by Amy Tintera
I pulled him closer and closer, until we were tangled together and he was running his fingers down my scars and I was laughing when he told me I was like a hot cyborg. Then there was nothing but the sound of his breath and his warm skin against mine and I forgot to keep one ear on the door or watch for threats or scan the closest location of weapons in my head. It was just him, his smile against my lips, his arms around me, and I was gone.
THIRTY-FIVE
CALLUM
I WOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO WREN ASLEEP AGAINST MY CHEST, her arms tucked up underneath her chin. She was wearing my shirt, which I’d wrapped around her when her arms had begun to prick with goose bumps. She’d buttoned it crooked, and I could see the tip of her scars, the first few of the metal staples holding the skin together. I tightened my arms around her and pressed my lips to the top of her head.
I hadn’t slept so well or so long in weeks—not since I was a human—and I blinked in the dark room. Was it too much to hope that everyone would leave us alone and I could spend the day right here?
Murmured voices trickled in from the hallway and I sighed inwardly. Of course it was. HARC was still out there and, thanks to Micah, we could already be too late to save the Reboots in the Rosa facility.
Wren stirred, and a smile crossed her lips before she even opened her eyes. She snuggled closer to me so her face was in my neck.
“Good morning,” she mumbled.
“Good morning.” I brushed a kiss against her cheek.
“Is it too late to take you up on your offer to leave and forget about everyone else?” she asked, humor in her voice.
I laughed. “Never. Let’s go right now.”
She grinned at me, because we both knew it was way too late for that.
“Hey, is Callum Twenty-two in here somewhere?” a voice nearby yelled.
I sighed as I swung my legs over the bed. “Yeah?”
“There’re people downstairs in the lobby for you. They say they’re your parents.”
I blinked in surprise. Even though David had said he thought they wanted to see me, I didn’t think they’d actually come.
Wren rolled out of bed and reached for her clothes. “Want me to come with you?”
“Yes. Please.”
I pulled on my clothes and shoes so slowly that Wren was standing by the hung-up sheets, watching me in amusement as I tied my boots.
“We could sneak out another door,” I said, half joking. “Or jump off the roof.”
“Breaking our legs just to avoid your parents is a little extreme.”
I released an exaggerated sigh as I stood. “Fine.”
Wren reached for my hand and tugged me from the room and down the stairs to the ground level. She pushed open the door and light flooded the stairwell. I walked out onto the black floor.
My parents and David sat in the chairs at the far side of the room, like they were waiting for an appointment with HARC officials. I took a tentative step forward and David, spotting me, jumped to his feet, a big smile on his face. My parents stood, too, and started toward me.
We all met in the middle of the lobby. My mom looked like she was going to cry, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that. My dad just seemed nervous.
“This is Wren,” I said, glad to have something to start the conversation with. She dropped my hand to offer it to my parents, and my dad shook it first, his gaze falling to her bar code.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, noticing his glance. “It’s One-seventy-eight.”
My mom’s eyes widened briefly but she shook Wren’s hand and turned a tentative smile to me.
“We heard . . .” My mom cleared her throat. “Well, we heard a lot of things.”
“I hope some of them were good,” I said.
My dad laughed. “Of course.”
I felt awkward with them staring at me like I was a hero. It was better than last time, though, when they saw me as a monster. I tightened my hand around Wren’s. “Is everything okay at the house? David said you weren’t hit too bad by the attacks.”
My mom nodded. “It took a bit of a beating, but it’s still in one piece. Nothing that can’t be repaired.”
“Good.” I felt a rush of relief, even though I never planned to live there again.
The front doors banged open and Riley and Addie walked through with several other Reboots. He gestured at Wren and she looked up at me.
“Go ahead,” I said, slipping my hand out of hers. “I’ll be over in a second.”
My parents watched her walk away, and my mom turned to me with a questioning look on her face.
“She was there, that night you came to see us.”
“Yes. We were in the Rosa facility together. She helped me escape.”
“Oh.” My mom smiled. “That’s wonderful. I didn’t know Reboots escaped.”
My dad eyed my bar code. “Rosa? What’s it like there?”
“Rosa is . . . a mess. I like it better here.”
“Are you staying?” my mom asked. “People were saying this morning that if we saved the Reboots in the last facility, we might drive HARC off for good.”
I cocked my head in surprise. I didn’t know who she’d been talking to, but it sounded like the humans were having a change of heart.
“I should go check in and see what the plan is,” I said, gesturing back at Wren and Riley. “A lot of the humans have been gathering at the schoolhouse. Have you been there?”
My dad shook his head. “Not yet.”
“You should probably check in with them. I’ll catch up with you guys later.”
My mom nodded, stepping forward like she was going to hug me. She stopped, her face twisting in worry.
“Do you still hug?”
I laughed, quickly covering it with my hand. I held my arms out. “Yes. I still hug.”
She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a quick squeeze. If I felt different to her she didn’t show it. In fact, she was teary-eyed as she pulled away and I quickly took a step back as I felt a lump grow in my throat.
They turned to go and I headed for Wren. She slipped her arm around my waist and gave me a kiss. I put my hand on her cheek and made the kiss last a moment longer.
“Do they approve of me?” she asked when I pulled away. “Am I too blond?”
“Yes. That’s what stuck out in their minds about you. You’re blond.”
Riley turned to us, an amused look on his face. “Are we done making out? Does anyone maybe want to come with me to figure out how the hell we’re going to rescue the Rosa Reboots?”
“Fine,” I said with an exaggerated sigh, grinning at him.
He charged ahead of us with Addie, and I slipped my hand into Wren’s as we followed them out the door. It was sunny but chilly as we walked through HARC’s front lawn and back into the heart of the slums. The city looked worse in daylight, many homes and buildings destroyed and not a human in sight. Maybe my parents misunderstood and the humans were uniting to kill all the Rosa Reboots. Take revenge for Micah’s attack.
Riley stopped in his tracks as he and Addie turned a corner.
“What the hell?” Addie exclaimed.
I jogged to their side, reeling back at the scene in front of me.
There were humans everywhere. Like the most I’d ever seen in one spot. They covered the schoolhouse lawn and took up an entire block.
And they all turned to stare at us.
I had a sudden urge to run even as Tony and Desmond appeared from the crowd and headed in our direction. Ordinarily that many humans against four Reboots would be terrifying.
“Hey,” Tony said with a tired smile as he and Desmond stopped in front of us. “Where are the rest of the Reboots?”
“Still at the facility,” Wren said. “What’s going on here?”
“Word got out that we’d taken Austin back from HARC. After HARC killed the Reboots in the cities, most of the humans decided to come here instead of New Dallas or Rosa.”
“To do what?” I ask
ed.
Desmond shoved his hands in his pockets, his eyes moving between me and Wren. “To join One-seventy-eight in the fight against HARC.”
“Sorry, what?” She let out an incredulous laugh.
“The officers in New Dallas didn’t keep their mouths shut about you escaping. Everyone knows. And when they heard Micah and his crew hit Austin, too, they figured out who the good guys were.”
“Imagine that,” I said dryly, looking pointedly at Desmond. He’d given me an utterly baffled look yesterday when I’d pulled him out of the rubble, like he didn’t believe I’d stick around to help him.
“We all figured out who the good guys are,” Desmond said quietly. I nodded, trying not to give him a smug look.
Tony smiled at Wren’s increasingly confused expression. “They’re here to partner with the Reboots to take down HARC.”
THIRTY-SIX
WREN
“THIS IS DEFINITELY A TRAP,” ADDIE SAID.
I looked at her in amusement as we ushered the last of the Reboots out of the facility and instructed them to go to the schoolhouse. “If it’s a trap, it’s a very elaborate one.” I followed her into the hallway and we walked past the glass rooms together.
“It is, but it’s brilliant. They lure us to an entirely different city under the guise of helping us, and then drop us straight into HARC’s lap!”
“I think that’s highly unlikely.” I raised my eyebrows at her, unsure if she was kidding.
She grinned at me. “If you get captured again, I’m leaving you. No rescue this time around.”
“Noted.”
I pushed open the door at the end of the hall and headed down the staircase, our footsteps loud in the empty building.
“I heard you decapitated Micah,” she said. “I approve. I wish we could have pushed him out of a shuttle first, though.”
I glanced at her as we stepped into the HARC lobby. “I don’t know. It felt kind of . . . wrong.”
“In what way? You probably saved half the humans in this city by getting rid of him.”
I shrugged. “I’m tired of getting rid of people. It’s what I’ve been doing for five years. I want to . . .” I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
“Make more people?” Addie asked, trying to keep a straight face. “Have some babies?”
I groaned. “No.”
“Are you sure? You can do your part to save the Reboot race. I have a knife right here. I can take out that birth-control chip for you now if you’d like.”
“I will stab you with that knife.”
She laughed as we walked into the sunshine. “So you and Callum are putting it to use.” She shot me a look, a wicked glint in her eye. I shoved her lightly. “Okay, can I ask you a question not about killing people?”
“Why not?”
“Would you ever be with a human?”
“How do you mean?”
“You know, like . . .” She waved her arms around. “Like . . . together. Like you and Callum.”
“I don’t know. I think it would be weird.”
She kicked a rock. “Yeah.”
I cocked my head to the side, something Callum had said about Addie protecting Gabe when they rescued me floating through my memory. “Gabe?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She looked at me sheepishly. “He kissed me last night.”
“Was it weird?”
“No, it was nice. But it made me think about the future. If we win and Reboots start living among the humans, what’s gonna happen? Are they going to start dating? Having kids? What is a half Reboot half human going to look like?”
“I don’t know; I never thought about it.” I shrugged. “Maybe Micah was right.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“Not about everything, but about the evolution stuff. He had a point that Reboots are simply evolved humans. So maybe we’re just in the tough part right now. Eventually everyone will sort of meld together into one superhuman Reboot.”
“A Rehuman. Or Huboot.”
“Maybe not Huboot.” I laughed as we turned the corner and the schoolhouse came into view. Callum was talking to a group of humans, a map in his hands.
I forgot to breathe for a moment when our eyes met and his lips curved up. I didn’t know whether to blush or jump into his arms every time he looked at me. Flashbacks of the previous night were on repeat in my head, and it seemed ridiculous that everyone around us was going about business as usual while I was standing in a slightly shifted world.
Addie punched my arm, snapping me out of my trance, and when I turned she grinned at me. She lifted one eyebrow and I blushed, scurrying to where Riley and Isaac were standing with a few Reboots.
“How’s the ammo situation look?” I asked.
“Not bad,” Riley said. “Micah and his team had a lot on them, so we took that. Combined with what the humans took from the cities, we’re in pretty good shape.”
Callum joined us, spreading the large map he was holding on the table in front of Riley.
“Do we have a plan?” I asked. Desmond and Tony were standing a few yards away, their heads bent together as they spoke. “One the humans are okay with?”
“Yes.” Riley put his finger on the map. “We’re here.” He moved his finger along the river to the north. “About thirty miles north is Rosa.” He traced the route farther up. “Twenty-five miles north of Rosa is New Dallas. Everyone has agreed to go into Rosa together to get the Reboots first since HARC has set up headquarters there. If we can take Rosa, we’ll hit New Dallas right after. Apparently there isn’t much left of HARC now. Most are in Rosa.” He put his hands on his hips. “Tony got in contact with Leb, and they think they can get together enough humans in the city to support us.”
“Seriously?” I said doubtfully. “They’re not exactly the most Reboot-friendly humans in Rosa.”
“I still have the scars from where they captured me and beat me in the middle of the street,” Callum said.
Riley rolled his eyes. “You don’t get scars.”
“Emotional scars, then.” A smile tugged at the edges of Callum’s lips.
Riley chuckled. “Leb said he and the other rebels have been working on the people in Rosa, especially recently. You have support from a few officers inside of HARC, which is what’s really important. Don’t go around killing any of them unless they strike first.”
“Are humans coming into the facility with us?”
Riley shook his head. “We’re going to position some outside, though, to try and prevent more officers from getting in before you guys have a chance to escape. Our hope is we can get all the Reboots out of the building quickly and fight HARC off in the street. It will be easier. Well, relatively.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “And Leb said Officer Mayer is back in Rosa. I thought you might appreciate that information.”
A blip of excitement ran through me at the prospect of cornering Officer Mayer and eliminating him. I glanced at Callum, who’d had the chance to kill the officer and hadn’t taken it, but his expression was neutral.
“Do they know all these humans came here to help us?” I asked.
“No idea,” Riley said. “We suspect if they do know where they went, they don’t know they want to partner with us.”
Addie looked down at the map, then back at Riley. “What’s the plan for the humans? Assuming we win? It’s not realistic to think they’ll all be okay with living among us.”
Riley shrugged. “Don’t know. The idea of splitting us up in each city was mentioned.”
“Like a rico side and a slum side?” Callum asked dryly.
“Hey, maybe we could lock all the humans in some sort of building,” Addie said.
“Oh! And they could help us out with stuff like policing and capturing criminals,” Callum said. “But they may not like that, so we should probably keep them pretty tightly contained.”
Riley gave me a “make them stop being ridiculous” look, and I laughed.
“Let’s install trackers in them,
in case they try and run away,” Addie said, her serious face starting to crack.
“And we should probably just get rid of them when they get too old, because you know how adult humans are.” Callum made a talking motion with his hand. “Blah blah blah, rebellion, blah blah blah, let’s fight back. And they’re not as strong when they get older anyway.”
“This is productive. Thanks, guys.” Riley shook his head as he rolled up the map.
“Oh, come on!” Addie called as he walked away, a smile spreading across her face. “We’ll give them really good food!”
Riley turned to give us an amused look. “Callum, fill them in on your plan.”
“You have a plan?” I asked, turning to him in surprise.
“A brilliant plan!” Riley called over his shoulder.
“Well, I don’t know about ‘brilliant,’” Callum said with a shrug. “But I was thinking about how screwed we were in New Dallas with that intercom system. HARC gets on there, says three words, and the Reboots do whatever they say. So I thought we should get a com and let you talk to the Reboots instead.”
“That is a brilliant plan,” I said, smiling at him.
He looped an arm around my waist, pulling me closer. “I plan, you do the punching-people-in-the-face part. I like how this works.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
CALLUM
I STOOD BY THE LARGEST OF THE SHUTTLES THAT NIGHT, WATCHING as our human allies climbed on behind the Reboots. Tony and Desmond filed in, and Desmond cast a glance in my direction. He nodded at me as he leaned against the shuttle wall.
We didn’t have nearly enough shuttles for everyone going to Rosa, so the pilots were going to have to make two trips. The first wave was mostly Reboots, but there were a few humans with us.
I turned to the other shuttle to see Wren walking in my direction. She held her arms out as she got closer and I took a step forward and scooped her up, lifting her off the ground so she wrapped her legs around my waist. She ran her hands behind my neck and pressed her lips against mine.
