Retraining

Six was actually constructing an argument. What on earth had that girl done to him that made him say such things? He got to decide? He hadn't made a single decision for himself from the day he was born until he ran away! He wasn't allowed to decide things!

Jared was actually quite worried that the retraining wouldn't work on him now. None of the other Numbers who had gone through this had concepts of caring, happiness, or making decisions in their heads.

Normally when a Number was retrained it was because they were questioning things too much, like Five. Or because they didn't want to comply when their adolescent hormones kicked in. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

This might be because the other Numbers had never been exposed to the outside world at the time of their retraining. Six had been living with an ordinary woman for the past few weeks and it seemed that she had planted all sorts of ideas in his head.