The Hunt

6

Zane

“THIS WON’T STOP THEM, BUT it’ll slow them down some,” my mom assured me, locking the door. It was far from a simple process. Seven locks decorated the wood: three dead bolts—two of which were so new they were shiny—three security chains, and the little tab lock on the doorknob itself.

I watched in stunned silence, not sure what the hell was going on. “Are you okay?” I asked cautiously. Her hands were shaking as she set the last chain; it took her two tries to get the little hook into the slider bar.

“Don’t worry about me. Did they hurt you?” she asked breathlessly, turning to scan me for obvious injury.

“Who are they?” I asked. You could hear the emphasis when she said it, communicating a single malicious entity made up of multiple parts. But it had been just Ariane and me out there.

She shook her head. “This must be really confusing for you right now, and I’m sorry that I can’t explain everything. But right now, I really need you to go to the basement.”

I gaped at her. Was it even possible for someone to lose their shit so completely in eighteen months?

Her eyes were too bright, and her cheeks were flushed with the exertion and anxiety. She appeared too thin, bony almost, and older, as if she’d aged decades in the time she’d been gone. The wrinkles on her forehead were deep grooves now, and the gray near her temples had spread through the rest of her dark hair, like silvery spider threads. Even though I’d surpassed her in height a couple years ago, she wasn’t short—five feet ten, the same as my dad. But now she seemed shrunken and frail.

It was as if something had been eating away at her, taking little pieces of the person I knew with every bite.

“Okay,” I said slowly, eyeing her as a stranger with my mother’s face. “Why the basement?”

“Because they’ve probably got the back covered,” she said, tugging at my arm. “But they don’t know about the other exit. Leads to the unit next door.” She gave me a grim smile that looked more like a baring of teeth.

Crap. Making tinfoil hats couldn’t be far behind. What had happened to the calm, stable person who’d weathered my dad’s shifting moods and short temper with the relatively serene disposition of someone confronted with a raging storm? Nothing to be done except endure. Just make it through.

“Mom—” I began.

Her hand tightened around my wrist like a claw. “Move.” She yanked on my arm with surprising strength, pulling me through the bare-walled entryway, past a staircase leading up, and over the threshold into a small kitchen. With her free hand, she pulled a cell phone from her bathrobe pocket and pressed a button.

“Whoa, Mom. There’s no need to call anybody.” I envisioned police officers, angry after weeks of paranoid calls from this address, showing up at the door. I doubted that GTX or my dad had filed any kind of report on either Ariane or me, but it wasn’t worth taking the chance.

I lurched for the phone, but my mom twisted out of my reach.

Shit. Ariane! A little help!

“Get him for me,” my mom said into the phone. Oh God, was there even a person on the other end of that call? Was she that far gone?

“Mom,” I begged. “Please listen to me.” Her nails were digging into my wrist, and she didn’t seem to notice. She was still pulling.

In the hallway, I heard the locks disengaging, one at a time, and felt a rush of relief. Ariane was coming.

I probably should have been worrying about what my mom would say when she realized Ariane had gotten in. But then again, if my mom thought the mysterious “they” could penetrate locked doors, maybe Ariane’s sudden appearance inside wouldn’t strike her as too odd.

“I don’t care if he’s busy. You get Dr. Laughlin on the phone now. It’s Mara.”

Laughlin. I froze. That was one of the names mentioned in Ariane’s letter from her father. “David Laughlin?” I asked. “How do you know that name?”

My mom frowned at me, moving the phone away from her mouth. “Where did you hear it? Did they mention him to you?”

Again with the “they.”

Before I could respond, the front door opened, the undone chains clacking against the back of it.

“Run!” My mom, wide-eyed with panic, let go of my arm and tried to shove me toward a closed door on the opposite side of the room, but I planted my feet and refused to move.

Ariane appeared a moment later at the threshold to the hall. She spared my mother a quick glance and then focused her attention on me, assessing me with those too-dark eyes hidden behind blue lenses. “Are you all right?”

She could have left, but she didn’t. That was the only thought echoing in my head, and the sudden swell of gratitude made my throat feel tight. “I’m okay.”

She nodded, a strand of her pale hair falling across her face.

I turned to my mom, who was watching us with a strange expression on her face, the phone in her hand seemingly forgotten. “Mom, this is my—”

“107?” my mom asked faintly.

My heart stopped beating for a second. 107. That was Ariane’s GTX designation, the number on the tattoo on her shoulder. I’d never heard anyone but Dr. Jacobs refer to her that way.

Ariane, though, seemed completely unsurprised by this development. She gave my mother a nod.

My mom sagged back against the counter in relief and started laughing, albeit with a hysterical edge. Then she lifted her phone up and ended the call with a definitive press of the button.

I looked back and forth between the two of them, but no answers appeared forthcoming. “All right,” I said, frustrated. “I guess I’ll be the stupid one and ask. What the hell is going on?”

Ariane spoke up with obvious reluctance. “Mara was a lab tech at GTX for a while. As for the rest…I don’t know.”

Hearing her use my mom’s name sent a jolt through me. I was pretty sure I’d never mentioned it to Ariane before.

A sick feeling grew in my gut. “Is that true?” I asked my mom. “Did you work in the lab at GTX? Did you do that…stuff to Ariane? Tests and experiments?” As far as I’d known, my mom had been an office assistant during her few years at GTX.

When she wouldn’t meet my gaze, my heart fell. I looked to Ariane.

Ariane hesitated. “No. It wasn’t like that. She tried to help. She—”

“Yes,” my mother said flatly. “I did.”

I stared at her, seeing not just an altered version of the person I’d known but maybe someone I hadn’t known at all.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she said to Ariane, her voice cracking.

Ariane nodded and glanced away, clearly uncomfortable.

“But I don’t understand,” my mom said with a frown. “How are you here? Where’s Mark?”

Mark Tucker, Ariane’s adoptive father. So my mom had known about that too?

I waved my arms, signaling a time-out before Ariane could answer. “Wait, let’s go back to the part where you worked on a secret project involving extraterrestrial DNA and human experimentation.”

My mom flinched as if I’d hit her, but I ignored it.

“When was this?” I asked. “And if you know her, then why were you acting all crazy? Talking about ‘them’ and—”

The phone rang in my mom’s hand, startling all of us. She stared down at it as if she’d completely forgotten she held it, and I remembered what we’d been talking about before Ariane had walked in.

“It’s Laughlin,” I said to Ariane quickly. “She knows Laughlin somehow.”

“I thought you were one of his,” my mom said to Ariane. “They’re not supposed to come here anymore but—”

“One of his what?” I asked, baffled.

Ariane cocked her head to one side, a posture I recognized as her listening to something the rest of us couldn’t hear. “Mara thought I was one of his hybrids. Ford,” Ariane said suddenly with the air of someone solving a mystery that had troubled her. “It’s a name.”

I frowned. Ford was a weird name for a girl. Unless…wait, Nixon and Carter, that’s what my mom had shouted out the door earlier. Three sequential president names. Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Some kind of naming scheme Laughlin had used instead of numbers? If so, that would mean there were three hybrids.

My mom nodded. “You look just like her, but Ford is…” A faint sheen of sweat appeared on her face. “She’s different.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “If she’s a hybrid, how can she just be wandering around like—”

“If I don’t answer, they’ll know something is wrong,” my mom said as the phone entered its third ring. “They may send someone.” She spoke to the room at large, but then she looked to Ariane, with deference and perhaps a hint of fear, for permission.

Ariane nodded. “Answer it. But be careful, please.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a threat or a warning. And I had no idea how to feel about it either way. This was my mom, after all. Then again, I wasn’t sure the person I’d thought of as my mom actually existed. I’d felt guilty about the way I’d behaved toward her before she left—and I still did—but I couldn’t make all that compute with these new secrets revealed, with this new side of her. What she’d done to Ariane was horrible. So, was it wrong to still feel bad for not being better to her?

I shook my head. It was so messed up and confusing.

But my mom just nodded at Ariane, as though she’d expected nothing less, and lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello?” she said. “Dr. Laughlin?” Her panicked breathing was loud enough to be just as audible to him as it was to us.

She was going to give us away without saying another word. He’d have to be an idiot not to realize something was wrong.

I must not have been the only one thinking along those lines, because Ariane started toward my mom with her hand out.

But my mom backed away, setting her chin in determination. “I just wanted to tell you that it’s not necessary for you to send your little drones to spy on me while I’m shopping,” she said in a steadier voice, one threaded with indignation. “I don’t think they really need to know whether I prefer frozen broccoli or asparagus.”

She paused, listening to him on the other end, her anger spreading fresh color over her pale and sunken cheeks.

“What difference does it make to you when I go to the store?” she demanded. “Maybe it is early for a grocery run, but it’s not as if I’m sleeping much anyway.” She gave a bitter laugh.

Another pause, and her mouth tightened at whatever he was saying. I knew that expression. She was getting pissed. I’d seen that face plenty of times when Quinn and I were arguing over toys or the TV remote or who drank the last of the orange juice.

“I don’t care if you say they’re still at the facility. I know what I saw,” she said. “I’ve kept my end of the agreement, you better keep yours.” Then without waiting for a response, she ended the call, dropped the phone on the counter with a clatter, as if she couldn’t stand to touch it for a second longer, and covered her face with her hands.

I edged closer to Ariane, giving my mom a wide berth—well, as much as possible in this small kitchen. I felt as if I didn’t know what my mom would do, how she would react—a wildly unpredictable variable in an already difficult situation. Weirdly enough, in this room with the woman who gave birth to me, Ariane was my source for familiar.

“Did he believe it?” I asked Ariane quietly, resisting the urge to pull her closer, tuck her under one arm like I needed the stability. But the tension in her shoulders and the tight set of her jaw told me she was on guard. She was in war mode, or whatever she called it, and probably wouldn’t appreciate me hampering her ability to respond.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t read thoughts over the phone. And unless he’s in the neighborhood, his mind is outside my range.”

“He believed it,” my mom said, looking up, her cheeks damp. “He thinks I’m scared and paranoid, which is exactly what he wants.” She smiled, tears overflowing again. “The worst part is, he’s right. I was telling the truth. I got so used to looking for them around every corner, I thought I caught a glimpse of Ford at the store last week. Watching me from the end of the frozen-food aisle.” She laughed, an awful, choked sound. “It’s not possible. Laughlin says he restricted them to the main facility a few months ago, except for when they’re in school, so I don’t know, maybe I really am going crazy.”

Ariane frowned and looked to me.

I shook my head. I had no idea what was going on, how much of it was real and what percentage might be in her head. But there were some coincidences that couldn’t be overlooked. Like the fact that she and Ariane knew each other and that the name Laughlin was being tossed around.

“Mom,” I began.

“I’m fine,” my mom said, straightening up and wiping under her eyes. “But you need to leave. He may have someone check up on me, and he cannot find you here. I won’t make it that easy for him.” She made a shooing gesture at me. “Go now.”

I stared at her. “You must be crazy if you think I’m leaving here without answers.”

“Zane,” she said in that exaggeratedly patient Mom tone, “I don’t have time to explain everything, so you’re just going to have to—”

“Fine, forget all of that,” I snapped. “How about what you’re doing here? Why you lied to me? Why you left in the middle of the night and never came back?”

She squared her shoulders, as if preparing for a fight. “You don’t understand. I was trying to—”

“What is your arrangement with Dr. Laughlin and his company?” Ariane spoke up next to me. “Did you seek him out to continue your…career?”

Oddly enough, that question—or maybe the fact that it came from Ariane—seemed to break through my mom’s resistance.

She slumped back against the counter with a defeated air. “Of course not,” she said. “When I took this job and moved here, I swear to you, I thought it was the office job I applied for. Laughlin Integrated has so many subsidiaries and branches, I didn’t even know it was his company.”

“That doesn’t explain GTX,” I pointed out. And Ariane. That, to me, was the most difficult part to wrap my brain around—that my mom had bundled me off to kindergarten with a kiss on the forehead and then gone to work where she’d stood on the other side of that glass wall and watched Ariane suffer or, worse, actively participated in the experiments and tests on her. Just the thought made me feel ill.

“I had the best of intentions, I promise you,” she said, but she couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “I didn’t know the extent of the project when I signed on. We needed the money, and your father was thrilled that I was working at GTX.”

Of course he was.

“I did the best I could, and I thought it was for a good cause,” she said, looking down at her hands, her fingers laced together.

“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” I muttered. That was pretty much the same excuse Ariane’s adoptive father had given for his role in everything. He’d done it to save other human children from cancer. Well, how could you argue with that? Except after seeing Ariane trapped in the small cell, miserable and alone, I couldn’t imagine anyone not arguing with it. “She’s not a freaking lab rat.”

Ariane cleared her throat. “It’s okay. She was kind to me.”

“Compared to what?” I demanded.

“Zane,” my mom protested weakly.

“If I am willing to accept her apology for what she did to me, then you need to as well,” Ariane said in that calm way of hers.

“That’s bull,” I said. “There is no apology to cover what they did to you.”

“Maybe not, but it’s more than any of the others have ever offered,” she pointed out. Then in a deliberate effort to change the topic, she turned her attention to my mother. “How does Laughlin come into this?”

I exhaled loudly. Trust Ariane to keep on point.

“He wanted someone who knew what GTX was doing with their…with you,” she said. “When I started applying for jobs—”

“So you were planning to leave?” I asked stiffly. I’d suspected that, of course, but hearing it was something different. Somehow, if she’d just, I don’t know, snapped and left on the spur of the moment, I could have handled that better than the fact that she’d made preparations for weeks or even months in advance. A thousand opportunities to tell me or even hint at it, and she’d said nothing. That made every moment I’d spent in her presence during that time a complete and utter lie.

“Oh, honey.” She reached for me.

I stepped back, and Ariane touched my arm, staying my retreat, her fingers cool, light, and reassuring against my skin, like a washcloth on your forehead when you have a fever.

My mom frowned, and Ariane dropped her hand.

“Things weren’t good at home,” my mom said. “You know that. We’d agreed to stay together until you were both out of high school, but with Quinn graduating, it was only getting worse.”

Much like this conversation. The fact that my parents hadn’t had the best relationship was not news to me. Learning that they’d had some kind of cold, factual agreement, with a timeline and everything, was.

“It was as if once he could see the light at the end of the tunnel, it only made him angrier that he was in the tunnel in the first place,” she said. “I was going to take you with me, but you were so determined to follow in Quinn’s footsteps and your father wasn’t going to give up without a fight.…”

“So you’re saying it was my fault,” I said, fighting a swell of fury and hurt, even though I’d suspected that same thing all along.

“No!” she said, shocked. “I didn’t want to take you from your home, to make you miserable.” She paused. “And I didn’t want to make you hate me more than you already did.”

She had a point; back then, that was exactly what I would have done: hated her and done my best to make her regret taking me away from my chance to make my dad proud of me. It was only after she’d left that I’d realized the absolute futility of that quest.

“How did Dr. Laughlin find you?” Ariane asked, once more redirecting the conversation. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or frustrated.

“I had GTX on my resume, but it was just the regular assistant job that I’d been told to use as a cover when I started working there. But Dr. Laughlin…he knew somehow. They all spy on each other.” She shuddered.

“What about Emerson St. John? The third competitor? You’ve met him,” Ariane said.

My mom shook her head. “No. Laughlin isn’t interested in his approach. He’s trying to use some kind of viral delivery system to effect changes within a human system.”

Huh?

To my surprise, Ariane nodded. “Rewriting the existing human code rather than trying to combine human and alien DNA to create a new entity.”

“Something like that. Laughlin doesn’t consider him a threat in the trials, so I don’t know much about him.”

“So, now you work with Laughlin’s hybrids?” I asked.

“Sort of.”

“What are they like?” Ariane asked softly. And I realized then we were talking about the closest thing she had to family on this world, maybe on any world, which somehow took a lot of the fuel out of my anger. My mom had lied to me, and my dad was a jerk, but I had them. They existed, providing a solid connection.

My mom shuddered. “They are…not human.”

“Neither am I,” Ariane said.

“No, you don’t understand,” she said. “Before, it was better. The four who survived the start of adolescence—two from each of the last test groups—they were mostly quiet. Submissive, distant. They seemed to live more inside their own heads than out in the world. But that wasn’t enough. Jacobs, Laughlin, they’re trying to find the balance between independent thought and obedience, between humanity and all the accelerated benefits of your…other people.” She shook her head. “They need someone who can take direction and think for herself. Even the best plans can’t account for every variable. If a mission doesn’t go according to the specifications, they need an operative who can still get the job done.”

“And Laughlin’s hybrids can do all of that,” I said.

“Not exactly. Not all of them.” She grimaced. “When Johnson…when Ford took over for Johnson, things changed. The bond between them has always been intense. They should have been competitors, but it’s something in their genetic makeup from the alien side. They thrive in a communal environment. The survival rate increased dramatically once Laughlin realized that.” She glanced at Ariane, as if searching for some sign of the same in her. Or perhaps recognizing that it was a miracle she’d survived alone, isolated in her tiny cell. “But the consequence is that they’re more like one entity with separate bodies. They’re networked through their telepathy. When Johnson was in control, it was all right, but Ford is leading now. They don’t blend as well as one-oh…as Ariane. They stand out too much. And Ford doesn’t care. They make people uncomfortable, and they seem to enjoy it.” She lifted her hands helplessly. “I’ve done my best but—”

“Your role is to help humanize them,” Ariane said.

“Technically, I’m a consultant. But yes. They didn’t have the upbringing you did. They are lacking in human cultural references and experiences. Laughlin wanted to minimize emotional attachment. They were raised without caregivers, other than for their physical needs. The idea, I guess, was that they would find it easier to follow orders without the complication of feelings. But the trouble is, now they don’t relate to humans except as order-givers. Laughlin realized that would put them at a disadvantage during the trials, especially when compared to others who are more conversant in human conventions, more relatable.” She dropped her gaze to the floor, avoiding Ariane’s eyes. “He wanted to know what GTX had done to promote those qualities.” She paused. “I tried. I did. But with Ford…they hate us so much.”

“Are you surprised?” Ariane asked with an edge. So maybe she wasn’t as okay with what had been done to her as she outwardly seemed to be.

“We were only trying to—”

“—completely disregard the ethical considerations of creating a life simply as a means to an end? Or how about the right of another living creature to exist unmolested and free of pain?” Ariane asked.

Yep, definitely not as okay with it as she seemed. I looped an arm over her shoulder, and she stiffened at first and then relaxed into my side.

My mom shook her head. “You’re probably right. That’s why you need to go. They’re clever. Sneaky, even. Unless Dr. Laughlin has given them strict orders, they will pursue their own…interests.” She lifted her hand to her throat, as if imagining fingers wrapped around it. Or if these other hybrids shared Ariane’s telekinesis, they wouldn’t even have to use their hands. “As I said, they’re not supposed to come here anymore, but—”

“That’s why you thought Ariane was Ford,” I said, finally getting the last piece of the puzzle. “What does she have against you? Other than being human and one of her captors, I mean?”

My mom winced, but she didn’t argue. “Johnson, the one who was in charge before Ford. She was…eliminated. She couldn’t adjust to the strain of outside life. She’d respond to thoughts instead of what people said. She’d forget to move things with her hands instead of using her abilities. She was too distant, too removed from the outside world.” Mara gave a helpless sigh. “She was attracting too much attention to the others at school.”

“School?” I asked in disbelief. “You sent them to school?”

“I had to do something,” she said defensively. “It’s fine. They have a cover story. They’ve been ‘diagnosed’ with a genetic condition that affects their appearance and their behavior.”

I rolled my eyes. As if that was the real issue here.

“And Ford holds you responsible for Johnson’s death,” Ariane said with the air of someone confirming something she already suspected.

“She does, yes. That’s why you need to go home. Please,” my mom begged. “Wingate is GTX territory, and that offers you some protection. Dr. Jacobs is a flawed man, but he, at least, let me go when he realized that the work was not for me. Laughlin is not nearly as generous. He’s not above…extreme methods to induce cooperation. Hurting people.” She swallowed hard and looked up to the ceiling, blinking rapidly against tears, making me wonder exactly what she’d seen during her tenure with Laughlin.

“I’m stuck here until the trials, working for him,” she said. “In exchange, he’s promised to leave my family alone.” She stuffed her trembling hands into her bathrobe pockets. “But if he discovers you’re here, he’ll send Ford and the others after you. You need to go home,” she pleaded.

Which meant, much as I hated to admit it, my mom was in some ways as much a hostage as the hybrids she’d been hired to work with.

I glanced at Ariane, who gave me a weary nod.

“Wingate is not an option anymore,” I said.

“I understand that your father is not the easiest man to—” my mom began.

“It’s not him. Or, not just him.” I sighed. “GTX wants us.”

“You mean Ariane,” my mom said.

“No, both of us,” I responded.

“I don’t understand,” she said slowly.

Apparently, in the confusion and chaos of our arrival here and her misidentification of Ariane, my mom hadn’t had time to put it all together. That GTX wouldn’t just let Ariane leave town, especially not without her “father” in charge. That I’d been freaked out by my mom’s strange behavior, but not at the discussion of alien/human hybrids and experimentation or Ariane getting in through a door with seven locks. That we were comfortable with each other in a way that suggested more than a casual school acquaintance.

I saw it the moment the ball dropped, and she figured it out.

She paled. “Oh no,” she whispered, staring at me and then at Ariane. “What did you do?”

I felt Ariane cringe next to me, hearing the inherent accusation in my mom’s words.

“It wasn’t like that,” I said as calmly as I could. “It started out as a stupid prank, something Rachel Jacobs cooked up. Ariane and I were working together against her, and everything just sort of developed from there.” In spite of myself and the situation, I felt a sudden lightness inside at the memories of happier days, the activities fair, the Star Wars conversation, breakfast in the truck. She was the first person who’d really seemed to like me for who I was, not for who I could be or should have been.

“The Rules,” my mom said desperately, as if she could just find the right thing to say, all of this would go away. “Mark Tucker had a list of rules you were supposed to follow to keep this exact thing from happening.”

That was the first I’d heard of it, but when Ariane was nodding, her face set in grim lines.

“Don’t get involved, don’t trust anyone, don’t fall in love.” My mom shook her head. “I can’t remember all of them, but a lot of thought went into them for this reason.”

That’s what Ariane had been battling inside herself the whole time we’d been playing against Rachel and getting to know each other? No wonder she’d had a panic attack getting into my truck that first time. Warmth and pride filled my chest. She’d had to fight hard to carry through with our plan, defying not only her adoptive father but also rules that had probably been drilled into her head for literally years—and she’d done it. That kind of strength of character only made me admire her more. I wasn’t sure I would have been able to do it if I’d been in that situation.

“And you thought chaining her down with those rules was a good idea?” I demanded of my mom. “Who can live like that?”

“The point was to protect everyone else,” she said, then turned on Ariane. “I cut off all contact with my son for eighteen months to keep him out of this mess, and you drag him back in? How could you do that?”

“Mom.” I held up my hand, angling to keep her from moving closer. “She didn’t drag me into anything—”

“I wasn’t dealing with a full set of facts, as you well know,” Ariane said hotly, finally goaded into defending herself.

“—I am capable of making my own decisions,” I said.

“You may not have known everything, but you certainly knew what you were,” my mom said to Ariane, as if I hadn’t spoken.

The air went out of the room.

Ariane stiffened, and I stared at my mom, unable to believe what had come out of her mouth.

“What is wrong with you?” I asked, trying again to see the person I’d once thought her to be in the stranger before me. Where was the mother who’d scolded me for teasing Quinn when he’d gotten that huge zit on his forehead? I’d called it an alien horn. I’d gone on a whole riff with it, called him Xenar, asked him when he was going back to his home planet, when did he expect the horn to make a full appearance. Typical annoying little brother stuff. And if it had been a few years later, he’d have beaten the hell out of me for it, but at that point we were fairly close in size. So when it got out of hand, with Quinn screaming at me and his eyes all shiny with tears, my mom intervened with a lecture about treating people the way I wanted to be treated. I’d rolled my eyes during the entire speech, but it stuck with me. Mainly because I’d never actually expected to upset Quinn.

Granted, that was just a temporary complexion problem (probably the last time Quinn would be less than perfect in anyone’s eyes) and this was something far more complicated, but didn’t that mean the lesson would be even more applicable in this situation? Unless, of course, my mom had meant to imply limits that I hadn’t even known about then by using the word people. It gave me an additional shock to realize that at the time of that conversation, my mom had already come and gone as a GTX employee, that she knew about Ariane and had left her to Dr. Jacobs’s schemes and devices.

“Sweetie.” My mom approached me with her hands out as if she would touch my face, and I backed up, taking Ariane with me. “I’m sure you think this is a grand and romantic gesture, but there is no way this can end well, do you understand that? She doesn’t deserve what’s happened to her, but she’s not human.”

I struggled to formulate a response that wasn’t just inarticulate yelling, but my mom moved on before I could.

“What was your plan?” she asked Ariane. “Run for Canada and hope for the best?” If it was possible, I could feel Ariane getting smaller by the second, shredded by her words.

“Do you think they won’t have thought of that?” my mom continued. “Do you think there’s a border crossing out there that doesn’t have your picture posted? You have no idea what you’re up against.” She threw her hands up. “If you’re lucky, you’ll end up back in the lab at GTX.”

At the idea of Ariane being trapped in that tiny white room again—and that my mom would think that a best-case scenario—something in me snapped. “Okay, we’re done here.” I grabbed Ariane’s hand and tugged her out of the room with me.

“Where are you going? Zane?” My mom followed us to the front door. “Wingate is your only—”

“No.” I led the way out onto the porch, then reached back and slammed the door once Ariane cleared the threshold.

“Come on,” I said, pulling her down the steps and across the grass to the van. She didn’t protest the pace, even though she had to take two strides for my one. “Keys.”

Ariane handed them over without argument, and I knew I was in trouble, then. No questions about where we were going or what we were doing. This wasn’t good.

I opened the passenger-side door and made sure she got in, mainly because I wasn’t sure she’d speak up if I drove off without her.

I climbed in behind the wheel and pulled away from the curb with a screech of tires on the pavement, generating a reproving look from an old guy across the street out picking up his newspaper.

Blowing out a slow breath, I let my foot off the gas a little as we left my mom’s neighborhood. Driving angry wasn’t a good idea right now. We couldn’t take the chance of getting pulled over.

Turning back onto the main road, I picked left, randomly. It was the opposite direction we’d come from. And it was as good as any for the moment. The lack of a specific destination made me a little edgy, but there was nothing to be done about it for now. I didn’t have Ariane’s training, but it seemed to me the smartest thing to do was find somewhere we could blend in and hide until we could figure out a next step.

“She’s right,” Ariane said after a few moments, her tone flat, emotionless. “I was being selfish. I could have left the motel without waking you up. But I shut the door. I wanted you to come after me, even if I couldn’t admit it.” Then her voice broke over a hiccup. “I wanted you with me.”

Oh God, she was killing me here. I couldn’t look at her and keep my eyes on the road.

“Listen to me,” I said as firmly as I could, “I’m here because I want to be. Until I met you, no one had ever put me first. Do you get that? Even with my mom, leaving my dad was more important than I was.” I glanced at her to see if my words were making a difference.

She was shaking her head. “We have nowhere to go, no plan. You can’t stay with me. You shouldn’t.”

This was my mom’s fault. Ariane might have left me behind before in an attempt to protect me, but now, it was more than that. My mom had said those horrible things, and Ariane had believed her. About her not being human, about it not ending well. Along with a strong implication that maybe she didn’t deserve to hope for anything more. All of it confirming what I suspected Ariane already believed.

If I didn’t do something, she’d take the first opportunity to sneak away or, God forbid, offer herself up to Laughlin in exchange for my safety, just as she’d tried to do the other day at GTX.

Ahead on the right, I saw bright and cheery signs for a mall, and beyond them a vast expanse of parking lot. Cars moved around the outer edge with purpose. Like ants surrounding a dropped sandwich, they were collecting around several early morning restaurants—McDonald’s, IHOP, and something called Walker Bros. Pancake House—within the mall complex.

I made a snap decision and jerked into the turn lane, ignoring the blare of a horn behind us. “Let me ask you something—how shallow do you think I am?” I demanded, letting more of my frustration bleed through than I’d intended.

Ariane looked at me, surprised, her eyes damp.

“Do you really think if you sent me back to Wingate, I’d just drift into a normal routine?” Assuming, of course, that Dr. Jacobs would allow it. “Do you think I’d forget all about this? Do you think I’d just drive by GTX and not wonder if you were in there, if they were hurting you?” My voice cracked, and I had to swallow hard to keep the words from getting stuck with the lump in my throat. “Do you really think that little of me?”

Her mouth fell open. “Of course not, but—”

“But what?” I challenged.

“I’m trying to do the right thing!” she shouted, frustrated.

“I’m sure that’s what they thought too when they gave you that messed-up list of commandments. Thou shalt not have a life. Always remember that you’re a freak and not deserving of anything resembling happiness.”

She inhaled sharply.

“I’m here, with you, because I want to be,” I said, trying to put my feelings into words, hoping they would convince her, if nothing else. “It’s not your job to save me.”

Her silence spoke volumes.

Weary suddenly, I pulled into a parking space, near a clump of cars on the far side of Sears—either employees getting an early start or overflow from Walker Bros. “I can’t make you believe that, though, and I can’t keep you from leaving. So, if you’re going to go, then fine.” I shoved the gearshift into park, turned the van off, and got up, staying half stooped to avoid the roof.

“What are you doing?”

I gestured to the parking lot around us. “It looks like it’s going to be busy as hell here in an hour or two. So I think this is as safe as it gets. Neither of us has slept in days, and I’m tired. We’re going to get some rest and then figure out what to do next, preferably before the van reaches a temperature hot enough to cook us alive.”

Without looking at her, I headed to the back of the van. I unrolled one of the sleeping bags that had been hidden in the smuggling compartment and unzipped the edges to create a blanket, some small measure of comfort against the hard metal floor of the van.

Then I lay down, tucked my arm under my head, and turned away from her, my heart beating too fast. It was a gamble to take this approach. I couldn’t convince her of anything; she had to reach the conclusion on her own. But would she?

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch.

After a few seconds, I heard her seat belt unclick, and swallowing the growing lump in my throat, I waited to hear the clunk of the door opening.

Instead, I felt the sleeping bag shift underneath me, and I opened my eyes to see her kneel down next to me. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered to me, the words aching, raw, and full of fear. That must have been hard for her to admit, being someone who relied on strategy, training, and plans.

I rolled over and lifted my arm in welcome, and she curled herself against me, resting her head on my other arm. Her tears dripped on my elbow.

“Welcome to the club,” I whispered back. “It’s called, we’re all just doing the best we can, and it’s better if we stick together.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “Are there membership cards? Because I don’t think that name is going to fit.”

Caught off guard, I laughed, surprising myself. “You should try to get some rest while we can. Then we’ll figure out what to do,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. “It’ll all make more sense later.” At least, that’s what I was hoping. Because honestly, right now, I had no clue.