No. I fought out of instinct, breathing hard and fast through my mouth, like an animal in attack mode. I pushed back against every hand on me, throwing them off me.
One of the men flew into Laughlin’s table, colliding with it hard and setting off a chain reaction. The glass pitcher and glasses hit the floor, and Laughlin scrambled out of the way, his assistants following with a shriek as the table collapsed.
Then, without moving from where he stood, Zane reached out and righted the man without touching him, pulling him away from the table and the glass shards with telekinesis as naturally and easily as if he’d been born to do it.
I froze, adrenaline thundering in my veins and air trapped in my chest.
Oh. Oh no. What had they done to him?
The GTX guards grabbed me again, but I didn’t fight this time, my mind reeling from the possible implications. Zane shouldn’t have been able to do that. What did it mean that he could? Was the Zane I knew still in there somewhere? Or was this some new version? Someone molded and fashioned to be like me, just to prove St. John’s point?
“I think perhaps it’s best if we postpone the remainder of this meeting until it can be held without disruption,” Morpheus said with obvious disapproval.
“Wait! That’s not necessary,” Dr. Jacobs protested immediately, with desperation and fury in his voice. “My product is perfectly stable. She was reacting only to this ridiculous stunt.” He threw Dr. St. John a glare that would have melted glass. St. John didn’t seem to care; if anything, he was amused.
But when Morpheus nodded at the GTX guards holding me, they dragged me toward the door.
Somewhere inside me, I was dimly aware that I was losing my chance, my opportunity to end Project Paper Doll in one fell swoop, but I didn’t care in that moment. How could I when I didn’t know if Zane was okay, if that person standing there wearing his face could even still be considered—
TOMORROW MORNING. WEST ENTRANCE.
The words boomed and echoed in my head as my guard entourage and I reached the doors. I flinched at the volume, costing me the extra second I needed to realize that I knew that voice.
Zane. He wanted to meet.
Except as the guards opened the door and pulled me over the threshold, Zane gave no sign of attempting to communicate with me. No look in my direction, no wink or smile, no further attempt to think words at me loudly enough for me to hear them. Actually, I could get nothing from his mind, which had never been the case before. And certainly shouldn’t have been the case now, if he really wanted to “talk” to me.
That’s when I realized that the message I’d received could just as easily be interpreted as a challenge: St. John’s special model calling out Dr. Jacobs’s product for a one-on-one elimination.
My heart collapsed in on itself, extinguishing the tiny flicker of hope.
A challenge was logical, far more so than any other explanation that I would have preferred. And recognizing that was like living through Zane’s death all over again. Only so much worse.
Because, this time, as the conference room doors closed after us, he was standing right there, just a few feet away and completely unreachable all at the same time.
THE SCAR ON MY STOMACH still burned and itched sometimes. But the fact that it was a scar and not a gaping wound with the accompanying destroyed muscles and organs—or worse, a stitched-up hole on my very uncaring corpse—was enough to keep my mouth shut with gratitude. Most of the time.
But it always got worse when I was stressed. Like now.
“He should have been back already,” I said, resisting the urge to dig at the raised edge of the scar as I paced the plush hotel room that had been assigned to me, twenty stories above the conference room where my fate as a trials competitor was being decided. I swore I could detect the tingling of little foreign cells zooming around beneath my skin, dodging my slower human ones. Emerson said it was my imagination, or possibly nerve damage that was still healing. I wasn’t so sure about either of those explanations.
I felt different. And it wasn’t just the itchy/tingling scar or even the occasional unintelligible buzz of other people’s thoughts in my head. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t struggling to keep up, to be better. I just was. The abilities, the powers I’d gained, made me see the world from a new perspective, one in which I had more control than I’d ever dreamed.
I could do things no other human on the planet—except Adam—could do.
But that only made helpless moments like these, where I had zero control, that much harder to bear.