The Rules

by Stacey Kade

  “No,” Zane said quickly. “It’s guarded. And you look…”

  I glanced down at myself, in my white jumpsuit with numbers on my shoulder and blood on my sleeve. Like an escaped experiment. Like a freak.

  I nodded, my face hot. “Right.” I pressed the only other button. Fifth floor.

  “It’s Dr. Jacobs’s office,” Zane said. “Maybe he’ll have a sweater or a lab coat or something.”

  Rachel laughed bitterly. “Yeah, like that’ll help.”

  Zane glared at her.

  “What?” she demanded. “We came in as two people, but we’re leaving as three. More than a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

  I stepped closer to her. “Are you volunteering to stay behind?”

  She blanched and then gave me a hostile look, but she shut up.

  “Ariane.” Zane moved to stand next to me. “You’re still bleeding.” He studied my face with a worried frown.

  The cut on my cheek. It must have been deeper than I’d thought.

  Zane lifted a hand as though he would touch me, but checked himself, color rising in his face.

  “Sorry,” he murmured.

  Well, I guess that answered the question of what he thought of me now. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine once I’m out of here,” I said stiffly, turning away to face the doors. Except I had nowhere to go. I hadn’t just lost my freedom in the last few hours; I’d lost my home, my family, my life. And the only guy I’d ever cared about was afraid to touch me.

  Yeah, I was great.

  My eyes stung with tears, and without the contacts, my vision was swimming that much faster. I tried not to blink. I would not cry in front of Rachel, not in the middle of an escape. That was just ridiculous.

  “Hey,” Zane said quietly. “I didn’t mean…I just… This is a lot, you know?”

  Yeah, I knew. I’d lived with who I was and where I’d come from every day of my life. But he hadn’t had nearly the same adjustment period. And I wasn’t sure if any amount of time would be enough.

  “Ariane—” he said.

  “I said I’m fine.” But my voice wobbled, belying my words. Damn it. If he didn’t stop talking, I was going to have to curl up in the corner and die. Which would be most inconvenient, given all the trouble I’d gone through to escape.

  Rachel snorted.

  “Shut up, Rachel,” Zane and I said at the same time, with varying degrees of exasperation.

  “Yeah. Like I’m the problem,” she said, but with far less aggression than normal. Clearly, her near near-death experience had thrown her for a loop. Or maybe it was learning that her grandfather viewed her as expendable. I almost felt bad for her. Almost.

  Zane gave me a commiserating glance, so familiar, so normal, it almost made me laugh even as it broke my heart. But I ignored the pain and drank in the moment, wanting one last bit of “normal,” or as close as I was going to get.

  I was glad I’d had it, because as soon as the elevator doors opened, everything changed again.

  ARIANE TENSED A SECOND before I saw him. Them, rather. My dad, in full uniform, with Joey the mountain on one side of him and another guy in GTX black on the other.

  The surprised look on their faces when they saw us was comical…until they pulled guns on us. Real ones, not the kinds with darts.

  “Dad, what are you doing?” I asked, shocked.

  “I told you, I have contacts at GTX. When you disappeared, did you really think I wouldn’t find out where you’d gone?” my dad demanded.

  I’d never really thought his mysterious GTX sources actually existed. Apparently, I’d been wrong.

  “Come on out of there, son.” He waved me forward, never taking his gaze or his aim off Ariane.

  “You can handle this, right?” I whispered to her. I’d seen what she’d done with those tranquilizer darts in the street.

  She lifted her shoulder. “I’ve had more practice with M&M’s,” she whispered back with a frown.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “Excuse me,” Rachel yelled from behind. “I’m a Jacobs. You need to let me through.” Without waiting for a response, she pushed past Ariane and me.

  I winced in expectation of shouting and possibly gunfire, but my dad nodded at her. “Come on.”

  She stepped neatly to the side and tossed a strained but smug smile at us as she headed into her grandfather’s office and out of harm’s way.

  Clearly, any lessons she might have learned tonight had had only a limited effect.

  “Zane, follow Rachel. We’ll take care of this,” my dad said.

  “Go,” Ariane said to me, never taking her gaze off the men in front of her. “I’ll be fine.”

  Except she wouldn’t. Even if they didn’t shoot her, she’d end up right back downstairs in that horrible little room. I had no doubt of that.

  She was trying to protect me.

  That realization broke something open in me. She, who’d had one seriously crappy and messed-up childhood, was putting me first even when most people in her situation would have done whatever they could to escape, including using me as a human shield.

  She cared. I wasn’t second best to her. The idea made my eyes sting with tears.

  So what did it matter where she came from? Who—or what—her parents were? Everyone’s family was messed up in some way, including my own.

  And she was still the same Ariane.

  “No,” I said. I couldn’t let her sacrifice herself. “I came here to get you out, and I’m not—”

  Startled, she looked at me directly for the first time. “You did?”

  “Well, I came here,” I admitted. “You kind of did the getting-out part yourself.”

  She smiled, then, a beautiful expression that lit her up from within, reminding me of the other night in the parking lot after the activities fair. When everything had been simpler, clearer.

  “Zane!” my dad shouted. “Move!”

  “If we don’t get off the elevator, the doors are going to close and they’ll start shooting,” Ariane said suddenly, all business once again. Her head was tilted to one side, her gaze slightly unfocused, and I realized she was probably “hearing” it from someone, possibly my dad.

  “Okay, together, then.” I held my hand out to her. She hesitated for a brief moment, and I flashed back to all the moments before she’d trusted me. But then she slipped her hand into mine, her fingers cool and light. “One, two…”

  We stepped out, and I moved in front of her.

  “Zane,” she protested.

  “Now is not the time to be a bleeding heart. Get out of the way,” my dad said.

  The elevator doors shut behind us, and I couldn’t help but feel we’d just lost our only avenue of escape.

  But I didn’t move. I was tired of not fighting, of just accepting the way everything was. Letting other people’s decisions rule my choices.

  “Of the two of us, I’ve got a better chance of stopping bullets,” Ariane pointed out.

  “Yeah, but they won’t shoot me,” I said, though I didn’t feel quite as confident about that as I sounded.

  “They’re not going to let you take her out of here, Zane,” my dad said. “Just walk away. Don’t be stupid.”

  That pissed me off. “I’m stupid? Because I’m too weak, too sensitive, like Mom? Yeah. I’m the one in front of the guns, Dad.”

  “What is this?” a new voice demanded. I looked over to see an older man, tall and imposing, at the other end of the hallway. I hadn’t even realized there was anything in that direction, but clearly this guy had come from somewhere. Staring at him a moment longer, I realized it was the same man who’d been in the street last night when Ariane was captured—Ariane’s father, according to what my dad had said.

  Next to me, Ariane flinched, her hand tightening on mine.

  “Stand down,” he ordered the guards, to my relief.

  Rachel peeked out from Dr. Jacobs’s office to see what was going on. “Stay in there,” Mr. Tucker said
in a tone that brooked no argument, even from Rachel. She disappeared from the doorway, closing the doors after herself.

  After the briefest hesitation, Mountain Joey and the other dude holstered their guns. “The chief said the kids were in here to cause trouble, vandalizing, maybe,” Joey said.

  And since Joey hadn’t been happy about letting us in in the first place, it probably hadn’t taken much convincing to get him to go along with the idea. And, of course, my dad knew he would have sounded crazy if he’d tried to explain what was really going on, not that he even had the whole truth.

  “Then we lost contact with Dr. Jacobs, and we couldn’t reach you on the radio.…” Joey trailed off.

  “So you’re going to start shooting people based on what, a hunch?” Ariane’s dad raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s more than a hunch, Mark,” my dad blustered, but he returned his gun to its holster. “And you know it. Just because it’s your kid—”

  “You have no jurisdiction here, Chief Bradshaw,” Tucker said smoothly. “The police haven’t been called. This is a private matter.”

  “She’s holding my son hostage!”

  “I’m here willingly,” I spoke up quickly, and my dad glared at me.

  “You need to leave, Chief. Now,” Tucker said. He looked to his guards. “Joey, Xavier, take the chief out and make sure he stays out. Then return to your posts.”

  He gestured for Ariane and me to step away from the elevator. I tugged Ariane to the side, making room for Joey and the other guard, Xavier, to move forward and press the button.

  The doors rolled open immediately. Xavier stepped in while Joey positioned himself at the threshold, gesturing for my dad to go.

  But my dad stayed put. “I’m not leaving my kid here, Mark,” he protested. I cringed at his repeated use of Mr. Tucker’s first name. What, like that would make people think they were equals or friends or something? “If he stays, I stay.”

  I rolled my eyes. My dad was not one to give up easily on his GTX dreams.

  Tucker turned to me, his gaze flickering over my position in front of Ariane and her hand locked in mine. “Do you want to go?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mark,” my dad snapped. “Zane isn’t eighteen.”

  Mr. Tucker tilted his head, as though considering his words. “But he’s an invited guest of Dr. Jacobs’s granddaughter. You, on the other hand, are trespassing.”

  I winced, waiting.

  My dad sucked in a breath, his face turning red, as if he was going to argue with Mr. Tucker, but then he just looked at me with disgust. “I should have let your mother take you.”

  I froze. “Wait, what? She…she wanted me to go with her?” It felt as if the world was tilting without me.

  “Of course she wanted you. You’re just like her, despite my best efforts,” he spat.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  He narrowed his eyes at me and then deliberately turned away.

  Son of a bitch. “Dad!” I shouted. He couldn’t drop that bomb on me and walk away. “Where?”

  Next to me, Ariane squeezed my hand. “Illinois. Chicago suburbs.” She tipped her head to one side, her expression distant, her forehead crinkled with concentration. “Gurnee, I think.” She gave me an apologetic look. “It’s kind of noisy in his head at the moment.”

  My father halted immediately and turned back, a horrified expression on his face. “How did you… You can’t…”

  Joey grabbed his arm and tugged him into the elevator, and my dad, in shock, offered little resistance.

  I grinned, relief almost making me giddy. My mom had wanted to take me with her. She hadn’t willingly left me behind. I didn’t have the whole story yet, but I’d find her and get it.

  Tucker watched the doors close on them, then he turned to us.

  “That way.” He directed us toward the opposite end of the hall, where I’d first seen him. “We don’t have much time.”

  I started to follow him, but stopped when Ariane’s fingers slipped from mine.

  I turned to find her standing still, her feet planted.

  “I’m not sure we can trust him,” she said.

  I swallowed a groan. So. Freaking. Close.

  “ARIANE, IF HE’S WILLING to get us out of here—lesser of two evils, right?” Zane pleaded.

  “He wanted me to cooperate with Dr. Jacobs,” I said. “Do you have a truck waiting?” I asked the man who used to be my father. “Or are you just going to trick me into walking into a trap?”

  “I told you to cooperate because I wanted you to survive,” he snapped.

  Maybe. Maybe not. He couldn’t seriously expect me to trust him again. He was a stranger with a familiar face. That was all.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Mark said impatiently. “Listen to my thoughts. You’ll hear what you need to.”

  “Yeah, it’s not like you’ve had plenty of practice hiding what you don’t want me to hear,” I responded.

  He let out a slow breath as if summoning patience or strength. “Jacobs picked me because I had the training and because my daughter was dying. I didn’t care what happened to me,” he said. “And in the beginning I didn’t care about you, either.”

  I stiffened. I’d been expecting it, but that didn’t make it hurt less.

  “Jacobs told me to use Ariane’s name for you, that it would be an easier backstory, fewer fraudulent papers.” He hesitated. “But I don’t think he thought about the consequences. The power of a name.”

  He met my gaze straight on. “You are not my daughter. She was a sweet and loving child who did not deserve what happened to her.”

  “I know that,” I said tightly, breathing through my tears. “Believe me, I know.” I would never have wished that fate on her.

  “But you are a strong girl in your own right, and smart. Ten years in your company and I’d prefer to see you survive, one way or another. Is that wrong of me?”

  I hesitated, wanting to believe him.

  His voice took on a gentler tone. “You are an Ariane, just not mine.”

  I blinked, and tears splashed down my cheeks.

  “Is that enough?” he asked.

  I nodded woodenly, and Zane moved closer, taking my hand. “It’s okay,” he whispered, and I wasn’t sure if it was my blurry vision or if he looked like this might have made him close to tears, too.

  “Then let’s move,” my father said.

  He led us down the hall, which was far more luxurious than any part of GTX I’d ever seen before, to the opposite end, where another set of elevator doors waited.

  My father ran a key card through a small black card reader. “For service,” he explained. “The cleaning crew. Jacobs doesn’t want them soiling his personal elevator.” He smirked.

  I tensed when the doors opened, revealing a wide industrial metal lift. But no one was inside.

  He pushed the button for the third floor, and I found myself holding my breath as the elevator descended.

  But the doors opened onto a darkened office floor. No one waiting to jump out at us.

  He led us through darkened cubicles to an emergency exit, glowing white and red, the most welcome beacon I could imagine.

  “When the door opens, the alarm will sound,” he said. “I’ll call it in as a glitch, but that won’t hold them off for too long, especially if Jacobs makes his way up here again.” He hesitated. “What did you—”

  “Knocked him out,” I said.

  He nodded with a tired but knowing smile. “I figured.”

  And if I was reading him correctly, he was proud that I hadn’t killed him. The corresponding rush of relief made me feel wobbly and weak.

  “Take the stairs down and to the left. The forest preserve is that way.” He pointed out the window to an area that looked darker than the surrounding grounds. “Stick to the shadows and away from the edge of the building. The cameras don’t have much range on this side. Too many deer setting off the moti
on sensors.” He hesitated. “You remember where to go to get what you need?”

  I nodded. Maybe there really was a bag duct-taped to the bottom of the Dumpster.

  “Good. I’ve been adding to it. You’ll have enough for a while, if you’re careful.” He reached for the push bar on the door, and suddenly it all felt too real. I would not wake up in my bed tomorrow. I would not eat breakfast with my father again (Sunday equals pancakes with bacon and sausage). I would, in all likelihood, never see him again. I couldn’t imagine that his betrayal—helping me escape could only be seen as such—would be taken lightly.

  “Wait!” I said quickly, and then I didn’t know what else to say. Thank you? I’m sorry?

  But my father seemed to know. He nodded. “Me too, kid. Me too.” He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over my shoulders.

  And that made me cry.

  He shoved open the door, which set off an alarm and flashing lights, and pushed me out. “Go!”

  Zane slipped out after me onto the darkened landing, and my father pulled the door closed after us, dulling the alarm only slightly.

  We scrambled down the stairs in the dim light, but I stopped when we reached the bottom. “The main road is that way,” I said, pulling my hand free and pointing in the opposite direction of the woods.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. “Come on, we need to move.” He grabbed for my hand again.

  I stepped back, shaking my head. “This doesn’t involve you, and it’s dangerous. I don’t want you to get hurt.” I steeled myself against the hurt of pushing him—the only person I had left—away. “Go home.”

  “No,” he said after a moment, fixing me with a defiant look. “I’m not going home. I’m going to find my mom.”

  “You can’t,” I protested. “That’s the first place GTX will look for you.” And Dr. Jacobs would not hesitate to use him to get to me, especially now.

  “As opposed to my house here in Wingate?” Zane asked dryly.

  I gritted my teeth. Was he really going to be this stubborn? “Your dad offers you some protection, Zane. He—”

  “—will be the first one to let GTX in, if he thinks it’ll get him what he wants,” he said in disgust. “I’m not going back there. Not right now. He lied to me. He knew where my mom was this whole time. I need to see her, make sure she’s okay.”