Project Paper Doll: The Trials (10 page)

“We’ll be monitoring your positions through the GPS in your phones,” Jacobs warned.

I swallowed a sigh. That would make the Zane encounter more difficult to pull off, though not impossible. “What, no tracking chips?” I muttered.

“And give the Committee the idea that there’s cause to doubt your obedience?” Jacobs asked sharply. “No. A well-trained dog requires no leash, electronic or otherwise.
But they will have monitors on you for your vitals.”

Ah, that explained the little black plastic triangle in the envelope. They wanted to know when to cross off names of the dead. Lovely.

“But should you require additional motivation…” He dropped the folder he’d been carrying on the desk, and it landed with a loud slap.

I flinched at the noise, and then felt a flash of my anger returning. Honestly, who was left for him to hold out as a potential punching bag? My father was gone, and Zane might as well be.

I set my jaw and made no move to open the folder. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

But Jacobs, as always, wasn’t particularly keen on what I wanted to give.

He flipped open the folder and held it up in front of my face. Short of closing my eyes, which would have only proved to him that he was on the right track, I had to look.

On the right side, several sheets of paper covered in charts, numbers, and medical information. On the left was a photo, the old-fashioned kind, a Polaroid, with the thick white border at the
bottom. I’d seen similar ones in the photo albums Mark had had of his daughter, the original Ariane Tucker, the one for whom I’d been named in the elaborate scheme that had first
introduced me into the world outside of GTX. The developing fluid had left strange streaks across the surface of this photo, but the figure in the center was still plainly visible.

The woman was blond and thin, sickly thin if the stick-like arms emerging from her sleeves were any indication. The voluminous dress she wore—dark blue with white polka dots—only
made her look smaller, lost within the fabric. Her delicate features—a long, thin nose; high brows and cheekbones—seemed even finer with the strain of weariness obvious on her face,
though she was smiling.

That smile…it set off a twinge of recognition, a feeling of familiarity even though I couldn’t place it.

“Do you know her?” Jacobs prompted, watching me carefully.

My mouth was dry, and it took me a second to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth and make it work. I could think of only one woman who’d have relevance in this conversation, not to
mention features I might recognize. “No.”

He shook the folder in front of my face, moving it even closer. “Are you sure?” he asked with a hint of ugly eagerness. He was enjoying himself.

The desire to reach up and break his neck swelled in me. A simple solution to a complicated problem. Except it wouldn’t really solve anything.

“She looks familiar,” I said through gritted teeth.

“She should,” he said with satisfaction.

“Who is she?” I asked, hating myself for giving him that advantage but needing the confirmation.

“This? This is the surrogate who carried you. Six months, from implantation to full term. Or, one of your DNA contributors, if you prefer,” he said with a shrug, as if that were
irrelevant.

My mother.
Dizziness swirled in my head.

I sat forward in my chair. “Is she still alive?” It hadn’t escaped my notice that the photo was old.
What’s her name?
That question I managed to keep to myself.
He’d never share that information; it would give away his bargaining position. If I had her name, I could find her and ask her all the questions that were suddenly bubbling up in my brain. I
wasn’t musical in the slightest—was that a deficit from my human side, or something I’d inherited from alien ancestors? Were my long, thin fingers hers? How about the annoying
tendency to get the hiccups after a meal with too much sugar?

When you’re created in a lab, it’s like existing in a void, no sense of connection to a larger world or family. I liked the color green because…I liked green. There was no one
to tell me that perhaps that my affection for that hue had come from an early incident in childhood or even a genetic predisposition.

I wanted to snatch the folder from Dr. Jacobs’s hand and examine every detail of the photo, but I restrained myself. It would only give him more leverage if he knew how badly I wanted
information.

“107, I generally don’t make it my business to keep track of former employees who behave themselves and obey their nondisclosure agreements,” he said with exaggerated
patience.

I relaxed slightly, even though the ramifications of his words were still sinking in, leaving behind a dull hurt. My mother, then, had been a willing participant. And she had walked away from
me. Why? Had she been sorry? Or was she more concerned about how quickly GTX’s check would clear?

I hated how much I wanted, no, needed to know.

“But making an exception this time seemed prudent,” Jacobs added with a glint in his eye that I recognized too well.

So she was alive and he knew where she was. “You’re threatening her,” I said flatly.

“You think so little of me,” he said, and
tsk
ed at me. “I could certainly find and threaten her, but I prefer to think of it as an inducement. The carrot instead of the
stick. Behave yourself and perhaps I will tell you more about her. Maybe even set up a meeting, a chance encounter, of course. She could never know who you are,” he added with a casual
dismissive wave.

The corollary, then, would be what would happen if I
didn’t
“behave.”

I felt sick, my head swimming from the picture, the threats, and the roller coaster of my own emotions from the last few hours.

“I just want to make sure you’re very clear on what’s at stake, 107,” he said almost gently, the blustering furor of a few minutes ago gone. “Not just for me or for
the company. If you follow my instructions and do your best tomorrow, it’ll be beneficial for others besides yourself.”

If one could consider “beneficial” to be defined as surviving, unharassed and untortured, I suppose that were true. I knew nothing of this woman. Maybe she deserved everything Jacobs
could rain down on her. She’d left her child to a laboratory and a lifetime of experimentation. But…how much had she actually known about what she was doing? Jacobs lied as easily as
he breathed. And even if she’d been aware of the truth, who was I to argue with her actions when I knew exactly how manipulative this man could be when it came to getting what he wanted?

Either way, I owed her the benefit of the doubt. All I knew for certain was that this woman had participated in an experiment almost two decades ago. She’d probably moved on long ago.
Maybe she had other children of her own. A garden. A job. A life. And I’d be the one who, indirectly, would destroy all of that.

Dr. Jacobs was such an asshole. Unfortunately, in the way of this world, that did not also make him wrong.

“I understand,” I said, my voice thick.

And I did. My choices were as ugly as ever. To win the trials, I’d have to kill the target, a girl who might very well be as innocent as she looked. It was, after all, a test, not just of
my capabilities but also of my obedience. And if I didn’t do as I was ordered, I’d lose the slim chance to stop the Project Paper Doll program, and the woman who was my mother, for
better or worse, would feel the repercussions of my rebellion.

“I knew you would,” Dr. Jacobs said with a smug smile as he closed the folder and stepped back, and my fury, long held in restraint, slipped its leash.

I lifted my hand and stopped him dead. My power wrapped around him from the knees down, holding him in place.

Even with his knowledge of my capabilities, Jacobs reacted as most humans did: looking down at his legs as if they’d suddenly been removed from his ownership, which they had, in
effect.

Then he glared at me, his jaw clenched tight. “I could call for the guards.” But his face was pale. He didn’t like me holding him. Too damn bad.

I cocked my head, letting him get the full effect of my stare, which most humans found unnerving. “You could,” I agreed. “But remember, I’m valuable only as a
competitor.”

I stood and inched closer to him, watching with gritty pleasure as sweat beaded on his forehead. “It would be unfortunate if something happened to me the night before the big event, right?
Or, if word got out that your ‘product’ wasn’t as compliant as you claimed?” I smiled, feeling it stretch my face into something harsh.

“What do you want?” he asked, anger bubbling in his voice, but he couldn’t quite meet my gaze.

“Just for you to remember
what
you made,” I said, deliberately choosing the word he would use for me, “what” not “who.”

His upper body jerked as if I’d slapped him. “And you’d do well to remember that if I made you, I can destroy you,” he snapped.

Except he couldn’t, not yet. And we both knew it.

I held him for a moment longer, just long enough for him to truly feel the start of panic and for one of those beads of sweat to trickle down the side of his face.

Then I released him. There was no point in pushing him further anyway, not now; I wanted to shake him a little, not scare him into pulling me from the competition.

Jacobs stumbled backward, catching himself on the dresser. He straightened up, squaring his shoulders and tugging his lab coat into place. “Be careful, 107,” he said in that smooth
tone that never failed to raise goose bumps on my skin. “You don’t want to test my resolve, I promise you. Push hard enough and my choice might surprise you.”

Then he turned and stalked out. Just a little bit faster, and he might have been running away from me.

My harsh smile returned.

Even better.

T
HE TRIALS STARTED WITHOUT FANFARE
. No horns blaring, no voice shouting over an intercom, “On your marks, get set, go!”

Just a tiny chirp at nine
A
.
M
. sharp from a timer app on the Committee-provided cell phone, as the numbers started rolling backward from
twenty-four hours, and the growing sense of dread and anxiety in my stomach. Somehow, the subtlety of the start made it feel all the more real and dangerous.

This was it. My last chance to make things right. And somehow, while wishing for it and anxiously awaiting it, the moment had still managed to sneak up on me.

I resisted the urge to pick at the edges of the vitals monitor that Emerson had attached to my chest before I left my room this morning. It felt conspicuous, the black plastic forming a dark
leachlike bump beneath the stupid yellow shirt that had been designated as the uniform for Adam and me during this whole mess. It matched the yellow in the Emerson Tech logo, I guess. The phone the
Committee had provided, now in the pocket of the khakis—seriously, who picked these clothes? Who goes on a secret mission in freaking lame-ass Dockers?—felt less invasive and obvious.
But maybe that was because I was used to carrying a phone, even if it normally wasn’t one being used to track my location. At least as far as I knew.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot and wiped my sweaty palms across the bottom of my shirt. “Come on, Ariane,” I muttered. This particular side corridor of the hotel, which
included double glass doors labeled as the west entrance, was empty, for the moment. The restaurant, O’Malley’s, was closed for renovations, according to a sign on a stand blocking the
entrance just behind me. But I couldn’t stand here for much longer without risking that someone, whoever was monitoring our locations through the phones, would notice that I wasn’t
actually leaving the hotel and trying to find the designated target.

If Ariane didn’t show up now, if she’d somehow mistaken my message or just not received it, I’d have to leave and try to find her out in the city. That would be a
nightmare.

Assuming that she’d even want to be found by me.

She might have heard me just fine yesterday but want nothing further to do with me. She could easily still blame me for screwing up her plans with Ford. I bet Ford did. And if Ariane had
something in mind for getting out of all this, she might not want to take the risk of involving me again.

That was a mistake I could not make again. If I was given the chance.

I studied the metal push bar on the doors to the sidewalk, focusing on the way it gleamed in the early morning sunlight, how it was probably warm to the touch. Holding those sensory details in
my head, I reached out and gave the doors a push, using that newly accessible part of my brain.

They opened, just as if I’d given them a shove with my hands, and a thrill shot through me, as always. I would never get used to this. And I was getting better, the more I practiced.

The only comparison I could make was that it was kind of like flexing your knee after you’ve hit the ground, bruised the hell out of yourself, and taken off a few layers of skin. You
don’t have a full range of motion while it’s healing, and it takes extra effort to move, but it’ll still work and eventually you won’t even notice the hurt.