The Hunt

5

Ariane

ZANE WAS BLUFFING WITH THAT THREAT. I was pretty sure. But all the emotion radiating off him made it hard to be certain. And determination ranked right at the top of that list. He wasn’t going to give up, and with that manager standing right there, ready to call the police, I couldn’t afford to waste any more time arguing with him.

Damn it. I shoved the gearshift into park and then reached over to unlock the door for Zane.

What might have been relief flickered over Zane’s face as he registered the sounds. Then, his mouth tight, he headed to the passenger side.

I shook my head. It was like just getting the bleeding to stop and then reopening the wound.

You never should have shut the room door. It woke him up.

All I’d had to do was walk out and leave the door slightly ajar. Just enough to keep the lock from engaging—a sudden and loud click that might be disruptive—but not so much that it would be noticed by a casual observer outside.

Easy, in theory.

And yet, in reality, not so much.

As I’d shut the door, I’d glanced at Zane one last time, sleeping and vulnerable, his limbs slack with exhaustion. His dark hair was a tousled mess, making him look younger and more at risk for harm.

Leaving the door unlatched—and therefore, unlocked—meant leaving Zane open to attack. Not just by GTX or the others who might be searching for me, but regular, disreputable humans who might not hesitate to take advantage of him. Or the money I’d left for him.

And wasn’t the whole point of this exercise to keep him safe?

I’d imagined Zane waking up with a stranger looming over him, his fear and confusion, and my hand had jerked, as if an electrical shock had passed through the metal handle. The door had snapped shut, the lock engaging with a declarative click.

And that had decided that.

Who, exactly, are you attempting to fool? You knew the risks of that action and took it anyway. You wanted this.

I winced. Great. The part of me that I counted on to be unemotional and logical—my “alien” side, as I thought of it—had apparently discovered the joy of sarcasm. Not that it was inaccurate.

Zane climbed in the van, saying something to the motel manager who was staring at us, a cell phone clutched in his thick hand.

“Thanks for getting him involved,” I said to Zane, as he closed the door.

“Never would have happened if you’d just talked to me instead of skulking out in the middle of the night,” he pointed out sharply, surprising me a little.

“I wasn’t skulking. Skulking implies shame or wrongdoing,” I said, stung. Stupid. It was a ridiculous response, but seeing him like this had thrown me. Struggling with my own mixed emotions, I hadn’t fully considered his feelings. Yes, I’d expected him to be upset when he woke and found me gone, maybe even feel a little betrayed, but I’d figured relief would outweigh both of those emotions. I mean, who wouldn’t want a free pass out of this nightmare that was my life?

Not, of course, that I’d planned to be here when he was running that particular emotional gamut.

You might not have planned it, but you certainly made it possible.

Oh, shut up.

Back in the world outside my head, Zane raised his eyebrows. “Really? That’s your defense? Arguing word choice?”

By now, I was feeling slightly provoked and attacked from multiple sides. “I told you, I was trying to protect—”

“Protect me, yeah. From what? What is so different now from a few hours ago?” he demanded.

“It’s complicated,” I hedged, putting the van in gear and pulling out of the parking lot onto the road. The last thing we needed was the manager calling the police anyway, because we weren’t leaving.

Zane narrowed his eyes at me. “This is about that letter, isn’t it? What does it say?”

I hesitated. If there was the possibility I could get him to leave without dragging him deeper into this mess, all the better.

He made a frustrated noise. “We’ve been over this already. If you don’t tell me—”

“You want to know so badly? Fine,” I snapped. “Good luck trying to ever sleep again. I won’t be.”

He waved his hand in a “give it to me” gesture.

“According to my father’s letter, GTX shouldn’t be my primary concern. Dr. Jacobs wants me alive. His competitors—David Laughlin and Emerson St. John—do not,” I said flatly. “One less hybrid to beat in the trials.”

Zane flinched.

“And apparently, they aren’t particularly worried about taking out innocent bystanders if it means getting rid of me,” I said. “Anyone near me is in danger of being killed. Not captured, not tortured, not used for motivation. Dead. Do you get that?” I could hear the hard edge growing in my voice and forced myself to breathe.

Zane let out a slow breath and slumped in his seat, rubbing his hands over his face.

Disappointment crept over me, but I shoved it away. This was good. He should know the stakes, the odds against his survival.

I pulled over into the mostly empty parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts and dug into my pocket for the key card to the room, which I’d kept for reasons I didn’t want to examine too closely. “Here,” I said softly.

His gaze flicked between the card and my face. “Do you not want me here? Am I…” He paused, as if searching for what to say, and then he exhaled sharply, frustrated with himself or me, I couldn’t tell.

“Am I slowing you down?” he asked finally, the words coming out rapidly, as if he was afraid of the answer.

I gaped at him, too shocked to respond at first. “No, of course not,” I managed. “I mean, yes, I want you here, but it’s too dangerous.”

At that, he gave me a bitter smile, his white, even teeth flashing in the dim light. “Has it ever occurred to you that, even without crazy government people chasing me, I don’t have much to go back to?”

“They’re not government. At least not yet. For now, it’s just the corporate.” I didn’t know why I felt the need to correct him, to pick at minute points of his argument rather than the main one. Maybe it was because I was having trouble finding fault with it; maybe it was because I didn’t want to.

Zane rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He shifted in his seat, turning more toward me. “Ariane, do you think I can go home again? Do you really think I can live with my dad after all of that?”

I remembered the shade of reddish purple his father’s face had turned when Zane defied him. There was no love lost between them now, if there ever had been. That much was clear.

I shook my head. “But you have everything. You have a future. You’ve got…prom and graduation and college.” All the things I wanted and could never have.

“Your reasons for keeping me away are so that I can attend lame school functions?” he asked.

“You’re being deliberately obtuse,” I said, exasperated. If he could throw around “skulking”…

He smirked. “My favorite color.”

“Funny,” I said dryly. Then I shook my head. I wouldn’t let him distract me. “Okay, so going back to Wingate isn’t an option. We already figured that anyway. But your mom—”

“Vanished in the middle of the night more than a year ago and hasn’t made contact since. Left a note full of apologies.” He gave me a piercing look.

Ah, that explained why he’d reacted so badly to what I’d done. I grimaced.

“Is it so hard to believe I want to be here? With you?” he asked quietly.

I froze. God, how was I supposed to respond to that?

I took a deep breath and worked through my choices. Could I force him out of the van? Yes. Would he be safer without me? Probably. Maybe. I wouldn’t be there if someone came after him, which was its own trouble. And he did, through my own foolishness, know my new identity. Which was a vulnerability that could be exploited, even against his will.

I had only the truth to give at this point. “I can’t…I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you because of me,” I admitted.

He turned toward me. “Yeah? How are you going to stop it? Especially if you’re not around?” His tone was gentler than his words.

“You’d be safer without me,” I blurted out in an approximation of my worst fear. Better off. He’d be better off without you.

Zane seemed undisturbed. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think you can know that,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can. Besides, even if that’s true, even if it’s more dangerous for me to stick it out with you, don’t I get to choose?” He leaned closer, bracing one hand on the dashboard, forcing me to meet his gaze. “Isn’t that why you hate GTX? Because they took away your choices? You want the opportunity to make decisions for yourself. Why do you get that freedom and I don’t?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again without saying a word. I didn’t have an argument for that.

You don’t need one. Just remove him from the vehicle.

No. I tried the other way. Maybe he’s right.

I sighed and shoved the arguing parts of myself to the back of my mind. There would never be agreement on this matter, I knew that much already. “What do you want to do?” I asked Zane.

To Zane’s credit, he didn’t react as though this was the capitulation he’d been seeking. He just sat back in his seat. “I want to go to my mom’s and make sure she’s okay.”

I opened my mouth to protest.

He shot me a look. “If they’re willing to kill people to get to you, she might be in danger because of me. And I need to warn her at least. You owe me that much.”

He was right. I’d wreaked enough havoc on his life. I could do this one thing for him to try to set things right.

“Okay, but then what?” I asked. “I need to get out of the country and—”

“Run for the rest of your life? Find an abandoned cabin in the woods somewhere and hope for the best?”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said.

“You’re willing to fight for everybody else but not yourself,” he said, more to himself than me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded, bristling.

“I mean, all of this started because you couldn’t stand to see Jenna suffering and then you were willing to do whatever it took to keep them from hurting me. You saved Rachel even after everything she did to you.” He shook his head in wonder. “But you won’t give yourself the same consideration.”

I didn’t like the direction of this conversation. Hearing the names of my former best friend, my only friend, and my high school nemesis only reminded me of the wreckage trailing behind me, a past I couldn’t escape. “Do you have any better options?” I asked tightly.

Zane shrugged. “I don’t know. What about going public?”

My jaw dropped. “Oh, yeah, that’ll end well,” I said. “Zane, in case it’s escaped your notice, there’s just one of me. Up against three very powerful companies with unlimited resources and, I don’t know, eventually the United States government maybe. I’m not human. I may not even have rights. They could classify me as an enemy of the state or a terrorist or something.”

“I think an argument could be that you’re as much human as anything else,” he said.

I tried not to wince. Is that how he thought of me? Is that the only reason he was okay with me? Because I was “as much human as anything else”? It was and was not true. Part of me was human, most definitely, but I would never be human “enough.” There would always be something other about me. It was just part of who I was, who I would be forever, the struggle between human and not.

“But fine,” Zane continued, completely unaware of my inner turmoil. “Even if that’s not the right answer, my point is that there are other possibilities. You just haven’t given yourself a chance to figure them out.” He paused. “You deserve more, Ariane. You deserve a life of your own.” His fierceness was unmistakable. He meant it.

Hope flared in me and stubbornly refused to go out. Was Zane right? I wanted so badly to believe him. Wanted to believe in the idea that there might be something to my future other than hiding. But I’d had this same feeling twenty-four hours ago, when fleeing GTX, and trusting in that little bit of hope again was more than I could do right now.

Through the window, I watched the employees moving around in the doughnut shop, giving myself time to think. “I’ll go with you to your mom’s house to make sure she’s okay,” I said finally. Beyond that, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—commit to anything. And if I could find a way to convince him to go back to some semblance of a regular life in the process, I’d take it. This kind of half-life, always running or hiding, wouldn’t be good for him, even if he couldn’t see that right now.

Zane gave me a curt nod and pulled his seat belt into place.

The difference between us now and an hour or so ago was marked and chilly. I tried not to let that hurt. It’s not as if I expected him to want to kiss me again. He’d fought to stay with me. That was enough, wasn’t it? I guess that didn’t keep me from wanting him to want to kiss me, foolish as it was.

“One more thing,” he said as I turned out of the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot onto the street.

“Yeah?” I asked cautiously.

“I get that you were leaving me to protect me,” he said. “But what you’re missing is that it’s too late. I’m already in, with both feet. I don’t need you to shelter me like I’m too weak to handle it. So stop it.”

The thing was, I wasn’t sure I could. Especially when I looked down and realized that those feet he’d referenced metaphorically were literally bare—well, socks only.

He’d left his shoes in the room when he’d chased after me, leaving himself vulnerable. And I had to wonder if that was the real metaphor to be worried about.

“Is that it?” Zane asked.

The sun was slowly coming up behind us, painting the street and the plain brick duplex ahead of us in pale blue light.

“Yeah,” I said. “1701B.” I put the van in park and checked the back of the grease-spotted receipt where I’d scrawled the address, just to be sure. We’d gotten lucky that his mother was listed in the phone book. I hadn’t realized how dependent I’d become on my phone until I didn’t have it. The third gas station I’d tried in Gurnee had had both breakfast sandwiches and a relatively recent phone book.

“It doesn’t look like much,” Zane said, which brought the total words he’d spoken in the last half hour up to about twenty. And six of those had been his breakfast order.

He’d gotten progressively quieter the closer we got to his mother’s house. But his leg was jouncing up and down with an excess of nervous energy.

He might still be a mad at me for trying to protect him instead of including him. He thought I counted him as someone lesser just because he wasn’t like me. That was, I suspected, thanks to his dad drilling that concept into his head for years. But now that we were here, any residual anger with me was taking a backseat to a growing uncertainty about seeing his mom.

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting at her home. Signs of a better life, the one his mother had felt it necessary to leave him for, maybe?

If that was the case, he was out of luck. The two-story duplex had all the depressing charm of a brick box. Square, dumpy, with black metal bars on the lower windows. The grass was dried out and crispy yellow, a sharp contrast to the miles of green lawn we’d left behind in Wingate.

The only sign of life was a small planter near the front door on her side. Red flowers of some kind flourished and spilled over the edge of the faux-cement plastic container.

I couldn’t help but think about how that must look from Zane’s perspective. She’d taken the time to plant flowers and care for them but not to make contact with her youngest son? The one she’d left the night before his fifteenth birthday?

I kind of hated her on principle for that.

“Do you feel anything?” he asked. “Is someone…waiting for us?” He meant GTX or one of the other companies.

I closed my eyes to focus. Zane, next to me, was the loudest source, due to proximity and his tangled-up emotions. I did my best to tune him out, pushing past to “hear” the others nearby.

Most of the time, I did my best to ignore the constant low-level buzz of thoughts in the back of my brain. I was a radio picking up dozens of stations at once, all of them chattering over one another. It gave me a headache if I paid attention to it for too long.

Fortunately, at just after six in the morning on a Sunday, almost everyone in the immediate vicinity was sleeping. The muted feelings and thoughts of dreaming humans had a distinctly hazy feel to them, making them pretty easy to distinguish.

A few people were up and moving already.

…out of coffee.

If I don’t wake Julie now, we’ll never make Mass.…

…just one more. If I can get one more, I’ll be okay. Just one more…

I grimaced at that last one, someone jonesing for another hit of something. This might not be the best neighborhood.

But I didn’t pick up any of the sustained tension and adrenaline that would inevitably accompany a GTX retrieval team lying in wait for me.

Which was a little weird.

I frowned. Surely someone had reported the encounter we’d had with Zane’s dad by now. I’d pulled the city name out of his thoughts. That’s how we’d known to head here. And surely GTX, with far more resources than a tattered phone book, would have easily been able to locate Zane’s mom’s address.

Then again, maybe that was why GTX wasn’t here. They knew I’d be on my guard, listening for them. So Dr. Jacobs would be forced to find another, sneakier option, something I wouldn’t see coming.

My stomach ached at the thought. I’d have to be so, so careful from now on, trying to outthink them outthinking me. And that sounded exhausting, impossible, and filled with pitfalls.

“No retrieval teams here,” I told Zane.

“What about my mom? Is she in there?” he asked, tilting his head toward the duplex.

“Someone’s in there. Just one person, I think.” My ability didn’t make distinctions between buildings.

“You don’t know if it’s her?”

I shook my head. “Most people don’t walk around thinking their names. Especially not when they’re asleep,” I said.

He made a noncommittal noise in response.

“What time does she normally get up?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation up and running.

His jaw tightened and he kept his gaze focused on the building. “I don’t know.”

Surprised, I looked at over at him before I could stop myself.

He dropped his gaze down to his hands in his lap. “She was always up before I was.”

The waves of guilt coming off him now were almost overwhelming. It broke my heart.

“Zane—” I said.

“Look, I know you didn’t have anything resembling normal when you lived in the lab,” he began.

I braced myself for whatever was coming next.

“But was there someone who took care of you, someone you didn’t want to let down?” He fidgeted with the cap from his orange juice bottle. “Besides your dad.”

Who had, after all, betrayed me, therefore nullifying any disappointment I might have caused him, I suppose.

I thought of the parade of technicians, scientists, and doctors, some of them far worse than others, traipsing through my little cell and the observation room above it. When I was very young, I’d had caregivers, all of them affectionate and loving and just the tiniest bit distant. With good reason, they were traded out on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on my level of attachment. Apparently, Dr. Jacobs had wanted to make sure I was capable of forming emotional bonds—a sociopath with my abilities was a frightening thought, even for me—but not to the point of actually enjoying the warmth and security of said bonds.

“No, not really,” I said quietly. The only exception might have been Mara, my favorite lab tech. She’d been kind to me, treating me like a person instead of an inanimate object, as the other doctors and technicians did. She’d even tried once to stand up for me against Dr. Jacobs, when he’d wanted me to kill Jerry, a lab mouse, and I’d refused.

But in the end, Jacobs had won that round. I’d killed Jerry, and Mara had disappeared. I’d always hoped it was because she quit and went on to some happier life, rather than a more drastic alternative deemed necessary for maintaining project security. Just another day in my childhood as a science experiment—worrying about murders committed simply because of my existence.

Zane sagged in his seat, flicking his OJ cap into the bag of garbage at his feet. He now had shoes, at least. Knock-off Adidas. Another of my purchases, that one at an all-night Walmart.

I leaned over closer to him, careful to keep my hands to myself. I wasn’t sure how receptive he’d be to my touching him right now. “No matter what life experiences I have or haven’t had, I can guarantee you one thing. It’s not your fault she left.”

“You can’t even tell me if that’s her in there, but that you’re sure of?” He snorted. “Right.”

“I am,” I said. “Because nothing you could have done or not done would justify cutting contact with you.”

“You don’t know that. I was pretty awful to her.” He paused, as if he couldn’t quite make himself say the words. “My dad thought I was too much like her, so I did everything I could to keep her away.”

I straightened up. “Yeah, okay, so you’re oblivious sometimes and prone to choosing the path of least resistance—”

“Thanks.” He glared at me.

I ignored him. “My point is, you’re human. You may have made mistakes, but those aren’t who you are in here.” I risked reaching across the gap between us to tap his chest. “You fought for me when no one else would, not even the man who raised me. As far as I’m concerned, that makes you a pretty spectacular person. My very favorite full-blooded human, in fact,” I said with a wobbly smile.

He exhaled slowly, and his blue-gray gaze fixed on my face, as if searching for answers he desperately needed.

I wanted to reach out to touch him, to reassure him, to impart my certainty that he was worth so much more than he thought, more than he’d ever been shown.

But then the moment broke, and he looked away.

“Let’s just go,” he said unbuckling his seat belt. “Get this over with. If she wonders why we’re here so early, we can tell her we’re on our way somewhere else and just stopped by to say hi.”

I wasn’t sure anyone ever stopped by this early in the morning just to say hello, but whatever. Sitting here on the street for another hour or two, like a couple of easy targets, didn’t seem a particularly great option either.

“Okay,” I said slowly, freeing myself from my seat belt.

He shoved open the door and climbed out, not waiting for me.

But when I rounded the front of the van, he was there, and to my surprise he took my hand, his fingers slipping in against my palm.

He kept his gaze fixed firmly ahead, and I knew better than to react to it, even though my heart was dancing an overjoyed and relieved jig.

I clenched my teeth. If this woman hurt him again, I would have a hard time not hurting her back. I didn’t care how bad her marriage was, how much of a jerk Zane’s dad had been (and I could believe he’d reached epic jerk proportions), there was no excuse for what she’d done. Leaving? Okay. Completely abandoning her son? No way.

Never knowing either of my biological parents—genetic material donors, really, one human, one alien—was difficult enough, at times. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have them reject me.

Next to me, Zane took a deep breath. “We’ll just ring the doorbell and see if she answers. If she does…” His grip tightened on my hand.

I hated seeing Zane, normally so confident, knocked back on his heels like this. “You’ll say hello,” I said firmly. “Then she’ll take it from there, I’m sure.”

And she’d better freaking smile and welcome him with open arms.

At the base of the concrete steps leading to her door, Zane hesitated.

I pulled free of his hand and gave him gentle push. “Go. I’ll wait here.” The porch wasn’t really big enough for both of us to stand side by side, and besides, I didn’t want anything—like, who is this strange girl you’ve brought with you?—to interrupt the potential reunion.

He went up the steps, rang the doorbell, and stuffed his hands in pockets to wait, rocking back on his heels. I could feel the nervousness flowing through him.

“No one’s home,” he said over his shoulder. “We should go.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just give it a second.” I paused, then added, “Chicken.”

He glared at me, but he stayed on the porch, just as I’d figured he would. He was stubborn if pushed on something that mattered to him, a quality I was incredibly grateful for.

The sounds of locks disengaging on the other side snapped his attention away from me and to the door.

Please be happy to see him, please, please, please. I tensed, ready to…I don’t know, pull Zane back, to protect him from his mother’s indifference, if necessary.

“Zane?” Her voice, thick with sleep, held uncertainty and surprise.

“Hi,” he said, the word escaping in a quick rush of air, as if he’d planned more but that was all that came out.

She gave an inarticulate cry of joy. “What are you doing here?” Her hands appeared on his shoulders, pulling him closer.

That was a good sign. I tried to relax but found myself fighting against a small and surprising surge of envy. I was alone, but Zane wasn’t. He had someone to welcome him, to know and love him unconditionally, as family was supposed to. It only amplified the feeling of being alone in a much larger world than I’d ever anticipated.

This is a good thing, I told myself. He needed this after everything that had gone down with his dad. And it might mean that I had an ally in convincing Zane that his life was better spent not on the run with me, no matter how much I wanted him to come with me.

But then Zane bent down to hug his mom, and I saw her face over his shoulder, her eyes squeezed shut.

I’d half expected to recognize her in a vague way, a face glimpsed at a distance in the hallways at school or behind the wheel of a passing car on the street. Even though I hadn’t been allowed out often, Wingate was a relatively small town, and Zane and I were in the same grade.

But it was more than that, so much more. I knew her.

My breath caught in my throat. It had been ten years since I’d last seen this woman, and she had gray in her hair now and deep wrinkles, near her eyes and on either side of her mouth. But it was clearly, unmistakably her. It was almost as if thinking about this woman had summoned her into reality. Mara. Lab tech. GTX employee. Most definitely not dead.

I must have made some choked noise, because Mara’s eyes snapped open suddenly and focused on me.

The color drained from her face. She released Zane from the hug only to yank him toward the door to the duplex, putting herself between us as if she thought I might charge forward. “You’re supposed to stay away,” she hissed at me. “I’ve done everything he asked me to.”

Behind her, Zane frowned, confused. “Mom?”

I retreated automatically, my hands up in defense. I had no idea what she was talking about. He who? Dr. Jacobs? She was afraid and angry, both of which were pulsing so loudly through her mind I couldn’t track her thoughts.

“You have no right to be here, threatening my son!” she shouted at me.

I cringed, all too aware of the scene we were making—well, she was making it and I was in the middle of it. Did she think I was here to hurt her? Had Dr. Jacobs threatened to send me after her at some point?

I backed up, off the sidewalk, checking all sides, expecting the flash of black retrieval team uniforms across the sun-baked yard. But there was nothing. The street remained empty. No one sprang out from behind the desiccated bushes.

“Mom, what are you talking about?” Zane asked from behind her, his voice strained with worry. “No one’s threatening anybody.” He tried to push past her, but she was determined, throwing an arm across the doorway to bar him.

“Where are the others, Ford?” she demanded, her gaze searching the yard and street behind me.

I gaped at her. The others? Which others? Her fellow GTX employees? And who or what was Ford?

I looked to Zane, but he seemed as baffled as I was. And a lot more freaked out. Of course he was; it was his mother who was behaving so strangely.

“Nixon, Carter, I know you’re out there somewhere,” Mara snarled. “Stay the hell away.”

And with that nonsensical statement, she pushed Zane into the house with enough force to send him stumbling and slammed the door after herself.

I stood there, the crash echoing in my head, and blinked in the sunshine as it crested over the roofs, and birds in the surrounding trees resettled themselves and began a frenzied fit of chirping. Otherwise, nothing moved, and it was quiet, except for the hum of traffic in the distance.

If this was an attempt to recapture me, it was possibly the weirdest, least-effective snare ever.

Ford, Nixon, and Carter. They were all former presidents. What that had to do with anything, I had no idea.

Was Mara crazy? Had she become mentally unstable in the years since I’d seen her? Her thoughts had been so corrupted with the bright clanging of fear, it was hard to tell. But that might explain her behavior today as well as her decision to abandon Zane without further contact.

But what about—

Ariane! A sudden spike of panic broke through the silence and into my head. Zane. Something inside the house had him freaking out.

I abandoned any further examination of the situation and raced up the sidewalk to the door.