Project Paper Doll: The Trials (32 page)

I, however, was under no such restriction. The urge to kill Dr. Jacobs thrummed beneath my skin. He wasn’t just a stain on humanity. He was a stain on me. In me. Between the cells. In
places I could never scrub clean.

All the emotion rioting within me bled away with a single epiphany: I would never be free of this man. Of GTX. Of what I was.

Everything I hated was part of me. No matter how far I ran or long I lived, I would never, ever escape it. I would question every decision, every act, looking for signs of that self-righteous
arrogance and inhumanity in me.

I wanted to scream. To cry. To end it.

“Ariane,” Ford said softly, catching my attention. Her gaze locked with mine, staring at her mirror image of my own face.

We were the same. And that, somehow, was reassuring in this mess. I wasn’t alone. She didn’t have the memories I had of Dr. Jacobs in the lab and what he’d done, but she
understood, better than anyone, what it meant. Why the thought of it made me want to crawl out of my own skin.

“Hold the others for me?” she asked, and understanding passed between us. She couldn’t do everything at once, but with me here…we could finish it. End everything right
here and now. I’d hold Jacobs and Emerson St. John and Rachel while she killed Laughlin. Then we’d complete the work together. The deserving would be punished.

“Ariane,” Zane said, sounding alarmed. “If you do this, if you kill him, you won’t be able to come back from it.”

But did that matter? Coming back…to what? What was there left for me?

I nodded slowly at Ford, my neck creaking with the effort.

“Even if you make it out of this building somehow, you can’t survive without the Quorosene, Ford. You’ll die tomorrow. The next day, perhaps, at the latest,” Laughlin
said, realizing his efforts to direct our attention to Jacobs instead had failed. His gun arm was starting to shake. Fatigue, or perhaps his first taste of genuine fear?

The thought of the latter gave me a greasy feeling of pleasure and satisfaction. I
wanted
him to be afraid. And the depth of that desire terrified me. All along I’d been attributing
my darkest impulses to the alien side of myself. And instead, it could just as easily be my humanity.

I felt like a person with no country to claim, no safe space for home. I had no place to stand with the water rising and no ability to swim. I was nothing but equal parts unknown and despised.
I’d never realized how much I’d counted on the human side of myself to be something not…awful.

“Yes,” Ford said to Laughlin, lifting her right shoulder in a shrug that looked painful. “But you’re overestimating our desire to survive against our eagerness to repay
what was given to us.”

I found myself nodding again. Not in agreement but in understanding of the inevitability of this moment. Of course it would end this way. We were the created rising against the creators. How
else but in blood, pain, and fear? It was our legacy.

But the worst part, the bit that made me feel smaller and more lost to myself than ever before, was I couldn’t think of a single reason why it shouldn’t end this way.

A
RIANE HAD GONE SO STILL
, she might as well have been in Ford’s grip like the others, except for the faint trembling over her entire body.

She was teetering on the edge. I could sense it. She wanted to listen to Ford. She wanted to give in.

If she did, it would destroy her. I understood the urge to kill Jacobs, more so now than ever. But the kind of person Ariane was, it would break something in her. She was a defender of the weak,
the innocent. This girl had been so guilt-stricken over the death of a mouse, it had blocked out a portion of her mind for years. Stopping that guy’s heart temporarily, just to get entry to
the trials, had pushed her toward self-sacrifice at every opportunity, made her believe she wasn’t worthy of breathing anymore. Murdering someone in cold blood, even a person she hated, would
end her. She wouldn’t be able to live without punishing herself. Ariane, the girl I loved, would disappear beneath waves of misery and self-loathing.

Running on nothing but adrenaline and panic, I straightened up, keeping ahold of the wall until I was sure I was steady, and then I reached out for Ariane.

As soon as my fingers touched hers, she pulled away, staring down at her hand as if she didn’t recognize it, as if it were coated in some kind of filth that she didn’t want to spread
to me.

“Stop,” I said, my voice hoarse and my throat dry. “It isn’t too late. You haven’t done anything irrevocable.”

“What I am is irrevocable,” she said softly. “That won’t change.”

I raked a hand through my hair in frustration. “You’re the same person you were fifteen minutes ago, five days, a month. It doesn’t matter. Please listen to me.”

But she gave no sign of hearing me.

I grabbed her hand again, and this time I didn’t give her the chance to pull away. “We aren’t where we come from. We make our own choices, remember?” I squeezed her
fingers. “That’s what you told me. Unless you were lying to me,” I said, pushing the words into a challenge.

Her gaze finally shifted to mine, emotion flashing briefly in the dark hollows of her eyes. “I wasn’t lying.”

“Then why are you any different from me and my messed-up family?” I asked, trying to sound logical even when all I wanted to do was grab her and run out of the room, assuming either
of us had the strength for it.

“Yes, 107, listen to the boy,” Laughlin commanded.

“Shut up,” I snapped at him. Jacobs, at least, was wise enough to keep quiet, but he was watching everything with wide-eyed fear.

“Ariane, take the others,” Ford instructed. “Now.” I could only see her in profile, but she didn’t look good. Too pale, but more than that. A chalky white that
spoke of blood loss.

The police, and whoever else had joined them in the hall, chose that moment to begin hammering at the door in earnest. “We’re coming in! Stand away from the doors.”

Ariane flinched at the sound of a motor starting up. Was that a saw? So much noise and chaos. It only added to the feeling of events spiraling out of control, like we might reach a point of
absolute anarchy where she just gave in to make it all stop.

“Ariane, please. You’ll hate yourself for this. Self-defense is one thing, but murder…” My voice broke. I was desperate to find the right words, and those were the only
ones I had, which felt so deeply inadequate for the moment.

She blinked and looked away from me. “I want Zane, Rachel, and Emerson St. John left unharmed,” she said to Ford.

“Yes!” Rachel shouted.

“No!” I said at the same time, even as I wanted to cry. Ariane was always looking out for everyone else. Even now.

Ford considered a moment. “Your human and the girl can be spared. But not the other.”

“But St. John took only volunteers,” Ariane argued, showing more spark than I’d seen from her since we walked in this god-awful place. “He didn’t experiment on
anyone who—”

“One of those volunteers killed Carter,” Ford said in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Zane needs him alive,” Ariane said, sounding weary. “He’s infected with a virus that’s making changes to his DNA.”

Ford raised an eyebrow, looking almost interested for a moment, then it disappeared. “Carter is dead. That’s a debt that must be paid.”

Ariane let out a slow breath, then she turned to me, and oh God, I knew what was coming before she opened her mouth.

“If I don’t do this,” she said, “I’ll never be free of it, of him. And he deserves punishment for what he’s done and to make sure he never does it
again.”

“107,” Jacobs said in protest.

“She’s right,” Rachel said. “She should kill him.”

God damn it, Rachel.
“He does deserve it,” I said loudly and without hesitation, as if I could drown out Rachel’s words in Ariane’s head. “But this
isn’t about him. It’s about you. If you do this, Ariane, you’ll never be free of it. You’ll know what you did, always. It’ll be in the back of your mind
forever.” I paused, just for a second to force the next words out, cruel as they were. “If you do this, he gets off easy, being dead. But it’ll haunt you, knowing he was right
about you. That you weren’t meant for a real life, that you’ve become exactly what they said, a weapon.”

Ariane sucked in a sharp breath, and the pain on her face made my eyes burn with tears for her. But I would not take it back. It was a low blow and deliberately so. She needed to hear it.

“Ariane,” Ford warned. “Don’t be weak.”

I glared at Ford. “You are
not
like him, and he does not control you,” I said to Ariane fiercely. “Make a different choice, and prove it.”

“If he lives, he could start again,” Ariane said, shaking her head, but I could feel her wavering.

“No,” I said firmly. “He won’t. He’ll be stuck in lawsuits, investigations, and public humiliation for the rest of his life. We’ll make sure of it.”

Ford gave a creaky laugh. “What does any of that matter? He should pay in blood. One life for all those he has taken is nothing.”

It was hard to argue with that. “The future or the past, Ariane,” I said finally.

She looked to me, her eyes dull.

“You have to choose. In the park, you said you missed what might have been. But you can still have that, a chance to live, to be free, to have friends and a normal life. That’s the
future.” I swallowed hard, praying not just for words, but the right ones. “Killing Jacobs, any of them, that’s choosing the past and letting it—”

“There is no normal life for us, Ariane,” Ford cut in. “Not now, not ever. You know that.”

“For you, maybe,” I snapped. “But she has a chance, if she just takes it. You wanted her to put family first? Then what the hell are
you
doing?”

Ford cocked her head, as if I’d spoken a new language, one in which she was not fluent. And then her gaze flicked to Ariane, and I felt a shift as if something had changed in the gaps
between our words.

“Is that true?” Ford asked. “Do you want this life?” She sounded tired.

“Ariane, you know I’m right,” I said desperately.

But she was locked in a stare-down with Ford, neither of them registering my existence, and I held my breathing, waiting for her answer, praying that she would for the first time in her life
admit that she had the right to
want
something.
Say it, Ariane. Please!

Ariane shook her head. “I did,” she said slowly. “But what difference does it make now?”

Ford straightened up, though it must have been painful. “It always makes a difference. What we want matters, even if no one else will acknowledge it.”

I felt like I was eavesdropping on a conversation in code.
Something
was happening; I could feel it in the weight of the air. Everyone else could too, evidently. Even Rachel and Laughlin
had gone silent, watching the exchange.

“If these men do not start the program again, another will,” Ford said in a warning tone.

Ariane nodded with a confused frown. “I know. But at least we can stop these from—”

“Then you know what needs to be done,” Ford said, as if this were the end of a long discussion.

Then she looked straight at me with that flat but somehow still defiant expression. “Family first,” she said, her normally uninflected voice carrying a tremor of emotion.

Ariane’s eyes widened then, a spark of alarm within them. “Ford, no.”

But before she could say anything more, Ford stepped out of the way, leaving Laughlin and his gun aimed at us. Her intent was clear: she was going to let him go and he would fire on us. He
wouldn’t be able to stop, even if he wanted to. His finger was already pulling on the trigger.

“Ariane,” I shouted, dropping to the ground and covering my head out of instinct and the very near and real memory of being shot. Rachel shrieked and hit the floor, following my
lead.

The pressure change in the air when Ford released her hold on Laughlin and the others was palpable. And immediately after, the sound of multiple shots echoed loudly in the enclosed space, making
it impossible to tell where they were going.

With my head down, I didn’t have a clear view of everything, but peering through a gap between my arm and the carpet, I could see enough.

Ariane didn’t run or duck. Instead, she lifted her hand in a wide-sweeping arc that was almost a blur.

Bullets hit the wall behind Laughlin with a quick
rat-a-tat
sound, knocking bits of drywall to the floor.

Then it went quiet. Even the police outside had stopped trying to get in. Or maybe I couldn’t hear them anymore over the ringing in my ears.

I scrambled to my feet. “Are you all right?” I asked Ariane, searching her for wounds and finding no obvious ones.

“I am.” But she didn’t sound like it.

Ford swayed on her feet, turning toward us as she did, and I saw the new hole in her ribs, just below her heart. She’d caught one of the bullets Ariane had deflected.

Oh, shit.

Ford sank to her knees.

“No,” Ariane whispered, moving to her side.

I stayed back, giving them some room.