Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
She looked up, her hands stilling as her gaze washed over his face. Sunshine. Her eyes on him felt like sunshine, and each time she cast it upon him, something inside seemed to grow. Something that, without her light, had lain dormant in the dark. Waiting.
“How often did you chase us?” she asked.
“Once a month, during the full moon.”
“Why the full moon?”
He gave a slight shrug. “I don’t know. To make it more exciting maybe? To provide more light? They didn’t say. You weren’t always there. Sometimes it was others. Most of them never woke up.”
“What did you do with them, Sam?” He saw that she was suddenly holding herself very still, waiting for his answer.
“I hid them. You were the first one that ran from me. You were stronger than the others.”
She was quiet again for several long moments as she secured the tape. “They told us we were dreaming,” she said. “About being in the woods. They told us the medication brought on dreams so vivid they seemed real. And sometimes hallucinations. They told us we were imagining things.”
“You weren’t.”
She tossed the roll of gauze down. “Yes, I know. I know.” She covered her face for a moment, her shoulders rising and falling as though she was attempting to rein in her emotions. “I know,” she said again, and this time it sounded more like a sigh. She dropped her hands and stood. The scissors she’d used fell from her lap and clattered to the floor. “They were supposed to care for us, and they used us. They threw us to the wolves.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“But they were supposed to care for you too, Sam. And I know you say they did, but…” She shook her head. She turned away and then turned back. “The ADHM, the medication…is that why your ribs were replaced, Sam? I thought the bullet would have shattered them, but it didn’t. Because they’re made of steel. You have other steel parts too.” Her gaze moved to his bandaged legs and then back to his eyes. “Your kneecaps. Your femurs. They were hit, but the bullets were deflected. The wounds on your legs were direct hits, but they’re merely flesh wounds.”
Sam looked away even as he nodded. He felt shame creep through him, casting a shadow over the sunshine. He felt exposed in a way he hadn’t before. Much of him was made of various metals. His ribs, his knees, his thigh bones, his shoulders, and his temples. Any person on the street could see what had been done to his hair and his face and the scars that might show beyond his clothes, but no one had ever looked inside him. No one knew the ways in which he’d been carved out and replaced.
He’d been a mere shell, and Dr. Heathrow had created a human where one had not existed before. Yet human felt like a misnomer to Sam. Monster felt more accurate. So it was how he defined himself.
“The man who… The shooter, he was one of the kids in the hospital with you? In the same program?”
“Yes.”
“That day…when you said they wouldn’t help you, that they’d hurt you, you meant the heads of the program you were in?”
That day. In the schoolyard. “I wasn’t supposed to be there,” he murmured. He felt her gaze on his face but didn’t look her way.
“Did you have any idea what he was going to do?” She seemed afraid to ask the question, her words soft and hesitant.
Kill children. “No,” Sam said, meeting her eyes. “I visited him an hour before. He seemed off. Something was wrong. I saw an address at his apartment. I went there. It was the school. It was too late. I tried…” He closed his eyes briefly. If he’d only been ten minutes earlier. Just ten measly minutes, and everything would have been different.
“Why did he do it? Do you know why? Did he…go rogue? Or…go crazy?”
“Maybe. I don’t know the why.”
She looked away worriedly. “They obviously will have recovered his body. They’ll begin an investigation.”
“They won’t trace him back to the program,” Sam said. They’d do whatever necessary to avoid that.
Autumn bit at her lip for a minute. “I called my job and took a leave of absence. But that only gives me about four weeks. You have to tell someone what happened to us, Sam. Not just with the shooting but with the hospital. The training. The woods. It wasn’t right, Sam, no matter how they justified it.”
“I can’t tell anyone about the program, Autumn. I meant it when I said they won’t help me, they’ll hurt me. And as far as the training, they’ll say we were both sick and delusional. No one will believe us. No one will back us up.” He caught her eye. “You’ve tried, haven’t you?” Because she was not one to let that go. She’d told him she was in New York City looking for answers about her past. But more than that, he’d read her journal—he knew her, or at least he knew she was a fighter. She would have fought. It would have gotten her nowhere.