Page 52 of Repossess My Heart

“You’re a fucking asshole!” I scream, battling his hands for any surface worth hitting I can.

It wasn’t the duct at all, was it?

“I hate you!” I scream again.Why’d you take it away?

This time he lets me hit him a few times before his own large hands capture mine. His rough pale skin spattered with blood as he jerks my face towards his, slamming his forehead against mine. “Are you okay?”

My uncoordinated attacks cease for a moment when his eyes take mine, searching them again. My stomach drops to the floor at our feet when he again doesn’t find what he’s looking for. Something akin to disappointment swirling around my chest.

“I am now.” I whisper. “My eyes are they-“

“Just as boring as ever, sweetling.”

15

An Amputation

Beautiful is Boring by Bones UK

ItseemsI’mevenmore useless than I was before.

Jumps, climbing and scaling things are harder than I ever remember them being. It’s almost like my body weighs more but considering I’ve barely eaten in the last three days since this entire getting kidnapped and made into an accomplice thing began, I’m sure that’s not the case. There’s something oddly… painful about the whole thing, but in a comforting way knowing CeCe was there for everything. Every freak out, every confession, she was there, listening and recording. Keeping herself immobile to store enough energy in the part of her she gave me is what it started as. CeCe knew her inner workings were failing according to Nine’s drone. She’d made a choice to give me information her previous owner had stored in her. She gave me a chance to live. Letting me go in the end was better odds than drawing out my confinement with a failing bot.

I can feel the press of Nine’s arms as he slinks through alleyways and up the sides of buildings in whatever district we’re in now. Dragging me along as dead weight despite us beinglate for a murderas he says. While I let his drone-I use the word loosely because if Nine had ordered it I’d have no choice either way-connect to whatever part of CeCe is inside me. When I told it to fuel from her… to kill her, so to speak, it gathered access codes Nine needed to read the tech. Although he’d opted to not see or be told of anything else that was on it.

His mom was beautiful.

She did all this…

Anton, the leader of the Down… of the world, had always been wary of her, but he loved her too much to care. Until Everly’s snooping became… tactless. Her disdain for the world that had done her and her boys wrong took over everything else. She’d found out that her boyfriend, her lover, was far more than the leader of the Down and after that, hate took over. Poisoned everything as it does. She knew it was coming. She’d planned to flee upwards with her information. To start a revolution.

Eat the rich and all that shit.

She just wasn’t fast enough.

CeCe was a failsafe; I have no clue how Anton became suspicious that the bots had been tampered with or if CeCe was the only one. It all seems too… perfect that she wasn’t decommissioned but left to rot in a dump. That it was my mom that found her.

That all these years later, he’d find me because of that debt that went unpaid.

CeCe was a care bot not only for Anton’s family but for all the children of the Down. Until the betrayal of Everly polluted what little kindness was in the man’s heart. He turned what was a Haven for the forgotten into a prison. He turned our whole world into a prison long before that, making me doubt there was ever any kindness at all. What unites people better than something…someoneto hate? That was what we are, the lower levels. A thing to hate, bugs to keep the machines on so those touched by the sun never saw the grime we live in. It isn’t hard to understand why Everly did it, why she sacrificed everything…

Why her only remaining son turned into everything she hated.

Even then, something is missing. A piece of the puzzle I’m not seeing. They built half of the Below around dumps. The last thing CeCe recorded the day she was meant to be destroyed was a Mig taking her from the compound, a Mig dressed like a little girl… the Mig from the high rise the Repo Men reside in but she wasn’t alone she was with a little boy.

“The sun shined down on the pink peonies, and they felt grateful for its warmth…” I whisper, jerking myself from the screen displayed in my mind. It’s an unsettling sensation I’m sure I’ll never get used to. I want to finish the story, but the words die in my throat. Getting tangled in the lump formed there, my own weird goodbye to CeCe. I feel my energy fade quickly once his drone withdrawals. It’s a cold feeling, one that settles into my bones. The only thing that alleviates the chill is the man supporting me. Nine goes rigid, his pale hair spiked upwards with blood instead of the mussed way it usually lays in his face as he peeks back at me. Even with his wildly mussed hair, he still manages to be devastatingly handsome. His sculpted face and scathing eyes turn my insides to mush.

When I feel blush crowd my cheeks, I let the silly little question that’s been nagging me for hours slip, “Did you mean what you said?”

“About?” He whispers, urging me to lower my own voice.

“Me being your girlfriend…” my fists tighten around his gear, waiting for his chilling laughter as he makes fun of me. It doesn’t come, I’m not sure if I’m disappointed by that.

“Sweetling, I will always say what I mean when it comes to you.”

I frown as he half shakes me off him, letting me land roughly on my feet, all the while making sure I don’t fall. “Now you stay put here. Do not move from this spot. If you do, I will know. If you allow yourself to be hurt, I will know.”

“You’re meeting Ten alone?” His drone zips to my side, hovering just inches in front of me and even I can see it for what it is.

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