Enders by Lissa Price Read Free Book Online

mine.
    He sucked in air as if I’d burned him.
    “Sorry, did I … 
hurt
you …?” I asked.
    He pulled his arm close to his body, as if he was wounded. “No, it’s all right.”
    It was clear it wasn’t from the visible pain in his eyes. Even the edge in his voice betrayed him—he was lying. But there wasn’t time to pursue it because a vehicle entered our level, drawing our attention. It was a beat-up truck. As it passed us, I saw that the driver was an Ender wearing a scruffy green uniform. Maintenance man, maybe. He stared hard at us and parked his truck at the other end of the level.
    Hyden watched the maintenance man get out of his truck and walk toward the service door before he unlocked the van doors.
    “See this?” Hyden pointed to the thick walls of the vehicle. “It’s a blocker.” He knocked on the side of his door. “Lined with ti-steel.”
    “This must have cost a fortune,” I said.
    “How much is your life worth?” He looked directly at me.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You’re priceless to some people,” he said, looking away. He patted the side of the car. “When you’re in here, my father can’t access your chip.”
    Just hearing those words made me shiver. I was there, talking with the
Old Man’s son
. I never could have predicted this.
    “What does he want with me?” I asked.
    “You’re one of a kind. The only Metal whose chip has been altered so you can kill when someone’s occupying you. And you retain your consciousness. I’m sure he wants to study your chip.”
    “I’m happy to give it to him. I’d like nothing more than to get it out of my head.”
    Hyden looked at me with serious eyes. “If only it were that easy.”
    My stomach tightened.
    “There’s so much I have to explain,” Hyden said, “and it’s all going to sound weird.”
    “What’s not weird? Voices in my head, a chip that could explode, now you telling me the only way to be safe is to be in a tank lined with ti-steel for the rest of my life.”
    “Or very high up. Or deep enough underground, like here. That way my father’s scanning technology can’t access your signal.”
    “He accessed me when I was in my renter’s mountain cabin.”
    “I know. I’ve been able to follow him in the chiptalk airspace.”
    “What?”
    “It’s like this: sometimes I look for his signal trying to access Metals—I call it chipspace. And I work to block him.”
    “How do you know how to do that?”
    “Before I was born, my father—his name is Brockman—was working on developing a chip for mind-body transfers. Lots of other scientists were trying. My mother told me that when I was young, I’d wander into his lab and stare at the whiteboard. She said I was listening, absorbing. I don’t remember it. My father didn’t believe her. Then, as she told it,one summer day, before I could speak, I picked up a pen and figured out an equation that had been eluding him for days.”
    “Really?”
    “Maybe she was exaggerating.” He smiled. It was the first time I’d seen that.
    “From then on, he observed me, treating me like another research project. Eventually, I figured out how to make it all work. We developed it together but argued about how it should be used. I saw medical uses, but he of course chose to go for the money.”
    “Why didn’t he just sell it off, then, instead of building Prime?”
    “He needed Prime to raise capital to perfect it. Prime also publicized the tech to the top-level buyers.”
    “Like who?”
    “Foreign governments, terrorists.”
    “He’d be selling out his country.”
    “That’s the kind of man he is. He only cares about himself. That’s why you have to be in a safe location.”
    Something about the way Hyden said those words made me wonder. “You mean I can’t go back to my home?”
    “There’s no choice.”
    “But my brother, what about him? And Michael?”
    “First of all, they’ll be safer if they’re not with you. You’re the prize, the one he must