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smiled, kissing her again as I slid onto the mattress. She kicked her shoes off and I did the same, slipping beneath the blanket she held out for me. She was still wearing the shirt I’d given her when we visited my parents’ house, and it smelled a little like home when I pulled her close.
    I didn’t want to remember home, or my parents, or how they rejected me. How I’d killed a man minutes after I’d toldthem I was the same person they remembered. I knew it was the HARC drugs that had made me an insane, flesh-craving monster, but I couldn’t help but feel I’d lied to them. After everything I’d seen and done on our escape, I wasn’t nearly the same person who’d left them a few weeks ago. It was ridiculous to think I was.
    But I often didn’t feel like a Reboot, either. I wondered if Wren really didn’t feel anything about the people she’d killed, or if she just hid it well. If being less emotional was truly a Reboot trait, then I hadn’t acquired it in my twenty-two minutes.
    Being able to brush off terrible things the way Wren did might have been useful, actually. I could see how numbness would be preferable to the weight sitting on my chest.
    I winced. The human version of me never would have considered that. He would have been horrified by the prospect of shutting off guilt.
    Wren looked up at me and I ran my hand into her hair and kissed her more intensely than I had intended. She wrapped an arm around my waist and kissed me back, tilting her head up as she pulled back slightly. Her eyes searched mine and I suspected some of my emotions were showing, because she seemed to be trying to find the right words.
    “I think we’re okay now,” she said softly. “I think we’re safe here.”
    I pressed my hand into her back, touching my foreheadagainst hers as I smiled. I got the feeling she was lying, or at least stretching the truth, because there was no way Wren felt safe yet. But I appreciated that she wanted to make me feel better.
    “Thank you,” I said quietly as I kissed her again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
FOUR
WREN
    I WOKE TO BIRDS CHIRPING AND I JERKED, MY HAND INSTINCTIVELY reaching for the gun at my hip. I found nothing but my old HARC pants. The heavy material at the front of the tent flapped in the wind, and I let out a slow breath.
    I was safe.
    Well, sort of. Safer than a few days ago, at least.
    My second instinct was to find Ever in the bed next to me, and my head turned to the left before I could stop myself. There was nothing there but the fabric of the tent. I took in a shaky breath as I looked away. At least I didn’t have to stare at her empty bed in my old HARC room.
    Callum was on my other side, hands behind his head, hisgaze fixed at the small opening at the top of the tent. He was so still that for a moment I panicked, thinking he’d slipped back into insanity, but his eyes shifted to me and he managed a small smile. I could tell what he was thinking without him having to say it. The horror of what he’d done, the memory of the man he’d killed, was written all over his face. There was nothing I could say. My only hope was he found a way to forget, or move on, or do whatever normal people did when they had guilt about taking a life.
    Someday I’d ask him how he could torture himself over one human life when I’d taken too many to count. I’d ask him why he liked me when he despised killing so much. Someday I’d point out the weirdness of that.
    But not now.
    I sat up and ran my hands through my hair, avoiding Callum’s gaze. I needed a shower. And new clothes. I was still wearing his old three-sizes-too-big T-shirt. They couldn’t possibly have enough clothes for everyone, though. I might just have to wash the ones I had.
    “Wren?”
    I sighed at the sound of Micah’s voice from outside the tent and crawled across the dirt to pull back the flap of the tent,