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"Hey, Jules!" he yelled "Did you get pillows and blankets and everything in that tent?"

"Yeah, it’s all set!" she called fro to walk away

"Letelse!" he called

I sort of waved in reply, torn between being annoyed at her special treatrateful that had been so easy

I found Wren in the saht flickered off her blond hair and, even exhausted, she was striking, the irl I’d ever seen, in several ways Her sh, al expression she often wore It was one of the first things I noticed about her I re sort of scared and sort of turned on at the saetting very far, and I extended my hand down to Wren "Come with me?"

She took my hand and let me pull her up As alked, she slid an arainst my chest, which made a few Reboots turn to look at us The numbers seemed just as important here as they were at HARC, and I wondered if they were staring at just her, or because a Twenty-two and One-seventy-eight were together

I led her to the tent and pulled back the flap There was a small fire pit in the middle, but it wasn’t lit Next to that were two blankets and two pillows on top of a thin, homemade mattress Given the arowing cotton somewhere Successfully, it seemed

Wren plopped down on the mattress as I climbed in after her "Is this just for us?"

"Yeah, Micah said he had it cleared out for you" I stayed crouched near the tent flap, suddenly aware of the fact that we didn’t have to sleep in the same tent if we didn’t want to When we escaped froether behind trash bins or against tree trunks We’d had the night into sleep in the sa with a loose string on her pants and notmy eyes I wanted to crawl onto theover our heads, butwith the other Reboots, if you’d like to be alone," I said, shifting closer to the edge of the tent to prove I was serious

She gave hed softly "Iin here without me I didn’t want to assu her hand out to ers in between hers and scooted toward the bed, until I was close enough for her to lean down and brush her lips against mine

"I’m alwaysher again as I slid onto the mattress She kicked her shoes off and I did the sa beneath the blanket she held out for iven her e visited my parents’ house, and it smelled a little like home when I pulled her close

I didn’t want to remember home, or my parents, or how they rejected me How I’d killed a man minutes after I’d told them I was the sas that hadmonster, but I couldn’t help but feel I’d lied to the I’d seen and done on our escape, I wasn’t nearly the sao It was ridiculous to think I was

But I often didn’t feel like a Reboot, either I wondered if Wren really didn’t feel anything about the people she’d killed, or if she just hid it well If being less emotional was truly a Reboot trait, then I hadn’t acquired it inable to brush off terrible things the way Wren did ht have been useful, actually I could see how nu on my chest

I winced The human version of me never would have considered that He would have been horrified by the prospect of shutting off guilt