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"Oh, believe et you to understand what I’ve been trying to tell you"

"The issue isn’t that I don’t understand, it’s that I don’t agree"

"I know," he said, "God, do I know that There have been so many times I wished you could--that you hadn’t let them crush you the way they did at Thurmond You’re so unkind to yourself, and you can’t even differentiate the actual truth from the warped version of it that they fed to you"

I was so sick of these speeches that if I hadn’t coet started But this was my price of admission I had to listen to his bullshit excuses for why he treated everyone around hirass beneath his shoes

"Never once, in the whole time I’ve known you, have you ever referred to e can do as a gift You snarl and snap your teeth if the word gifted is so much as whispered in your direction There’s a stubbornness in you I just don’t understand, no ine how exhausting it must be to use yourwhat do you call them? Abilities You punish yourself if you fail to control thes I findabout you is that you’re soift from yourself--like it’s a whole separate entity that you can beat back into submission"

He stood up and came toward me, his arms crossed over his chest in aclicked on overhead, breathing out a hiss of cold air The chill stroked its icy fingers over my bare arms, my neck, my cheeks It was a caress For asoit, but I wasn’t the same Ruby I’d been at East River I wasn’t blind to his tricks; this is how he consistently wor "

I let out a s to turn back toward the door, testing how desperate he was for me to stay How hard it would be to play this little plan of mine out

"Don’t you wonder why it’s so easy for Blues to control what they can do?" he called "It’s because each ti, it’s a naturalthey want to happen It never turns off for the Greens, because their gift is like a net over theirmore"

Whereas, for someone like Zu, a Yellow, or me, or even Cole--we had to knoe could turn it off, and co and everyone around us We used ourto return the ourselves in the process

"It must be torture for you to be around those three Blues constantly, to have theht and that you can control what you do--and then see theer and have it work perfectly You spent six years at Thur way in case it ive you a second look You knohat they’ll do if they ever catch you and bring you back to that cah to run their tests and confirm what they already know You sa quickly and quietly they took the Reds, Oranges, and Yellows out The Reds, they went to Project Jamboree The Yellows, to one of the new camps built specifically to keep their abilities at bay But what happened to the Oranges? Where did those kids go?"

My throat had closed up on itself What little courage I had left was draining out ofin

"Do you want me to tell you?" he asked, his voice quiet as he leaned his shoulder against the glass

I surprised myself with a breathless, "Yes"

"Soraht into after they closed the first one at Thurmond," Clancy said "The others, if you believe the word of some of the PSFs stationed there at the time, are two miles north of the camp, buried a few hundred feet away from the railroad tracks"

"Why?" Why kill them, aste their lives, why do it like they were animals that needed to be put dohy them--

"Because they couldn’t be controlled Period It was the neatest, easiest solution to their headache And because they also knew, if the kids were to ever be released fro that IAAN was the root of it, that they were susceptible to a non-existent second wave of the disease Our gift h kids that it won’t raise h these days--few people would take the risk of a child being claiuess

His dark eyes slid toward me "I’ve seen the military orders--the explanations for how to do it ‘huisters the smallest amount of pain I’ve never been able to reach any of them in time to save them"

"You don’t save anyone," I said bitterly "You only help yourself"

"Listen to lass "You are your abilities and they are you I can’t put it to you more plainly Do you knohy I hate this cure? It’s a state It’s a punish that isn’t our fault--all because they can’t control their fear about e can do, any more than they can control their resenter and more powerful than they are They want to strip you of yourself--your ability to protect and enforce your right to make decisions about your life Your own body Mark my words: in the end, it won’t be a choice They’ll decide this for you"