#projectpaperdoll

THE TRIALS, the final book in the Project Paper Doll series, comes out on April 21. So, between now and then, I’m sharing a few excerpts. :)

My plan goes something like this:

Feb 1: Prologue

Feb 21: Chapter 1

March 21: Chapter 2 (that’s this one!)

April 15: Chapter 3 (partial because…well, you’ll see!)

Here’s the third excerpt, which is Chapter Two...(and obviously, spoilers for books 1 and 2):

Chapter Two Ariane

“107,” Dr. Jacobs snapped.

His voice over the sudden pop of the intercom jolted me awake. I sat bolt upright, my heart pounding in triple time.

I blinked rapidly, trying to reorient myself, the rush of adrenaline making me shaky. I was in a cell at GTX, just like usual. Well, the usual for the last three weeks, anyway. My eyes were gritty, and my neck had a painful kink.

I tugged at the collar of my tunic, which was damp with nightmare-induced sweat. In the dream, I was being chased by an unseen enemy, while Zane, a pale spectral vision with a blood-soaked shirt, watched in the distance. And no matter how hard or fast I ran, I couldn’t seem to get any closer to him, nor could I shake my pursuer.

Nothing like your subconscious to be as subtle as an anvil to the skull.

“I said, how soon can you be ready to go?” Dr. Jacobs sounded brusque, annoyed even, at having to repeat himself.

I looked for him at the door first but found him instead at the observation window above me, his forehead pinched with irritation. I wondered how long he’d been trying to wake me.

“Go?” I repeated dumbly. “Now?” The trials weren’t until tomorrow. I hadn’t been asleep for that long.

“How soon?” he asked again, through clenched teeth.

“I don’t know . . . fifteen minutes?” I shook my head, trying to clear it. What was going on? This was odd.

“Excellent,” Jacobs said. “I’ll make the arrangements. In the meantime, please be clean, dressed, and ready to go as soon as possible.” Strangely, his words were clipped, completely devoid of the arrogant, anticipatory triumph I’d expected from him on the day before his “great victory.”

I frowned up at him.

He avoided my gaze. Like that would help him. The trouble with creating an alien/human hybrid that can sometimes read minds is that sometimes that mind is yours.

“You’re upset about something.” More than just my unwillingness to be conscious at his command.

. . . Laughlin behind this. I’m sure of it. Why else would they . . . Security will be almost impossible and 107 has run before . . . He must have told them . . . otherwise, why select such a location . . .

“They changed the venue. No,” I amended, listening more intently to his thoughts. “The venue isn’t what you thought it would be.” Interesting.

“Enough, 107,” he said sharply. “I have clothes for you.” He nodded at someone to his left, and a tech appeared at the door, watching me with open trepidation written on his face and shrieking at me from his brain.

I remained still as he opened the door and hurled a pile of clothing—bra, underwear, socks, jeans, and a shirt—and a pair of shoes in my general direction before pulling the door shut again.

“There’s a meeting this afternoon for all the participants and their companies to make sure everyone has an equal understanding of what is expected of them and what will constitute a fair win,” Dr. Jacobs said, his mouth puckered as though the words tasted sour.

How complicated could it possibly be, I wanted to ask. Wasn’t pretty much the only rule, “Kill or be killed”? But those words lurched to a stop on the tip of my tongue as the ramifications of this meeting’s existence sank in. My plan had been to win the competition while looking for the opportunity to end everyone involved in it, one by one and over weeks or months if necessary. But if I understood Dr. Jacobs correctly, all the major players would be in the same room today.

My heartbeat increased until I could feel my pulse in my fingertips. Was that even possible? Could I finish this before it even began? Taking on multiple opponents at once made it riskier, but if I got it started, maybe Ford and Carter would join in.

I fought the urge to grin.

“—both know, it’s a dog and pony show, a chance to look at you and the others up close while you all run through your ‘tricks,’ ” Dr. Jacobs said with distaste, drawing my attention back to him. “But we can use that against them.”

Oh yes. Yes, we can. Well, I could. I wasn’t sure what Dr. Jacobs had in mind.

“I’ve had to make some adjustments to my original plan.” He sounded miffed. “So we’ll discuss additional strategy details . . . later. Just be ready.” He paused. “I need you on my side for this one, 107.” He glared down at me as if that would help impress the words upon me.

I nodded quickly, obediently. I’d come this far and done so much with everything working against me, I needed this opportunity. Whatever he needed to see/hear/feel to take me to that meeting, I was willing to do.

Jacobs gave me a curt nod before snapping off the intercom and stalking away from the observation window.

Legs shaking with repressed relief and giddiness—I might really have a shot at ending this all today!—I moved to the other side of my narrow room and gathered up the clothing the tech had tossed in to me.

It was only after I touched the jeans that I realized they were mine. From my old life. Jacobs must have sent someone to my former house, the one I’d shared with my father for ten years.

A house that GTX probably owned, now that I thought about it. But even knowing that, it was still home to me. The first place I’d ever felt safe. I couldn’t stop myself from picturing it as it probably looked right now.

The grass in the front yard had to be overgrown, likely prompting comments from the neighbors. Our breakfast dishes from that last morning, still in the drying rack, probably had a fine layer of dust. My backpack with all my books still on the floor of my bedroom, weeks of homework collecting at the school office, never to be retrieved. The bathtub with its slow-drip faucet, still dripping. The stacked packages of blue contacts beneath the sink, no prescription, just color.

I wondered if my father had been able to retrieve the photo albums of his daughter, the original Ariane, before leaving town. I hoped so. I wanted to think of him having those with him, wherever he was.

Would GTX send movers? Someone to go through our stuff and pack it up so they could destroy it or sell it? Maybe they already had.

A powerful ache started inside me. I wanted to be home, sitting across the breakfast table from my father, talking to him about my day.

But that home, that life, was gone. And so was my father. I’d hated him for what he’d done, for lying to me for all those years, secretly reporting on me to GTX. But now . . . now I could see it another way. He’d saved me the only way he could. Teaching me what it meant to be human even as he’d encouraged me to own my distinctly nonhuman abilities. 

He would have hated my plan, hated who I’d become to accomplish the goal in front of me. He’d warned me, told me to cut ties and run, but I hadn’t listened. At least, not well enough to save myself or Zane. So this was all that was left.

I stroked one finger down the velvety softness of the denim in my hands. By complete chance they’d brought my favorites, my Luckys. I’d worn these on my first “date” with Zane to the activities fair. The beginning of a sequence of events that led me to this time and place.

It seemed appropriate that they were also part of the end.

Whenever I’d thought about the trials, I’d always been far more preoccupied by what they would be instead of where. In my head, the setting was always dark, vague, anonymous. 

An old abandoned warehouse or an empty hangar on a military base of some kind, perhaps. I’d never paid much attention during my imaginings. The spotlight, sometimes literally, was always focused on us, dueling or punching or levitating stuff in front of an unknown audience, hidden in the shadows.

But if I had considered it, I would have said that an isolated location, in a low-res area with a perimeter that could be easily secured, seemed only logical. No witnesses, plenty of time to clean up, and room for lots of plausible deniability.

In short, absolutely nothing like downtown Chicago.

But from my seat in the very back of a GTX van— the security team accompanying me was not taking any chances—it looked like that’s where we were headed. We’d left the interstate behind to enter a grid of congested one-way streets. Madison, Monroe, more president names flashed by my window, reminding me of Ford and Carter. And Nixon.

Nixon. The memory of his hand on mine, seeking reassurance, as we headed into Laughlin’s facility, made me flinch inwardly. The recollection was paired, as always, with the image of Nixon on the ground, his eyes staring up at the sky unseeing and the pool of blood spreading beneath his head. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to blot out that horrible picture.

A horn blared, and my eyes snapped open. The van jerked to the right suddenly, nearly toppling me over.

The security guy at the wheel cursed under his breath. I watched as a cab shot over a few lanes, still honking at everyone in his way.

We were most definitely heading deeper in the city. Why?

I sat forward in my seat. “Where are we going?” I asked, speaking for the first time since I’d been escorted from my room up to Jacobs’s office and then down through a service elevator to the waiting van in the GTX parking garage.

All four security guys ignored me, except for a slight tensing of shoulders in the one nearest me. Two rows of seats away. Clearly my reputation preceded me. Their thoughts were buzzing with anxiety and anger, making them difficult to read.

I tried again. “Where is Dr. Jacobs?”

Again, silence.

The driver was torn between watching me in the rearview mirror and trying to pay attention to the cars around him. “I’m just going to keep asking,” I said, using that flat tone that so many humans—well, the ones who knew the truth about me—interpreted as threatening.

“He’s already on location,” the driver said curtly. “Because of the delay.”

Ah yes, the delay again. The fifteen minutes I’d suggested as the time I required had stretched into an hour and then two and then more before anyone had shown up to retrieve me.

It was already late afternoon. The sun was a bright orange blaze in the west, reflecting off mirrored high-rise windows in bright flashes as we passed. Had we missed the meeting? Was that Jacobs’s brilliant plan? Just not show up?

I forced myself to inhale and then exhale to a count of ten. Staying calm and alert was my best bet.

Watching out the window, I counted off blocks and turns, memorizing our route. It kept my brain occupied.

When we drove past the sweeping entrance for the Manderlay Hotel, I didn’t think much about it, except to note that it looked like something out of a movie.

The bustling valets and bellmen in red coats, the flags flapping on poles overhead, and the limousines idling in the drive.

But then the van slowed and pulled into the attached parking garage. The Manderlay? Seriously?

I moved to the edge of my seat. Maybe we were going somewhere else, another building that used the same garage.

But no, the driver was following the signs inside for hotel parking. What the hell? The Manderlay looked expensive. Luxury, even. I would have felt better pulling up to a former meatpacking plant full of rats and tetanus or something. This just didn’t make sense: a fight to the death in a place that turned down your covers and didn’t bolt the remote to the bedside table. I could understand why Jacobs would pick a nice place for the duration of the trials. Laughlin, too. And the as-yet-unknown military contacts who would be judging the trials. (Jacobs called them the Committee.)

But why bring me here? I was missing something, some important detail or fact that would make it all click. It made me uneasy. If one of my assumptions was wrong, then my read of the entire situation—and my plans, accordingly— might be wrong.

The driver parked and cut the engine.

I stood up, my head bent to avoid the roof, but before I could start for the van door, the guard closest to me, the nervous one, held up his hand to stop me. “No,” he said loudly, as if speaking to a stupid but large puppy. One with sharp teeth.

I raised my eyebrows. “I am fully fluent in English and four other languages. There’s no need to shout. I am more than capable of understanding basic human speech.”

He twitched at the word human but otherwise ignored me. I couldn’t resist tweaking him, though. “For example, no, bù, nein, nyet, la.”

No longer fearing for my life made me bold in ways that were probably not so good for my survival.

He glared at me as he climbed out of the van with his buddies. I made him uncomfortable, which meant I’d need to keep an eye on him, if he was sticking around for the duration. Someone that edgy might be more likely to shoot first and never ask questions. Maybe I could use that to my advantage.

I watched as the four of them did a visual sweep of the area. Apparently, someone was worried I’d die on the way to my death match. Interesting.

The guard nearest me gave a nod toward me through the van’s tinted windows.

As soon as I stepped out, the four of them positioned themselves around me, two in front and two in back, and led the way through the garage to a set of doors marked lobby.

Really? This should be fun.

Beyond the doors, the smell of new carpeting and fresh paint in a recently redecorated walkway filled my nose, making it hard to breathe until I adjusted. The walkway had a few other people in it—families, a few couples, some of them heading toward the garage, others ahead of us in the trek to the lobby. We earned curious glances, but nothing more. My hands weren’t bound, and I was dressed in my regular clothes. If anything, I probably looked more like the privileged child of someone important—progeny worth protecting, coddling even. Oh, hello, irony. 

As soon as we reached the polished black-and-white floor of the lobby, my escorts took a sharp left at the koi pond in the center of the room, heading for a narrow hallway tucked to the side of the massive mahogany registration desk. At the end of the hallway, we went through a set of swinging wooden doors and ended up in a significantly less posh section of the hall. Linoleum floors, thick yellow paint on the walls, the faint smell of old food, and rolling carts full of folding chairs stacked on either side. A service corridor, most likely.

One short trip up in a battered and small elevator to the third floor, and we’d arrived. To where, exactly, I wasn’t sure. But Dr. Jacobs was there waiting, as the doors rolled back.

He reached in, past my guards, and hauled me out, his hand tight enough to bruise my forearm. “What took you so long?” he hissed at me, flecks of spit landing on my cheek.

“We stopped to sightsee,” I snapped, pulling my arm back. As if I’d been even remotely in control of our arrival time.

He released me, shaking his hand as if touching me had in some way contaminated his skin. I’d never seen him this agitated. Normally, the angrier he was, the more pleasant he got. When the man smiled, it was absolutely terrifying.

But this . . . this reaction was something else.

As the guards exited the elevator and fanned out in what proved to be another service corridor, I studied Jacobs, rubbing my forearm. He wore an outdated suit (that still screamed money) beneath his pristine, white lab coat, his cheeks were flushed, and his forehead was damp with perspiration.

Either he was coming down with a deadly disease (fingers crossed!) or this was Dr. Jacobs being nervous. I wanted to enjoy his misery, but if he was worried, I wasn’t sure what that meant for me. His thoughts were too jumbled and buzzy with adrenaline for me to read.

He reached into a white plastic bag resting on an abandoned room service cart behind him, pulled out a bundle of bright red fabric, and thrust it at me. I took it reluctantly. Unfolded, it proved to be a sweatshirt with UW–MADISON in big white letters across the front. The letters were soft around the edges from wear, and the cuffs were ragged. This was definitely not new.

I glanced at him in question, and he held up an equally battered backpack. Not mine. This one was dark blue with a tiny, yellow Minion figure dangling from a keychain attached to the hook strap at the top. From the shape of the bag, it appeared to be full of books or something equally weighty. That was . . . strange.

“It’s not ideal, I realize,” Dr. Jacobs said. “But it will have to do. We had a fully detailed and tailored navy uniform all ready for you, but the location was not—” He cut himself off.

Ah, the venue change from this morning. Evidently Jacobs had assumed we’d be at a military base of some kind. That, or he’d gotten bad intel. Either way, that explained his foul mood and the delay while he scrambled for a Plan B. “Just put it all on.” Jacobs dropped the bag at my feet, where it landed with a solid thud. “These, too.” He fished a small, familiar-looking package from his lab coat pocket: tinted contact lenses, the same brand I’d worn every day for years. He tossed them at me, and I caught them automatically.

But when I hesitated, still trying to piece together what was going on here, Jacobs waved a hand at me, as if that would cause some kind of magical transformation, instant wardrobe shift, and I felt a flash of anger.

I’d crossed a lot of lines in pursuit of my goal, and I’d given up a lot of things; rather, I’d had them taken from me. Freedom, individuality, basic human rights (assuming I was entitled to them). Changing my appearance on command was a relatively small straw by comparison, but it felt like the last one. I was not a toy, not a lab monkey to be dressed up and paraded around for the mockery and pleasure of others.

But I was so close to the end, just minutes away from the meeting that would change everything. What was one more violation if it got me closer to my objective?

Gritting my teeth, I turned my back on Jacobs and the guards. I pulled the sweatshirt over my head first. It smelled faintly of bonfire smoke and spicy deodorant, but not unpleasantly so. And it was about three sizes too big; my arms swam in the armholes, and the hem dropped halfway down to my knees.

I ignored the backpack at my feet for the moment and concentrated next on carefully tearing open the packaging on the contact lenses. I was used to doing this at the bathroom counter with a mirror in front of me, so it took me an extra few seconds to figure out how to juggle the packages and then get the lenses in my eyes without a guide.

Eyes watering fiercely, I bent down and scooped the backpack off the floor and jammed the empty lens packaging in a front pocket that was empty but for what appeared to be a half-eaten granola bar. Lovely.

I turned and faced my audience.

Dr. Jacobs looked me up and down in evaluation. His lips pursed in displeasure. “Pull your hair up.” He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a dirty green rubber band that looked as though it had recently been wrapped around mail or something. 

“What exactly is the point of this?” I asked, hoisting the backpack onto my shoulder and then gathering my heavy hair into a rough ponytail. Were we going to be judged by our ability to assemble a ridiculous ensemble from items from the lost and found?

“No,” he snapped. “Braid it.”

“I don’t know how,” I said through clenched teeth. I hated him so much, sometimes it felt as if it were burning a hole outward through my chest.

He paused, seemingly mystified by this gap in my education. “Not a lot of slumber parties in my recent past, remember?” I asked. 

He heaved an impatient sigh. “I don’t care what you do with it. Just make it look normal.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. As if I hadn’t been trying to do that for most of my life, with little success. “Is this a costume party?” I asked, wrenching my hair up into the barely contained ponytail I’d worn to school every day back in my “real” life. “I’m going to look like a little kid playing dress-up.”

He pursed his lips. “It doesn’t matter, 107. The point is simply for them not to recognize you for what you are.”

I raised my eyebrows. Wasn’t the whole point of this to show us off?

With some impatience and more than a little pride, he explained, “We’re emphasizing our strengths.”

“By dressing me in someone else’s clothes?” I asked slowly.

When that wasn’t enough, he elaborated impatiently. “We want to give them a chance to see what they’re getting, 107. First impressions are everything, and we want to win them over as close to the start as possible by demonstrating our advantage.”

And Jacobs’s big advantage in me? That I already knew: I played human far better than Ford.

I stared at Dr. Jacobs. That was his magical plan? I was going to walk in and . . . out-human her? By what? Looking normal and harmless, I suppose. It was either the most brilliant or ridiculously stupid scheme in the history of such things. And in other circumstances, where I didn’t intend to strike first, it might well have gotten me killed by giving off “easy target” vibes.

“Sounds great,” I said in response to his questioning look. Whatever. I wasn’t here to see him succeed in selling me.

I managed to get my hair somewhat under control, though the individual strands would continue to frizz and wave without the addition of product.

“Good enough,” Jacobs said in a tone that suggested anything but. He took my elbow, pulling me along down the hall, toward a door I hadn’t noticed until now. “Just remember,” he said to me as the guards fell in behind us. “You’re a regular human.” A vein in his forehead, throbbing and blue, pulsed with intensity behind his words, as if it might burst at any second.

This from the man who’d done everything he could to take that “regular” humanity away from me, to remind me that I had no right to it?

The urge to help that vein on its way to an embolism right now seized me, but I resisted. Barely. The idea, though, made me smile, twisting my mouth into something ugly. And I found I didn’t care anymore.

I wanted to defeat Dr. Jacobs, to stand over him in triumph. Or, okay, at the very least, see him howling in immense pain and possibly—no, definitely, bleeding.

See? Compromise. That really is the key to success.

To be continued with Chapter Three, April 15…

___________________

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THE TRIALS, the final book in the Project Paper Doll series, comes out on April 21. So, between now and then, I’m sharing a few excerpts. :)

My plan goes something like this:

Feb 1: Prologue

Feb 21: Chapter 1 (that's this one!)

March 21: Chapter 2

April 15: Chapter 3 (partial because…well, you’ll see!)

Here's the second excerpt, which is Chapter One...(and obviously, spoilers for books 1 and 2):

Chapter One Ariane Tucker

TWO MORE DAYS . TWO MORE DAYS . TWO MORE DAYS. 

I repeated that refrain in my head, over and over again, blocking the errant thoughts and memories that threatened to interrupt my concentration as I pushed myself through another round of sit-ups on the shiny white floor of my cell. 

I’d kept a running countdown of days, based on the cycle of the lights in my room and the dates I’d overheard from the staff. It had been almost a month since my return to GTX. Almost a month since the parking lot. 

Almost a month since Zane’s blood on my hands, so red and wet . . . 

I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing harder on the burn in my stomach muscles and the dull ache in my head from the strain of pushing my abilities too far, too fast. I could no longer see my metal-framed cot swaying above me, held there by the force of my mind, but I could feel it pulling at that part of my brain, like a weight attached to a limb not quite accustomed to bearing the burden. 

In the far corner behind me, a stack of books, a much lighter target, was also levitating near the ceiling, theoretically. I’d turned my attention away once I’d lifted them off the ground, relying on my ability to keep them up without my gaze on them, a stretch for me. A second stack waited in front of me for similar treatment, though I hadn’t managed two at once (plus the cot) yet. 

I was improving but not fast enough. Time was almost up. I needed to be ready; I needed to be better. The trials would start the day after tomorrow somewhere in the Chicago area. 

I was pretty sure. 

One of the disadvantages of being a mouse in a GenTex cage is that people don’t exactly bother to keep you in the loop. They probably thought it didn’t matter. After all, I was just “the product.” It wasn’t as if I could do anything to change my situation. 

Sometimes I thought the uncertainty would kill me before anyone else had the chance. 

Until recently, I’d never thought much about dying. That sounded great, enlightened even, like a lack of concern about my own mortality was a gift of higher spiritual knowledge via my alien half. But to be honest, that had nothing to do with it. 

The truth was there were things worse than death. I’d been far more worried about ending up back in the small white room where I’d lived the first six years of my life, longing to see the world outside. 

Here’s the funny thing, though: once the worst has actually happened—well, what you thought was the worst, anyway—you learn that that line was only a low watermark, an indicator of your own naiveté. The idea that there is a cap to the horribleness that can happen to you is ridiculous. 

It can always get worse. A lot worse. I know that now. Back in that parking lot by the Illinois border, when I was caught between Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Laughlin with Zane looking on, I’d have leaped into the black unmarked van with the retrieval team to come here—hell, I’d have driven myself—if I’d known what was going to happen instead. There is no maximum threshold for the worst that can happen to you. To believe otherwise is just daring someone to prove you wrong. 

Those who would want to show you the opposite, that life can be better than you’d ever imagined, were few and far between. 

One fewer now. 

At the thought of Zane, a horrible pang of longing and sadness struck my heart with unerring accuracy. But I pushed it away, trying to refocus on the cool, emotion-deadened spot inside me, the one that had opened up shortly after I’d awakened in Laughlin’s facility with an IV in my arm and Zane’s blood all over my hands. 

Ford, my counterpart at Laughlin’s company (and probably my clone, if such a thing were possible), made it look so easy—just stop caring. Do what needs doing. Shut off the consequences and the fear and the guilt. 

I’d managed to do exactly that for a while, but the relief of that emptiness wasn’t to be found today, not with anxiety and anticipation warring within me, my body tired and my concentration stretched too thin.

Not to mention the all-too-familiar high-pitched nattering filling my ears.

“—and then Cami told me what Trey said. Too high maintenance to be worth it? Seriously? What does that even mean?”

My eyes snapped open against my will on the down motion of a sit-up, showing me Rachel Jacobs perched, as usual, on a swivel chair just outside the glass door to my room. With her ankle wrapped around one of the casters to control her movement, she spun a few inches back and forth, like a child.

She’d been here every day after school for hours, for almost two weeks now. Dr. Jacobs’s master plan. Forget waterboarding, spikes under my fingernails, or strategic electrocution; Rachel’s presence was worse punishment than any of those. She was a constant reminder of my old life, what I’d had and lost, what I’d deluded myself into thinking could be mine forever. It was a finger poking into a still bloody wound, making it impossible to ignore.

I hated it. I hated her.

Which was exactly what I suspected Dr. Jacobs wanted. I just wasn’t sure why. “Someone to keep you company,” he’d announced cheerily before her first visit, and damn him and my stupid broken heart that wouldn’t stop hoping for miracles, I’d thought for a second that maybe it was my father or somehow . . . Zane. Even though I’d left him bleeding out on the pavement in a Wisconsin park.

But then Rachel had entered the hallway beyond my cell in a swirl of her trademark red. Dr. Jacobs set her up in the chair outside my door and left before I could pin down his thoughts beyond the noise of Rachel’s. My telepathy was spotty at best, even worse around a broadcaster like her. She was so loud; she drowned out everyone else.

Rachel had glared after him, still pissed, but she sat down, anyway. He was, after all, paying her to be there, according to her thoughts. All she had to do was talk. And she hadn’t shut up since.

“Just because I know what I want,” Rachel continued huffily. “What’s wrong with that?”

Rachel shook her head as though I’d responded, her shiny dark hair tumbling forward over her shoulder as she tapped away at her phone. I didn’t know what she was doing; it wasn’t as if she could get any kind of signal down here.

I imagined the flood of waiting texts that would soar from her phone, like evil flying monkeys released from the holding pen of her outbox, the second she ascended to a point where phone service kicked back in.

“And then Trey wouldn’t even apologize! He acted like I was the one with the problem. He’s never done that before.” She sounded almost hurt, if she were capable of such emotion.

In the beginning, Rachel had done exactly as I’d expected, taunted me, said every mean thing she could think of, even repeated a few that she was particularly proud of. All trying to provoke a reaction, just because she could. She thought she was safe on the other side of the door. She wasn’t, but I had zero interest in diverting my focus just to scare her. (Okay, the thought did cross my mind, but only for a moment. I didn’t want to give Dr. Jacobs the satisfaction.)

After a few days of insults and taunts, though, something changed. It was as if Rachel had forgotten I was there or she didn’t care. She’d turned the threshold of my cell into a confessional, treating these afternoons like one long series of free therapy sessions. Either way, for some reason, her monologues were harder for me to ignore.

Maybe because they showed she was human, much to my dismay. (I was half human, after all, and frankly that was already too much in common with her.) Or maybe because, as usual, Rachel had no idea that what she bitterly complained about were things others would be overjoyed to have.

Like the guy who loved her still being alive but shunning her (rightly so) for being too demanding.

“I mean, whatever. It’s not like I care or anything,” she continued in that tone that screamed anything but. She was a child who wanted sympathy over a toy she’d broken herself.

Rage welled in me, breaking past the barriers I’d erected so carefully over the last few weeks, and spilling into the empty, emotion-free zone.

Zane was dead. He’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was there because he’d cared about me. And Rachel was bitching because she couldn’t manipulate Trey into playing one of her popularity games? The injustice of it made me want to scream until I was hoarse.

“His loss, you know?” she continued, blithely unaware. “I can do better.”

As if love was disposable, easily discarded and forgotten, just as easily replaced.

Maybe for her. My one chance was gone. 

My control splintered. Overhead, one end of the cot dipped alarmingly. I yanked my legs out of the way a bare second before the cot clattered to the floor in front of me. In the corner, books thumped to the floor, pages making a ruffling noise. Then I whipped around to face Rachel. 

“Trey’s worshipped you for years and you treat him like crap, like he’s yours to do with you as you please,” I snapped, frustrated with myself for responding and yet unable to stop it. “What did you expect?”

Rachel froze, her fingers still poised over her phone. Then she raised her eyebrows. “It speaks,” she said, with a sniff of disdain. “Guess you’re not brain damaged, just a freak still.”

I flopped back on the floor, cursing myself for breaking. “Go away.”

She gave a harsh laugh. “Believe me, I’d love to. You don’t think I have better things to do with my time?”

“No,” I said flatly. Rachel, for all her willingness to express her opinion and dictate to others what theirs should be, seemed to be lacking a sympathetic (or unresponsive) ear to listen to her discuss all the endless trouble in her life.

She gave me a hostile look. “I’m not getting paid enough for this,” she announced to no one in particular and everyone within hearing range before returning her attention to her phone.

But once I’d opened up the barrier—burst through the waxen layers of resistance and determination that had distanced me from Rachel—I couldn’t reseal it.

I sat up. “Does of any of this even register with you?” I asked, sweeping my hand in a gesture that encompassed my cell, the observation window above, and pretty much the entirety of the corporation, levels above me. “People are going to die because your grandfather and Dr. Laughlin are determined to one-up each other.”

The trials, in theory, were a competition to determine who had the best product, a term they used to describe genetically engineered alien/human hybrids like me. The prize: a lucrative government contract to create a whole line of soldier/ assassins of the not-quite-human variety, according to Dr. Jacobs. The losing products would not survive. They would either die in the competition or be destroyed afterward. No reason to keep them around.

There were three companies competing. I didn’t know who Dr. St. John would send, if anyone. (Jacobs didn’t seem concerned about him.) But I knew it was me from GTX and likely Ford from Laughlin Integrated. Laughlin and Jacobs had a history, hating each other for past sins and slights and using us to act in their stead in this grudge match.

It was more than a contract at stake here; it was pride and ego. And those were far worse.

Ford and I, sisters of a sort, would end up at each other’s throats, perhaps literally, vying to win. Ford, because she would fight until the end to save the only other hybrid we knew of, Carter. And I would kill to end this program, to destroy us all and the ones who’d made us. In fact, I’d already killed for that cause, as much as my mind tried to shy away from that memory.

The only question was which of us—Ford or me—would succeed. And it had to be me. If I was going to die—and that was a certainty, only the timing was in doubt—then it needed to count for something.

I pictured Ford on the ground, her face, identical to mine, turning red and then shades of purple, veins bulging as she struggled to breathe while I held her heart still in my mental grasp. Now that I’d actually done it—stopped a beating human heart—it was all too easy for me to picture.

A wave of sadness washed over me. Even in trying to do the right thing, Ford and I would both end up hurting each other instead of the people who deserved it.

I definitely didn’t wish Ford dead. She and Carter were the closest thing I had to family. I didn’t like Ford, exactly—she was difficult and strange—but I admired her. She hadn’t had it any easier than me, living in Laughlin’s facility and forced to attend school as part of a humanizing effort, all the while trying to protect her “siblings.” She’d never had a chance at true freedom, either. But the photo of a gorgeous lake surrounded by mountains—somewhere in Utah, maybe?—that she’d hidden away in the cubby where she slept told me that she’d dreamed about it, at least.

“Not real people,” Rachel muttered defiantly, meeting my gaze with a challenge in her eyes.

It took me a second, lost in my thoughts as I was, to put Rachel’s words in context.

I stiffened. People were going to die, but they weren’t real people to Rachel. I wasn’t a real person.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise she held that opinion. A lot of people involved in Project Paper Doll, including Zane’s mother, Mara, shared it. And yet hearing those words from Rachel sliced at me. I’d been in classes with her. She’d known me as Ariane Tucker before she knew I was GTX-F-107.

I pushed myself up off the floor, ignoring my overworked muscles, and approached the door. “You think this is about aliens and hybrids and creepy crawlies made in a lab?” I demanded.

Rachel pushed her chair back until it slammed into the bottom step leading from the hallway above, and then she jumped up, as if she might run. As if that would save her.

“Stay away,” she said, her hands clutched tight around her phone, her life preserver of normal in the ocean of alien strangeness around her.

I leaned against the glass door, pressing my palms flat on it, the lines on them the same as hers, as human as hers. “They’re going to use us as assassins, spies, and mercenaries,” I said, staring her down, knowing the fear and discomfort my too-dark and almost irisless eyes provoked in people. “Who exactly do you think we’re going to be killing and spying on, Rachel? Not other ‘freaks’ like us.”

She stumbled up the first step and glared at me, hating me for making her afraid. “God, Ariane, okay. What do you expect me to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Care about someone other than yourself. Or pretend, at least.” I turned away from the door and her beyond it, returning to my place on the shiny white floor, near my now-overturned cot.

I waved my hand at the cot, flipping it upright easily and then lifting it up toward the ceiling again, and prepared to resume my physical training.

Push-ups, maybe. My upper body strength was definitely lacking, my bones too fragile to support much of the muscle development. But every bit would help, especially against Ford, someone who was, in all likelihood, my exact match in strength and abilities. It would come down to some less definable element—surprise or willpower or cunning.

I couldn’t let it be Ford. This had to end. Jacobs and Laughlin, they couldn’t be allowed to keep using us, taking from us.

An image of Zane’s face, a smile pulling at his mouth as he leaned over me, flashed across my mind.

“Did you know they’re having a memorial service at school on Monday?” Rachel asked, startling me. She’d been so quiet I’d assumed she’d stormed off in a huff to report me to her grandfather. Instead, a quick glance in her direction showed her back in her chair, albeit still pushed away from the door. “For Zane, I mean,” she added.

My heart stuttered. I’d been expecting this or something like it for weeks now, ever since Dr. Jacobs, in one of his many attempts to elicit a reaction from me, had broken the news that no one could find Zane. But somehow the expectation hadn’t prepared me for the reality of hearing those words.

I sat back on my knees and lowered the cot to the ground quickly before it could crash again. “What?” My voice sounded rough even to my ears.

“Well, I guess it’s not really a memorial service,” she said in a considering tone. “Since they didn’t . . . they haven’t found his body.” She winced visibly.

I stared at Rachel, making an effort this time to hear her emotions and thoughts as well as her words. Grief mixed with anger, cloudy and pervasive, pulsed through her. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

She ignored my question, staring holes through me instead. “His mom, she’s back in town now. I met her. She seems nice. She wants to have a funeral—Quinn, too—but they can’t do that, can they? I mean, what are they going to do, bury an empty casket? Maybe some of the blood the police scraped up from that parking lot?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

My hands clenched into fists.

“The hospital still says his body never got there. I mean, they have the record of the ambulance call and everything, but that’s it. Nobody seems to know what happened to him after that,” she said, lifting her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. Then her eyes narrowed. “But you do, don’t you?”

I looked away. “No.”

I didn’t, truly. But I had my suspicions, given the people involved. There was no way that Jacobs or Laughlin would risk police involvement, as there inevitably would be with a shooting death. No, it was better that Zane Bradshaw, an inconvenient victim/speed bump on the road to progress, just mysteriously disappear as a bureaucratic error, lost in the system. Perhaps even delivered to an accommodating funeral home and cremated “by mistake,” a discovery that would be made months or years from now. Or never.

Or maybe Laughlin or Jacobs’s lackeys, whomever they’d charged with cover-up duties, had gone old school and  simply buried him in a grave that some early-morning hunter or jogger would stumble over one day.

My stomach lurched, and I rocked forward to my hands and knees, the imagined scene pictured too clearly in my head, the white of his shirt, now dull and dirtied, wrapped in tatters around bones. Bile rose up my throat. I coughed and choked it out, bright yellow on the pristine white floor.

“So, see?” Rachel asked, watching me, satisfaction heavy in her expression. “I’m not the only one who’s selfish. You got Zane killed, and you won’t even help his family and those of us who really cared about him say good-bye.”

Her words struck deeply, where I was most vulnerable. Because she was, after all, absolutely correct. I might not know where Zane’s body was, but I was definitely the reason he was dead.

“Screw you, Rachel,” I said, wiping my chin and glaring at her through my tears. “I hope you get everything a real person like you deserves.”

“Girls, girls,” Dr. Jacobs said in a scolding tone, catching both of us by surprise. He stood at the top of the steps behind Rachel, having emerged from the private elevator or perhaps even the observation room behind my cell. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care.

Rachel stood up immediately, scooping her bag up from the floor and slinging it over her shoulder. Then her hand shot out toward him, palm up. “Cash,” she said flatly.

His smile was tight with irritation. “Good afternoon to you, my dear,” he said. “Manners do still count for something, you know.” But he reached into the pocket of his white lab coat to remove a silver, or more likely platinum, money clip.

“Yeah? How about you save your lectures for the grandchild you didn’t try to have murdered?” She paused for a moment, pretending to think, tapping her finger against her mouth. “Oh, wait . . . there’s just me.”

Rachel was holding tight to her grudge. Not surprising. Dr. Jacobs had once thrown her into my cell, hoping she’d annoy me enough that I’d kill her and therefore meet the entrance requirement for the trials. When a family member, the only one who seems to really care about you, is willing to have you killed to prove the worthiness and ability of his science experiment—namely, me—that’s probably not something you get over quickly or easily. Unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that he was still pretty much all she had.

Dr. Jacobs paused counting out hundred dollar bills to give Rachel a sharp look.

“You know, if you’d just give me access to my trust fund, we wouldn’t have to go through this,” she said. “You bribing me to talk to your toy, me pretending not to hate you.” She waved her hand in an airy gesture.

“Not until you’re eighteen,” he said with a weary air that suggested this was a conversation that had taken place multiple times in various iterations.

I pushed myself to my feet to snag the roll of toilet paper from my bathroom—a toilet, sink, and shower set up in the corner of the room behind a privacy curtain that was more of a suggestion of such than the real thing.

I wanted, if at all possible, to get the floor cleaned up before Jacobs noticed. But I forced myself not to rush; that would surely draw his attention faster than anything.

“I could hire a lawyer,” Rachel continued, snatching up the money he held out and shoving it into her bag.

“Not one that’s better than all of mine,” he shot back. “It’s untouchable for the next fourteen months, Rachel. Get used to it, please.”

“Whatever. I’m late to meet Cami,” she said, spinning off in a huff.

I mopped up the floor as Rachel stomped up the stairs, her heels cracking loudly on the tile.

“I’ve already made your excuses for your absence on Friday, as you requested.” Jacobs’s voice was muffled as he turned away from the intercom outside my cell to call after his granddaughter. “I explained your trip to Chicago has an academic aspect, and Mr. Kohler has agreed that a five-page paper on the architecture of the city should be more than enough to—”

“Five pages?” Rachel shrieked.

“Chicago? She’s coming with us?” I blurted, the wad of toilet paper forgotten in my hands. He was bringing Rachel to the trials? Since when had this top secret competition become a spectator sport? The thought of her smug face watching from the bleachers made me feel ill. I still didn’t know exactly what the trials would involve. Dr. Jacobs claimed not to know. The event was supposedly shrouded in secrecy, to prevent one competitor from having an advantage over another.

Dr. Jacobs turned to me, startled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Rachel is accompanying her friends on a shopping outing.” He glared at me, as though I was the one revealing secrets.

“Wait, you’re letting her out?” Rachel asked her grandfather, a beat too slow on the uptake. Was it just me, or had her face gone a shade paler?

“It’s nothing for you to be concerned with,” Dr. Jacobs said, lifting his hands reassuringly. Rachel shuddered.

“Just keep her away from Michigan Avenue. I don’t want her spoiling anything for us. Cassi’s always filling out those stupid giveaway cards. It’s about time she actually won something nonpathetic. They’re sending a car for us on Friday.” She paused with a frown. “I hope the driver knows to bring spring water—the carbonated kind, not that cheap regular stuff.”

Then she turned and stalked off toward the elevator. I felt Dr. Jacobs’s attention return to me.

I chucked the toilet paper into the tiny plastic trash can (white, just like everything else in here) and resumed my place on the floor, forgetting until I was in position that I’d already done sit-ups and my stomach was not in a forgiving mood.

“That was more emotive than you’ve been in a while,” Jacobs said conversationally as I forced myself through another set of five. I didn’t know whether he meant my shouting at Rachel earlier or the vomiting on the floor, but I wasn’t going to ask.

What he said sounded like a statement, but I knew better. It was bait with a bright, shiny hook buried inside. He’d been trying to get me to talk for weeks now, to open up, as he said.

A horrible idea that brought to mind the image of my skull being cracked open with everything spilling out for further examination, speculation, and admiration of his handiwork.

I gave a shake of my head, more to myself than him. No, damn it. My feelings and thoughts were mine, at least. The only things that were, in this place. And I was going to keep them.

Instead, I lay on the floor, giving my abused muscles a break, and retrained my efforts on the other side of my new exercise regime. With barely any exertion, I had my cot suspended above me again, along with my initial stack of books, gathered and reassembled in midair. Once, something like this would have been difficult for me and the results unpredictable. The lightbulbs overhead would have blown and anything not bolted down would have been shaking and shifting.

Not anymore. Amazing what grim, uncompromising determination would do for you.

“Your improvement is quite impressive, particularly for such a short amount of time,” Jacobs said, after a moment. “Then again, I suppose that might be due to your newly acquired motivation.”

I went still, and the books wobbled slightly. Was that an oblique reference to Zane’s death? If Jacobs had guessed my intention to raze Project Paper Doll to the ground, personnel included, I wasn’t sure what he would do. He needed me to compete in the trials but certainly not at the risk of loss, humiliation, and death.

I let out my breath slowly, straining to maintain an impassive expression. Steady, stay steady. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to my cot and the books or myself.

“Your desire to seek vengeance against Ford is understandable,” he continued. “And I certainly can’t argue with the results.”

I relaxed. That was a logical assumption on his part. Of course I would blame the person who pulled the trigger on the bullet that had killed Zane. In Dr. Jacobs’s arrogant mind, that was the only reasonable response. No way would I hold him responsible. He hadn’t hurt anyone.

Except me. Over and over again, in almost every way possible. He had vastly underestimated the depths of my anger and desire for retaliation.

A grim smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. His loss. Or, it would soon be. Yes, Ford had shot Zane, but it had been unintentional, a by-product of her attempt at self-defense against Laughlin’s guards. Zane’s death was her fault only because she, like me, was a pawn in this game Jacobs and Laughlin were playing with us.

“But we,” Dr. Jacobs said with a wink at me, as if we were somehow collaborating, “need you to be you. Everything that makes you special, not some flesh-and-blood robot.” He made a disgusted noise at the idea and then smiled at me as if I understood what he was talking about.

Which I didn’t. Not at first. Robot? What?

Then, suddenly, his meaning clicked. Oh. If I were too much like Ford, too obviously different, inhuman and nonemotional, his methodology wouldn’t shine through, demonstrating the obvious advantages of his technique (i.e., she walks, talks, even smiles just like a real human, but she’s not!) over that of his competitor, Dr. Laughlin.

And that, in turn, explained Rachel’s persistent presence. Rachel had the ability to crawl beneath my skin and set up camp, like a rash that would not go away. She irritated me, to the extreme. He’d been counting on her for that, to force me to react and dissolve the walls I’d put up around my feelings. He wanted to make sure that if he pricked me, I’d still bleed. Especially in front of the audience we would have waiting for us at the trials. And I’d fallen right in line with his plan.

A fresh cascade of self-hatred washed over me, and I let my cot and books fall to the floor.

I stood on shaking legs to turn my back on Dr. Jacobs’s gloating face. He’d won, yet again.

“You’ll be pleased to hear that Private Zadowski is being released from the hospital today,” he said smugly.

My breath caught in my throat at the name; a vision of that soldier’s face, young and unlined, growing purple from the effort to stay alive, was so bright in my mind.

“Minimal permanent damage to the heart, despite clinical death, thanks to your resuscitation efforts. He’s going to be fine.” He paused. “You really are quite capable of amazing things, 107.” He sounded impressed, pleased, but there was a layer of smugness beneath it all, as if to say, “Of course you are. Because I made you.”

Then he walked up the stairs and away from my cell, whistling, his shoes clacking happily on the tile floor. My fingernails dug into the vulnerable skin of my upper arms, the pain sharpening my focus and reminding me of my true purpose.

Oh, Dr. Jacobs, you have no idea what I’m capable of.

I lowered myself into push-up position on the floor and sent that second stack of books into the air, where they held steadily for the first time.

Two more days.

To be continued with Chapter Two, March 21…

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