Defect - By Ryann Kerekes Page 0,34

Sabrina take off from the starting line. I join Sam in cheering for her. Though I’m curious about what’s going on between Lexi and Will, the last thing I want is to be caught looking over at them. Lexi already doesn’t like me and I don’t want to give her, or anyone here, another reason to have a problem with me. I have enough enemies already.

Alex comes up beside me and knocks his shoulder into mine. “Good job, Eve.”

“Oh, thanks.”

I smile, and he places his arm across my shoulders. I feel like I’m being watched and when I glance up, Will’s looking at me again; actually, he’s looking at Alex’s arm that rests across my shoulders. A frown tugs one corner of his mouth down.

“Should we go to lunch?” I ask, and let Alex steer me from the gym.

Chapter 13

That night, I make sure to shower when the bathrooms are at their busiest. I’m trying not to be afraid of Kane, but that doesn’t mean I have a death wish. When I make it back to the dorms, Lexi is standing in the middle of a group of girls, reading from a file. I stop dead in my tracks.

“The patient was the result of an illegitimate pairing,” she reads. “Her mindscan results were inconclusive.”

Lexi has my file. She must have taken it from Will’s room. I imagine them lounging on his bed, reading it together, laughing.

“Mother was mentally insane and was discharged from the program. Father was …”

I lunge for the file. “Give me that!”

Lexi holds it up over her head. I jump and swing my arms reaching for it, but it’s no use. “What? I think we deserve to know who’s staying in the dorms with us, don’t you ladies?”

A few of the girls nod their heads. “Let her read it,” someone says.

She holds it up out of my reach and continues reading. “Brain activity – normal,

intellect – normal, mental determination – high.” She snaps it closed and tosses it to me. “This is boring.”

I grab for it, but the pages slip through my hands and flutter to the floor, scattering at our feet. I bend down to pick them and find that Sam, Sabrina and a girl named Bailey have bent down to help me gather the pages. They hand them to me, and I stuff everything back inside the file.

I hear the word inconclusive being whispered around me and feel eyes pricking my skin.

“Are you okay?” Sam asks, looking concerned.

I nod and stand up with the file. “I just want to be alone right now.” She nods and lets me walk past.

Clutching the file to my chest, I head through the dorm, through the bunker and out into the hallway. At this time of night it’s deserted, and I slide down the wall to the floor. In the dim light, I study each page of my file. There are fourteen pages total. I pour over every word.

The first page is a transmission of my mindscan, dated on my sixteenth birthday. My answers to the questions before the mindscan started are the first things listed. My favorite color: midnight blue, my favorite food: chocolate. These words now seem meaningless, immature, like they are part of a life that doesn’t belong to me.

Farther down the page there are little jagged lines that show my heart rate, my brain activity, my breathing, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. The words printed at the bottom of the page stare up at me. The mindscan had no affect on her brain. That seems like a strange way to phrase it. I didn’t think the mindscan was supposed to affect your brain, but rather just see what was in there.

All the results of the tests I completed with Dr. Nolan are there. I scored average on most of them. But my sense of self-preservation is marked as low. That strikes me as odd. It implies that I don’t care about guarding myself from risks. Then I remember all the times I’ve stood bold in the face of danger, refusing to be vulnerable, and I decide that maybe it’s accurate after all.

I see Will’s messy handwriting scrawled unevenly across the pages of notes on my physical tests. Physically weak, but determined to succeed. Sense of drive is high. Acts with courage when faced with challenges, his last entry says. Maybe he knows me better than I know myself.

I also learn that my father’s name was Reid Elway. I whisper it aloud in