Enders(26)

I didn’t move. I wanted to see what he’d do next.

“Let’s check out his body.” Hyden lifted his shirt. “Hey, abs!”

He pretended to be surprised at Jeremy’s toned physique. He grinned and then let his shirt fall, covering it again.

He took my hand and gently placed it over his shirt, over his abs.

I let it rest there a moment. Then my mouth went dry and I pulled away.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s not you,” I said. “I don’t want to be part of this.” I shook my head. “You stole his body.”

He hung his head. I couldn’t see his face, but his hesitation suggested he was conflicted. “This is the best I can do. I’m the same inside. It’s me in here. You know that.”

I knew it, but I didn’t know how I felt about it.

“The me inside this shell is still me. What defines me? Skin? You know you can change that with the wave of a laser. Muscle? EMS can build that. Fat? It can fade away with freezing. I hope I’m more than that. Than this.” He swept a hand in front of Jeremy Stone’s body. “That I am what I think, what I believe. What I feel.”

He brought his hand to my face. Slowly, he traced his finger along my temple, to the side of my cheek.

“I miss touching,” he whispered.

He ran his finger down my jawline. I closed my eyes and felt the caress.

“Nice.” It was so faint, it was like a breath.

I moved closer. Our lips inched toward each other, pulling together in a kiss. My head spun, feeling the electricity.

We kissed until our lips burned. I traveled to another place, a place that would never have anything as mundane as a name. And then I remembered. …

“Your body.”

He pulled back to look at me with sleepy eyes. “What about it?”

“We left it in the car.”



I’d heard of people leaving babies or dogs in cars by accident, before the war, but this was a first. We rushed to the garage.

Hyden unlocked the car and opened the back door hatch. We looked at his body lying there.

“You’re still breathing,” I said.

“Of course I am.”

It felt so bizarre to see it lying there. Hyden cradled his body with a blanket.

“I look so sweet,” Hyden said.

“That’s not funny.”

“I’ll take the top part if you can handle the feet,” he said.

We carried the body, me behind Hyden. It wasn’t hard at first, but after a minute he became ten times heavier. Hyden leaned against the wall so he could press the code to open the door in the garage.

As we entered the elevator, Hyden bumped his real body, the one we were carrying, against the wall.

“Careful,” I said. “It’s still your body, remember?”

“I know.”

“No matter how many people you jack, you can’t change who you are,” I said.

He had no answer for that.

My arms began to burn from holding him, but I couldn’t bring myself to put him down.

Finally, the elevator doors opened to the lab level.

“No one’s here,” I whispered.

“They must still be in the dining room,” he said quietly.

We took his body to his private room and rested it on the couch. Hyden put the blanket over the legs.

“How long will you be asleep?” I asked.

“Hours.” He pointed to a disc patch on the neck. “Or longer.”

“You’re not thinking of keeping that body?” I asked, gesturing to Jeremy’s torso.

He stared back at me. I didn’t know if I was giving him a new idea or whether he’d been considering it all along.

“It would solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it?”

“You can’t.” I said this with the firmness I remember my mother using with me at crucial times.

He rubbed his forehead and looked down. “No,” he said finally. “I’d never do that to Jeremy.”

My shoulders relaxed. “Good.”

It was so weird, talking to him in Jeremy’s form but staring at Hyden’s real body, resting there on the couch.

“We’re going to have to explain this to the group,” I said.

“You tell them.”

“Why not you?” I asked.

“You’ll do it so much better. They like you more than me.” He forced a smile with Jeremy’s lips.

“That’s because I listen to them,” I said.

My phone rang. I looked at it and saw it was Michael. Michael?

The rule was not to call each other so that the calls couldn’t be traced.

“Don’t answer,” Hyden said.

“It’s got to be important.” I pressed the talk button. “Michael?” I said into the phone. “Where are you?”