If I cooperated now, if I worked to win the trials, I would gain some measure of trust. Perhaps even a portion of freedom, having proven myself. And then I would use that freedom to destroy them all. Dr. Jacobs, Dr. Laughlin, Ford, Carter, myself. The entire program.
That was the only way to end this, the only way any of us would ever truly be free. They’d never let us go. Ever. And if we could never truly have lives, if we were only ever to be symbols of their ego, pawns on their board, then what was the point of pretending? Pretending only brought more pain.
A quick flash of Zane’s smile, his gray-blue eyes regarding me with warmth, slipped across my mind.
Pretending had brought me to Zane, and my pretending that we could be together in any real way had taken him away from me.
No. I shook my head, the pillow crinkling beneath me. I was done with pretending.
I’d failed Zane, but I wouldn’t fail in this. And I wouldn’t die trying, either.
A slow smile spread across my face, autonomic almost, painless and joy free. I would die succeeding, in this one thing at least.
25
Zane
“CAN YOU HEAR ME?” A warm hand squeezed my shoulder hard, bringing me to awareness with a jolt of pain.
We were somewhere loud, people shouting, an intercom paging a Dr. Johnson to the OR. There was beeping, at regular intervals.
My eyes drifted open. A familiar outline, tall with rumpled hair, loomed over me. Memories fell into place. The man watching my mom’s house as Ariane and I watched him. Ariane’s flat declaration that he was not with GTX.
The same man at the lake. In the yellow rain jacket.
Who was he? Why was he here? Where was here, anyway?
I tried to ask, but I couldn’t make the words come out.
“No, you can’t talk. There’s a tube in your throat.” He looked over his shoulder at something I couldn’t see. I wished he would go away. I just wanted to close my eyes again. “We have only a few minutes. My name is Emerson St. John.”
Reluctant recognition tugged at me, but I couldn’t place his name. I’d heard it recently, but where? I couldn’t concentrate. My body ached everywhere, especially my side where it felt like liquid fire, and yet I felt lighter than I should have, like being drunk but without that lumbering weighty feeling that accompanied it.
Where was my mom? Where was Ariane?
Ariane.
I had a last memory of her worried face over mine, blood smeared on her cheek. Her dark eyes flooded with tears for me. Because I’d betrayed her.
“You’re dying.” The annoying man interrupted my thoughts again.
I waited but felt no surprise at this revelation.
“They’ve stabilized you temporarily, but your injuries are too severe. If the shock doesn’t end you, an infection will.”
Again, this wasn’t news to me, even though I still wasn’t clear on how I knew what I knew.
“I have one question for you. Do you want a second chance? No matter what the cost?”
Did I? I struggled to think. Of course I wanted to live. I wanted to tell Ariane how sorry I was and—
“Good enough,” he muttered.
What?
He patted me on the shoulder, more gently this time. “When you wake, you’ll be a whole new man. Hopefully.” He sounded pleased.
A little too pleased, actually. If I’d been more coherent, I might have been alarmed.
But I was drifting again, away from the pain, away from the man. Emerson St. John.
There was a loud pop near my ear, then the sound of liquid dripping.
Cold flooded my veins, and the darkness behind my eyelids exploded into stars.