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Maybe he and I were the same color beneath our skin

And maybe ould both be dead by tomorrow

"Keep up!" the PSF snapped He didn’t try to hide his annoyance as I hobbled after him, but he didn’t need to worry; you couldn’t have paid me to stay in the Infirmary, not while I was conscious Not even with the new threat hanging over my head I knehat they used to do there

I kneas under the layers of white paint

The earliest kids they had brought in, the first guinea pigs, had been subjected to a whole array of electroshock and brain-chop-shop terrors Stories were passed around camp with sick, al for ways to strip the kids’ abilities--"rehabilitate" them--but they had mostly just stripped their will to live The ones who iven warden positions when the first se bit of luck and tirew larger and larger as the cao, they’d run out of space completely There were no new buses after that

I still wasn’t h for the soldier He pushed ory light over us; the PSF shoved hpain inme out so outside, breathing in the daful of misty rain, and sed the bitterness down I needed to think Assess If he was taking me outside to be shot, and was on his own, I could easily overpower him That wasn’t the issue But in fact, I had no way of slipping past the electric fence--and no idea where the hell I was

When they had brought me to Thurmond, the familiarity of the scenery had been inia aren’t all that different, even though Virginians would have you believe otherwise Same trees, same sky, same aeather--I was either drenched in rain or sticky with huinia at all But a girl in my cabin swore up and down that she had seen a WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA sign on her ride in, so that was the theory orking with

The PSF had slowed considerably, ainst theover hih above on the Control Tower

The ht added itself to the ball and chain of terror I was dragging behind ; it was only called the Tower because it stuck up like a broken finger in a sea of one-story wooden shacks arranged in rings The electric fence was the outer ring, protecting the world fros Blues, the next two rings Before they were taken away, the few Reds and Oranges lived in the next rings They’d been closest to the Tower--better, the controllers thought, to keep an eye on them But after a Red had blown up his cabin, theythe Greens as a buffer in case any of the real threats tried to make a run for the fence

Number of escape attempts?

Five

Number of successful escape attempts?