But they’re gone.
ELLA
JULIETTE
Run, Juliette
run
faster, run until your bones break and your shins split and your muscles atrophy
Run run run
until you can’t hear their feet behind you
Run until you drop dead.
Make sure your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you.
Run, I said.
The words appear, unbidden, in my mind. I don’t know where they come from and I don’t know why I know them, but I say them to myself as I go, my boots pounding the ground, my head a strangled mess of chaos. I don’t understand what just happened. I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I don’t understand anything anymore.
The boy is close.
He moves more swiftly than I anticipated, and I’m surprised. I didn’t expect him to be able to meet my blows. I didn’t expect him to face me so easily. Mostly, I’m stunned he’s somehow immune to my power. I didn’t even know that was possible.
I don’t understand.
I’m racking my brain, trying desperately to comprehend how such a thing might’ve happened—and whether I might’ve been responsible for the anomaly—but nothing makes sense. Not his presence. Not his attitude. Not even the way he fights.
Which is to say: he doesn’t.
He doesn’t even want to fight. He seems to have no interest in beating me, despite the ample evidence that we are well matched. He only fends me off, making only the most basic effort to protect himself, and still I haven’t killed him.
There’s something strange about him. Something about him that’s getting under my skin. Unsettling me.
But he dashed out of sight when I threw another table at him, and he’s been running ever since.
It feels like a trap.
I know it, and yet, I feel compelled to find him. Face him. Destroy him.
I spot him, suddenly, at the far end of the laboratory, and he meets my eyes with an insouciance that enrages me. I charge forward but he moves swiftly, disappearing through an adjoining door.
This is a trap, I remind myself.
Then again, I’m not sure it matters whether this is a trap. I am under orders to find him. Kill him. I just have to be better. Smarter.
So I follow.
From the time I met this boy—from the first moment we began exchanging blows—I’ve ignored the dizzying sensations coursing through my body. I’ve tried to deny my sudden, feverish skin, my trembling hands. But when a fresh wave of nausea nearly sends me reeling, I can no longer deny my fear:
There’s something wrong with me.
I catch another glimpse of his golden hair and my vision blurs, clears, my heart slows. For a moment, my muscles seem to spasm. There is a creeping, tremulous terror clenching its fist around my lungs and I don’t understand it. I keep hoping the feeling will change. Clear. Disappear. But as the minutes pass and the symptoms show no signs of abating, I begin to panic.
I’m not tired, no. My body is too strong. I can feel it—can feel my muscles, their strength, their steadiness—and I can tell that I could keep fighting like this for hours. Days. I’m not worried about giving up, I’m not worried about breaking down.
