Project Paper Doll: The Trials (35 page)

“This looks a lot easier in the movies,” she observed with a frown at her feet.

“Yeah, they’re not usually slogging through six inches of snow,” I said breathlessly when I finally reached her. “Are you okay? How did you get here?” I
didn’t wait for her to answer before grabbing her in a tight hug, bending down to bury my face against her neck. Her puffy coat released a burst of warm air scented like lemons, like Ariane.
The familiarity of it, and the reminder that, until this moment, I’d thought I might never experience it again, made me eyes burn with more than the cold.

She pulled back to smile at me and touched my face. Her fingers were like ice, but I didn’t care. “I’m all right.” But the tightness around her eyes and her mouth told me
that maybe that hadn’t always been the case. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”

“Four weeks at St. John’s lab in Rochester, letting him try to undo everything he’d done,” I said, making a face.

She raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

It had not been an easy decision. But the vision of Adam lying on the ground, shot and dead despite all of his acquired skills, had stuck with me. Not to mention the bloodbath in the conference
room at the hotel.

There were no guarantees in life. What NuStasis had given back to me—the chance to live—could just as easily be taken away again, perhaps even by NuStasis itself.

“My body still wasn’t adjusting well, not stabilizing,” I admitted. “More nosebleeds, headaches, dizziness, passing out.” I shook my head. I could have kept
fighting, trying to hold on to those abilities, but at what cost? I’d seen firsthand how pricey that kind of shortsightedness could be. And I hadn’t liked who I was becoming. Confidence
was one thing; perpetually spoiling for a fight was another.

Plus, if NuStasis killed me—or kept me in a lab under permanent observation—I wouldn’t have been able to search for her.

“And?” Ariane searched my face anxiously, as if the answers were written there, and they sort of were, in that I didn’t look permanently ill anymore. I hadn’t realized
how bad it had gotten until I looked in the mirror one day and was startled
not
to see dark circles embedded under my eyes.

“Most everything is back to normal,” I said. “It was mostly keeping my immune system from overreacting and killing me, I guess. Lots of IVs, and antibiotics I’d never
even heard of. Sometimes my ears ring still, and I pick up a word or two out of nowhere. And if I really concentrate, I can make the TV remote kind of wobble a little. Unless that’s just
Quinn messing with me, which is definitely possible.” But I didn’t want to talk about any of that.

“Did they let you go?” I asked. “Did Justine…” I paused and glanced over my shoulder instinctively, half expecting to see a black van barreling toward us.
“Does Justine know you’re here?”

“Justine knows I’m here. She’ll know wherever I am.” Ariane pulled out a slim phone from her pocket, almost as thin as a credit card. “I have to keep it on me at
all times. A compromise for no embedded tracking device. I made them remove the one under my skin from before.”

I nodded but had to wonder what would have stopped them from inserting another at the same time.

She smiled tightly, obviously following my train of thought or just plain hearing it. “Because I wouldn’t let them use any anesthesia or numbing agents, and they had to show me the
removed chip afterward.”

Jesus. Yes, confirmed once more: Ariane Tucker was a badass.

I shook my head in wonder, my thoughts trying to catch up with everything she was telling me. “Do you want to go inside? I don’t have a car, and it’s freezing out here.”
I clamped down to keep my teeth from chattering.

She shook her head. “I can’t stay long. I just wanted to see if I could catch you here before you went home.”

“Oh.” The word escaped before I could stop it, more like exhaling than actually speaking. So that was what it felt like to have your heart crushed. It wasn’t just a sinking
feeling, the way everyone described it. It was more like someone had reached in my chest and removed said heart with a clenched fist.

But it made sense. Of course she wouldn’t be staying. How could she? Why would she even want to, assuming they’d let her?

Ariane regarded me with a faint wrinkle of confusion in her forehead. Then her expression cleared, and she raised herself up on her toes, pressing her cold lips against mine.

Hell if
that
was going to be our last kiss. I bent down and looped my arms around her waist, lifting her up.

Her mouth was as impatient as mine, and her fingers curled into my coat collar, pulling me closer. And suddenly I forgot about the cold, the snow, everything except her body pressed against
mine.

After a long moment, Ariane pulled back, her rapid breath appearing between us in little white puffs, and I set her down reluctantly.

But she kept her hand on my chest. “I’m going to the apartment they set up for me,” she said to me slowly, as if she was afraid I would misunderstand. “Here in town, in
that new complex.”

“Over on Forest and Lombardi?” I asked, confused, my brains kind of scrambled from the kiss.

She nodded.

“But…that’s where my mom’s new place is.” Which meant Ariane would be close to where I already spent a lot of time.

Ariane just smiled.

It clicked. “You knew that already.”

She grinned. “I might have heard something to that effect. But we’re in Building B, across the courtyard from her apartment.” She pulled gloves—knitted in bright pink and
purple stripes—from her pockets and put them on.

“We?” I asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “The agent assigned to me. Not sure who it’s going to be yet. I was hoping maybe…”

I didn’t have to have my former (limited) mind-reading thoughts to know she’d been hoping Mark Tucker would reappear. I considered mentioning what Rachel had told me about her/their
mother, but decided it could wait.

Ariane shook her head, dismissing Mark as a possibility even though neither of us had said his name. “It’s okay. I think it’s going to be Marta, one of the DHS agents assigned
to me when I was with them. And she’s fine. Kind of dry, not much of a sense of humor, and she doesn’t believe in watching movies—”

“Obviously she’s an alien,” I said.

“Clearly,” Ariane said, her eyes bright with amusement.

I stared at her in disbelief. “How did you manage all of this?”

“I can be very persuasive,” she said.

“I’m aware,” I said dryly. “But they’re just letting you go?”

“Not exactly. They need me.” She shrugged. “And when you’re the only one on the entire planet who can make all their recovered alien tech light up and send out
incomprehensible streams of data that will take them years to decode, they’re pretty motivated to keep you…cooperative.”

“Dr. Jacobs needed you,” I pointed out, stomping my feet in place to keep warm. Ariane, in her boots and brightly colored cold weather gear, didn’t seem bothered.

“No,” she said. “Dr. Jacobs wanted to control me. There’s a difference. He was willing to break me, wanted to, even. Justine…she knows better.” Her voice
took on an ominous tone, and I wondered what, exactly, Ariane had had to do to convince her of that point. “I’m no good to them if they push too hard.” Her mouth curved in a tight
bitter smile. “Not to mention all the tales I could tell if someone does show up here from another planet, wanting to know if you all are worth keeping around.”

Leverage. That’s what she’d been talking about when we’d first met with Justine. And now, with Ford and the others dead, I guess she had it, though I was betting she would have
rather it not happen quite in this way. “So you could have gone anywhere,” I said. “You didn’t have to come back here for…I mean, I’m not…”

“I didn’t come back just for you,” she said. “Dr. Jacobs is…currently out of commission. But he’s not the only one who knew what was going on at GTX.”
Her expression darkened. “He’s not the only one who could start it up again. I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. Here or anywhere else. I promised Ford.” Her gaze
dropped to the ground.

I nodded, even as my brain chewed on the fact that she’d said that she hadn’t come back “just” for me. Which meant that she had considered my presence in Wingate and it
had been a factor in her decision. And that made a ridiculous grin spread across my face.

The sound of tires crunching on snow came from behind me. I turned and saw our battered SUV slowly making its way into the parking lot. Quinn braked as soon as he saw me, unwilling to go farther
into the unplowed parking lot, and honked the horn in a short, impatient burst.

I waved at him so he’d know I saw him. “That’s Quinn. He’s living here now and hogging the car. I have to go,” I said to Ariane. “Come with me,” I added
on impulse.

“Considering the last time Quinn saw me,” she said after a moment, “I think it’s probably better if we work up to me being in an enclosed space with any member of your
family.”

I thought about the nightmares that Quinn had occasionally, after all that he’d been through while being held by Dr. Jacobs as a bargaining chip. He sometimes woke up screaming loud enough
to wake everyone. Once, even Mrs. Kripke next door had called to make sure everything was okay. Proof perhaps that Quinn’s “pretend it never happened” method wasn’t working
as well as he might prefer.

Ariane had done nothing to Quinn, but she’d been at the parking lot during the exchange that had gone horribly wrong. And while Quinn didn’t know her, he had to know that she was the
reason he’d been taken. He’d never mentioned it, but seeing her marched out in handcuffs and surrounded by guards had to be a pretty big clue.

I wasn’t sure how Quinn would react to her now, being in our car or at our house.

My dad would probably foam at the mouth.

“You might be right,” I admitted. “But I don’t want to just leave you here.” Or ever.

She smiled at me. “I really do need to go to the apartment,” she said. “It’s not far. I’ll be fine.”

Quinn hit the horn again, harder this time, but I stayed put.

“But you’re going to be here tomorrow, right?” I asked, hating that I felt the need to be reassured. But I knew all too well how quickly the world could shift, your entire
understanding of the universe changed in less than a day.

“As long as the world as we know it doesn’t end,” Ariane said. “I’m on call for that.”

“Okay,” I said with a laugh. “I can work with that.” But I found myself walking backward, keeping her in my view. I was still reluctant to leave, afraid she’d
disappear again.

“Zane,” she called after me.

I stopped immediately. “Yeah?”

“Can you come over tomorrow? After school, assuming they let me back to classes,” she asked, not quite meeting my eyes.

I ignored Quinn waiting, my heart picking up an extra beat in alarm. “What’s wrong? Do you think Marta might not be on your side or—”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” She paused, biting her lip. “Just maybe bring a DVD or something? I’ll have my laptop set up by then. And I’ll get popcorn.”

“You want to watch something?” I asked, baffled by the contrast between what she was asking and her reaction to doing so.

She nodded, her face brighter red than I’d ever seen it, as though she were asking me for some huge favor or extreme task.

And then I got it. This was a big deal. She’d never invited
anyone
over to her house before. Of all the amazing things she’d done and could do, this simple, everyday part of
life was new and
huge
for her.

“Unless…” She hesitated. “I mean, if that’s not something you’d want to—”

“Yes, I want to,” I said quickly and firmly. “Definitely. If the snow clears up, we could even go out to the movies. In public.”

She blinked, as if she hadn’t even considered that possibility in her newfound freedom.

I grinned at her. “Maybe we’ll even sneak some French fries in and skip the popcorn.”

“That’s against the rules, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Thought you were all about that,” I said.

Her face lit up with one of her rare, uncompromised smiles. “I guess I am,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

That sounded like a promise to me.

T
HE PALE WINTER SUNLIGHT
,
REFLECTING
off the new snow, was so bright it hurt my eyes. And when I took a deep breath, the cold
air made my lungs ache.

But it was worth it. To be outside. To be unmonitored. Well, mostly. But the cell phone in my pocket was as little encumbrance as could be imagined, particularly compared to before.

My promised new life at the ocean had never materialized, and that was fine. I’d get there one day, now that I had the freedom to make my own choices. Instead, I’d spent the last
eight weeks indoors, surrounded by Justine and her people. Moving from one safe house to another, and then to conference rooms that were all very similar, and finally to a secure facility outside
Phoenix where scattered metal pieces and fragments of a ship—some with strange characters on them, some without—had been carefully cataloged and organized.