kyle Wagner out of his practice time?”

Crap. If Mr. Coffee saw me, he’d realize there was one more strange-looking student than there should have been. That’d set off some alarms, I bet.

I turned my back to him swiftly, only to be confronted with my image in the huge mirror. Damn it.

Zane, figuring out my dilemma, took two long strides toward me, his arms out in preparation to pull me against him. Evidently, they’d freed him also.

I could almost feel the embrace already: his arms reassuringly tight around me, the warmth of his chest beneath his scratchy white shirt pressing against my cheek, and the steady thump of his heartbeat in my ear. I wanted it—all of it—badly.

But I made myself shake my head, and he stopped in midstep, hurt flashing across his face. My chest ached in response, and I longed to close the distance the remaining between us. But if this got ugly, I wanted him to be clear of the danger. Well, as clear of it as he could be when we were all in the same room.

So, instead, I lowered my chin, letting my hair fall forward to hide my face, and waited to see what would happen.

“Leave,” Ford said to the teacher. She sounded bored.

“Now, listen here, young lady, I told you I don’t care if your father is the CEO of…” He faltered, and I watched through the veil of my hair as the three of them turned as one. They stared him down with eyes so cold and dark, there was no humanity in them. I knew that for a fact. I’d seen (and consequently avoided) my own reflection often enough.

The teacher held his hands up, responding instinctively to a threat he couldn’t understand but sensed nonetheless. “I’ll report this to your father,” he blustered, a last-ditch attempt to save face.

I wonder who was playing the role of their “father,” whether Laughlin had cast himself or enlisted an underling. Either way, the hybrids didn’t seem particularly concerned.

They just kept watching Mr. Coffee until he caved and left the room.

When the door clicked shut after him, the hybrids swiveled as one to face me again, and Ford raised an eyebrow, as if to say, You were saying?

Turning to face her again, I fought the absurd urge to laugh even as chills raced up my arms. That facial expression was a particularly human one, something she must have absorbed unintentionally along the way, but seeing it on her only amplified her otherness.

I took a breath before responding, trying to think through my options quickly. Clearly, Ford thought I knew something or had something she wanted. But I didn’t. She’d mentioned supply and weaning off of it, whatever it was. A drug? One that had been given to them, and she assumed I’d been dosed as well? I could try lying, but I wasn’t sure how long I could pull that off, and that might cause more damage in the long run.

“I don’t have any on me,” I said, settling on something ambiguous but true.

The crinkle in Ford’s forehead returned, her version of a frown. “Then how are you here? How did you escape?” she persisted.

Wait, wait. I shook my head, trying to fit all the pieces into place. Laughlin kept them in line by dosing them, it sounded like. “I broke out,” I said bluntly, opting for oversimplification over losing them in details.

The three of them stiffened as one, as though an electrical charge had passed through them.

“What’s going on?” Zane whispered behind me.

“I don’t know,” I whispered back.

“You are not being treated with the enzyme,” Ford said in another of her statement/questions.

Once more, I hesitated before answering. I had a feeling this was, as the saying went, the $64,000 question (which had never made sense to me as a metaphor—it’s a relatively paltry sum to indicate great significance). “No,” I admitted.

Carter’s mouth fell open in surprise and stayed open as if he desperately wanted to say something, but at a signal I didn’t see or hear, he snapped it shut. Nixon’s distant expression remained unchanged. I wasn’t even sure if aware he was of what was going on.

But Ford just bobbed her head in that strange birdlike nod again. “We will see you at the trials when we…when I kill you,” she said, and turned to leave.

“No, wait!” I lurched after her. “Listen, we could go public. Force them to give you the…whatever you need.” I didn’t particularly relish the thought of using the media as a defense when there was just one of me, but with four of us, we might actually have a chance.

“We have no interest in explaining ourselves to the humans,” she said dismissively. “By the time they have finished arguing among themselves as to our intentions, we will be dead. And that is only if they don’t decide to execute us immediately.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

But Ford was done talking. She started for the door, followed by Nixon, only for both of them to rock to a stop, as if yanked by an invisible rope. Only Carter remained where he stood, as if locked in place.

Slowly, Ford and Nixon turned, focusing their attention on the lone member of their party who hadn’t moved. A long, uncomfortable silence held for several seconds, the tension in the room building, as they stared at one another.

Huh. Apparently, they weren’t quite as “one unit” as Mara had seemed to believe.

Behind me, I heard Zane shifting his feet uneasily and had to fight the urge to do the same. The air was filled with expectancy. Something was about to happen. Bad or good, I wasn’t sure.

“You desire our cooperation in your endeavor for freedom?” Carter asked, his chin set stubbornly.

“Our endeavor for freedom,” I corrected cautiously. “And yes.”

“Good!” Carter said.

I blinked.

“Hi,” he whispered with a shy smile that transformed his narrow face. He did have dimples.

Whoa. He seemed almost normal by human standards.

I smiled back reflexively. They must have seriously recalibrated Carter’s human/alien percentages. Nixon had yet to even indicate that he was aware of our existence in the room, his blank stare focused somewhere over my head.

“We can’t live without an artificial enzyme, Quorosene,” Carter began.

“Carter,” Ford said sharply.

He ignored her, but at his sides his hands balled into fists, as if he were steeling himself against her displeasure. “It is how we were created. If we go for more than twelve hours without a dose, our internal organs start shutting down. Death follows. Painfully. It’s how they control us.”

“And how they eliminate us when we are no longer useful,” Ford added, her flat monotone a sharp contrast to Carter’s expressiveness. “You would do well to remember that, Carter. It’s a lesson Johnson never quite mastered, and they made her pay.” Her hand drifted toward her cheek and the line marked there.

It was a hash mark, I realized suddenly, my stomach lurching. Johnson. That was the name of the hybrid who’d been killed when she couldn’t fit in. So…Ford was keeping score? Tracking Laughlin’s sins, perhaps, and in a manner that must have infuriated him. I couldn’t imagine that someone so interested in making them blend in had been thrilled to see that she’d marred her face in that way.

Had they all been connected at the time Johnson died? It seemed likely. Had they felt the life slowly drain out of one of their own? What torture that must have been. I felt like throwing up, just imagining the helplessness they’d felt. No wonder they’d hunted Mara.

“We’ve been trying to break our dependence, or at least reduce our need so that we can build up a supply. But…” Carter’s narrow shoulders moved up and down helplessly in a shrug. “It has been difficult. If we had the opportunity to experiment with our limits more often, it might be possible, but we are monitored too closely.”

“She cannot help you,” Ford said, moving closer to Carter until he turned to face her.

“You don’t know that,” he said. “You’ve done your best for us, but that is a temporary solution at best.”

“It has worked so far,” Ford said. “I’ve done all that I can to—”

“What has?” I asked.

“If Ford cooperates, behaves herself, and wins the trial, Nixon and I stay alive,” Carter said, his mouth twisting in a bitter smile. “And I get to keep coming to school. But that’s only if Dr. Laughlin keeps his word. Do you trust him, Ford? I don’t.”

The two of them stared at each other, a silent standoff that dragged on for far longer than was comfortable. Clearly, telepathy was their primary method of communication.

I glanced at Nixon, who had shifted just slightly in the direction of Ford and Carter. Participating in the conversation, perhaps? I wondered if he was the cause for the rumors that Dr. Jacobs had heard and passed along to me, that Laughlin’s “products” weren’t able to speak. Ford and Carter didn’t have issues with speech, when they chose to use it, but either Nixon was the ultimate in “strong but silent” or he just didn’t talk. Whether through lack of ability or desire, I didn’t know.

“Fine,” Ford said abruptly, breaking off whatever discussion had been going on inside their minds. “If that is what you both wish.” She didn’t sound happy. “But we will not be foolish about it.”

“What you’re suggesting is too difficult, Ford,” Carter protested.

“That is the point,” she said, before shifting her attention to me. “You want our help? We need a supply of Quorosene or information on how to eliminate our dependence,” Ford said bluntly. “That is the price for our aid.”

My mouth fell open. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“From what we’ve been able to learn, it’s manufactured elsewhere. But Dr. Laughlin seems to keep a small amount in his office at Laughlin Integrated, just in case of an interruption in the supply,” Carter offered apologetically. Clearly, even though he disagreed with Ford, he wasn’t going to take a stand against her.

“Isn’t that where you are? Why don’t you just get it yourself?” Zane asked suspiciously.

For the first time, Carter seemed to hesitate, looking at the other two. “The price for disobedience is not worth the risk. As you have likely already deduced, only one of us will be allowed to compete in the trials, per the agreed-upon terms.”

Which meant Dr. Laughlin had two lives to hang over Ford’s head.

I grimaced. If their bond was as deep as it seemed to be, I understood Ford’s motivation, but I couldn’t help thinking that if Laughlin was anything like Dr. Jacobs, she’d just given him two opportunities to further control her.

“So, you expect Ariane to, what, break in and start nosing around?” Zane demanded.

“I don’t expect anything. How you accomplish the task is not our concern,” Ford said, talking to me as though I was the one who’d spoken. “You asked for our assistance. We are merely defining the parameters under which we’d be willing to provide it.” She sounded both annoyed and amused.

“That’s crazy,” Zane insisted.

No, it was a test (one that Ford obviously thought I would fail). I didn’t like it, but I understood her reasoning. Why should they trust me when they didn’t know me? I could just as easily be here trying to find a way to disqualify or discredit her. But if I could do as they asked, I would prove myself. And they’d have what they needed to rebel with me.

Or, quite simply, it could be a trap. One less competitor for the trials, plus some bonus points for being the ones to arrange my capture.

Either way, though, the bottom line was the same—they wanted me to walk into Laughlin Integrated and try to steal something that was most likely locked up tighter than they were now or I’d ever been.

Right.