“I wouldn’t put anything past him. It’s not hard to create a voice. He just needed to find a sample on the Pages and then extrapolate from that. I’m sure your father had a voice sample on his Page, right? Everyone does.”
Images of my dad fishing, talking to the camera, flashed through my memory. Only the oldest Enders didn’t believe in documenting some part of their lives for everyone to access.
“Of course,” I said.
“He used his voice to get to you.” Hyden thought for a moment. “What did your father do?”
“Inventor. He was part of the team that invented the handlite.” I unwrapped my Supertruffle.
Hyden leaned forward in his chair. “The handlite? That’s huge. What else did he work on?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t talk about his work much. If we asked, he would joke, say it was too boring to be of any interest. And then he’d talk about holos or old films. He loved those.” I took a deep breath. “He never knew his parents,” I said. “And my mother lost hers to a car accident. Then she had me in her thirties. But the spores took her.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “You just never know, do you?”
An image of my mother rose in my mind, and I suddenly felt exhausted and on the verge of tears. The chocolate tasted bitter in my mouth.
“I saw the spore fall on her arm,” I said softly. “My world stopped that day.”
“I know,” he said.
For a moment, his eyes locked onto mine. I knew he wanted to comfort me. This was the kind of moment where any normal person would touch your shoulder or offer a hug. But not Hyden. I swallowed hard and tried to change the subject.
“Do you hate Enders?” I asked. “Except for Redmond, of course.”
“I don’t hate all of them, just the ones who make the rules, who set the laws that say Starters can’t work and have to be locked up in institutions. Didn’t they see they were giving Starters no way out?” He shook his head. “You must hate them too. Look at what they’ve done to you. Killed your parents, forced you out on the streets.”
“I don’t hate all of them.” I rolled the wrapper in my hands into a ball. “Some of them … I know they were scared too. They saw themselves getting older with no income to support themselves. They needed those jobs.”
He finished his Supertruffle and rubbed his hands to wipe off the crumbs. “What do you want, Callie Woodland?”
“I want my family back.”
“Can’t have it, sorry. You have to make a new family out of what you have left,” he said. “We all do. You’re lucky you’ve got your brother.”
Tyler. He was the one person who could make me stop obsessing over the voice.
“I want him to have real peace,” I said. “A safe home where he won’t have to worry about being kidnapped by your father, by anybody. I want the chip out of his head. That would be a start.”
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do that.” He looked down. “Maybe you’ll settle for just feeling safe a day at a time?”
“No. I won’t be happy until I know he and I are no longer Metals.”
Hyden’s eyes told me he didn’t think that was possible.
“What, you think we can’t have that?” I asked.
“I didn’t say anything,” he said.
“You don’t know what it’s like, to feel this foreign object in your head that someone as vile as your father can invade. It’s something I live with every minute of the day. Sometimes I want it out so bad I think I’ll do it myself.”
“Callie,” he said, “you don’t mean that.”
“I want to have someone try to remove it.”
Hyden shook his head. “We’ve never been able to successfully remove a chip. Not that Redmond’s tried with humans, but he did with lab animals. And we lost every one.”
“Don’t tell me that.” I took the chocolate wrapper I’d been holding and flung it into a trash can. “I need to believe that someday this will be out of Tyler and me. That we’ll be free from him. I’m sure I’m not the only Metal who feels this way.”
I looked at the green plant on the table and realized my vision was going blurry again.
“Callie?” Hyden said.
His voice seemed very far away.
Helena’s memory this time was in Prime Destinations. Images of donor girls, with words—“skier,” “snowboarder,” “ballet dancer”—flashing around them. The voice of Tinnenbaum, the master salesman, selling her on their skills. A rush of feeling from Helena.