Project Paper Doll: The Trials
Kade, Stacey
This book is dedicated to you.
Yes, you, standing (or sitting) right there.
I love telling stories. Thank you for letting me.
Thank you for reading.
PRIVATE JOSEPH “JOE” ZADOWSKI WAS young, maybe only four or five years older than me. His reddish blond hair was cut short, buzzed on the sides. He was about a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than me, though his green fatigues bagged loosely around him, like he was playing dress-up. Freckles stood out as dark splotches against the pale skin of his nose and cheeks.
He swallowed hard and shifted beneath my gaze. Extended eye contact made most full-blooded humans uncomfortable. Extended eye contact with an unknown quantity (me) while locked in a small cell in a secret lab made them downright jumpy, it seemed.
But if I was going to do this, I owed it to Joe to remember his face. It would haunt me for the rest of my life. Fortunately I didn’t expect the rest of my life to be all that long. The trials were just weeks away. I’d survive long enough to see my personal mission through, but that was it.
“They told me you’re dangerous,” Joe blurted, surprising me.
Interesting. The techs or Dr. Jacobs? Likely the former. I had a hard time imagining Jacobs deigning to meet and greet the human being he’d brought in to serve as a guinea pig.
“What else did they tell you?” I asked Joe.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, his fingers tapping against his leg. I didn’t see a weapon on him, but I suspected that nervous twitch was him wishing he had one. He hadn’t come in farther than was necessary for the door to close behind him. “That, uh, I’m supposed to subdue you by any means necessary.” He produced a pair of clear zip ties from his pocket, a prop provided by Jacobs or the techs. There was no way he’d actually get close enough to use them, even if he didn’t know that.
“And?” I prompted.
“107.” Dr. Jacobs’s voice sounded over the intercom in warning.
Joe jumped. I ignored it. Dr. Jacobs was, I was sure, watching on the monitors in the observation room. The glass wall was opaque at the moment, preventing me from seeing him. But his impatience and eagerness crawled over my skin like a thousand biting ants.
“And?” I said again to Joe, drawing his attention back to me.
His expression flashed irritation mixed with fear. “You’ll fight me the whole time, supposedly.” Already he was making assumptions about me, based on my size and gender. Not smart, but inevitable.
I had just a couple more questions. “You’re a volunteer?” I asked, confirming what I’d been told.
“Yesss,” he said, drawing out the word, not understanding at all why this was relevant.
“And they told you you’d be risking your life?” I pressed. More than “risking,” actually, but that wording was the only compromise Dr. Jacobs and I had been able to reach.
Joe lifted a shoulder in a shrug. Even with the strangeness of the situation and all the unknowns I could hear circulating through his head (What is this place? There’s definitely something wrong with her. Why is she so calm?), he wasn’t nearly as concerned as he should have been.
“I like my odds,” he said, staring back at me for the first time, his ego rising up against that quiet voice of doubt, the niggling sense that something was “off.” After all, I was just a girl, and a small one at that.
Oh, Joe.
“107, time is wasting,” Jacobs snapped over the intercom.
He must have been running a timer along with the camera that would record what was to transpire. Yes, heaven forbid I did not break world records in speed and manner of killing.
“You know the consequences if you don’t do as you’re told,” Jacobs continued.
Without warning, Joe took two large steps toward me, zip ties in hand. Evidently he’d decided enough was enough.
I let him come at me, feeling a bit of grim enjoyment for the momentary panic that caused on the other side of the observation window, and then slid out of his reach, my back to the opposite wall.
“Don’t make this difficult,” Joe said, shaking his head with exasperation. The fact that he’d charged at me and nothing had happened—not that he was sure what to expect, exactly—had boosted his confidence.
Guilt sprang to life in me, throbbing like an infected cut. Delaying wouldn’t change anything, and by doing so I was toying with him, giving him hope where there should be none.
So, when he came at me again, I stopped him, lifting my hand and directing my power to wrap around him, freezing him mid-lunge. It involved little more than a thought from me, no longer the struggle it had once been.