Chapter 7

TWENTY-TWO HIT THE MAT AND DID AS I HAD REQUESTED—he didn't scream.

He pressed his face into the black plastic and his fists clenched the material of his shirt, but he didn't

cry. His afternoon had been littered with injuries, but he was doing a decent job of not screaming or

crying.

I knelt down and pushed his pants leg up. The bone stuck out from the skin.

"In this case you have to shove it back in," I said.

He moaned and shook his head.

"You have to. You've got to get the bone closer to where it's supposed to be or it won't heal right.

Your skin is going to close up around the bone and then I'm going to have to slice the skin open again."

"That is so gross," he mumbled against the mat.

"Sit up."

He slowly pushed himself to a sitting position, grimacing. The training teams around us had turned to

stare. Across the room, Hugo was muffling a laugh with his hand.

"Just shove it back in." I focused on Twenty-two again.

"That's it?" he exclaimed. "Shove it in?"

"Give me your hand." I held mine out.

He slipped his hand into mine. It was warm and not as perfect as I had imagined. I thought rich people

must have soft hands free of any marks. They didn't have to do hard manual labor like the people in the

slums. I was certain Callum had never built a fence or worked a cotton farm in his life.

But his hands were rougher than mine, and when I turned his palm up I saw little scars on his fingers.

The scars from human life never fade.

"Like this," I said, placing his palm on the bone. I pushed it in, hard, and he clapped his other hand

over his mouth to stop a scream.

He collapsed on the mat again, a soft whimper escaping his throat. I felt a pang of guilt. That guilt

again. I didn't know if I liked it.

I hadn't meant to break his leg. It was a good learning experience, one he would have needed

eventually anyway, but it had been an unfortunate side effect of him not moving as quickly as I'd told himto.

"You're going to have to learn to move faster." I think I had meant that as an apology. It didn't come

out right. "I mean, I didn't—" Wait. I didn't apologize to newbies. I was here to teach him. He needed to

know how to pop his own bone back in.

He rolled over onto his back and looked at me in amusement. Well, amusement tinged with searing

pain.

"If you apologize every time you hurt me, you won't be doing much of anything else."

A laugh bubbled up in my chest and I quickly turned away so he couldn't see the smile on my face.

"Get up," I said, jumping to my feet.

"My leg's still broken."

"I don't care. Get up. If you just lie there in the field they'll break your other leg and then you're

screwed."

He unsteadily got to his feet. "Is it really that bad out there?" he asked, trying to keep all his weight on

his good leg.

"It depends," I said.

"On what?"

"Who it is. If you're just extracting a sick person it's fairly easy. If it's a criminal with a big family

you might get ambushed getting to them. Depends on how scared they are. If they've gotten cocky and think

they can rebel."

"What if they didn't do it?"

"What?"

"Whatever crime we're snatching them for. What if they didn't do it?"

"They always say they didn't do it. It's our job to bring them in. HARC takes care of the rest."

"They let them go if they're innocent?" he asked.

I hesitated. As a Reboot, I was never informed of what happened to the humans I captured. As a girl

living in the slums, I knew the truth. Once they took someone, he never came back.

"They're sure of their guilt before they take them," I said.

"How?"

"It's not our concern."

"Why not?" he asked. "We're the ones catching all these people."

"Our job ends there."

"Where do they go?"

I had wondered that myself once. Some sort of prison? I doubted it. "I don't know."

He frowned. "Do they tell anyone? The families?"

It figured the rich boy had no idea how this worked. I did one assignment in the rich area of town for

every hundred I did in the slums.

"No. I don't think so, anyway."

"But—"

"How's the leg?" I interrupted.

He looked down, shaking it out. "Getting there."

"Get your arms up, then. Let's keep going."

He met my eyes almost every time I swung at him. I wasn't sure what to make of the way he looked at

me, like he was intrigued by something. The little flutters it caused in my chest were distracting.

"Let's stop for today," I said after his jaw had healed from its second break of the day. Dinner was in

ten minutes; everyone else was clearing out of the gym.

I held out my hand to help him off the mat and he took it. As he pulled himself to a standing position,

he put his hand lightly on my arm and leaned so close to my ear his breath tickled my cheek.

My first instinct was to jump away. No one came that close to me. Even as a human, I didn't

remember anyone being so near I could feel the warmth of their skin. But he began speaking, so softly that

I wouldn't be able to hear him if I moved away.

"Do they listen to us all the time in here?" he asked.

"I don't know," I whispered. "I know they do in the field. There are cameras everywhere in here, so

probably."

He straightened but didn't step away. I think I meant to put a more appropriate distance between us,

but I got distracted by the way he smiled down at me. I'd always lived in a world where I had to look up,

but for the first time I wanted to rise up on my toes and bring my face closer to his.

I heard a throat clear and I quickly took a big step back. Whether or not they could hear us, they could

most certainly see us. The guard in the corner, the cameras on the wall, the other Reboots passing by—

they could see us just fine.

"Good night," I said, turning to quickly walk away