Page 8 (1/1)
He is scarlet with rage as he stu his free arirls around me have crawled under the tables; I’m diunshot, the end tosince any of us tried this that I wonder if they’ve forgotten what they’re supposed to do
They co of a nearby baton registers as a change in the flow of the air around s down By the ti forward The weight that’s slammed into me from behind drops me to the floor My chin connects with the concrete and I taste blood There is not a single part ofin pain, but so the fire I kick back, trying to catch him--he can’t have me, I won’t let Tildon do this
My hands are wrenched froainst h to capture both wrists at once and secure the up like a bucking horse, and the war closer to my ear He breathes out one word
"Sa to kill her
You spend ti violent shades He huffs and puffs like the Big Bad Wolf, and he’s so slow to recover from that first blow to his chest, he can’t avoid the back of her skull as she sends it sailing straight into his face Between the blood that’s rushed to his face, and the blood that’s co out of his crooked nose, the PSF’s skin looks blistered by his own rage This is the kind of anger that cracks bones Crushes windpipes
It’s not until she turns around and claws him across the face that the realization sinks nition turns into a roar as the girl turns back ina beautiful face defiant She looks like so out of its tie, her face flushed with griirl who once jumped out of our tree and broke her arm, just to prove to me she wasn’t scared like I was
This is Saely,into fists Shit, shit, shit I’ve seen her before as she alking toward the Factory--well Before that I saw her thisinto the Mess I saw her inside the Mess I saw her every step of the walk over here, feeling every bit as creepy as Iback to her, drawn to her face like a lone candle flame in the dark I’m so damn stupid that even when I saw the faint scar above her lip, curved toward her nose, I thought, She must have had a cleft lip like Sa for one particular face, that I ht here
He touched her I watched hiht he wanted to intimidate her, push her around like they do with all the kids here But the look on his face was like a snake’s--eyes glassy,under thehis face toward her ear I had to concentrate on controllingUp in the rafters, the PSFs hovered like hawks, unsure whether or not to intervene with the hunt happening below I don’t knohat they thought when they looked at each other, but I do know they didn’t do one daot a hell of a lot bolder Useless pricks I knohat "search" ht here, in front of everyone Use it as an excuse to deoing to let that fly I see it in her face She knows exactly what’s going to happen to her, and she just doesn’t care She is a fighter against the ropes, ready to go doinging
I can’t do a daivenother than stand here like a scarecrow, trying to keep the fluttering kids at bay with nothing other than their own fear To the camp controllers and PSFs, our minds have been drained of will, of impulse, of that fluid connection between the head and the heart that lets you make decisions The Trainers know the fire in us is bottomless They took care to beat the fla us little piles of e fuel to turn sparks into a blaze
The PSFs need to think I don’t feel a thing as I watch the scene play out like a car crash in front of overnment’s "care" because I have followed the only rule I have: Don’t react I must stand as blank-faced as the others even as the terees in the center of my chest, and I sith the effort it takes to control myself to be still I can’t throw years of work away in an instant, let the--the way they did to the other kids who didn’t take to their training methods The ones who burnt themselves out, too hot, too volatile for even thefor weeks-- in their eyes when everyone else was checked out, vacant, scratching at their lives like dull pencils until the Trainers handed them a sharpener I aht in front of one