Zane laughed. At times, it was so easy to surprise and amuse him. I liked that. It made me feel as if I was doing something right, as if I had some value to him and I wasn’t the only one getting something out of this.
“What do you have there?” He nodded at the phone in my hand, which was still displaying Laughlin’s picture.
In answer, I turned the screen toward him so he could see the caption beneath the photo with Laughlin’s name.
Zane’s forehead creased with worry. “You think he’s going to be at the school?”
“No. But I want to be able to recognize him if he is.” I had no idea how often Dr. Laughlin checked on his progeny. Perhaps he was there to pick them up after school every day.
Zane nodded. “Okay.” But he still appeared concerned.
“It’ll be fine,” I said briskly. I hoped. “Got your tags?” I was betting we had only a few more seconds before that clerk was over here to hassle us about buying or leaving. I’d be tempted to wave a fistful of hundreds in front of her face, but we were trying to be discreet.
Zane handed me the mangled bits of paper, the bar codes barely legible.
“I didn’t have scissors in there,” he protested when I gave him a questioning look.
“I could have helped,” I said with a sigh.
“Maybe next time,” he said lightly but with a heated gaze that sent a jolt through me. No one had ever looked at me that way.
My face flushed. “I meant with the tags.”
“Oh. That too.” He grinned.
Yeah, I was possibly in a little over my head.
Our spot in the Linwood Academy parking lot was still open, but all the students who’d been wandering around before had vanished.
Staring up at the monstrosity of the main building—it really was ugly and just weird looking—and imagining all the strangers within, I felt a fresh wave of uncertainty.
The first rule of a successful operation was adequate preparation, and I didn’t know this school or these people.
After taking the keys out of the ignition, Zane unbuckled his seat belt, but I made no move to do the same.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I stared down at the phone in my hand and squeezed it so tight my knuckles ached. “The Web site didn’t list a bell schedule, so I’m just guessing at the timing for lunch.”
Sneaking in during mealtime would give us the best shot at blending in unnoticed. Lots of students moving around all at once and for more than three or four minutes at a time, as they would between classes. That was the theory, anyway. The trouble was, it didn’t give us a lot of time, and I had no idea where the hybrids might be. And while Linwood was small—“An elite student body, made up of the best and brightest,” according to their About Web page—a thousand kids in four grades meant a lot of rooms to search.
“I’m assuming fifty-minute class periods from the listed start time, which would give us three overlapping lunch periods of half an hour each, but I don’t have anything to confirm that.” I let out a shaky exhale. “And I don’t have a building layout or a breakdown on the organizational system they use for assigning classrooms.” If the hybrids were juniors, as I was supposed to be, theoretically, they’d be in junior-level classes. But that was assuming that (a) these hybrids were supposed to be my same age and (b) that Linwood’s curriculum was in some way similar to ours. “I just don’t have enough information.”
Zane was staring at me. “I think we’ll be fine,” he said slowly, as if I were crazy.
“I’d feel better if we were more prepared,” I said. The plastic casing on the phone squeaked against the pressure of my hand. I released it.
He shook his head. “You’ve done the best you can do with what you have. Isn’t that something you learned in all your training?”
No, because I’d never had any real-world experience with missions. Not where I set my own objective, anyway. And in lab-created scenarios, I’d always had access to everything I needed to succeed, even if I had to work hard to get it. No Kobayashi Maru tests at GTX. Maybe Dr. Jacobs had been saving that for my return. Or maybe, he, like Captain Kirk, didn’t want to contemplate the possibility of a no-win situation.
“Besides,” Zane continued, “rich people, hybrids, or whatever, this is still a high school.” He shrugged. “It can’t be that different from ours.”
“Yes, and my experience at Ashe High was certainly a model for success,” I said flatly.
“Hey, look at me,” he said.
I glanced up from the phone and yet another utterly useless Web search for information about Linwood.
“We’ll find them, okay?” he said, his gaze steady and calm. “Without getting caught.”
I nodded, feeling a great surge of love for him. This wasn’t his idea, not something he even wanted to do, but he was working hard to reassure me anyway.
He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, thinking. “These hybrids, they’re, uh, different, right?”
I nodded. “Mara said they don’t blend in well.” I hesitated, then added, “Dr. Jacobs once said something strange to me, that they couldn’t talk. But that can’t be right.” If it were, there’d be no point in trying to “humanize” them, would there? Not talking would make so-called normal interactions with full-blooded humans pretty difficult.
“Then all we have to do is get in. Someone will know who they are and probably even where we can find them,” Zane said with a shrug. “Everyone always knows who the…”
He stopped himself before the word freaks exited his mouth, but I heard it just the same and it struck like a slap.
He grimaced. “I didn’t mean—”
“No,” I said quietly. “You’re right. They are. We are.”
“Ariane,” he began with chagrined expression.
I shook my head. “Don’t. Let’s go,” I said. I didn’t want an apology. Can’t apologize for the truth.
I pushed open my door, climbed down from the van, and started for the entrance.
Zane followed, taking long strides to catch up with me. “So, do you have a plan?” he asked.
Actually, I did. And what Zane had said a moment ago had only confirmed my idea. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re going to ask someone.”
“That’s…direct,” he said, startled.
It was, which was the beauty of it. I’d considered other alternatives—eavesdropping on thoughts, searching likely rooms or wings, simply waiting in a central location (like the cafeteria) for them to walk by—but considering our time constraints and our paper-thin cover as Linwood students, it seemed best to move, and move quickly.
“What you said before was right,” I said, ignoring the wailing of my all-too human feelings. “High school generally functions on a caste system. For that to work, participants must know who the untouchables are.”
Zane flinched.
“We’ll find someone likely to have a good grasp on the social workings, a student, not a teacher, and just ask where we can find Ford, Carter, or Nixon.” Assuming, of course, that the hybrids hadn’t adopted new names upon entering school. If they had, well, then this would be that much harder. But not impossible. Ford, Carter, and Nixon’s…unusualness wasn’t limited to what they were called. Someone would know who we meant, even if we had to describe them based on our vague details.
“Okay,” Zane said reluctantly. “What the hell.” He tried to smile. “Can’t be any worse than wandering the halls aimlessly.”
The closer we got to the doors, the more my nerves grew. The strange pillars—men in loincloths holding the roof up over their heads with strained expressions—seemed to be glaring down on me as we passed. The bright white concrete leading up to the building looked as if it was power-washed on a weekly basis. No black spots of gum or chalk messages for Linwood students.