Free Enders by Lissa Price Page A

apple juice.
    Soon, Lily started twitching and mumbling. Then she opened her eyes with a start.
    “What?” she said, disoriented. “Who are you?”
    “I’m Callie. And you’re okay. It’s safe here.”
    She struggled to sit up.
    “Just rest,” I said. “Are you hungry?” Food could turn an enemy into a friend … or at least buy a little trust.
    I brought the tray over. She picked up the sandwich and sniffed. Then she bit into it.
    “Have you got more?” she asked.
    I knew then we were going to be okay.

    Over the next couple of weeks, we brought many more Starters to the lab. We were able to convince most of them by talking instead of using force. But no matter how we brought them in, they all wanted to stay. We had a real dorm going, full of Metals with various skill sets. Some of those skills had been exploited when the Starters were rented, like wrestling or martial arts, and they continued to practice them if it was possible. But other skills, like cooking or making repairs, became useful in our community.
    Meals were taken in shifts to accommodate everyone in the dining room. It was just off the kitchen, a large, white-walled, bare-floored space with worktables, and dinner was the happiest time of the day. Breakfast and lunch were grab-and-run, but I wanted everyone to eat dinner together, partly because it made sense to share the cooking duties, but also because it made the Starters a community.
    I missed Tyler. Hyden convinced me that the risk of doing another airscreen-talk session was too great. And I wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t just make it harder on both of us in the end. It was easier not to hear my little brother’s voice. It kept me focused on what I had to do.
    Rescue Metals.
    Hyden and I got so good at it that sometimes we even did it without Ernie. If Hyden had to touch someone, he used a towel or a jacket as a barrier. We were both more relaxed around each other, but he still hadn’t told me what was behind his inability to touch.
    “Hyden, what happened to you?” I asked one day when we were driving on a stretch of highway, alone on a Metal hunt. “Why can’t you be touched?”
    He was silent for a long moment, then inhaled deeply. He held his breath as if considering whether to answer me. Then he let it out with a sound that I hoped was relief—but maybe was a huff.
    “I was working in the lab, with my father. This was back before we split. My mother was there; she’d just brought us cocoa with marshmallows.” He smiled. “I don’t remember most of that day, but I remember the marshmallows. Weird, right?”
    I shook my head. I knew what that was like, rememberingsome bizarre detail about my life before the spores. Before I became a Starter.
    Hyden cleared his throat. “There was an accident, an explosion. We never figured out why, but it happened. My dad was all right, but my mother and I were burnt.” His voice cracked on the word “burnt.” “We had treatments, surgeries, but there was pain for months.”
    “That’s awful.”
    “Once we were healed to the point where we could handle cloth on our skin, we still couldn’t handle touch. They tried skin desensitization therapy, where a therapist touches you skin on skin, but neither of us could take it. It was excruciating.”
    “When was this?”
    He gripped the wheel more tightly. “Two years ago. They said I was lucky to be alive, that in the past they wouldn’t have been able to fix me. Look at me—you can’t really tell.”
    He pushed back his shirt and held up his arm. The skin was perfect.
    “So if your skin has been repaired—”
    “And my nerves.”
    “And your nerves, then why—”
    “There’s a disconnect in my brain. My brain perceives pain when I’m touched.”
    I thought about that. “And when you touch someone else?”
    “I can only do it with some barrier, like gloves or my jacket.”
    “Like when you pushed me away at the bombing.”
    He nodded.
    “So it could get better someday?”