Oh yes. Yes, we can. Well, I could. I wasn’t sure what Dr. Jacobs had in mind.
“I’ve had to make some adjustments to my original plan.” He sounded miffed. “So we’ll discuss additional strategy details…later. Just be ready.” He paused. “I need you on my side for this one, 107.” He glared down at me as if that would help impress the words upon me.
I nodded quickly, obediently. I’d come this far and done so much with everything working against me, I needed this opportunity. Whatever he needed to see/hear/feel to take me to that meeting, I was willing to do.
Jacobs gave me a curt nod before snapping off the intercom and stalking away from the observation window.
Legs shaking with repressed relief and giddiness—I might really have a shot at ending this all today!—I moved to the other side of my narrow room and gathered up the clothing the tech had tossed in to me.
It was only after I touched the jeans that I realized they were mine. From my old life. Jacobs must have sent someone to my former house, the one I’d shared with my father for ten years.
A house that GTX probably owned, now that I thought about it. But even knowing that, it was still home to me. The first place I’d ever felt safe.
I couldn’t stop myself from picturing it as it probably looked right now.
The grass in the front yard had to be overgrown, likely prompting comments from the neighbors. Our breakfast dishes from that last morning, still in the drying rack, probably had a fine layer of dust. My backpack with all my books still on the floor of my bedroom, weeks of homework collecting at the school office, never to be retrieved. The bathtub with its slow-drip faucet, still dripping. The stacked packages of blue contacts beneath the sink, no prescription, just color.
I wondered if my father had been able to retrieve the photo albums of his daughter, the original Ariane, before leaving town. I hoped so. I wanted to think of him having those with him, wherever he was.
Would GTX send movers? Someone to go through our stuff and pack it up so they could destroy it or sell it? Maybe they already had.
A powerful ache started inside me. I wanted to be home, sitting across the breakfast table from my father, talking to him about my day.
But that home, that life, was gone. And so was my father. I’d hated him for what he’d done, for lying to me for all those years, secretly reporting on me to GTX. But now…now I could see it another way. He’d saved me the only way he could. Teaching me what it meant to be human even as he’d encouraged me to own my distinctly nonhuman abilities.
He would have hated my plan, hated who I’d become to accomplish the goal in front of me. He’d warned me, told me to cut ties and run, but I hadn’t listened. At least, not well enough to save myself or Zane. So this was all that was left.
I stroked one finger down the velvety softness of the denim in my hands. By complete chance they’d brought my favorites, my Luckys.
I’d worn these on my first “date” with Zane to the activities fair. The beginning of a sequence of events that led me to this time and place.
It seemed appropriate that they were also part of the end.
Whenever I’d thought about the trials, I’d always been far more preoccupied by what they would be instead of where.
In my head, the setting was always dark, vague, anonymous. An old abandoned warehouse or an empty hangar on a military base of some kind, perhaps. I’d never paid much attention during my imaginings. The spotlight, sometimes literally, was always focused on us, dueling or punching or levitating stuff in front of an unknown audience, hidden in the shadows.
But if I had considered it, I would have said that an isolated location, in a low-res area with a perimeter that could be easily secured, seemed only logical. No witnesses, plenty of time to clean up, and room for lots of plausible deniability.
In short, absolutely nothing like downtown Chicago.
But from my seat in the very back of a GTX van—the security team accompanying me was not taking any chances—it looked like that’s where we were headed.
We’d left the interstate behind to enter a grid of congested one-way streets. Madison, Monroe, more president names flashed by my window, reminding me of Ford and Carter. And Nixon.
Nixon. The memory of his hand on mine, seeking reassurance, as we headed into Laughlin’s facility, made me flinch inwardly. The recollection was paired, as always, with the image of Nixon on the ground, his eyes staring up at the sky unseeing and the pool of blood spreading beneath his head.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to blot out that horrible picture.
A horn blared, and my eyes snapped open. The van jerked to the right suddenly, nearly toppling me over.
The security guy at the wheel cursed under his breath. I watched as a cab shot over a few lanes, still honking at everyone in his way.