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Six sees the revolver in his waistband the sauy," Six whispers

He pounds again and again until the lights in the frontturn on Then, through the door, a woet out of here, Tiht now!" he yells back "Or else, Charlene! Or else, you heardistance of hile holding a snake in its talons

She yells back, her voice shakier than before: "Just leave me alone, Tim! Why are you here? Why won’t you just leave me alone?"

He pounds and yells even harder I’le and snake right off his neck, when I see the gun slowly crawl up his lower back until it floats away froun up against the back of the man’s head and buries it in his brown hair She cocks the ha on the door He stops breathing, too Six pushes the gun even harder into his skull and then she pushes it stiffly to the right, spinning the un in front of his face o white He blinks and shakes his head violently, expecting to wake up in his bed or in the back alley of whatever bar he caun side to side and I wait for her to say so, to really spook the hell out of hiun towards his car She shoots, and a radius of broken glass appears on the windshield He screaun at his face again and he quiets down, letting a stream of snot hit his upper lip "Please, please, please," he says "I’ht now I swear I’ain I see the curtain of the fronte blond wo right now I’un Six ai; the rear driver’s sideexplodes into a thousand pieces

"No! Okay, okay!" the h of his jeans Six un at the front , and he makes eye contact with the blond woman inside "And I’ll never coun bobs to the left twice, indicating he can leave The man rips his car door open and dives in Stones spit out from under his tires as he reverses out of the driveway and then barrels down the road The woun that’s floating next to her front door, and that’s when Six flings it over the house with such force that it’s sure to land in the next county

We run back to the road and then we continue to run until there isn’t a house in sight I wish I could see Six’s face

"I could do that kind of stuff all day," she finally says "It’s like being a superhero"

"Humans do love their superheroes," I say "Do you think she’ll call the police?"

"Nah She’s probably going to think it was all a bad dream"

"Or the best dreas we could do for Earth with our Legacies if eren’t busy being hunted or hated

"How did you train yourself, anyway?" I ask "I can’t is I did if it hadn’t been for Henri pushing me so much"

"What other choice did I have? Either we adapt or we perish So I adapted Katarina and I trained for years before ere captured, but obviously never once after ot out of that cave I pro to be in vain, and the only way to do that was to seek revenge So I picked up where we had left off It was hard at first, especially on er Besides, I’ve had acies came sooner than yours, and I’m older than you"

"You know," I say, "my sixteenth birthday--or at least the day I celebrated as o"

"John! Why didn’t you tell us?" she asks, then lets go ofme instantly visible "We could have celebrated"

I s blindly in the dark She takesht of Sarah co it out

"So as she like?" I ask "Katarina?"

A mo others And she was funny We used to joke and laugh a lot, which probably see how serious I usually am"

I chuckle "I didn’t say it, you did"

"But hey, no changing the subject Why didn’t you say anything about your birthday?"

"I don’t know I actually forgot about it until yesterday, and then it just see on"

"It’s your birthday, John; it’s not pointless Every birthday any of us are lucky to have is cause for celebration, considering what’s hunting us And anyway, had I known I "

"Yeah, you uy like that on his birthday," I say, and then nudge her She nudges me back Bernie Kosar leaps from the brambles and trots beside us Several burrs are stuck to his fur like Velcro, and I let go of Six’s hand to pluck therass and a winding river lie ahead of us We turn around and amble back towards the house

"Does it bother you that you never got your Chest?" I ask after a few minutes of silence

"In a way I think it fueledI could do about it So I did what I thought was s the rest of you I just wish I could have found Number Three before they did"

"Well, you foundif you hadn’t Or Bernie Kosar, for that rip loosens a little Guilt rises in my chest as we make our way back to the house I do love Sarah, but it’s hard to iine a life with her when I’m so far away, on the run, with no sense of where the future will take ht now is the one I’ The one with Six