What was confirmed was her status as full-on freak. Not only were her instincts right about her and Sam’s innate differences, the geneticists confirmed that they were the first non-Sets ever born. They would never fit into normal culture—never be able to marry another Set—never have children or travel now that they were freak fugitives and marked as murderers. She was sure these videos would have little impact. Gray Altar would find them and she would die fighting.
“Keep up the pace!” her therapist called from across the room. “One more mile!”
Sweat dripped down her forehead and neck. Her arm made a slight whizzing sound when it whipped this fast. One more, she thought, one more. She had left a world obsessed with twos for a world of one more sit-up and one more push-up, an endless grind of getting her body back. But that was impossible. There was no getting herself back. She was damaged and she would have to live with it.
“Lookin’ hot!” Mason yelled from the open doors.
“Let her finish,” the therapist said.
Penny liked his habit of showing up as she finished a strenuous session, especially when he was holding two lattes in his hands. They steamed in the big mugs that only made her miss the white paper cups that she and her friends used to get, always leaving blotches of lip gloss on the plastic lid. She slowed and jogged to Mason, smiling, knowing that he liked her without makeup and ruffled from a hard workout. At least that’s what he told her.
“I’m calling it,” Penny yelled to her therapist.
“You don’t make that call,” she said, looking up from her tablet.
Penny leaned between the two mugs coffee and gave Mason a quick kiss, chin stubble against her smooth cheek. “I’ll make it up tomorrow.”
The therapist huffed and tabulated something. Overhead, the fake sun slid behind a fake cloud and the room dimmed.
“You’re… okay. Yeah, you can make it up tomorrow, but you have your other therapy too,” she said.
“Right,” Penny said, toweling sweat.
Mason still eyed her arm, but in a different way—in a curious boy way that made her feel desired. He might have liked it for the power it presented or even the way it looked, but he definitely liked it because it was attached to her.
“Let’s get out of here. I got us permission to take a walk.,” Mason said, holding her by the waist. She knew this was the only way they could have privacy and she enjoyed getting out of the base as much as she could. “Everybody’s watching you know what.”
Penny wanted to ask if he’d watched the new episode as well, but she knew he had because Dixon had told her it was going to introduce him and Mason at the end.
The therapist was standing next to her now, snapping pictures of her shoulder where her titanium arm connected. “No intense pain?”
Penny shook her head, though there was always some pain. Her phantom limb ached for its twin like any other lost Set might.
“Please tell me if there is,” the therapist said, relaxing her posture and smiling at them. “Please.”
“Anything else?” Penny asked. Her curtness even surprised Mason.
A glitch in the screen above them twisted what was fanned brushed clouds into a craggy cluster of black pixels not unlike a storm. All three of them watched it stutter as it crept across the fake sky.
“That looks menacing,” the therapist laughed.
This only reminded Penny that there were digital lenses everywhere. Cameras probably filmed her running around the track. There was footage of her and Mason sipping from their mugs being stored and sorted right now. She had forfeited her privacy for the security of One Nation and now One Nation could use her life to further its cause.
“C’mon,” Mason said, squeezing Penny in this new way he had been doing, a closer, chest-on-chest way that made her swell. But as good as he made her feel, even casual touching made her recoil inside. It seemed as if her body had accepted her prosthetic, moving it almost like a natural arm, but she couldn’t convince herself that it didn’t make her grotesque. Penny thought about attaching the human-like model that the engineers made, but it felt like covering a problem that she needed to address.
Without thinking, she leaned her prosthetic away from Mason whenever he gestured to her. Penny had done this too many times for him not to notice.
Penny sipped her latte as they hurried out of the recreation center and down the wide corridors. She always corralled Mason to her right side, away from her arm. He nudged her hip with his, playful.
“How was your work out?” he asked.
“Good. Same as always.”
This was his way, dodging the more sensitive topics by asking around them. Overtly asking about her psychologist or any post traumatic stress would have embarrassed them both, but only because they were so new to each other. They were at Penny’s bedroom door when she stopped and turned to him.
“Lemme get some stuff from my room,” she said, “I need to shower.”
Mason held her again, looking up and down the hall to make sure they were alone, and kissed her. She felt his trembling hands on her hips, inching to her exposed skin. “I’d love to…”
Penny shied away, nuzzling into his neck. “Shh….” She looked down the hall to see people coming their way. “Just give me like 10 minutes. I stink.”
“K,” Mason said, tapping his mug to hers in a joking way. “Take your time.”
Penny turned, but kept her eyes on his. “10 minutes.”
All she had to do was gesture in front of the sliding door to make it open. Inside her room, Penny stripped off her workout gear and stumbled into the bathroom, turning on the shower and grabbing her toothbrush at the same time. The air started to steam. At the counter, toothbrush in her mouth, she leaned over and pressed two divots at the top of her metal shoulder and held the recessed buttons down until she heard a double click. She did the same to a pair of divots inside her armpit and unclasped her prosthetic from the titanium joint permanently fused to her torso. Once the contraption was loose, she lowered it to the counter with a thud. “Ugh.”
As much as she liked the arm, it was always a relief to free herself from it. Penny stared into the mirror and her lopsided body—her eyes and ears and breasts all so perfectly symmetrical—the way she knew herself—while this metal port clung to her still-healing bones. She turned her head and lifted her hair to see her scar’s straight trench where the bullet grazed her. This was a constant reminder that she was more than just a deformed survivor, she had taken a life. She had seen Prince’s head and neck separate in the second before she herself fell. In her heart, she knew both she and Sam struck the man, undoubtedly destroying him. This thought never left her. Even when she wasn’t thinking about it, the residue of that event smeared all other actions and emotions.
Penny realized she had wasted one entire minute pitying herself. She stepped into the shower and brushed her teeth while she rinsed off. Toothbrush clenched in her mouth, she washed one-handed. Dropped the bar of soap twice. She didn’t bother with her hair. And when she toweled off it was more like scrubbing herself dry. Leaning down to the height of the bathroom vanity, she connected her arm to its socket and gave it a slap with her free hand before cranking it into place. The engineers warned her about doing this too hastily, but it didn’t seem to matter. With a few quick twists of her shoulder, the arm cranked to life.
The only choice she had to make was her best underwear, jeans, and a t-shirt. Half her wardrobe was donated by One Nation, all of it ready and waiting for her when they arrived. It was still weird not having to stress about what Sam was wearing. None of that mattered now. Penny brushed her hair as she hunted for a hoodie that hid her arm and metal claw best with its big front pocket. Now that she never unlaced her sneakers, she slipped into them easily and checked the mirror one last time. Arm inside her hoodie pocket, she almost looked like the old Penny.
When she gestured for the door to open, Mason was leaning against the wall with both hands holding his mug to his lips. He was
cute when he was faking coy. “Ready?” he asked.
“Yup,” she said.
They held hands down the hallway, unsure what to say to each other. This was preferable, until they got outside and she would have to buffer his advances with conversation. There was no doubt they were thinking about the same thing. Penny wondered how many millions of people were watching her online right now because those were the numbers Alix had boasted about, saying, “It’s working far better than we predicted. Millions of views.” That video of their mom was the first official statement from One Nation and they had made it count. Tonight, Alix predicted the viewership would double.
And of course Sam helped out. She had watched hours of footage and edited it down with a team, even agreed to do interviews. After a few days of unsuccessful attempts to convince Penny to do the same, her sister gave up. Millions of viewers, Sam had kept saying, like it was a good thing.
Mason was talking about being bored of the base already, but she her thoughts wandered, making it impossible to focus. It was like she could hear every individual voice all at once—the online commenters and deniers and trolls—all of them swarming into one deafening roar. They’d all see that she was an outcast and even more so now that she was deformed. One-armed-freak. Penny was so overwhelmed that she hadn’t realized they were at the main entrance and the two guards had stepped aside saying, “Just half an hour and not beyond the shield.”
“Thank you,” Mason said with a sincerity that was quickly becoming his signature. She loved that about him—the no bullshit realism of the Bourgeois twins, excluding their father who secretly filmed them for days. That was one thing she could never forgive.
“This way,” Mason whispered, walking outside.
He gently tugged her hand in the direction of the woods. Overhead, the churning drones ensured the magnetic shields were active and that the base was impossible to detect, let alone penetrate. They dashed over blown-out cars and splintered plywood used for targets, past the scrap pile where most of the destroyed stuff rusted. Her heart hammered like it had that night in the lake when Mason had led them into the water and lifted her by the hips to spin her kissing. She had sunk into him, feeling naked in her bikini, letting him taste her tongue and neck with his hands at bay, not going any further than she wanted.
“Where are we going?” Penny asked, close to panting.
Mason turned to her. “Somewhere no two can see us.”
They slipped through the treeline, over the new summer growth and creeping ivy. Penny glanced back at the base to see if the guards were watching from the wide, low door that looked like a dark, rectangular mouth.
A few seconds later, Mason turned to her and hugged her. Big arms tense. “Know what the best thing about the base’s shield is?”
“No, what?” Penny asked, squeezing him, but staring into the deepening forest shadows.
He kissed the top of her head. “No mosquitoes.”
This made her chuckle, but not enough to feel secure inside this bubble of One Nation’s anonymity and her boyfriend’s affection. It was as if the more support she had, the less supported she felt. What made her feel even more insecure was Sam’s ease—how her sister had embraced this weird new life of seclusion because it reinforced everything Sam had always wanted. One Nation authenticated her uniqueness. And by making her feel special, she was easier to manipulate. How was she not seeing that?
Mason’s lips traveled down to her ear. Warm breath weakened her knees like her legs wanted to release her to the forest floor. He kissed her ear, sucking gently on her lobe, and no matter how much she wanted this—to be transported back to the lake when she was eager and willing to let him make her feel new things—she could not relax. Her body craved his touch, but her mind repelled anything that tried to get too close. Penny wasn’t sure what to blame. Was it her new arm? Was it making her reject emotional advances even if they were what she longed for? Or was it the violence Emmett Prince inflicted? The fact that a man tried to kill her, a man of power and influence, a man whose family and company was planing their revenge right now.
The more Mason leaned into her, the more she turned her covered arm away from him. His hands were under her hoodie and shirt, one caressing her side and the other sliding so slowly into her waistline. Penny quivered and sighed silently, watching the black gaps between the trees.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” Mason said. “We haven’t been alone in weeks.”
It excited her to know he had been thinking about her as much as she had been thinking about him. Penny didn’t want to disappoint him. She felt like she was a disappointment to so many people already—her mom and Clint and all of One Nation who wanted her to participate in the web series, her sister who was harder and harder to relate to, and, most importantly, herself. She felt her metal claw with her natural hand through the big pocket of her hoodie. She didn’t know what to do with it. Would Mason ignore it completely or bring it unwanted attention. Could the arm hurt him somehow, unintentionally? How was she going to begin trusting a boy with her body if she didn’t trust it herself?
As his fingers rounded to the front of her underwear, Penny’s body dipped away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I dunno.”
“You okay?” Mason asked, hands in his jacket pockets as if to hide the evidence of what he might have done.
Penny turned away from him. “Yeah.” And she hugged herself through her hoodie, wanting to cross her arms, but that wasn’t possible. “I dunno.”
Mason stepped to her. “It’s okay if you need more time.”
Penny nodded. What was there to say? She could tell Mason wanted to hold her in support, but some part of her resisted this.
He stepped closer and Penny backed away. His shoulders rose and fell in a silent sigh. “What is it?”
This was the last thing Penny wanted to talk about. She couldn’t even bring herself to look at him. “Everything. Really.”
Mason’s attention was half on her, half on the entrance to the base. She was wasting their half hour on drama. “You can talk to me if you need to. Is it the videos? They’re not that bad, you know.”
“No, it’s not the freakin’ videos,” Penny said, resenting that he brought this up.
Mason took off his ball cap and bent the rim and put it back on like he was charging a piece of armor. “It might be good if you were a part of it. Use it to, I dunno, like… to get your emotions out.”
Penny clenched her claw inside her pocket. Her stomach gurgled. The medication she’d taken for her IBS wasn’t designed to alleviate these mounting stresses. “Good for me?” she said. “Reliving all of that, you think that’s going to be good for me?”
“How else are people going to understand?” Mason said, sounding like everytwo else now.
“Understand?” Penny yelled. “I don’t give a shit if they understand! Look at me!” She pulled her arm out of the hoodie’s pocket and held up her claw for him to see. “Prince didn’t think twice about killing me. No two cares.”
“That’s not true.” Mason stepped to her, both hands out as if to calm her. “They tried to kill me too. And Dixon, they tried to kill all of us. I just think you need to think about being a part of the videos. It can only help…” Regret soured his face. Penny could see that Mason knew he’d said the wrong words.
“Help?” Penny shouted, turning to the closest tree and grabbing its trunk with her claw. With one squeeze, the claw bit out a chunk the size of a basketball, bark and splinters spraying everywhere. The tree started to lean. Mason backed away. “Nothing’s going to help me.” Penny reared back, opened her claw all the way, and fired her wrecking ball at the trunk like a rocket. Her arm recoiled. Mason dove. The force of the ball punched the tree down, snapping it at the trunk and topping it into the surrounding brush. The ground rumbled. A gale of dirt and leaves pelted them.
The guards at the base’s entrance started to run towards them.
Penny blinked and turned to Mason as
the dust settled. “You want to help me?” she said. “Help me kill every last Gray Altar fuck.”
The wrecking ball automatically rolled towards her open claw. Her arm’s magnetized force snapped the metal ball back in place with a loud clang. Penny brushed bits of wooden debris off her claw and started at the fallen tree.
Mason got to his feet. “Penny…”
But before he could say anything else, she pulled her hood over her head and started walking back to the base. When the guards passed her, they asked what the noise was and all she said was she was practicing. She heard Mason tell them to let her go, that she needed space and Penny jogged to the base’s entrance with one eye on the distracted guards. Her window for escape was fleeting. A second later, she dashed around the corner, hugging the sharp shadows of the base and dashed to the treeline.
Penny knew there were no secrets at One Nation. At that very moment, some technician was monitoring her movements and that maybe, just maybe there was a chance that the security pinheads might have missed her slipping into the forest’s cover.
CHAPTER 5
Though episode two’s screening was the most exciting event in weeks, Sam was sick of answering when people asked, “Where’s your sister?” and “What are you going to do without her in the series?” She sat in the back of the base’s largest lounge where chairs and couches were arranged so everytwo would have a view of the projected video. With Alix beside her, they all waited for the anonymous hackers to post episode two through their encrypted channel to YouTube, the process taking longer than they had planned.
“Uploading now,” Alix said as she messaged her contact using three layers of encryption on a phone they would destroy when the video posted. While they waited, the projected video cycled screen shots of YouTube showing user comments. Sam had chosen some of them, sculpting the base’s perception of their success. This is what Alix wanted.
“Over sixty million views of episode one,” a person in the front row shouted.
Two Girls Book 2: One Nation Page 5
