by Amy Tintera
“Personally, I’m glad I never knew my family,” Riley said. “All this parent stuff seems really stressful.”
I almost laughed but it died in my throat, pushed down by the rock of pain sitting in my chest.
“It’s going to be fine,” Addie said softly. “She’s going to be fine.”
I nodded as I resumed my pacing. “She is. She probably already burned New Dallas to the ground and doesn’t even need us to come get her.”
They all laughed and agreed and I tried to force a smile onto my face like I wasn’t worried.
“I’m going to feel guilty forever if she’s not okay,” Riley said quietly, after a long pause. He picked at the grass. “I knew Micah used to drop bad Reboots. I should have warned you guys.”
“Guilt isn’t going to help anyone,” Addie said. She looked pointedly at me. “Is it?”
I didn’t know if she was talking about my guilt for making Wren stay at the reservation, or my guilt about killing the human. It had all formed into one giant lump of awful in my chest.
“No,” I admitted. “Doesn’t mean it’s not still there.”
“But that’s good, right?” David looked up at me. “Before you came back, I thought Reboots didn’t feel guilt. It seems like good news that you still do.”
“True,” I said with a small smile. It was only a few days ago I’d wished away my guilt about killing that man, but David had a point. It would be worse without it.
“I like to harness guilt into kicking people’s asses,” Addie said.
David turned a worried look from me to Addie and scooted a little farther away from her. I bit back a laugh as Addie arched her eyebrow in amusement.
I glanced back at the shuttles, armed and prepared for takeoff. “I think that sounds like an excellent plan.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
WREN
MEAT.
My arms wouldn’t move. My legs wouldn’t move. I was on a hard table and I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t get to the meat.
I squinted in the bright light at the figures around me, snapped my teeth, and thrashed against the metal holding my wrists.
Mumbled voices floated in the air, and a man came into sight. He was juicy meat, plushy meat, fatty meat.
I growled, lifting my head as far as it would go. Meat moved away.
The voices around me were louder, and the meat was holding my arms and legs. I flailed until the table began to wobble and the voices grew louder. Panic. I liked the panic. The panic made the meat smell better.
I wrenched one arm free and grabbed at the closest meat.
Everything went black.
I blinked, squinting at the blurry walls of my cell. My head was heavy and cold. My cheek was pressed to the freezing concrete.
I slapped my hands against the floor and started to push myself up, gasping as a wave of dizziness crashed over me. I was going to vomit.
No, I wasn’t. There was nothing in my stomach. I couldn’t.
The hunger was so intense, suddenly I could barely breathe. I felt sick, and hot, and cold, and confused. I blinked again and the bars of the cell came into focus. How long had I been in here?
I squeezed my eyes shut and collapsed on the ground again, not caring that it was freezing.
The door opened and I mustered the energy to glare at the guard who entered.
He tried to make me shuffle down the hallway in my chains, but I was weak and kept swerving into him. He made disgusted noises every time I touched him, so I fell entirely against him. He yelled and I ended up on the floor. It was not my most well-thought-out plan.
He shoved me along in front of him the rest of the way, and when we emerged from the elevator, Suzanna and Officer Mayer were waiting in front of the lab. Officer Mayer snorted as soon as he spotted me.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the long lab window. My hair was dirty and messy. I couldn’t make out my features very well, but my eyes looked dark and sunken in. I seemed smaller somehow, like I’d shrunk even more. That didn’t seem fair. I didn’t have any spare inches.
“Feeling better, I see,” Suzanna said as the guard hauled me onto the table. “I wasn’t sure that antidote would work.”
Was this better? When had she seen me last? Ever’s face flashed in front of me, that crazed, hungry look she’d had in the days before her death, and I winced as the humans began to shuffle around the room. I now understood her panic, her sobs when I told her what was happening to her. I don’t think I fully appreciated the terror she felt until this moment.
Suzanna stuck a needle in my arm and I glanced down to see my blood running into a bag. She poked a hole in my other arm and hooked a bag to that one, too.
“What happens if you drain a Reboot dry?” Officer Mayer asked.
“They pass out. They come back, though.” Her lip curled as she looked at me. “They always come back.”
“You don’t always come back, you know. Sometimes Reboots die for real.”
My head fell to the side as the memory edged into my brain, Riley’s voice as clear as the day he’d first said that to me, early in my Reboot training.
“Is this how you want to be in the field? Do you want everyone to see you as a pathetic little mess?” Riley had asked after I’d been shot on an assignment and was curled into a ball in the dirt, gasping for air.
“Up.” He pulled me to my feet by my collar. He was tall for a fourteen-year-old. I’d been surprised when he told me his age. The assignment was on the ground behind him, hands and feet bound.
Riley dumped the bullets out of the human’s gun and held them toward me. “You always take the bullets out of the gun before you go back to the shuttle. And you hold the gun by the barrel. If a guard sees you approaching holding a gun by the handle, they will shoot you.”
I whimpered, crossing my arms more firmly over my bloodstained shirt.
Riley sighed, lowering the gun and bullets. “Do you want to die? Again? For real this time?”
I just stared at him. Maybe I did. Maybe death was better than this.
“Because if you let them kill you, what does that say about you? Is that who you want to be?”
I’d swallowed, his words pulsing through my whole body. That wasn’t who I wanted to be.
“You can be the best,” he said. “You’re One-seventy-eight. Do you want to be the biggest disappointment, or the greatest success?”
I didn’t want to be a disappointment. I’d felt like one most of my life.
“I know it’s a lot of responsibility,” he said, his voice softer than usual. “And I know you’re really young. But life isn’t fair. Or Rebooting isn’t fair. Either way, it was the hand you were dealt. Your choice what to do with it.”
I took in a long, slow breath. I’d decided I wanted that responsibility, the pressure of being the best. I’d let it consume me and I’d come out the other side as someone I was vaguely proud of. But now, I think I was only someone HARC could be proud of.
“Your choice what to do with it.”
Suzanna and Officer Mayer put their heads together, and I felt a sudden panic zip through my body. I didn’t want to die here. I didn’t want them to win. I didn’t want Callum to think that my choice had been only myself, and that I didn’t care what happened to the other Reboots or the humans who had helped us.
I didn’t want to be a mindless slave who did what they wanted without question. Who had run away the first chance she got and hadn’t wanted to try and help others still stuck in the same situation.
That wasn’t the choice I wanted to make. That wasn’t someone I could be proud of.
TWENTY-NINE
CALLUM
THE METAL OF THE SHUTTLE CLANGED UNDER MY BOOTS AS I stepped inside. The seats were already all taken, and Reboots piled in after me. We had about sixty, which was less than I had originally thought, but I couldn’t expect everyone to jump on board with saving Wren, even if we were freeing the New Dallas Reboots in the process.
As
I leaned against the shuttle wall, I caught Tony’s eye. He stood outside next to Desmond, watching as the Reboots boarded. I’d thought Wren was wrong about how self-serving humans are, and now I felt incredibly dumb. I looked forward to telling her how right she was.
“Wait! Wait!” a voice called as the shuttle door began to close. Gabe darted inside, dressed in black clothes and armed. He nodded at me and I blinked.
“Gabe—” Tony stepped forward.
“You said when I joined you guys I made all my own decisions and accepted the consequences. Going with them is the right thing to do. I accept the consequences.”
Tony closed his mouth as defeat crossed his face. For a moment, I thought Gabe’s outburst would prompt a show of support from other humans. Desmond looked between the two of us, his brow furrowed in thought, the angry expression he’d been wearing since we arrived gone. But he said nothing as the door slid shut.
I gave Gabe a grateful look as we started to lift off the ground. “Thank you.”
He shrugged, bouncing a little from foot to foot. “It could have been me. I almost died of KDH a couple years ago. I don’t see staying human as anything more than luck. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal.”
“I’d say it’s bad luck you are human,” Addie said, a corner of her mouth turning up.
“Hey, maybe I’ll die tonight and I can give you an opinion about it tomorrow.”
Addie laughed. “And have you whine about the pain? Stick with me, all right? I’ll try to take any bullets for you.”
“That might be the nicest offer I’ve ever had from a girl.”
Addie blinked, pink spots appearing on her cheeks as Gabe grinned and started making his way across the shuttle, toward the pilot’s door.
“That was weird, right?” She looked at me expectantly.
“Uh, I don’t know, Addie.”
“I mean, a human flirting with a Reboot is weird.” She looked to me for confirmation but I just shook my head in amusement. She nodded, as if convincing herself. “It’s weird.”
I chuckled, then quickly wiped the smile off my face. I shouldn’t be laughing. I needed to focus on Wren. It could already be too late, and I couldn’t be laughing while she was dead.
Addie’s gaze slid to where Gabe was standing with Riley and Isaac. He was watching her, too. I gestured with my head for her to go and she paused for a second before slowly walking over.
I closed my eyes as I leaned my head back against the shuttle wall. “Focus,” Wren would say.
My brain didn’t want to focus. It wanted to panic and run through horrible scenarios. Being on this side of things sucked. I didn’t like being the one who was fine while Wren was captured. I didn’t like being the one the other Reboots looked to for a plan. I could see why she tried to avoid it.
I pushed my hands into my pockets and tried to listen to the hum of the shuttle instead of the shouting in my head. I kept my eyes closed as we flew, ignoring the conversations around me.
“Brace yourselves!” the shuttle pilot called about fifteen minutes later. “We’re approaching New Dallas.”
Focus.
THIRTY
WREN
MY HEAD HURT WHEN I OPENED MY EYES. I GRIMACED, WONDERING if the headache was a side effect of the drugs, or if they’d done it on purpose. As my vision began to clear, the pain faded slightly, and I realized I was in the lab again. I hated how they could steal my time and I’d wake up with no idea where I was or how long I’d been there. If it weren’t for the growing hunger in my stomach (which wasn’t that bad yet, indicating it had only been two or three days), I would have had no idea how long I’d been a prisoner.
Officer Mayer drifted into the light and out again, and I heard Suzanna Palm talking from somewhere behind me.
I had a needle in my arm, and I squinted down at my blood running into a bag. There was a full bag next to it, and I was woozy.
“ . . . eliminate her?” Officer Mayer’s voice was a whisper.
I swung my head to either side, stretching my arms slightly. The metal cuffs around my wrist banged against my skin.
I wondered what Callum was doing. Was he still looking—
I took in a sharp breath. The cuffs. They’d moved around on my wrist.
I glanced across the room to where Officer Mayer and Suzanna were still deep in conversation. I barely moved one arm.
Someone had forgotten to tighten the cuffs.
I began squirming against the cuff farthest away from them. My hand slipped out in seconds.
I swallowed down a wave of excitement. I slowly twisted my other wrist around, the one in their line of sight. Officer Mayer glanced at me and I stopped, blinking blankly at him. He turned back to Suzanna.
My skin burned as I yanked my hand harder against the cuff. Suzanna’s eyes widened.
“Get her! She’s—”
My hand popped free and I shot up to a sitting position, yanking the needle from my arm. The world tilted violently and my attempts to hop off the table resulted in me facedown on the floor.
A hand grabbed my foot and I kicked, gasping as I desperately clawed at the floor. The world tilted and shook and for a moment I thought it was just the drugs making me dizzy, but Suzanna’s face twisted in confusion. Another loud boom sounded from somewhere below me.
Officer Mayer grabbed me by the shoulders, hauling me into a sitting position. “I told you we should kill her,” he panted.
Yells came from outside. I turned toward the door, hope racing through my body.
“Go,” Suzanna said, blowing a curly strand of hair from her eyes. Officer Mayer raced out, and she settled her gaze on me as she pointed a gun to my forehead. “I got this.”
My eyes locked on hers. She didn’t have the best grip on the gun, and I didn’t know why she’d just told Officer Mayer to go. She obviously didn’t use a weapon often.
She hesitated, and I forced my vision to focus as I stared at her. She wasn’t wavering because she was conflicted about whether it was right to kill me, that was for sure. I knew it was because she was weighing her investment, her loss if she wasn’t able to research me further and put me back in the field. Her disappointment in me was just as obvious as Officer Mayer’s.
A smile started to form on my face, and Suzanna gave me a confused look. I was proud that I disappointed them. I wasn’t emotionless or hardened or the perfect monster they thought I was. I was trained.
I lunged forward so suddenly Suzanna gasped, almost dropping the gun in an attempt to fire it. I snatched it out of her hand and slammed my palm into her chest. Her back hit the ground.
She dove for the gun in my hand again, growling as her fingernails dug into my arm. I fired one shot into her head.
I let out a sigh of relief as my legs gave out and I hit the ground. I didn’t usually look at humans after I killed them, but I stared at her blank eyes. I’d killed her in self-defense, and I couldn’t say I minded that she was dead, but I wished I hadn’t had to do it at all. Maybe that was what Callum meant when he tried to explain the difference between me and Micah. I’d never killed someone if I didn’t have to.
I turned away from Suzanna, a strange mix of relief and sadness mingling in my chest as I crawled for the door.
THIRTY-ONE
CALLUM
THE NEW DALLAS HARC FACILITY LOOKED VERY MUCH LIKE ROSA from the roof. It was empty, but the door was propped open, just as Tony had said. The small ground team had already jumped off the other shuttle, and smoke lapped up the side of the building from their bombs.
The shuttle took off as the last Reboot stepped onto the roof, headed for the front entrance to pick up Reboots as they escaped.
“We’re in the basement.” I put a hand to my ear as Isaac spoke through my com. “She’s not down here. Guard is saying they took her upstairs.”
“Which floor?” I asked, running for the stairwell as I pulled my gun from my pocket.
“Hold on.” There was a brief silence before he spoke
again. “He’s saying two or three. Not sure. Medical floors somewhere.”
“Okay.” I threw open the stairwell door and rushed down the steps, sixty Reboots flying after me.
“All Reboots to your rooms immediately.” The voice on the intercom was loud and firm.
I cursed and ran faster, rounding the tenth-floor landing. We’d hoped to get to the Reboots having dinner in the cafeteria before HARC ordered them to their rooms and locked the doors, but given that announcement, it didn’t look good. Hopefully Addie would be able to get to the control room and unlock the doors again, like she did in Austin. I twisted around to see her and Gabe and a few other Reboots opening the door to the eighth floor, where the control room was.
I passed the sixth floor, where the Reboot rooms were located in this facility, and the rest of the Reboots split off. Only Riley and Beth stayed with me.
I flew onto the third floor and ran down the hall, Riley and Beth close behind me. Everything was locked up tight, the white walls blank. I turned around and sprinted back to the stairs, rounding them down to the second floor. I glanced behind me as I threw the door open wide enough for Riley and Beth to get through.
I ran smack into something, and I blinked as I wrapped my fingers tighter around my gun.
Officer Mayer. His eyes widened in recognition and he took several quick steps backward, stumbling slightly. I raised my gun as I strode after him, locking my gaze on his as I aimed the barrel at his head.
He reached for the weapon on his belt and I lunged forward, twisting his hand and extracting the gun as he yelled.
He wrenched away and whirled around like he meant to run, but I kicked the back of his knees, hard, and he hit the ground with a crunch. Around me, the building shook, the echo of gunfire sounding through the hallway.
I grabbed his shirt and yanked him around to face me. Leaning down closer, I pressed the gun to his forehead.
“Wren,” I said.
He was breathing heavily, wheezing as fear started to spread across his face. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
