The Hunt

19

Ariane

THE DARK INTERIOR OF THE SUV reeked of new leather and too much men’s cologne, a mixture that would now forever be associated in my mind with blinding terror.

I was in the middle seat, close enough to see the precise line of the haircut on the driver’s neck, smell that he was the source of the offending musky odor, and notice the plastic communication bud in his ear when he turned to check traffic before pulling out.

So close. Agent Blonde, as I nicknamed him, was so very close. And though I hadn’t had the chance to confirm it, I suspected he, too, was carrying concealed under his jacket. I’d seen a gun on Lando, the other guard, when he’d held the SUV door open for us. (I named him after the Star Wars character he vaguely resembled. I may have been slightly punchy with panic.)

That gun—and Agent Blonde’s presumably as well—was the real thing, not the kind with tranquilizer darts like I’d seen on Dr. Jacobs’s retrieval teams.

Theoretically, these men and their weapons were here to protect the hybrids (a.k.a. Laughlin’s investment), but I was willing to bet they’d been trained with scenarios that would involve turning those weapons on their charges.

Carter’s shoulder pressed against mine on one side. Nixon was folded up on the other side of me.

I imitated their position. Staring straight ahead, hands resting neatly, palms down, on their knees. Three little statues in a row.

But on the inside, I was screaming.

I’d messed up. Years of training for covert operations—not exactly like this one but similar enough that it shouldn’t have been an issue—and I’d hesitated.

In that last moment before climbing into the vehicle, I’d frozen. Just for a millisecond. Long enough for a deeply buried survival instinct to rise up and shout, “Are you freaking kidding me with this?”

It was only human. At a time when I could least afford to appear so.

That would never have happened to Ford.

I could feel sweat forming under my arms, at the base of my spine and in little pockets where my hands rested against my knees. God, what if a trickle ran down somewhere visible, like down my cheek or neck? What if they noticed I was sweating when I got out of the car? Who knew what they’d been told to watch for and report?

I could hear my breathing picking up pace and falling out of sync with the others.

Next to me, a tremor ran through Carter and his hands squeezed into fists. He kept his expression steady, though he seemed to grow paler.

On my other side, Nixon’s leg began to jounce, as though he were trying to run in place.

They were feeling the effects of separation. Suddenly, my worries about my mistake seemed insignificant. If they couldn’t keep it together in the car, we were so very dead. Or caught. Either way, the same thing.

Keeping my gaze fixed straight ahead and my hand low, I reached over and clamped down on Nixon’s hand, pressing down to stop his leg from moving.

To my surprise, he flipped his hand up, catching my palm in his and squeezing tightly. His expression never changed—never had, in all the time I’d been watching him—but there was someone in there. Nixon was very much at home. Not the empty shell he appeared to be.

Carter edged closer until he was pressed against me in a solid line. Then his hand wiggled under my elbow until his fingers latched hard around my arm.

They were using me as a touchstone, maybe. A weight to keep them from drifting back to Ford.

I watched both of them as carefully as I could without looking at them, sick with dread that one of them would reach for the door handle and throw himself out to return to Ford. I might be able to hold them in place with my ability, but for how long, especially with two of them struggling against one of me?

“Everything okay today, kids?” Lando asked casually, lifting his gaze to the rearview mirror.

Was I, as Ford, expected to answer as leader? Or would Ford’s disdain for humans keep her silent, ignoring the question? I didn’t know. This wasn’t one of the scenarios I’d covered with Ford during our brief consultation.

I couldn’t breathe; all I could do was sit there, my heart beating so hard I shook with it.

The silence in the backseat dragged on and on. Maybe five seconds, but it felt like centuries. And it was too long.

Lando frowned—I could see the wrinkle in his forehead in the mirror—and started to turn around.

Then Carter rallied. “The day was within acceptable parameters, thank you,” he said. He might have been a little more breathless than I’d ever heard before—and his fingers were tight enough on my arm to cut off circulation—but Lando didn’t seem to notice.

Lando nodded, those piercing eyes now fixed on me.

I did my best to look like Ford. Bored, impatient, tired of these humans.

After a long moment, Lando’s gaze flickered and then dropped away.

And it took everything I had not to sag back in relief. I’d been worried about dying inside Laughlin Integrated; now I was wondering if we’d survive the trip there.

Forcing myself to concentrate, I listened to the roar of the tires on the road until my breathing slowed. I stared through the windshield, unfocusing my eyes until the trees all rolled together in a green blur, broken only by bright sparks of light—sunshine reflecting off passing cars.

I wasn’t connected to Carter’s and Nixon’s minds, and they’d never given any sign of hearing my thoughts, but if anxiety was contagious, so was relaxation. They’d pick up on it through my body language, if nothing else. I wasn’t Ford, but I could still try to lead. They were trusting me.

By the time the SUV approached Laughlin Integrated Enterprises—a glass and concrete tower with shiny, reflective windows that made it look like a bit of hardened sky—and rolled down a ramp and past security gates into an interior garage, Nixon’s grip on my hand had eased, and Carter was breathing easier. And my panicked sweating had mostly stopped, leaving me damp and uncomfortable against the leather seat but far more in control. Yay.

Agent Blonde opened the door this time, and Carter exited first. I stepped out onto an immaculate concrete floor, double glass doors just ahead and to the right.

All kinds of security blinked and flashed next to those doors: key card slots, palm scanners, intercoms, and a freestanding device with a various mechanical arms—some of which had pointy ends—and a metal cuff to hold an arm in place. Blood test, maybe? Scary.

But according to Ford, I wouldn’t need to worry about any of those.

Head straight for the doors, then right, right, and left until you reach the end, she’d said.

The end of what? I’d asked.

But she’d waved my concern away. You’ll know.

Nixon got out and, after a brief hesitation that almost stopped my heart dead, led the way to the entrance. I followed, hoping Carter was paying attention behind me. Looking back wasn’t an option, obviously, unless I wanted to announce in not so many words that I wasn’t who I was supposed to be.

Pretending to be linked to Nixon and Carter was a hell of a lot harder than I’d ever imagined.

It wasn’t just knowing someone well enough that you could predict what they would say or do, it was literally becoming a part of them. One organism with many limbs. You didn’t have to think or hesitate or confer any more than I had to look at my arm and tell it to move.

I watched Nixon ahead of me, listened to the sound of Carter’s footsteps behind me, and tried to adjust accordingly, but the echoes off the concrete walls made it almost impossible.

Fortunately, Agent Blonde and Lando, their transportation/guard duties complete, were seemingly absorbed in the discussion of a game from television the night before and the possibility that the referees had been bribed.

Nixon didn’t hesitate on approaching the doors, and neither did I, determined not to make the same mistake twice. As if sensing that, the doors slid apart while he was several feet away, granting us immediate access. I didn’t even have to slow down.

Someone was on the ball with the button pushing somewhere. I wanted to look around for the camera but didn’t dare.

The doors whooshed closed behind me, presumably once Carter had cleared the threshold, and we were in a small entryway with another set of closed glass doors ahead of us.

A cool rush of medicinal-smelling air surrounded me, lodging an immediate and familiar throb of dread in my stomach. I knew that smell. Sure, here there was dark gray carpeting and ash-colored walls instead of Dr. Jacobs’s all-white, all-the-time theme, but it was still a lab. It still held the scent of antiseptic, overheated plastic from the computers, and a hint of formaldehyde (a.k.a. failure).

I kept moving behind Nixon, and the second set of doors opened, just like the first.

Past those doors, the air warmed slightly and potted plastic plants and trees appeared along the walls at a regular basis, between closed office doors, along with a sanitized version of corporate art. Nothing like the luxury Dr. Jacobs had surrounded himself with.

I’d accompanied my father to the dentist once for a procedure that inhibited his ability to drive. It reminded me of this. Impersonal but worse for the attempt to make it seem like something else. The plastic plants and “art” only called attention to what they were trying to hide. The sterile confines of GTX had, at least, been honest in their nature.

I made the turns as instructed by Ford, and the slight slant to the floor told me we were wending our way onto lower levels. Interesting. No stairs or elevators. That meant fewer ways in or out. So maybe Laughlin wasn’t as confident in his hold on his hybrids as he appeared to be. Or perhaps he simply thought of them as more disposable. I shuddered and then caught myself, hopefully before any of the surely numerous cameras picked up on it.

As we rounded the final corner, I noticed a sign hung flush against the wall, just above my line of sight.

GALLERY

SERIES 7.11.19

The tidy white font on the black background reminded me of the signs I’d seen for museum exhibits on television and in movies. (I’d never been to one in real life; there’d been an eighth grade field trip to the Field Museum, but I hadn’t gone of course. I had asked, though, because I’d thought it might be allowed under my directive of “know the humans so you can better imitate one.” Now I had to wonder how much of my father’s refusal had to do with the perennial obligation of being unnoticed and how much to do with the fact that the museum was, perhaps, a little too near Laughlin’s territory.)

Honestly, I expected nothing more from the gallery than a collection of the same drab photographs and prints that had decorated the previous corridors.

So I didn’t understand what I was looking at, at first. The initial display appeared to be some kind of modern art statement piece, a glass box—seemingly empty but for a tiny dot in the center of it—set into the wall with a small black-and-white sign beneath it.

It wasn’t until after three or four identical displays that the object in the box became large enough for me to recognize familiar features, for me to understand what I was looking at.

Large, dark eyes set behind translucent lids in a pale, delicate head. Tiny hands that looked more like flippers. A body no larger than my fist, curled in on itself, floating in an eternal sea of preservative.

And beneath it, on that neat black-and-white sign, a name: QUINCY ADAMS.

The name of a former president. These were Nixon, Ford, and Carter’s predecessors on display.

My stomach revolted, and I gagged.

Carter stepped on my heels before I realized I’d slowed down to stare. “You can’t stop. We can’t stop,” he hissed in my ear.

Oh God. He was right. Ford wouldn’t stop. Because she was steeled against this horrific display; she’d have to be. She’d seen it every day for years.

I forced my sluggish legs to move, commanded my knees to bend and lift my feet. I’m sure if anyone were watching closely enough, they would have seen Ford moving as though there were strings attached to her arms and legs. Jerky, puppetlike. But I was moving. And that was the best I could do.

Especially as the “gallery” only got worse.

As the series progressed, as the names grew closer to the living Laughlin hybrids I knew, the specimens appeared to grow, in a mockery of the development of the living beings they’d once been. Signs of “progress” in Laughlin’s process, obviously.

Until, finally, I was looking at full-fledged children. Not infants who might have perished before birth from some unspecified developmental flaw. No, these were boys and girls, some taller than others, some thinner and less human looking. All them, though, had the same pale and fine hair I struggled with on a daily basis. Short, long, wavy, straight, and every state in between, it hung in clouds around their heads, above their sightless eyes, floating gently like seaweed on the current. Probably thanks to the filtration system that kept them preserved and on display.

It was horrific. The exact fate I’d feared for the source of the alien DNA we all shared, the one who’d crash-landed here on Earth in 1947. I’d never dreamed…I’d never imagined someone would do this to us. I felt a kinship to these silent and lost souls just as much as their living counterparts. Yes, some of them, had they survived, might have wanted me dead (as Ford might still); some might have even tried to kill me during the trials. But that didn’t change what we were to each other.

In the displays that contained the more advanced hybrids, metal tools lined the inside of the tank and a see-through plastic flap covered a drawer beneath, where scientists could presumably reach through and collect their bits and pieces of flesh.

My vulnerable siblings, half brothers and sisters, had no peace even in death. They would be stared at, studied, and sampled.

One of the Roosevelts, the first one, T. Roosevelt, looked like a tiny, perfect doll. Five or six years old. The same age I’d been when I’d “escaped” with my father. Even in just the quick glimpse I had of her, she reminded me of me. And the daughter I would never have. (I wasn’t sure it was even possible, and even if it was, who knew what the genetic tinkering they’d done on me would result in?)

I wondered if they’d called her “T” or “Roosevelt” or nothing at all.

It was a waste. Such a waste.

Despite my extensive education in world religions and the various wars and conflict they were supposedly responsible for launching, I’d never reached a conclusion on my own opinion about souls or an afterlife. But I figured this display said more about the postdeath fate of those who’d created it rather than those who were in it. I prayed my fellow hybrids were long gone and, at the very least, feeling nothing at all anymore.

I opened my eyes wide to hold in the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks.

Far be it from me to be thankful to Dr. Jacobs for anything, including my existence, but at least I wasn’t part of something like this grotesque collection.

Then again, for all I knew maybe Jacobs had a gallery somewhere in GTX that I had just never seen. But I doubted it. This wasn’t his style. He was determined, vicious, and uncaring in his pursuit of his goals. Cruel, oh yes. But with purpose. Not that that made it better, but somehow cruelty without purpose, like creating this gallery, like making the surviving hybrids pass it daily, seemed worse.

This reeked of arrogance, self-indulgence, and a twisted mind.

As the wall curved ahead of us, I could see the final displays. Thank God. Although I had to wonder if something worse lay ahead, since no one, not even Carter, had mentioned this monstrous memorial to me in preparation for this trip.

The last hybrid name I recognized, not just from human history but from Ford herself.

Johnson had been a girl, taller and stockier than Ford and me. Unlike the others, she appeared to be staring somewhere off to the left. Her neck was twisted at a strange angle that someone had tried to correct, not quite successfully.

According to the tiny plaques beneath the boxes, all of those prior to Johnson had died of “system failure.” Multiple organs giving up at once, for no known reason. In my research back in Wingate, I’d learned that genetic hybrids and animal clones created in human laboratories often suffered this fate.

But Johnson had been “eliminated” when she couldn’t fit in with Mara’s cultural indoctrination suggestions. Dr. Laughlin had taken away her dose of Quorosene, and she’d died. Slowly, horribly, according to Ford and the others.

Looking at Johnson’s obviously broken neck, though, I wondered if someone had stepped up and put her out of the misery in the end. Killing her even though they’d all feel that death. Someone more than a sister, an extension of themselves.

Ford. I’d have bet money on it.

I couldn’t imagine doing that.

Johnson had once been part of Ford, Carter, and Nixon’s minds, and she part of theirs. She was represented by the line on Ford’s face. On my face now, too—a temporary mark, thanks to Ford’s adept hand with a pen.

Except, after having seen all of them, from Washington on, I knew the line on my face stood for every last one of them.

I wanted to stop, to tell Johnson I was sorry, and I was going to end this.

But hesitating again might only make it impossible for me to do that. I had to keep going, pretending to be unaffected. I could do it. If not for myself, Ford, Nixon, and Carter, then all the ones who’d come before us. Including the 106 who’d lived, however briefly, at GTX before me.

But even with that edict in mind, the very last display case caused me to stumble. There was a long stretch of unbroken wall ahead of it, so I almost missed it, thinking the gallery had (finally) ended. But there was one last tank. Empty, but that didn’t matter. It was the sign beneath it that caught my attention.

“Ford,” it read in that mesmerizingly bright white text.

The birth date was filled in with an ominous hyphen pointing the way to her unknown-for-the-moment death date. Ford. Not Carter, not Nixon.

Carter reached out and tugged me along as he passed.

Keep going, keep going, was the unspoken message. Of course, he couldn’t say that to me. The real Ford would have understood him in her mind, no words needed.

Ahead of us, Nixon sped up, like a lost dog that finally recognizes home, and I realized we’d reached the end of our journey. The gray hallway dead-ended into a final set of glass doors. They opened into a large room with dark green walls and faux skylights—revealing an artificial night-time sky, complete with fake constellations—set into a high ceiling. An oversize structure dominated the back wall. It looked like a cross-section of a beehive but without the natural irregularity found there. This was made of plastic and precise. Four large tubes enclosed in a larger plastic box. Like the bottom side of a giant LEGO piece.

Each tube was big enough to crawl inside, and watching Nixon, I saw that was exactly what he did. He took the lower opening, leaving three cubbies open. Upon closer inspection, I saw bedding and clothing in several of them. One of them—Carter’s, I’d bet—had been papered with clippings from magazines and catalogues. A white iPad charger dangled from the opening.

That was evidently where they slept and spent time when they were at “home.” The only bit of seclusion they seemed to have. In the corner was a bathroom area: toilet, shower, sink. But there was no curtain, no door, no illusion of privacy whatsoever.

And with cameras likely tracking our every move, no place for a private conversation and the questions now burning a hole in my brain. Why did Ford have a tank and not Nixon? If the tanks were prepped in advance, which would make sort of a sick sense, then why weren’t there three empty ones waiting? Or, at least two, designated for the ones who were not going to the trials. Instead, it was just Ford’s. Which would imply that Laughlin had no intention of sending her to the trials.

I glared at Carter, who either in genuine ignorance or deliberate misunderstanding, nodded toward the upper tube on the left side, diagonal from Nixon.

Yeah, I was asking which cubby was supposed to be mine/Ford’s. That’s what I wanted to know at this exact moment. Right.

He raised an eyebrow in an Are you stupid? look he could have only learned from Ford.

With an effort, I hauled myself into the tiny bed tube/room that belonged to Ford, worrying a little about how strange it would look for me to struggle at this when Ford obviously managed it nightly.

Ford’s chamber was nearly as stark as Nixon’s. I crawled past a pile of clothes near the opening. At the far end, I found bedding wound in a heap with a pillow. When I moved the pillow and sheets, feeling too warm and closed in, paper rasped. Upon closer inspection, I found two small pages glued or somehow stuck to the bottom of the tube. One appeared to be some kind of diagram of a portion of the night sky, with the stars named. Someone, Ford, presumably, had circled a few of them in red. The other was a glossy page that appeared to have been torn out of a larger work, like a travel guide. It was a picture of purplish mountains surrounding a lake so blue it had to be Photoshopped. I didn’t recognize the location, but—

A faint tapping sounded to my right suddenly, startling me. I sat back and listened for a moment before picking out the pattern. Morse code? Really? Well, better than attempting a conversation that would be picked up by the cameras. I doubted that Carter and Ford ever talked aloud here. Why would they when they can communicate telepathically and not risk being overheard? “Change now for training.” That was Carter’s message?

“Why didn’t she tell me?” I tapped in a manner that, I hoped, conveyed my pissed-off-ness. I’d been led to believe that Ford was the one chosen for the trials. The empty tank said otherwise. “Why didn’t you?”

The long delay before his response seemed to indicate a level of discomfort or perhaps, oh, God, uncertainty. “Laughlin does not understand us. He is reminding Ford that she is not irreplaceable, and that if she’s gone, there will be no one to protect Nixon and me. That’s all.”

Except it was more than a threat.

Clambering around in the tube so I was facing out again, I could see the empty display with Ford’s name. It was set apart from the others, an expanse of unbroken wall between it and Johnson’s tank. Why? Perhaps to leave room for Nixon, or to make sure that Ford saw it every morning when she sat up.

That? That was a promise.

And it was proof of a lie. A lie that Ford had told.

According to that gallery and the last display, Nixon and Carter weren’t in danger of being “discontinued” in advance of the trials, as Ford had implied; she was.

I’d been counting on her loyalty to Nixon and Carter to keep me safe while I was in here and to make her play her part in this scheme.

But how could I know for sure what was going on in her head? Could even Carter and Nixon know for certain? They clearly believed that she wouldn’t abandon them, or else they would have spoken up. Right?

Plus, leaving now didn’t even make sense. If Ford took off, that would only guarantee her a slow and painful death from a lack of Quorosene. Unless she had some kind of workaround for that. Maybe she’d weaned herself without the others knowing.

I glanced down at the picture on the bottom of her cubby again, the mountains, the lake, the trees. It looked peaceful, safe, and a little lonely. Like an end.

That was another possibility: maybe Ford didn’t care. Maybe she’d had enough of trying to take care of the others. And maybe the chance to die on her own terms was worth more to her than living on someone else’s. I wouldn’t put it past her. Stubbornness was strong in both sides of our heritage.

And I’d just given her the opportunity and the ability to walk away from her fate, from that box with her name on it, for good.