The Trials by Stacey Kade
She shook her head. “This is an off-the-books operation. We can’t have any record of it for the DOD to find, for anyone to find.” She paused. “And as I’m sure you are aware, Dr. Jacobs is far too interested in public accolades and fanfare. We couldn’t take the chance of trusting him.”
“Because if it blows up right now, it’s officially the DOD’s project and it’ll be the other guys’ responsibility,” I said, finally getting it.
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“Wait, wait.” Zane held up his hands, stopping the conversation. “I have a question. About the…about them. If they’ve been coming here, looking for Ford, Carter, and Ariane, how did they know where to find them? And what’s in Phoenix?” He paused. “Or should I say, who?”
A secondary lab, a beta site with a backup copy of the research, including one or more hybrids? It wasn’t unrealistic that Laughlin or Jacobs would take that precaution, though this was the first I’d heard of it.
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Justine hedged.
“Of course it is,” I muttered.
“What I told you earlier was correct,” Justine said. “The technology recovered from the desert—”
“Roswell,” I snapped, suddenly weary of her circumspection. It felt like another polite term to cover up an ugly truth. Like saying, “Native American Relocation program” instead of “rampant colonization and displacement and abuse of an indigenous people.” Or “economically advantageous labor force” instead of “slaves.”
“Just say it,” I said to Justine. “Roswell.”
“Fine,” she said evenly. “The technology recovered from Roswell has a genetic component,” she said. “From what we can tell, it would likely form a connection with individuals from that background, for control, communication, everything. Our scientists are hypothesizing that it’s related to the way their society is structured. In the same way we might use voice command with our phones or cars, these vehicles are likely responsive to telepathy.”
Because that is their…our…the primary mode of communication. It made sense. They created their tech to meet their needs. Humans have buttons on their phones because they have long, skinny digits that can push the designated numbers. If they’d had tentacles instead, the tech would have developed in some other way to accommodate that physicality.
“In any case, that genetic portion of the technology is likely detecting Ariane and the others. A specific brain wave pattern or some genetic kind of marker that their ship has programmed to pick up.” She sighed. “We aren’t sure. It might be that they’re searching for those who were lost all those years ago, or it might just be chance.”
“And Phoenix?” I asked, still envisioning a lab underneath the desert sands, another pale-skinned, white-haired child stuck behind a glass wall. Alone.
Justine tugged her sleeves down, absurdly interested in the evenness of sweatshirt cuffs. “A storage facility.”
I gave a sharp laugh. “What, no Area Fifty-One?”
“That’s DOD territory,” she said. “Not us.” She shook her head. “We presume that something within the wreckage may still be active in some way, though no one here has been able to detect it. It may be, again, that telepathic component.”
I eyed her carefully, searching for the telltale signs of deception. She spoke clearly, concisely, and without hesitation. She was uncomfortable at times, but nothing indicated that she was lying. Then again she would be better at it than most, wouldn’t she?
“Everything you’ve shown me could have been easily falsified,” I said, nodding my head toward the folder. “Created to convince me for your own purposes.”
Justine raised her eyebrows. “You want proof?”
“Ariane…” Zane murmured, and I wasn’t sure if it was in warning or concern.
“Fine,” Justine said. “I suppose that should work both ways.”
I didn’t understand exactly what that meant, but I didn’t like the eager, speculative gleam in her eyes.
I watched as she tapped on her phone for a few seconds. Then she spun it to face me.
“Here,” Justine said.
The screen was black with a white triangle—the traditional “play” symbol. With a sense that I was stepping out into water that was likely way over my head, I touched the play symbol and immediately pulled my hand back.
At first, there was nothing. Faint static and some small rustling noises in the background made a little sound-measuring needle flutter, but barely.
“I don’t hear anything,” Zane said, frowning. “What—”
Cold. Pain. Alone. Alone. Help. Damage.
Cold. Pain. Alone. Alone. Help. Damage.
The needle never moved, but the words somehow broke through the static in my head that was a permanent part of my existence, all the human thoughts being broadcast around me. Except they weren’t words so much as sensations screaming in my head and sending waves of chills across my skin.
“Shut it off!” I said, clapping my hands over my ears, an instinctive and completely illogical response to something that was likely a frequency my brain was detecting rather than my auditory nerves.
Justine gave a triumphant grin. “They weren’t sure it would work. It’s new technology, a broad spectrum recording, but—”
Zane reached over and slapped at the phone, cutting the sounds off instantly. “Are you okay?” he asked me, his eyes wide.
I had to wait a few extra seconds for my teeth to stop chattering. “It’s…Something’s wrong.” I shook my head and wrapped my arms around my middle. “A distress call, maybe, I don’t know.” I’d never felt anything like that inside my own mind before, like a finger rising up out of nowhere to poke at the gray matter around it.
Zane stared at me, and I winced a little on the inside. I was, once more, just a little too alien.
Justine cleared her throat. “If I may continue?” Without waiting for us to respond, she said, “We would like you to interact with the artifacts and to look at the accumulation of reports on the incident and of the various tests run on the tech. See if you can think of something we haven’t.”
That’s what she’d meant by documents, not sheaves of paper on which my relatives had jotted down interstellar directions or something. So, no written language, or at least not one the humans could perceive as such. I’d been right about that.
“Or see if something speaks to me, you mean,” I said. “You want to see if the wreckage responds to me. If I can hear it, then maybe it can hear me.”
“That is one of our interests, yes,” she agreed, but there was the lingering feeling of words unspoken hanging in the air.
A new weapon or a better engine, most likely. That’s what they were hoping for out of this mess, I could almost guarantee it.
“And what are your other interests?” I prompted. Because so far, this was exactly what she’d asked me to do before breaking out the recording from hell.
“Our primary interest in your assistance is in communication,” she said.
“You want to talk to them?” Zane sounded alarmed. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I’m thinking they might be kind of pissed.” He slid me a questioning glance.
I nodded. That was my take as well. And part of me wanted to see it—Dr. Jacobs sucked up screaming into a vortex of light to a ship where he’d be punished for all that he’d done.
I smiled grimly at the mental image of the good doctor trapped in a giant maze, where one lever would bring the alien equivalent of cheese; and the other, death by some vaporizing ray.
Yeah. I could live with that.
“We want to be able to talk to them,” Justine said. “Learn from them. Offer an exchange of information and culture in what could be a major turning point in human history.” She sounded almost excited for a moment. Then her gaze dropped to her hands. “And, of course, we’ll want to explain our efforts to preserve their culture and species in the best way we knew how,” she said primly, tipping her head towar
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “That’s your story? That’s the rationale for why I exist?”
She nodded. “Yes. And we hope it will be yours as well.”
“Oh.” It clicked finally. Duh, Ariane. I couldn’t believe I’d been this slow to catch on. “You want me to be your mouthpiece, to stand in front of them and speak in official bullet points.”
Zane looked horrified. “You want to just offer her up? You don’t know them. You don’t know what their reaction might be to—”
“We want her to communicate with them,” Justine corrected. “If they return. It’s been three years since the last incident. They were within a hundred miles of Ariane and the others and never attempted to make contact.”
“As far as you know,” Zane said, furious.
“But someone is thinking it might just be a matter of time, and if they do come back, you want someone to be able to tell them that you’re A-OK here,” I said. “Good folks. Not worth blowing up or conquering.”
Justine nodded reluctantly. “Yes.”
Well, at least now her motives were making sense.
“What makes you think they’d listen to me?” I asked. “They might consider me every bit a freak as you do.” And I wasn’t particularly eager to hear from them, if it was at all like what I’d just experienced from a simple recording.
She looked unsettled for the first time in this conversation. “We don’t know what they’ll do,” she admitted. “We hope, if or when they decide to make contact, it will be a peaceful encounter, one that could be mutually beneficial.”
“But it’s your job to prepare for the worst,” I said.
“This is, for better or worse, your home,” she said quietly. “I’m hoping you’ll want to do everything you can to save it. And the people you love.”
“That’s low,” Zane said to her in disgust.
He was right. And yet what Justine had said was not untrue. Even if I could try and convict Dr. Jacobs as a jury of one, could I do that to an entire planet?
I listened to the dozens of people around us, their voices clamoring. Laughing, talking, placing orders, and arguing with spouses or coworkers on the phone. They were alive. With their own dreams and destinies.
There were good things here: peanut butter, french fries, music, art, puppies and kittens, orchids, high-quality denim. And good humans, too. Not just Zane and my father, but thousands of others I’d witnessed acting out of kindness, in person or on video clips.
Full-blooded humans could be the most shortsighted, self-serving, hateful beings (see the comments section of any blog post ever), but they also rushed into burning buildings to save strangers, raised orphaned animals (and little alien/human hybrid girls) by hand, and held the door open for the person behind them.
The dichotomy was difficult to wrap my brain around, but it was one of the things I loved most about that half of my heritage. That people capable of extreme ugliness could also do such amazing things.
Justine was right; I couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave them to their fate if I could have a hand in saving them. It was my home and these were my people, as much as whoever might show up in a flying saucer at some future point.
Besides, oddly enough, this arrangement Justine was suggesting might also provide the leverage I’d been missing before.
I felt a flicker of excitement, maybe even hope, for the first time in a long while. They wanted to use me, but I could use them right back. After all, they were counting on me to provide a good report, when and if it was needed, and I would be willing to do that only under certain circumstances. Namely, find a way to end the trials and then leave me and mine the hell alone until the day those ships show up again.
“Why me?” I asked.
Zane turned in his seat to stare at me in disbelief. “You’re not seriously considering this?”
Come on, Zane, don’t make me get into this now.
I spoke as calmly as I could. “We’re talking about saving the people I care about.” Truth, but also what Justine would want to hear.
MY GOALS HAVEN’T CHANGED, ZANE. I’M JUST GOING ABOUT IT A DIFFERENT WAY. I thought the words at him as hard as I could. I’LL EXPLAIN LATER.
His head jerked up, as if he’d heard a distant shout.
I gave a tiny warning shake of my head. DON’T REACT.
“Ford was the first candidate we considered, but she was deemed…inappropriate,” Justine said loudly, another of her less-than-subtle efforts to steer the conversation back on track.
“Translation: she hates humans and you’re afraid she’ll encourage them to blow this place up,” Zane said. “And Carter won’t do anything without her.”
“My point is that if you think those ships are looking for us, don’t you think they’ll search out Ford and Carter too?” I asked. “It’s kind of hard to spin the story if you’re not controlling all the sources.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we have to,” Justine said vaguely, which was totally a pat on the head, filler for an answer she didn’t yet have or perhaps didn’t want to share.
I raised my eyebrows. “But in the meantime, the trials continue. That girl, the target, dies. And Laughlin keeps making hybrids.”
With a sigh, Justine squared her shoulders, likely preparing to give a speech about collateral damage and broken eggs being a requirement for omelets or whatever.
But Zane spoke first, frowning. “What girl? What are you talking about?”
Startled, I glanced over at him. “The girl. You know. The one in the packet they gave us.”
He sat up straighter. “No, it was a guy. Adam said it was a dude.”
A chill slid its way down my spine. “Are you sure?”
He nodded slowly.
“Did you see the pictures yourself?” I asked.
“No, but I know what Adam said,” he insisted.
“Maybe Adam said that to confuse you, in case you decided to actually compete,” Justine said with impatience. “What difference does it make?”
Possibly a huge difference. If they’d provided us with separate targets, that changed everything. If we each had our own target, that would mean there could be multiple “winners,” which meant there was more to this test than they were saying.
I put the red folder down on the table, pulled my assigned phone out of my pocket, and tapped the screen until I had the pictures I’d taken of the hard-copy photos from the envelope. “Here. This is her.” I handed the cell to him.
Zane took it and thumbed through the images, his brows drawing together in confusion.
“This is not who was in our packet,” he said.
“If you didn’t see it—” Justine began.
“Because Adam would have said something,” Zane said sharply. He handed me my phone. “I recognize that girl,” he said to me. “I spent weeks sharing a room with Adam. She’s in a couple of the family photos he had up in our quarters at the facility. It’s his sister.”
“SEPARATE TARGETS,” ARIANE SAID TO Justine, with the air of someone confirming plane crash fatalities. She stood, shoving her phone in her pocket, a new urgency to her movements.
“I don’t understand,” I said, frustrated. Something big was going down, but I didn’t have enough of the pieces to see the whole picture. It was like being half-blind in a world of people with X-ray vision.
“You didn’t know?” Ariane asked Justine.
“Not my area of concern,” she snapped.
“Hey,” I shouted, no longer caring if I drew attention. “What is going on?”
“If each of the competitors has a separate target,” Ariane said, “then this isn’t the contest. They could each take out their target and be successful. It doesn’t eliminate anyone.”
“So, that means…” I pressed.
“There’s another stage,” Justine said.
“Likely direct confrontation between the candidates,” Ariane said.
Justine hesitated, then nodded. “That would be my guess
Ariane smiled bitterly. “And what better motive than vengeance?”
“Vengeance,” I repeated, still not getting it. Until, suddenly, I did. “If they pulled Adam’s sister into this as your target…” Words failed me, but the thought echoed through my head. If they’d pulled Adam’s sister into this, odds were that the other two targets fell into the same category. Family. Friend. Someone who meant something to another candidate.
I stood. “Give me your phone,” I said to Ariane, my heart pounding out a panicked rhythm. My mom. Quinn. Had they just gotten out of this mess only to get sucked back in?
Reluctantly, she shook her head. “Jacobs and the others, they’re monitoring it. If you start making calls, they’re going to know that you’re not where your tracker is and that we’re onto them. Right now, those two things are our only advantages.”
I looked to Justine.
She leaned away from me, her fingers curling around her phone protectively. “No,” she said, her mouth a tight line. “It’s an expensive piece of equipment with access to highly sensitive—”
I lifted my hand and mentally pulled the phone from her. It slipped free from her grasp easily enough, landing in my palm with a slap. But it was screen-locked, of course.
Justine’s mouth fell open in protest.
“Code?” My face felt like it was on fire, and the lights overhead flickered and sizzled, like grease in a skillet. Black spots swirled in my vision, and the room tilted, the wall falling away from me. Nope, that was me.
I scrabbled for a hold on my chair.
“Okay, it’s okay,” Ariane said with the calmness that was so much at the core of who she was. She grabbed my arm and held me steady. “We’re going to figure this out,” she said soothingly. “We don’t need any lights exploding here.” The teasing lilt to her voice was a bit forced, but I appreciated what she was attempting.
I tried to smile. “No, that’s your specialty.” But blood ran, warm and bitter, down my nose and into my mouth before I closed against it.