Read Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin for Free Online

fast.
I roll toward the building and tuck myself flat against
 the wall. The jutting overhang of the upper floor gives me
 six inches of cover at most. As bullets dive into the ground
 near my feet, I scramble clumsily along the wall, then lose
 my balance, smacking my head against the rough granite
 wall in almost the exact spot where the insert came loose
 from my skull. The pain is blinding, but I keep going.
I’m so cold I can hardly get my body to work. I think
 my wet clothes are starting to freeze. The cold obliterates
 every thought in my head, and my need to get away from
 it overpowers every other instinct, even my urge to flee. I
 try every door I pass, but none of them budge.
Looking over my shoulder, I wonder when one of those
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soldiers is going to track me down. I shove my hands into
 the front pockets of the hoodie, but the wet fabric gives
 no warmth. I feel something, though. Something small,
 plastic, rectangular.
The passcard!
Maybe I can find a place to hide, some little mouse hole
 or a cabinet under a sink somewhere. The police will come
 eventually. You can’t attack a hospital and expect to get
 away with it.
Not unless you attack in the middle of a blizzard. And
 the hospital is in the middle of nowhere. And help couldn’t
 arrive even if it wanted to.
There’s a sudden, painful heaviness in my rib cage, and
 it tells me that I’ve hit the dark truth. I’m on my own,
 stranded here, and no one is coming to help me.
I close my frozen fingers around the passcard and con-
 tinue running along the side of the building until I come to
 a huge garage bay door. There’s a magnetic card reader on
 the wall, so I zip the card through it and immediately wish
I hadn’t. The door rises, incredibly slowly and incredibly
 loudly. I might as well have sent up a flare to let the soldiers
 know where I am.
Once the door rattles to a halt, I don’t want to risk low-
 ering it again. Someone will hear it for sure. I’ll have to
 leave the door wide open. Forget about staying warm.
I press my hands to my head. I still feel that slow drip-
 ping sensation and, now with it, something much worse—a
 terrible, budding sadness unfolding inside my mind. It feels
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    like something bad has already happened, and something
 worse is about to follow. I’m more afraid of this sudden
 ache than I am of the men with guns who are after me.
Because this thing—whatever it is—is coming from deep
 inside me. And I can’t run from it.
I’m momentarily paralyzed. I keep gripping my head
 and stare down at the floor, at the wisps of snow swirl-
 ing around the lawn mowers. I need a plan. I need . . . I
 need. . .
What do I need? I’m so cold, I can’t think!
“You need wings, little one. But no one has wings.”
My mother speaks these words to me as if she’s stand-
 ing just over my shoulder. I jerk to my right to look, even
 though I know she can’t be here. Because she’s dead. They
 told me that much.
But I remember her. A little bit, anyway.  
I remember that she said these words to me, and how
 she said them—the last traces of her accent hugging each
 word. But I cannot remember her face.
The next thing I know, I’m pulled into the past.
I’m sitting on a stool, staring at a fat woman with rings on every
finger. It’s not my mother. It’s Mrs. Esteban. She’s stirring a pot
 in a too-small restaurant kitchen, her long skirt shifting with each
 stroke. The scent of cooking rice and spice and hot lard fills the
 room. I could lick the air, it smells so good.
I am seven, maybe eight. Some kids were chasing me, so I
 ducked down an alley and then into the back of this pupusería,
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    smack into the large back end of Mrs. Esteban. She is a cook here,
 and she also lives in the third-floor apartment directly below my
 mother and me. She let me hide from the kids who were chasing
 me, but now she’s impatient