Endgame Novella #1 by James Frey Read Free Book Online Page B

of course, tangles of circuitry, and favored toxins. Some girls fashion jewelry from wire and polished stones, and everyone eventually figures out how to scam personal pleasure items out of the minders. Stuffed animals, when they were small, then puzzles and games, now comic books and football banners. They allhave their own laptops, of course, and while access to the internet has been disabled, they were all taught to program, to hack, to build and rebuild the circuits from scratch, before they were 10 years old—if they want to punch through a firewall and connect with the world, no one can stop them.
    Their laptops are frequently searched for contraband material; their belongings are itemized and approved. There are no locks, no doors, no privacy, but none of this is needed. After all, they have no secrets from one another, or from their minders.
    Or, at least, they are not supposed to.
    Those who keep secrets learn early to keep them in their heads.
    This is where Kala keeps her shreds of memory, the scents and colors of a family that has probably long since forgotten her. No one knows how carefully she has pieced together these fractured shards, trying so hard to make some comprehensible picture come into view. She doesn’t know why it matters to her and to no one else. Maybe because she’s missing a piece of herself. She believes that if she knew them, could find them and face them, she could fill the puzzle in.
    This is her most dangerous secret.
    It has, for so long, been her only secret. After tonight, she will have two.
    Kala sleeps beneath the southernmost window. The moon is already setting when Alad appears at the opening, the stars bright. Something has kept Kala awake. Like she knew he was coming.
    She is ready.
    They have spent years practicing the art of subterfuge, so it is nothing for her to ease out of bed and launch herself silently through the window. The other girls never stir in their sleep. It occurs to her that she may not be the first to have had a midnight caller—how many girls have tiptoed past her cot, slipped open the door or climbed out the window? How many have breathed in the night air and the musky scent of nerves and need, clasped hands, and run into the night?
    She prefers not to know. She doesn’t want to think of this as somethingusual, common . There is nothing common about the way she feels when Alad takes her hand and looks at her, so full of fear and hope, nothing usual about their soft footsteps padding across the camp until they reach a secluded clearing, within the perimeter of the base but still far beyond prying eyes. The camp is built on an excavated lake bed, one of the few areas in this arid corner of the country where clay and stone interrupt the endless miles of sand. There is nothing here but the scratchings of spiders, the bare rock, and the two of them.
    Kala should be nervous. Of being caught—of not being caught, and whatever happens next. But when he cups her chin in his strong hands, when he whispers, “I couldn’t wait any longer,” when she closes her eyes and some powerful force draws their lips together, it all feels too right for worry.
    It is like running. No thought, only motion: only breath, only heartbeat, only the body and its needs.
    Except there is no motion now.
    She has never felt more still. She never wants to move from this place, from his arms.
    “You’re so beautiful,” he tells her, and she goes tense, because she knows it to be a lie. She knows her green eyes are too wide apart and her slim, muscled body is all sharp lines and hard edges. Her black hair is hacked off close to her scalp, which makes her ears look huge. These aren’t things she minds, but they are things she knows.
    Then he continues.
    “You’re like a living weapon,” he says quietly. She can feel his lips move against the skin of her neck. “A blade. Shining in the night. The way you move, the way you strike . . . it’s like liquid starlight.”
    She