She shook her head. “This must be really confusing for you right now, and I’m sorry that I can’t explain everything. But right now, I really need you to go to the basement.”
I gaped at her. Was it even possible for someone to lose their shit so completely in eighteen months?
Her eyes were too bright, and her cheeks were flushed with the exertion and anxiety. She appeared too thin, bony almost, and older, as if she’d aged decades in the time she’d been gone. The wrinkles on her forehead were deep grooves now, and the gray near her temples had spread through the rest of her dark hair, like silvery spider threads. Even though I’d surpassed her in height a couple years ago, she wasn’t short—five feet ten, the same as my dad. But now she seemed shrunken and frail.
It was as if something had been eating away at her, taking little pieces of the person I knew with every bite.
“Okay,” I said slowly, eyeing her as a stranger with my mother’s face. “Why the basement?”
“Because they’ve probably got the back covered,” she said, tugging at my arm. “But they don’t know about the other exit. Leads to the unit next door.” She gave me a grim smile that looked more like a baring of teeth.
Crap. Making tinfoil hats couldn’t be far behind. What had happened to the calm, stable person who’d weathered my dad’s shifting moods and short temper with the relatively serene disposition of someone confronted with a raging storm? Nothing to be done except endure. Just make it through.
“Mom—” I began.
Her hand tightened around my wrist like a claw. “Move.” She yanked on my arm with surprising strength, pulling me through the bare-walled entryway, past a staircase leading up, and over the threshold into a small kitchen. With her free hand, she pulled a cell phone from her bathrobe pocket and pressed a button.
“Whoa, Mom. There’s no need to call anybody.” I envisioned police officers, angry after weeks of paranoid calls from this address, showing up at the door. I doubted that GTX or my dad had filed any kind of report on either Ariane or me, but it wasn’t worth taking the chance.
I lurched for the phone, but my mom twisted out of my reach.
Shit. Ariane! A little help!
“Get him for me,” my mom said into the phone. Oh God, was there even a person on the other end of that call? Was she that far gone?
“Mom,” I begged. “Please listen to me.” Her nails were digging into my wrist, and she didn’t seem to notice. She was still pulling.
In the hallway, I heard the locks disengaging, one at a time, and felt a rush of relief. Ariane was coming.
I probably should have been worrying about what my mom would say when she realized Ariane had gotten in. But then again, if my mom thought the mysterious “they” could penetrate locked doors, maybe Ariane’s sudden appearance inside wouldn’t strike her as too odd.
“I don’t care if he’s busy. You get Dr. Laughlin on the phone now. It’s Mara.”
Laughlin. I froze. That was one of the names mentioned in Ariane’s letter from her father. “David Laughlin?” I asked. “How do you know that name?”
My mom frowned at me, moving the phone away from her mouth. “Where did you hear it? Did they mention him to you?”
Again with the “they.”
Before I could respond, the front door opened, the undone chains clacking against the back of it.
“Run!” My mom, wide-eyed with panic, let go of my arm and tried to shove me toward a closed door on the opposite side of the room, but I planted my feet and refused to move.
Ariane appeared a moment later at the threshold to the hall. She spared my mother a quick glance and then focused her attention on me, assessing me with those too-dark eyes hidden behind blue lenses. “Are you all right?”
She could have left, but she didn’t. That was the only thought echoing in my head, and the sudden swell of gratitude made my throat feel tight. “I’m okay.”
She nodded, a strand of her pale hair falling across her face.
I turned to my mom, who was watching us with a strange expression on her face, the phone in her hand seemingly forgotten. “Mom, this is my—”
“107?” my mom asked faintly.
My heart stopped beating for a second. 107. That was Ariane’s GTX designation, the number on the tattoo on her shoulder. I’d never heard anyone but Dr. Jacobs refer to her that way.
Ariane, though, seemed completely unsurprised by this development. She gave my mother a nod.
My mom sagged back against the counter in relief and started laughing, albeit with a hysterical edge. Then she lifted her phone up and ended the call with a definitive press of the button.
I looked back and forth between the two of them, but no answers appeared forthcoming. “All right,” I said, frustrated. “I guess I’ll be the stupid one and ask. What the hell is going on?”
Ariane spoke up with obvious reluctance. “Mara was a lab tech at GTX for a while. As for the rest…I don’t know.”
Hearing her use my mom’s name sent a jolt through me. I was pretty sure I’d never mentioned it to Ariane before.
A sick feeling grew in my gut. “Is that true?” I asked my mom. “Did you work in the lab at GTX? Did you do that…stuff to Ariane? Tests and experiments?” As far as I’d known, my mom had been an office assistant during her few years at GTX.
When she wouldn’t meet my gaze, my heart fell. I looked to Ariane.
Ariane hesitated. “No. It wasn’t like that. She tried to help. She—”
“Yes,” my mother said flatly. “I did.”
I stared at her, seeing not just an altered version of the person I’d known but maybe someone I hadn’t known at all.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she said to Ariane, her voice cracking.
Ariane nodded and glanced away, clearly uncomfortable.
“But I don’t understand,” my mom said with a frown. “How are you here? Where’s Mark?”
Mark Tucker, Ariane’s adoptive father. So my mom had known about that too?
I waved my arms, signaling a time-out before Ariane could answer. “Wait, let’s go back to the part where you worked on a secret project involving extraterrestrial DNA and human experimentation.”
My mom flinched as if I’d hit her, but I ignored it.
“When was this?” I asked. “And if you know her, then why were you acting all crazy? Talking about ‘them’ and—”
The phone rang in my mom’s hand, startling all of us. She stared down at it as if she’d completely forgotten she held it, and I remembered what we’d been talking about before Ariane had walked in.
“It’s Laughlin,” I said to Ariane quickly. “She knows Laughlin somehow.”
“I thought you were one of his,” my mom said to Ariane. “They’re not supposed to come here anymore but—”
“One of his what?” I asked, baffled.
Ariane cocked her head to one side, a posture I recognized as her listening to something the rest of us couldn’t hear. “Mara thought I was one of his hybrids. Ford,” Ariane said suddenly with the air of someone solving a mystery that had troubled her. “It’s a name.”
I frowned. Ford was a weird name for a girl. Unless…wait, Nixon and Carter, that’s what my mom had shouted out the door earlier. Three sequential president names. Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Some kind of naming scheme Laughlin had used instead of numbers? If so, that would mean there were three hybrids.
My mom nodded. “You look just like her, but Ford is…” A faint sheen of sweat appeared on her face. “She’s different.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “If she’s a hybrid, how can she just be wandering around like—”