Crap. If Mr. Coffee saw me, he’d realize there was one more strange-looking student than there should have been. That’d set off some alarms, I bet.
I turned my back to him swiftly, only to be confronted with my image in the huge mirror. Damn it.
Zane, figuring out my dilemma, took two long strides toward me, his arms out in preparation to pull me against him. Evidently, they’d freed him also.
I could almost feel the embrace already: his arms reassuringly tight around me, the warmth of his chest beneath his scratchy white shirt pressing against my cheek, and the steady thump of his heartbeat in my ear. I wanted it—all of it—badly.
But I made myself shake my head, and he stopped in midstep, hurt flashing across his face. My chest ached in response, and I longed to close the distance the remaining between us. But if this got ugly, I wanted him to be clear of the danger. Well, as clear of it as he could be when we were all in the same room.
So, instead, I lowered my chin, letting my hair fall forward to hide my face, and waited to see what would happen.
“Leave,” Ford said to the teacher. She sounded bored.
“Now, listen here, young lady, I told you I don’t care if your father is the CEO of…” He faltered, and I watched through the veil of my hair as the three of them turned as one. They stared him down with eyes so cold and dark, there was no humanity in them. I knew that for a fact. I’d seen (and consequently avoided) my own reflection often enough.
The teacher held his hands up, responding instinctively to a threat he couldn’t understand but sensed nonetheless. “I’ll report this to your father,” he blustered, a last-ditch attempt to save face.
I wonder who was playing the role of their “father,” whether Laughlin had cast himself or enlisted an underling. Either way, the hybrids didn’t seem particularly concerned.
They just kept watching Mr. Coffee until he caved and left the room.
When the door clicked shut after him, the hybrids swiveled as one to face me again, and Ford raised an eyebrow, as if to say, You were saying?
Turning to face her again, I fought the absurd urge to laugh even as chills raced up my arms. That facial expression was a particularly human one, something she must have absorbed unintentionally along the way, but seeing it on her only amplified her otherness.
I took a breath before responding, trying to think through my options quickly. Clearly, Ford thought I knew something or had something she wanted. But I didn’t. She’d mentioned supply and weaning off of it, whatever it was. A drug? One that had been given to them, and she assumed I’d been dosed as well? I could try lying, but I wasn’t sure how long I could pull that off, and that might cause more damage in the long run.
“I don’t have any on me,” I said, settling on something ambiguous but true.
The crinkle in Ford’s forehead returned, her version of a frown. “Then how are you here? How did you escape?” she persisted.
Wait, wait. I shook my head, trying to fit all the pieces into place. Laughlin kept them in line by dosing them, it sounded like. “I broke out,” I said bluntly, opting for oversimplification over losing them in details.
The three of them stiffened as one, as though an electrical charge had passed through them.
“What’s going on?” Zane whispered behind me.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back.
“You are not being treated with the enzyme,” Ford said in another of her statement/questions.
Once more, I hesitated before answering. I had a feeling this was, as the saying went, the $64,000 question (which had never made sense to me as a metaphor—it’s a relatively paltry sum to indicate great significance). “No,” I admitted.
Carter’s mouth fell open in surprise and stayed open as if he desperately wanted to say something, but at a signal I didn’t see or hear, he snapped it shut. Nixon’s distant expression remained unchanged. I wasn’t even sure if aware he was of what was going on.
But Ford just bobbed her head in that strange birdlike nod again. “We will see you at the trials when we…when I kill you,” she said, and turned to leave.
“No, wait!” I lurched after her. “Listen, we could go public. Force them to give you the…whatever you need.” I didn’t particularly relish the thought of using the media as a defense when there was just one of me, but with four of us, we might actually have a chance.
“We have no interest in explaining ourselves to the humans,” she said dismissively. “By the time they have finished arguing among themselves as to our intentions, we will be dead. And that is only if they don’t decide to execute us immediately.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
But Ford was done talking. She started for the door, followed by Nixon, only for both of them to rock to a stop, as if yanked by an invisible rope. Only Carter remained where he stood, as if locked in place.
Slowly, Ford and Nixon turned, focusing their attention on the lone member of their party who hadn’t moved. A long, uncomfortable silence held for several seconds, the tension in the room building, as they stared at one another.
Huh. Apparently, they weren’t quite as “one unit” as Mara had seemed to believe.
Behind me, I heard Zane shifting his feet uneasily and had to fight the urge to do the same. The air was filled with expectancy. Something was about to happen. Bad or good, I wasn’t sure.
“You desire our cooperation in your endeavor for freedom?” Carter asked, his chin set stubbornly.
“Our endeavor for freedom,” I corrected cautiously. “And yes.”
“Good!” Carter said.
I blinked.
“Hi,” he whispered with a shy smile that transformed his narrow face. He did have dimples.
Whoa. He seemed almost normal by human standards.
I smiled back reflexively. They must have seriously recalibrated Carter’s human/alien percentages. Nixon had yet to even indicate that he was aware of our existence in the room, his blank stare focused somewhere over my head.
“We can’t live without an artificial enzyme, Quorosene,” Carter began.
“Carter,” Ford said sharply.
He ignored her, but at his sides his hands balled into fists, as if he were steeling himself against her displeasure. “It is how we were created. If we go for more than twelve hours without a dose, our internal organs start shutting down. Death follows. Painfully. It’s how they control us.”
“And how they eliminate us when we are no longer useful,” Ford added, her flat monotone a sharp contrast to Carter’s expressiveness. “You would do well to remember that, Carter. It’s a lesson Johnson never quite mastered, and they made her pay.” Her hand drifted toward her cheek and the line marked there.
It was a hash mark, I realized suddenly, my stomach lurching. Johnson. That was the name of the hybrid who’d been killed when she couldn’t fit in. So…Ford was keeping score? Tracking Laughlin’s sins, perhaps, and in a manner that must have infuriated him. I couldn’t imagine that someone so interested in making them blend in had been thrilled to see that she’d marred her face in that way.
Had they all been connected at the time Johnson died? It seemed likely. Had they felt the life slowly drain out of one of their own? What torture that must have been. I felt like throwing up, just imagining the helplessness they’d felt. No wonder they’d hunted Mara.
“We’ve been trying to break our dependence, or at least reduce our need so that we can build up a supply. But…” Carter’s narrow shoulders moved up and down helplessly in a shrug. “It has been difficult. If we had the opportunity to experiment with our limits more often, it might be possible, but we are monitored too closely.”