Page 14 (1/2)

“So her nose “Like ?”

“No,” Brittany said “Bug is blue, remember?”

“Oh yeah”

“It has to be a chip of soht?”

They see this whole conversation with the same solemnity hich they considered fall colors No more, no less

Brooke, however, snapped to attention “Soet a scalpel Now”

If you’ve never heard a cheerleading captain speak these words, then you have never felt true terror A scalpel? And just as she planning on scalpeling? Because she had to know that I wasn’t letting her co of the sharp and pointy variety

Lucy with the knives had been h

“Got one!” So had a scalpel handy I wasn’t going to ask about that I really didn’t want to know

“Who do you want cutting it out?”

“Cutting what out? There will be no cutting! None Lucy, step away from the scalpel”

Lucy rolled her eyes and handed the scalpel to Tara

“You have a chip in your shoulder,” Tara said softly, like she was talking a stray puppy out fro chip of soel reacts to certain alloy , and that’s why your shoulder’s pink You’ve been tagged”

Okay, now this day officially sucked

“We have to take it out, Toby For all we know, so you to the Quad as we speak”

I didn’t respond I was too busy thinking There was a chip inchip inmy movements

“A you to the Quad as we speak” Brooke ainal statement

“She never touched me She never even came close to me She was across the room the entire time She couldn’t have done this”

In the privacy of my own mind, I came up with an alternative theory Not one, but two of the one badly, both times because of the presence of a third party Someone had blown up Kann’s car, and someone had stolen the nanobots I’d wondered how the intruder could possibly be an unknown player, how they could have known to come to Ross’s lab, and now I knew

Whoever the figure in black was, I’d led theht to the weapon Soyback on our operation, and now that person had soy And, to add salt to the wound, if I’d used the twins’ stupid shower gel before noe ht have discovered this fact before we’d lost the nanobots and before the aforeht

“Got it” Tara’s words snapped me back to reality, and I realized that she’d already made a small incision in my skin, so small that it barely bled and didn’t hurt until I realized that it should have