Enders (11 page)

Hyden wrapped his jacket around his hands, and together we picked the guy up and put him in the SUV. An Ender at the end of the alley yelled at us, but we ignored him. Hyden
climbed into the back with the Metal while I got in the driver’s seat.

“Go,” he said.

I started driving. “Where?”

“Head to the freeway.”

I set the navigator and concentrated on the road.

After some rustling around from the back, somebody climbed up to sit in the passenger seat next to me. Only it wasn’t Hyden. It was the guy with the plaid shirt.

Panicked, I accidentally swung the car into the next lane. “What happened to Hyden?”

I turned around and saw Hyden’s body sprawled out in the back of the car.

Plaid Shirt guided the wheel with his left hand. “Careful with my car.”

I looked at him. He smiled, and something about him seemed familiar.

“Hyden?” I asked.

“Yes,” Plaid Shirt said.

It was so weird. “Is that really you?”

“In the flesh. Well, actually, in the borrowed flesh.”

“What do you think you’re doing? You jacked that guy.”

“It’s for his own good. He would have fought us.” He took his hand off the wheel but nodded toward the road. “Focus.”

I climbed the freeway on-ramp. Hyden put his hand on my right arm. But it wasn’t his hand—it was the plaid-shirted guy’s. The whole thing was so weird. I wasn’t even sure I trusted Hyden. How well could you know someone who could be anyone they wanted to be?

“Are you really okay back there?” I craned around to get another look at Hyden’s body in the back.

“Don’t worry.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The guy you’re in.”

Hyden started patting his pockets. He pulled out a wallet and looked at a photo ID of himself.

“Jeremy Stone.” He looked through the wallet. “Not much cash. Either he was one of the donors at the end who didn’t get paid, or he ran through the money.”

“How did you get in Jeremy so fast like that?” I asked.

“Guess.”

I thought it over. “You have a chip in your head.”

“I was the first one. To test my invention.”

His hand remained on my arm, sending its warmth through me. I didn’t want to like it. I refused to like it. But the warmth was undeniable.

“This isn’t so different from your father,” I said. “He wears a mask, and you’re wearing a whole-body mask.”

He stared out the windshield. I suspect he was a bit ashamed. If he wasn’t, he should have been.

“You wouldn’t want to be me, Callie. Can you imagine hating your own body? I’m a prisoner inside it.”

I’d been a real prisoner, inside Institution 37, and it had been the worst time of my life. Much worse than being a squatter. But I had been able to escape.

Could Hyden?

“All the Metals are prisoners,” I said. “Until we can defeat your father.”

CHAPTER NINE

Hyden guessed that Jeremy had not eaten for a while because he soon got very hungry and wanted flash food from a drive-thru. He started to order for just us.

“No!” I shouted at the order machine. “Make that thirty of everything—burgers, fries, and chocolate shakes.” I turned to Hyden. “We can’t just bring back food for ourselves. Food will make them trust us.”

When we drove back to his place, he hesitated before getting out of the SUV. “Listen, I don’t want the Metals to see me in a borrowed body. Too weird.” Then he told me about a private room where I could meet him. We went up separately, me carrying the large bags of food. The Metals were so thrilled to see the food that they didn’t bother to ask why I wasn’t sitting and eating with them.

Hyden’s secret room was about the size of two of our dorm-type rooms, with a bed and a desk.

“So this is where you hide out sometimes,” I said, admiring the decor. “Nice of you to share it with me.”

He pulled a sheet from a shelf and spread it on the floor.

“Picnic?” I asked.

“Why not?”

One wall was covered with an image of a cliff overlooking the ocean, and I could practically feel the brisk spray on my face.

“That’s beautiful,” I said.

“It helps.” He shrugged. “But it’s not the real thing.”

I put the food on the cloth on the floor. He remained standing, so I did too. He moved closer to me than ever before, about a foot away. He put his hands out toward me, palms to the ceiling, in an invitation to touch.

“Callie.”

I placed my hands over his. He closed his eyes, as if he was savoring the sensation.

Finally, he opened his eyes. He gently held my hands, caressing them, then turning his palm until ours matched, in front of us. He slid his fingers down to meet the crooks of mine, and we were grasping each other’s hands.

My heart was beating faster. I unclasped my hands and pulled back.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Jeremy’s face looked puzzled. I had to get used to a whole new set of expressions now that it wasn’t Hyden’s eyes, brows, and mouth.

“It’s too weird,” I said, motioning to his body.

He moved closer to me. “Please.” He touched the back of my hand lightly with his fingers. “Come on. This is the only way I can touch you.”

I didn’t move. I wanted to see what he’d do next.

“Let’s check out his body.” Hyden lifted his shirt. “Hey, abs!”

He pretended to be surprised at Jeremy’s toned physique. He grinned and then let his shirt fall, covering it again.

He took my hand and gently placed it over his shirt, over his abs.

I let it rest there a moment. Then my mouth went dry and I pulled away.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s not you,” I said. “I don’t want to be part of this.” I shook my head. “You stole his body.”

He hung his head. I couldn’t see his face, but his hesitation suggested he was conflicted. “This is the best I can do. I’m the same inside. It’s me in here. You know that.”

I knew it, but I didn’t know how I felt about it.

“The me inside this shell is still me. What defines me? Skin? You know you can change that with the wave of a laser. Muscle? EMS can build that. Fat? It can fade away with freezing. I hope I’m more than that. Than this.” He swept a hand in front of Jeremy Stone’s body. “That I am what I think, what I believe. What I feel.”

He brought his hand to my face. Slowly, he traced his finger along my temple, to the side of my cheek.

“I miss touching,” he whispered.

He ran his finger down my jawline. I closed my eyes and felt the caress.

“Nice.” It was so faint, it was like a breath.

I moved closer. Our lips inched toward each other, pulling together in a kiss. My head spun, feeling the electricity.

We kissed until our lips burned. I traveled to another place, a place that would never have anything as mundane as a name. And then I remembered.…

“Your body.”

He pulled back to look at me with sleepy eyes. “What about it?”

“We left it in the car.”

I’d heard of people leaving babies or dogs in cars by accident, before the war, but this was a first. We rushed to the garage.

Hyden unlocked the car and opened the back door hatch. We looked at his body lying there.

“You’re still breathing,” I said.

“Of course I am.”

It felt so bizarre to see it lying there. Hyden cradled his body with a blanket.

“I look so sweet,” Hyden said.

“That’s not funny.”

“I’ll take the top part if you can handle the feet,” he said.

We carried the body, me behind Hyden. It wasn’t hard at first, but after a minute he became ten times heavier. Hyden leaned against the wall so he could press the code to open the door in the garage.

As we entered the elevator, Hyden bumped his real body, the one we were carrying, against the wall.

“Careful,” I said. “It’s still your body, remember?”

“I know.”

“No matter how many people you jack, you can’t change who you are,” I said.

He had no answer for that.

My arms began to burn from holding him, but I couldn’t bring myself to put him down.

Finally, the elevator doors opened to the lab level.

“No one’s here,” I whispered.

“They must still be in the dining room,” he said quietly.

We took his body to his private room and rested it on the couch. Hyden put the blanket over the legs.

“How long will you be asleep?” I asked.

“Hours.” He pointed to a disc patch on the neck. “Or longer.”

“You’re not thinking of keeping that body?” I asked, gesturing to Jeremy’s torso.

He stared back at me. I didn’t know if I was giving him a new idea or whether he’d been considering it all along.

“It would solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it?”

“You can’t.” I said this with the firmness I remember my mother using with me at crucial times.

He rubbed his forehead and looked down. “No,” he said finally. “I’d never do that to Jeremy.”

My shoulders relaxed. “Good.”

It was so weird, talking to him in Jeremy’s form but staring at Hyden’s real body, resting there on the couch.

“We’re going to have to explain this to the group,” I said.

“You tell them.”

“Why not you?” I asked.

“You’ll do it so much better. They like you more than me.” He forced a smile with Jeremy’s lips.

“That’s because I listen to them,” I said.

My phone rang. I looked at it and saw it was Michael. Michael?

The rule was not to call each other so that the calls couldn’t be traced.

“Don’t answer,” Hyden said.

“It’s got to be important.” I pressed the talk button. “Michael?” I said into the phone. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Flintridge,” Michael said. “Outside the old library.”

“Where’s Tyler?”

“With Eugenia, at the cabin. He’s okay.”

Hyden came closer to follow the conversation.

“Why did you leave the mountain?” I said. “It was safe. No one could scan your chip.”

At that Hyden shook his head. “Why’d he leave?” he muttered.

“I remembered something,” Michael said. “Something that didn’t happen to me, but to my renter. I needed to get away from the house so my call wouldn’t be traced to it.”

“What did you remember?” I asked.

Hyden took the phone from me. “Don’t say any more,” he said to Michael. “We’ll come get you.”

He pressed the off button and grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair. “Let’s bring him in.”

When we got to what used to be the Flintridge library, we parked across the street. Sometime during the Spore Wars, the library had been closed and barricaded. A chain-link fence surrounded it.

“I’ll go alone,” I said. “You stay.”

“Callie.” Hyden put his hand on his door handle.

“He knows me. He’s never even met you. And you aren’t even you right now,” I said, looking at Jeremy’s face. “I’ll just go get him and we’ll be right back.”