Project Pandora Page 3

  Her father stared at her. His eyes were wide, nostrils flared, mouth agape. He looked like a stuffed catfish—until he spoke, and by then he more resembled a snarling dog. “How dare you.”

  “Do you think anybody there cares if I have a boyfriend?” Elizabeth asked. “Or that I go out? That I date? That I wear clothes I want to wear instead of”—she lifted the modest hem of her gown, drawing it up above her knees—“this dumb granny dress? You’re so worried about your stupid election you don’t let me do anything. Don’t you get it? I’m not a little kid. I’m seventeen!”

  Sputtering with rage, her father stepped forward and raised his hand. Before he had the chance to bring it down, she pushed him again, harder than before. He stumbled into an ornamental table by the wall, knocking over a brass figurine and a scatter of silk flowers. Glass shattered.

  She fled to her room before he could recover.

  His voice followed her up the winding staircase and down the hall with its Persian rugs, carried on the back of a scream. “Why, you ungrateful little whore! You’re not like her at all! You’ll never be like her!”

  Weeping, she slammed the door and pressed her back against it. Her entire body shook with the force of her sobs. She could hear her mom and dad arguing below, the perfect couple, a vision of America’s future. The ideal nuclear family. What a joke. What a sad, pathetic joke.

  Status Report: Subject 5 of Subset D

  3/20: A new subject has come into my care today, Subject Five of Subset D. She is almost seventeen, so it will be interesting to see how the task of programming her compares to Hades. D-05’s aptitude tests revealed an affinity for athletics and military tactics, but no other notable talents. Once she is trained, Charles Warren wishes her to be used for the new black operations division of the Project. I look forward to seeing how she works with Hades.

  4/06: First session of electroconvulsive therapy. Subject awoke feeling very groggy. Once the anesthesia wore off, I followed the ECT with an hour in the tank (see D05_1.mp3 for recording).

  5/13: After Hades, I was worried that all the children were stubborn and misbehaving, but D-05 has proven me wrong. She will make an obedient subject. I have given her the name Artemis, a fitting title for a huntress of men.

  6/08: Charles Warren has requested that Artemis be tested. A man who was once part of the prenatal crew has now become a nuisance. Warren wants a knife used. Hades will accompany her.

  6/10: The mission was successful. Hades kept a close eye on Artemis during the hit, and she showed absolute detachment. A clean kill, no hesitation. Charles Warren will be pleased to hear about this.

  Case Notes 3:

  Artemis

  Halfway through fourth period, a phone rang.

  Mr. Preston froze at the whiteboard, lowered the dry erase marker he held, and turned to survey the class. From her place in the back row, Shannon Evans watched students squirm in their seats, checking their pockets and backpacks.

  A tall blond boy at the end of her row reached into his jacket pocket and took out a flip phone. He stared down at the phone as it rang, without opening it.

  You’re in trouble now, gorgeous, she thought, resting her chin in her hands.

  Tyler Bennett was one of the few people she paid attention to during English. He had transferred to her school at the beginning of the semester, and from the first day, he had caught her eye. From his golden tan and striking leonine eyes to the calm, confident presence he exuded even in repose, he was absolute perfection. Just her type.

  The only problem was that he didn’t ever seem to notice her, even though he sat only a few desks away. She always hoped that Mr. Preston would pair them together for assignments, but the semester was almost halfway done and she’d had no luck so far. She didn’t even think he knew her name.

  “Tyler Bennett, what have I told you about turning off your cell phone in class?” Mr. Preston asked, drawing her attention back toward the front of the room.

  She suppressed a groan. Another lecture was coming, she just knew it. Mr. Preston was a real pain when it came to rules. He was so rigid she thought he must walk around with a stick up his butt all day.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Preston,” Tyler said as the phone continued to ring. “I didn’t realize it was on.”

  Mr. Preston walked forward. “I’m going to have to hold on to that until the end of class.”

  At first, she thought Tyler would relinquish the phone. Instead, he lifted it to his ear and answered the call. As he listened to the caller, his wrinkled brow smoothed over. His expression became distant, and his warm, aristocratic beauty was eclipsed by a harsher, colder light.

  “Are you listening to me, Mr. Bennett?” Mr. Preston stopped in front of Tyler’s desk and extended a hand. “Give me your phone.”

  “Pandora’s box is opening,” Tyler said abruptly, rose to his feet, and walked past Mr. Preston. The teacher tried to block him, but he shouldered past Mr. Preston’s raised arm without stopping and opened the door.

  She watched in shock. Pandora’s box is opening. Why did those four words sound so familiar?

  “Looks like he’s doing it again,” a boy next to her muttered.

  “What?” she asked, glancing over at him. She didn’t remember his name.

  “Tyler’s in my biology class,” the guy said. “He did this last Tuesday, too. I think he got detention for it.”

  “It must’ve been an important phone call,” she murmured.

  The guy snorted. “Whatever it is, Little Orphan Annie’s got some balls for telling off Mr. Prickton.”

  “What did you just call him?” Shannon demanded.

  “Who? Little Orphan Annie?” The boy rolled his eyes. “He’s some foster kid or orphan or something. Figure his parents dropped him on his head a few times as a kid.”

  Anger burned in her stomach. She had also come from the foster care system, and she hated how people assumed that foster kids were bad or defective in some way.

  “Sure you’re not thinking of yourself?” she snapped, then turned back to the front of the class as Mr. Preston clapped once to catch everyone’s attention.

  Class resumed like normal, and Shannon spent the next thirty minutes doodling in the margins of her notes and glancing at the door. She expected Tyler Bennett to return at any moment, but he never did. When class ended and he still hadn’t returned, she began to worry. What if something terrible had happened?

  On the way to the lunchroom, she noticed a familiar figure searching through a locker at the end of the hall. She reached Tyler just as he shut the metal door, and he flinched at the sight of her.

  “Hey, sorry, didn’t mean to surprise you,” she said, lifting her hands.

  A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “No, it’s fine. I should’ve been paying more attention.”

  “Are you okay?”

  He paused midway through zipping up his backpack and stared at her in evident confusion. “Uh, yeah?”

  “It’s just…” She trailed off, struck by the force of his gaze. She had always thought his irises were amber-brown, beautiful but without variance. Now, she was close enough to see that their color was nearer to hazel—speckled with flecks of gold and green. True lion eyes.

  She took advantage of her proximity to admire the rest of him, all six feet of classical hotness. His build was slim and elegant, designed for speed and agility instead of raw power. He wore a navy windbreaker and faded Levi’s, but she could just as easily see him in a tailored suit or prep school uniform. He possessed an air of cultured intelligence, and his Ivy League haircut only reinforced that impression.

  “Is something wrong?” Tyler asked, studying her with an intensity she found both compelling and slightly unnerving. In spite of his refined features and classy appeal, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something dangerous about him.

  She blushed, realizing her nosiness must have offended him. “No, sorry to bother you. I’ll go.”

  Before she could embarrass herself fu
rther, she hurried off, feeling his gaze burn into the nape of her neck. At the end of the hall, she turned the corner and found brief shelter in the girls’ bathroom.

  With a sigh, she ran a hand through her hair, dismayed by how she had completely flubbed up her first actual talk with Tyler. She shouldn’t have approached him like that. Whatever the phone call had been about, she was the last person he’d want to talk it over with.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered under her breath, running her hands under the cold water tap.

  She glanced in the dirty mirror. Her blush burned through her layer of foundation, where freckles formed ghostly constellations. She turned off the faucet and blotted her hands on the seat of her jeans. Scrounging through her purse, she found a tube of BB cream. As she reapplied the cover-up to her cheeks, the bathroom door swung open, and her friend Victoria walked in.

  “Oh, I was just about to go looking for you,” Victoria said, blinking. They had been best friends since junior year, when Shannon had transferred schools, and Victoria’s look hadn’t changed once in that time. She sported the same combat boots, the same fishnet stockings, and the same black eye shadow. The only exception was when her blond roots were growing in and she went around looking like a skunk until she decided to recolor them.

  Shannon, on the other hand, never dyed her hair. It was straight and auburn, as dense as a vixen’s pelt, and not a month went by without a boy complimenting her on it. She knew it was her best feature.

  “The weirdest thing just happened in Mr. Preston’s class,” she said, capping the tube of BB cream.

  A lazy smile stretched across Victoria’s lips. “Oh, really?”

  “Do you know Tyler Bennett?”

  Victoria shook her head and leaned against the wall near the hand dryers.

  “Well, he sits next to me in English. So, anyway, his phone starts ringing halfway through class—”

  Victoria winced. “Ouch. Did Mr. Prickton tear him a new one?”

  “No, because he just got up and left. Tyler, I mean. Mr. Preston nearly had a heart attack. You should have seen him.”

  “Did he even say what the call was about?”

  “No, and that’s what makes it so weird,” Shannon said. “He basically just answered his phone, was all like ‘Pandora’s box is opening,’ whatever that means, and walked out.”

  “Pandora’s box is opening?” Victoria asked, picking under her nails.

  “That’s what it sounded like, at least.” Shannon shrugged. “I guess he likes to listen to Pandora.”

  “Wait, is Tyler the Asian guy in Ms. Freeman’s class?”

  “No. I think if he was in any of your classes, you’d know who I’m talking about.”

  “Because he’s weird?” Victoria asked, lifting a thin eyebrow.

  Shannon laughed. “No, because he’s hot as hell.”

  “Mmm. Let me guess, another one of those blond prep types you love so much?”

  “He’s not a prep. He’s classy. There’s a difference.” She returned the BB cream to her purse. As she looked for her eyeliner, her fingers grazed something smooth, cold, and unfamiliar. She took the item out, expecting it to be a compact, based on the curve she had detected.

  It was a cell phone, the kind with the flip top and tiny antenna. A relic from the Stone Age.

  It was not hers.

  “What’s this?” she muttered, flipping it open. Her finger hovered over the on button. She hesitated. Although there were a hundred possible explanations for how another person’s phone could have ended up in her bag, she felt a sudden twinge of unease.

  Victoria looked at her, waiting for the punch line.

  “This isn’t my phone,” Shannon said.

  “What?”

  “Where’s my phone?” She set her bag on the counter and rifled through it. Just as she was about to dump everything out, she found her smartphone and pulled it out. “Oh, thank God. I thought I’d lost you.” If not for her lipstick, she might have kissed the screen in relief.

  “So whose is it?” Victoria asked, coming over to her. She craned her head, trying to get a good look.

  Suddenly, Shannon remembered the phone that Tyler had used during class. What if this was his? He had startled pretty badly, so could it have flown into her purse somehow?

  She returned the phone to her purse and closed the clasp.

  “You aren’t even going to look at it?” Victoria asked.

  “I think I know who dropped it.”

  “But that’s so anticlimactic!”

  “It’s not mine anyway.”

  “Like that’s ever stopped you.” Victoria crossed her arms.

  “Later,” she said, looking at her reflection one final time. She frowned at the girl staring back at her.

  She was used to seeing a stranger in the mirror. For once, it wasn’t a good thing.

  After spending the next five minutes searching for Tyler with no luck, she went to the shaded rotunda at the front of the school, where she knew nobody would be at this hour. She sat under the corrugated roof, opened her purse, and took out the flip phone.

  She did not turn it on.

  Although the phone wasn’t hers, it felt familiar in her palm. When she traced the keys with one red-lacquered nail, she saw herself punching in a number. But what number? Whose number? She couldn’t remember.

  Her thumb went for the on button. She hesitated.

  What are you so afraid of? She nibbled her lower lip, not thinking about the damage she was doing to her superb lipstick application. Just turn it on.

  She set the phone next to her and cracked her knuckles to distract herself. For some reason, she had a sudden urge to pitch the phone across the concrete and watch it break. There was something very gratifying about the thought of destroying someone else’s property, like scratching an itch until it bled.

  Her gaze returned to the phone. Unable to resist the impulse, she picked up the phone and turned it on, waiting for the screen to light up. She wasn’t aware she was holding her breath until she heard the air hiss through her clenched teeth.

  The screensaver resembled a default background. The rest of the phone was equally impersonal: no texts, no photos, no voicemails, no saved contacts.

  She was about to return the phone to her purse when a strange urge came over her. Only half aware of what she was doing, she thumbed in *69 and raised the phone to her ear.

  Listening to the ringing, her heart began pounding. Sick nausea welled up inside her. She closed her eyes, feeling on the verge of puking or passing out. Knowing her luck, she would do both simultaneously.

  The phone continued to ring.

  “Kill,” Shannon whispered, without even hearing herself. “Kill.”

  There was a sharp click, and the ringing stopped. Her breath caught in her throat. Blood churned through her ears, and a crushing pressure built behind her closed lids.

  From the other end of the line, a calm, deep voice said, “Hello, Artemis. Impeccable timing. I was just about to call you.”

  Her eyes shot open.

  Artemis. The name struck her like a fastball, leaving her winded. She opened her mouth to speak but found herself unable to.

  “Artemis?” The man paused, and for an awful, irrational moment, she feared that she had been discovered. Somehow he knew she wasn’t Artemis, even though the only thing he’d heard of her was her shallow, unsteady breathing.

  “Olympus is rising,” the man said.

  “Pandora’s box is opening,” she said in reflex, and she knew at once who she was speaking to.

  “Are you at school?” the man, Zeus, asked.

  Her dread dissolved in an instant, leaving her feeling warm and sedated. She would have been content with just listening to Zeus speak, but he expected an answer. She didn’t want to disappoint him.

  “Yes.” She nodded, despite knowing that Zeus wouldn’t be able to see the motion. “It’s lunch hour.”

  “Are you alone?” Zeus asked.

&nbs
p; “Yes.”

  “And are you in danger of being overheard?”

  “No,” Shannon said.

  “Why did you call?” Zeus asked.

  She hesitated. She knew the rules. She wasn’t to use the phone unless ordered to. During school hours, she must keep the device stashed away to avoid having it taken by a teacher.

  But then she had gotten confused, and she was still confused. Although the phone—her phone—fit comfortably in her hand, and although she recognized Zeus’s voice, there was a trapped part of her that sensed the device wasn’t hers.

  The feeling was a lot like déjà vu but inherently opposite. A sense of unfamiliarity. A darker reality that even now she could only feel as an agitated tingling beneath her skin, not touch or see, much less understand.

  Shannon closed her eyes again and silently counted her breaths. She knew the confusion would fade. It always did.

  “Never mind,” Zeus said. “I suppose it really doesn’t matter. Do you have anything planned after school today? Anywhere you must be, anywhere you are expected?”

  “No.” She had made no plans with her friends. As for her foster parents, they both worked late. Her mom wouldn’t arrive home until four thirty or five, and her dad was on a business trip.

  “Good. I have another job for you.”

  She opened her eyes and looked at the black blotches of chewing gum stuck to the concrete at her feet. They reminded her of dried blood splatters.

  “Another hit?” She could remember neither the date nor the circumstances of the last job, but she had a feeling it had been several weeks ago. Maybe longer.

  “The wheels of Fate are turning rather quickly now,” he explained. “Olympus is, indeed, rising.”

  If Olympus was rising, it was only because it was being built on the bodies of the dead. As horrifying as that knowledge was, as much as she wanted to throw the phone down or break it in two, she heard herself say, “I understand.”

  Resistance was futile. She had no choice but to listen and obey. It was a decision that came as naturally as breathing, and that seemed just as essential.