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  But the fact that I was now the bomb was worse than being a Positive. I was the thing to be scared of.

  "So, have they said what your symptoms are yet?"

  "No," I respond. "There hasn't been any change in my blood work either, so it's kind of hard to tell."

  "Maybe yours will be quick," he responds. "Unlike mine, you know?"

  "Does yours—um, hurt or anything?"

  "Not really," he responds."After testing it usually does, but it mostly feels like nothing."

  "What else is wrong with you because of that?"

  Atticus sighs and scratches his head. "Before the chip, I had to wear an oxygen tank. It had these little wheels attached to it and straps so I could wear it as a backpack," he says, a smirk spreads across his face. "Dagan always used to help me carry it."

  "Dagan? Who's that?"

  "He's my—was my boyfriend."

  I swallow and break eye contact with him. Death should be something that doesn't phase me anymore, but it doesn't mean that I won't get uncomfortable talking about it. I can hear it Atticus' voice that nothing good happened to his boyfriend, and I hate myself for even bringing it up.

  "Anyway," he says, shaking his head. "I had interstitial lung disease. No doctor could explain what was causing it. My parents had taken me to every specialist under the sun. Not one of them could give them an answer. They told them I'd most likely need a lung transplant by the time I was fourteen.

  My parents were at their wits end. Their insurance couldn't cover the full cost of the transplant, I'd be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of my life. I accepted that I was going to die young. I actually told my doctor that. So then, he recommended another option."

  "The chip," I answer.

  Atticus nods. "I was entered into a trial period with the chip. No guarantees, no promise of extended life. Just hope. Hope that I wouldn't have to go under the knife or die." A coughing fit interrupts him. He wheezes some air into his lungs afterwards and sits up straight again. "As you can see, it was successful in keeping me alive longer."

  "Atticus, I'm sorry."

  He smiles and shakes his head. "No worries," he responds. "Seems like the chip is attacking mainly my nervous system now which makes me think that's what was causing my lung disease in the first place. Don't really know how though. It's just a theory."

  "I hope they find a way to help you."

  "Yeah," he responds. He pulls at the threads in his pant leg. "What about you? Were you sick before you got the chip?"

  "No, actually," I say, shifting to my stomach. I rest my head in my palms. "My sister was though. She needed it and my parents just signed me up for it because I was still a minor and had to do what they said."

  "Well, it wasn't really what they said that mattered in that situation," Atticus says. "How old were you when you got your chip?"

  "Ten."

  "Chips were already mandatory by then," he responds. "After two years of human trials on a handful of patients, the chip was backed by every major insurance agency in the world. Took a lot of pressure of those companies not having to worry about something like a degenerative lung disease"

  I nod. It never really occurred to me that the chip was something that was required by someone else other than my parents. I hated them for making me get one. The feeling of pure anger never seemed to leave since then.

  "Positive." The voice makes me jump. I turn and see a guard standing on the other side of the box attached to my room. "Please place the slide back in the box when you're done."

  The guard marches to Atticus' cell, and the door swings open. "See you later, kid." He moves in front of the man in the hazmat suit with his head facing the ground.

  I squeeze my eyes shut waiting, hoping really, that the prick on my finger wouldn't have pain. If I didn't feel anything after, this was just a dream. The chips never malfunctioned. My sister never died. I never went through surgery. Everything was perfect again.

  But the pain comes, and it takes everything in me not to breakdown completely.

  Chapter 10

  Our cell doors pop open sometime after I fall asleep. Two people in hazmat suits wait outside the doorways. “Please exit your cells,” a voice demands over a loudspeaker.

  Atticus lowers himself to the floor and limps to the open doorway. I mirror him and meet him outside the cells. He smiles and nods which makes the pit in my gut disappear for the moment. Our new cell mate follows behind us in a dragging shuffle.

  “Where are we going?” I say, my voice coming out hushed in the bare hallway.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “The head doctors are testing out group interaction,” one of the worker says, rolling their eyes. "Orders from upstairs." They don’t turn around, and the silence returns in a rush afterwords. A shiver travels through my spine to my hands and feet.

  Maybe this is where they send us to a mass slaughter. I remember in my history class seeing the images of Holocaust victims being walked to their deaths in the gas chambers. I had nightmares of the sunken-in faces staring at me. They had nowhere to turn, nowhere to look other than the straight and narrow path ahead of them. In this moment, I guess you could say this was another Holocaust.

  "What are you thinkin' about kid?"

  I shrug. It's probably better that I don't tell him that he looks like a Holocaust victim and that I feel like we're marching to our deaths right now.

  The personnel leading us down the hallway speak among each other in muffled mumbles. Occasionally, they'll look at one of us and then laugh. I wonder what they're saying to each other that could possibly be funny. Is it because Atticus limps now? Or maybe it's because our new cell mate sobs louder than a baby.

  Deep down, I know it's me though. My hair gets wilder everyday without my oils I had at home. My mom always loved my tight spiral curls. They'd bounce when I walked. Now, only a tangled mess is on top of my head. The water here burns my skin making it feel raw to the touch. Atticus thinks it's a cleaning agent they use to prevent us from getting sick.

  But nothing stops the disease that runs through our veins. Nothing changes the fact that you're a Positive.

  The men in hazmat suits stop and turn to face us. "No contact is permitted during group interactions. If you get near the fence, over a thousand volts of electricity will course through your body. If you happen to survive—well, let's just hope you don't." Everyone's breath stops in an instant. The silence that follows is nauseating. A cold sweat travels down my back. They push open the heavy metal doors together and sunlight floods through the open doorway.

  I raise my hand to shield the brightness from my eyes. The sun warms my skin in an instant. Clouds pass overhead with the slight breeze that makes its way across the abandoned parking lot. The group of us stand in awe while the personnel leading us ramble on about the rules.

  "I haven't seen sunshine in ages." I look up at Atticus and watch tears well at his bottom eyelashes. "This is the first time I've been outside since—" His voice trails off into the wind. We make eye contact for a second before he turns away.

  "Are you ok?"

  "Yeah, it's just—it's just overwhelming. That's all."

  "You have one hour to mingle," the man at the front of the pack says. They step to the side and the group begins shuffling past them. My skin warms in the sun, and a smile melts across my face. As restricted as my life has become, there's happiness in this brief moment. I forget that my parents left me behind. I forget that I'm dying. I forget what I am.

  Atticus shuffles towards the basketball court that stands in the middle of the parking lot. I follow him in silence.

  "I guess it's safe to call you my friend?"

  "For now." I smirk and pick up a pebble from the ground. "Why do you think they're letting us do this?"

  He shrugs and sits down next to the basketball hoop. "Maybe to give us some air. Or maybe it's 'cause we're all dying, and they feel sorry for us."

  I swallow pa
st a razor blade feeling in my throat.

  "Relax Salvatora," he says turning his gaze to the ground. "I'm messing with you."

  "You're not very funny."

  "I get that a lot."

  We lean our heads back against the metal pole and listen to the hushed conversations from the other Positives. At several corners of the parking lot, tall towers made of wood loom over us. For a moment, a glint shimmers in the sunlight.

  "What do you think your parents are doing?"

  The question tightens my throat. My parents hadn't crossed my mind in days. I mostly stopped thinking about them after the first couple nights. For a while, I hoped everything that happened was a nightmare, but eventually, your nightmare becomes what's normal and everything else fades away. "Probably sitting in the living room in front of the T.V. waiting for someone to tell them what to do."

  "I'd always wondered what happened to some of my friends," Atticus says, clearing his throat with a rattling cough. "I mean, they're most likely dead. But it's nice to think they didn't end up in a place like this."

  "How did you end up here?"

  "I guess you can say I turned myself in," he says, picking at dirt under his fingernails. "After my boyfriend died, I was scared. I didn't want to suffer like he did. I stayed with him until the end. And it was awful."

  "How did he die?"

  He looks down at his hands and clears his throat again.

  "I'm sorry," I say. "I shouldn't have brought it up."

  "No, no. It's ok." He breathes in a deep wheezing breath. "My boyfriend died because his pacemaker was taken out."

  "Pacemaker?"

  "It was a device that regulated heartbeats," he answers. "He got the chip and the pacemaker removed during the same surgery when he was sixteen. When his chip malfunctioned, his heart couldn't provide the oxygen his brain needed. He stopped breathing hours after that."

  I reach out and squeeze Atticus's hand until mine throbs. Losing someone you love doesn't require you to be sad. I miss Elaine a lot, but fear and anger took sadness's place. In Atticus' voice though, I can hear it. I can hear what losing Dagan meant to him. The long pauses, the breathing between words, the way he avoids eye contact with not only me, but anyone who crosses our paths—it all makes me feel the drowning depression that lies just under the surface of his skin.

  "I really am sorry, Atticus."

  "Yeah," he says, glancing out of the corner of his eyes. "I never called him my boyfriend in front of anyone. I wasn't out yet. My parents weren't ready for that kind of news." He laughs and swallows. "The day he died, I told them that I was going to see my friend. I'll never forgive myself for that."

  I never felt so connected to everything before in my life. The ground pulses like it has its own heartbeat. Atticus' chest rises and falls in uneven patterns. This is the first time I've felt alive since my parents left me. No more worrying about what's next. No more trying to figure out who I am. I almost think I remember what happiness feels like. But then a horn sounds, and the NGs start corralling us back into the building.

  Everything in me screams at me to run and take my chances. But a tiny voice deep down whispers to stay put. Tears well in the corners of my eyes as we're redirected into our cells. Dozens of positives leave at a time until it's just Atticus, our neighbor and me. The mist starts the moment the doors shut behind us. I hear the muffled screech of wheels. When I look up, Atticus pushes his bed up against the wall. A smile flashes across his face as he nods his head toward my bed.

  I mimic him and push my metal hospital bed against the wall. My whole life, I was the big sister. From the moment Elaine was born, it was my job to protect her. To be honest, ever since she died, I've been completely lost. Atticus is the only the person that I have now. And even though we're separated by a wall of glass, I feel so much safer with him here.

  "Thank you," I say.

  "Don't mention it."

  Chapter 11

  A tapping at one of the glass walls wakes from another restless sleep the following morning. I can't remember the last time I got a good night's sleep. Was it before I was stranded here by my parents? Before my sister died? Or somewhere before the chips malfunctioning? I open one eye to see a ND waving from the other side of my wall. My eyes roll without even trying.

  I throw my sheet off of me and head toward my deposit box. The light stings my eyes as I force them open the rest of the way. "Is it necessary to wake me up without getting any sleep?"

  "You've actually slept for the eight and a half hours recommended for your age group."

  This ND will just not stop coming here. I fold my arms across my chest and wait for the slide and needle to drop. "Can we please just get this over with? I'm hungry and tired."

  "Do you feel any different than your first couple of days here?"

  "I'm still afraid if that's what you mean."

  He nods and jots something down onto a clipboard I can't see. "Did you enjoy recreational time?"

  "We barely got to breathe in fresh air before we were brought back in."

  "We're still in the trial period, but I promise it'll get longer," he places the clipboard on top of my box. "Did you have fun?"

  "I'd have more fun if we weren't locked up after any tiny bit of freedom we get."

  "Miss Cuevas, I promise you, I'm trying to change—"

  "Yeah, I get that. But do you honestly think I can trust you?" I fold my arms across my chest and glare at the green-eyed ND. "You locked me up from my family like I did something wrong. I feel like I'm in prison. That's how this facility works, isn't it? We get recreation time, lunch and then it's back to our cells."

  He rubs the back of his neck and nods. "I'll be the first to admit, I never thought this place would turn out like this," he whispers. "I thought this would be a treatment facility. I knew people were scared, but I didn't think they were scared of the people trying to help them."

  "If you were brought here the way I was, you'd be scared too."

  He nods. "I don't doubt that by any means."

  We stand in silence for a moment to let that sink in. It feels good being angry at the green-eyed ND. Anger is only the emotion that doesn't make me feel hopeless. It gives me purpose. Gives me a reason to keep fighting. To live.

  "I promise to you, I am listening," he says after a few more moments of silence. "This is my problem that I'm trying to fix. I never realized the oppression that was going on in these facilities—"

  "You know what? I'm really tired of hearing that you didn't know. Do you really think that's an excuse? A reason to treat people less than human?" I squeeze my fists tighter trying to keep my voice steady. "I've been stuck in this box for weeks without any notice of what happened to my family, when I'm going to be released, if I'm going to even live to be released. This isn't something I chose for myself. This is something I was born into and now, I'm stuck with it."

  Wetness touches the back of my hand. At first, I think it's tears, but when I look down at my skin, a dark red shines in the lights. I reach up to my nose and swipe; blood covers the length of my arm. I ball up a corner of my shirt and press it under my nostrils. "What's happening to me?"

  "It's probably your chip." He signals something onto the camera, and the door to my room opens. I back away from him with my shirt pressed into my nose. My heart races as he gets closer. He holds out his hand with the slide and needle. I see him mouth the words "Let me help you," but no sound comes with it.

  Right now, I realize that this ND is right. I'm petrified of him because of what he stands for. He supported dozens of Positives being taken into these facilities. He supported the imprisonment of people who didn't have a choice but to get the chip. Yet, the only person who can save my life is him. Even if it means being stuck in this glass box, he's the only person who can figure out what makes my chip tick.

  A searing pain behind my eyes makes me drop my shirt. I collapse to my knees, my vision tunneling until there's nothing but darknes
s.

  * * *

  "Miss Cuevas?"

  My eyelids are like lead. I reach a hand out and touch the smooth metal of a handle. A warm grip meets my hand. "Atticus?"

  "No ma'am," the voice responds.

  I force myself to open my eyes. I'm in my bed again, in clean scrubs. The same ND leans over me and smiles. "Are you feeling all right?" he says, squeezing his hand against mine.

  "I used to get nose bleeds when I was younger—before my chip implant." I push myself up to a sitting position, my head spinning once I'm upright. The ND hands me a glass filled to the top with a clear liquid.

  "It's water," he says, answering my doubts before I can voice them. "If I wanted to poison you, don't you think I would've done it by now?"

  "Can you blame me for not trusting you? My parents had blind faith in you, but that doesn't mean I have to."

  He sighs and places the glass on the small metal table next to my bed. "I know who I am probably holds little to no significance to you," he starts, rubbing the back of his neck while wincing. "My name is Michael Keys. I am the Chief Executive Officer of the Cure Chip Company. I also happen to be the inventor."

  I look him up and down, my blood boiling with each passing second. The man sitting in front of me is the man responsible for all of this. He's responsible for tearing thousands if not millions of families apart, killing close to everyone in the country, and he's sitting in the same room as me. My mouth hangs open like a nutcracker. I push myself further from him praying Atticus will come back soon.

  "So you see, I have to make this all right again," he says, reaching a pale hands toward me.

  His hand touches my shoulder, and I cringe. A flash of hurt crosses his face, and he removes his hand from my shoulder. "I'm going to need a blood sample. This is your first symptom," he says without making eye contact.

  "What does that mean for me?"

  Michael sighs and glances in my direction. "I don't know, but hopefully something good comes out of it." He holds his hand out for me. I give him my finger and turn my head away. "I'm going to take this to the lab and run some more tests. I'll have you go to Testing tomorrow."