by Stacey Kade
“I want you to fight,” he said.
“But I—”
“And not by giving yourself up,” he added.
I turned to face him. “Again, I’m very open to suggestions,” I said through gritted teeth. “But I don’t see another option when they have all the information, all the power. You can’t just tip the balance in our favor by wishing it, no matter how noble your motives.” I couldn’t keep the sneer out of my voice, even though he didn’t really deserve it. I was as frustrated with myself as with him. “We’re the underdogs here, remember?”
He scowled at me. “I’m not suggesting that we—” He paused, a strange look crossing his face. “Maybe, maybe not.” A faint smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked with wariness.
He sat in his chair again, his entire posture changed now, confidence pouring through the cracks. “You could do exactly what they’re expecting you to.” He gestured to the phone still clutched in my hand. “You have Adam’s sister. You can track her.”
“I am not going to kill on their orders again,” I said. I’d done it once because it was a necessity; that was not the case this time.
He made an exasperated noise. “No, I’m not saying that. But they’ll be watching you. Seeing you track her and find her will keep them off your back temporarily. If you’re dead, you can’t save anyone,” he said rather pointedly.
“And then?” I prompted. Part B of this had to be damn near spectacular to make any kind of difference.
“You do what they’re expecting you to do, and then you turn it around on them,” Zane said with a grin.
Which was exactly what we’d done to Rachel in what felt like another lifetime, but I failed to see what that had to do with our current dilemma.
But Zane wasn’t done. “Adam had family pictures of that girl at the lab. I think the odds are pretty good that he’d answer a call from her.” He raised his eyebrows in a triumphant smirk.
I went still. “You have the number for the phone they gave you?” I asked breathlessly, the words tumbling over one another in my hurry to get them out. “Why didn’t you say so?” We could just call Adam and…
“No, but I know Adam has his own phone. One he used to stay in touch with his family. He had it at the facility.”
“Dr. St. John let him keep his phone?” I asked in disbelief.
Zane shrugged. “Adam is a volunteer. It’s not like he was going to try to plan an escape. As long as he didn’t talk about the ‘mission’ in specifics, I don’t think Emerson cared.”
“But that doesn’t mean he has it on him now,” I pointed out. “He’s got yours instead.”
“He didn’t when he left the hotel this morning, and I’m sure Emerson was checking in with him before we met up,” Zane said. “Therefore, odds are, he’s got his own phone on him.”
“So, you have his number?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “But I know someone who does, and so do you.” He grinned.
Now I could see what Zane had. I felt the first glow of excitement, of possibility.
“The odds are against us,” I warned him. “We’re running short on time.”
Zane just smiled. “So, what’s the plan?”
THE BAD NEWS WAS THAT Adam’s sister was in a city of three million people and thousands of tourists. The good news was that my girlfriend—was it okay to call Ariane that? We’d never officially discussed it, but I thought there might be some kind of automatic boyfriend/girlfriend status conferred once you’ve almost died for one another—had scary skills.
After pulling her phone from her pocket, she tapped the screen, flipping through various applications as I watched upside down. Then she landed on one very familiar icon and tapped it with complete confidence.
“Wait…you follow her on Twitter?” I stared at her. “How? When?” As far as I knew, the packets containing target information had been handed out only last night.
“The documentation they provided gave me her first name—Elise. After that, it was just a matter of interpreting contextual clues from the provided pictures. I tracked her through her university, Michigan State, and her sorority to get her last name, and then I used social media to create a false profile to follow her.” She shrugged. “I’m ‘Brittany Pearson’ as far as Elise knows.”
I gaped at her. It was scary, frankly, exactly how good Ariane could be at this stuff. This girl, Elise, would have died today if Ariane had so chosen.
She frowned. “What?”
“Nothing. I’m just glad you’re on my side,” I muttered.
Ariane returned her attention to her phone. “Now we just need to find out what she’s been posting in the last hour or so. She doesn’t use the location check-in function, but she’s been posting to one of the photo sites. I found her account there as well. Apparently, she won the annual all-expenses-paid trip with five friends from the Midwest Fine Arts Council, if such an organization even exists, to visit the city for the weekend.” Her tone held bitterness. “Just enough to make it impossible for her to say no but not enough to make her wary enough to stay away.”
“Tempting, but not too good to be true,” I muttered. The Committee knew what they were doing.
Ariane stiffened suddenly.
“What’s wrong?” I looked at her phone, expecting to see something horrible, like a photo of trials-related violence or an “account deleted” notification.
She shook her head, her mouth tight. “I think I just figured out who the Committee selected as Ford’s target.”
Meaning the person they thought Ariane would fight or seek vengeance for.
“Who?” I asked, mystified.
“Before I left GTX, Rachel was talking to me—”
“Rachel Jacobs?” I asked in disbelief.
“It’s a long story,” Ariane said with a sigh. “But she mentioned something about Cami winning a shopping trip. She’s here in the city today.”
“You’re kidding.” If the Committee had selected Rachel as someone Ari would care about, then maybe we weren’t in as much trouble as we thought, because clearly their research skills sucked.
She shook her head. “It didn’t occur to me before, because they were clearly attempting to select people who were of emotional interest to the candidates. I’m not sure how Rachel qualifies for me, but I think it’s a good possibility.…”
“Ford and Rachel inhabiting the same space,” I said, trying to imagine it. Rachel would think Ford was Ariane, which meant she’d be her typical abrasive self. I doubted Ford would handle that with anything like the patience Ariane had demonstrated. “That’s going to go bad, and quickly.”
“My thoughts exactly, which means we have another reason to hurry.” Ariane turned her attention to her phone, skimming through Elise’s posts. “Elise was at the Museum of Science and Industry as of forty-five minutes ago.” She turned the screen toward me, and I vaguely recognized the white sprawling building in the picture. “Lake Shore Drive.” She clicked her phone off and returned it to her pocket, moving swiftly. “I should have more than enough money for a cab, assuming we don’t encounter traffic difficulties.…” She hesitated. “Are you…how are you feeling?”
Her dark eyes searched my face.
I forced a smile. “I’m fine.” I could handle a cab ride, no problem. And a museum? That didn’t sound too taxing.
The problem with our plan became very, very clear as soon as the cab pulled up to drop us off in front of the building.
“Wow. It, uh, didn’t look this big in the picture,” I said.
Ariane looked up from her phone, where she’d been attempting to find out information for the layout. “It’s one of the biggest museums in the country, apparently,” she said, sounding displeased, as if the museum had done this deliberately to aggravate her.
I fought the urge to laugh.
Ariane paid the cab driver, her actions awkward and uncertain, indicating the newness o
f the activity for her, and then we got out.
The museum, with its towering columns, sat in the center of an expansive lawn, the lake a bright blue pool to the east. All the skyscrapers that made up downtown Chicago had been left behind for this vast openness that felt out of place in the middle of the city. Hundreds of people swarmed up and down the museum sidewalk and steps. In the grass, families were having picnics or eating bag lunches. Crowds of elementary-aged school kids, tourist groups with cameras, and even groups of people on Segways flowed around us.
And that was just on the outside. This place looked so huge, I couldn’t imagine how many more people were already within.
“Any chance ‘Brittany’ could message her and suggest meeting up out here?” I asked.
“She just happens to be in Chicago the same day as Elise, the very next day after following her on Twitter?” Ariane shook her head, her mouth in a tight line. “It would be too suspicious. And if she thinks Brittany’s…what’s the word?” She paused, flipping through her mental dictionary. “A creeper. If Elise thinks Brittany’s a creeper, she might block me.”
It was funny sometimes, hearing slang come from Ariane. She used the words with such precision, unlike everybody else, like someone from another country who was still adapting. She’d been living outside with the rest of us humans for ten years, but she’d spent her first few years in near isolation, with only adult scientists for company. And then just her father for the years after that. Occasionally her unusual childhood showed, especially when she was stressed.
I was lost enough to notice and to find it kind of cute.
“So we’re going in?” I asked, forcing my attention back to the matter at hand.
“Not that way.” She gestured at the main entrance. “Admission for both of us will take almost half the money I have left. There has to be another way in.”
She headed off to the side of the museum with the confidence of someone for whom locked doors were no deterrent. It didn’t take long to find a loading bay and next to it a regular door, which, when opened, led into a narrow hallway with offices at the far end.
“What about cameras?” I hissed.
She nodded, a tiny motion. “I’m sure there are. Act normally, move quickly, and try to find a way onto the main floor,” she said under her breath.
“If anyone asks, you’re Jan Peterson’s son and I’m your girlfriend,” she added.
Aside from the quick burst of warmth I felt at hearing her call herself my girlfriend, that statement raised more panic in me than it allayed. “Who is Jan Peterson?”
“Hopefully someone who works here,” she said over her shoulder as she started down the hall.
“Shit,” I muttered. “You’re kidding me with this, right?”
But she wasn’t, and in this very rare instance, luck evidently decided to give us a pass. Before I could ask what would happen if we encountered someone who actually knew a Jan Peterson at the museum, she’d found a door labeled MUSEUM FLOOR.
A security badge scanner, a black plastic square with an ominous red light at the top of it, held a place of prominence on the wall next to the door. Well, that was a problem.
But Ariane ignored it, and with a quick motion of her hand by the door, the lock retracted with a loud snap.
I held my breath as she pulled the door open. The light on the scanner stayed red, but no alarms sounded.
Ariane’s enhanced skills and training were no match, though, for the sheer size of the museum and the number of visitors. As soon as we stepped into what turned out to be a small side corridor, the noise crashed over us. When we reached the main floor, it got worse. It wasn’t anything bad, just people shuffling around in every direction possible, talking and laughing.
“Can we page her?” I asked as we merged into the crowd, trying to watch for Elise and keep from getting run over. “They have to have something like that here, right? For lost kids and stuff?”
Ariane pulled her phone from her pocket, checking for Elise’s latest posted whereabouts. “Likely. But who will we say is calling?”
“I don’t know, her brother?” I asked.
“Is Adam his real name?” Ariane asked, looking up from her phone.
I paused. “Uh…”
“And what do we say when she arrives and finds that there is no phone call from her brother? Instead, there are two strangers who want her to call him for reasons that won’t make much sense.”
I made a face. Fair enough.
“Come on.” She frowned at her phone. “It looks like they’re still near the aviation exhibit, if we hurry.”
And that began the world’s worst game of hide-and-seek. First, there was no hurrying at all, anywhere. It was like trying to run underwater. Second, Elise was a freaking ghost. She’d post a picture or a status update, referencing an exhibit or display or, hell, a “cute” shirt she saw someone wearing (she wasn’t the most discriminating of posters), and we’d arrive at the designated location, out of breath and surrounded by the irritated people we’d pushed past, and never catch so much as a glimpse of her. We were always a step behind.
And Elise and her friends seemed to have the attention span of spider monkeys, leaping from one thing to another with no discernible pattern.
Under other circumstances this might have been fun, wandering the exhibits and people-watching, but with each passing moment, I could feel time slipping away and Ariane growing more and more tense.
The text messages from Dr. Jacobs, which had shifted from berating to glowing encouragement once we’d actually started trying to find Elise, had stopped.
That couldn’t be good, but I was, at least, pretty sure that Jacobs wouldn’t have been able to resist screaming at Ariane if Ford or Adam had succeeded in eliminating their targets ahead of her. Which likely meant they were having as much trouble, or more, finding their people. I doubted Carter had any kind of social media presence for Adam to use against him, and I was pretty sure Ford wouldn’t know what to do with Twitter if it bit her (and biting Ford wouldn’t end well for anyone or anything).
We’d lost a lot of time at the beginning, but we now had more up-to-date information on Elise’s movements than the others would for their targets. We were okay, maybe even ahead of the game.
But when I’d mentioned that, Ariane had not seemed all that reassured.
Or maybe she was still recovering from the exhibit we’d stumbled across upstairs. I was.
The Pre-Natal Development exhibit consisted of twenty-four fetuses and embryos, at various stages of development, in glass display cases. It was kind of creepy and weird and a little sad, especially considering that, if they’d lived, some of those babies would have already died from old age. They’d been at the museum since the 1930s, according to the signs, but they were still perfectly preserved. You could see their eyelashes, even. It was like they might open their eyes at any second and start crying to be freed from their glass boxes.
It had chilled me.
But Ariane’s reaction had been more severe. She’d frozen in place, oblivious to everyone around us. “It’s like this at Laughlin’s. He has displays of all the previous models.…” Her voice had broken, as if she might start crying. And I’d never seen her so pale, the color draining from her face until she really was gray.
I’d pulled her out of there, her hand, thin and so cold, in mine. She’d been much too quiet ever since.
Now, at the start of our second hour at the museum, we were sitting on benches near the main entrance. Perhaps Ariane was following the principle that you were more likely to be found by someone—or to find someone—by staying in one place. Or maybe she was taking pity on me. I hadn’t asked for that, but I was definitely grateful. The trials had only officially started five hours ago (nineteen hours to go), and my whole body ached, and I had chills, off and on. The virus battling my still-adapting immune system. No nosebleeds in the last couple of hours, but I hadn’t tried to use any of my new abilities recently, either.
I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did. If I’d been at the hotel, I bet that Emerson would have been hovering nearby with a worried frown and a thermometer in hand.
Unwilling to think about that too much, I shifted uneasily. “I still think we should consider paging Elise,” I said. “We can always walk away as soon as we see her coming. Then at least we’ll have a visual on her. A chance to identify her in the crowd.” That was something else I was worried about. People in real life, three dimensions, could look very different from flat photographs. If Elise’s hair was shorter or pulled back or something, I wasn’t sure that I would have picked her out of the crowd.
Before Ariane could respond, her phone chimed. She’d set it to alert her whenever Elise updated her feed. She clicked on the notification. “‘Heading to Millennium Park. Gotta see the Bean. So excited!’ They’ve left. But they’re not there yet. Let’s go.” She bolted up as if the floor were spring-loaded beneath her.
I followed her outside to the cab stand, and when a yellow taxi stopped in front of us, Ariane lurched for the door, yanking it open.
“Take us to the park as you would take tourists,” she commanded as I pulled the door shut.
She sounded so stilted. I kind of doubted the driver saw either of us as natives, especially now.
“You kids are new to the city, eh?” he asked, glancing at us in the rearview mirror.
Ariane stared out the side window, studying the traffic and the taxis around us, leaving it to me to answer.
“Something like that, yeah,” I said. The TV screen embedded in the seatback in front of me flickered and sputtered, spitting out the occasional words “missing,” “bioethics violation,” “Chicago,” “scandal.” Must have been the local news, though it was kind of early for that at just after two in the afternoon.
“Uh-huh.” The cabbie’s gaze flicked from me to Ariane, lingering longer on her than it should have.
I couldn’t blame him. Her knitted hat had slipped back, revealing more of her pale hair, but more than that, it was her posture that spoke of something other. Her back straight and formal, she was rigid with tension, sitting forward in the cracked and worn leather seat as though she might be ejected from it at any second and have to scramble to regain her footing.