“Work harder.” The bro in the navy scrubs is not a doctor. His name is Marco, and he’s not a drill sergeant, either, although he’s actually more demanding than any one of those that Nina’s ever had. “Push.”

She’s pushing, all right. Harder, faster, stronger. Every time she thinks she’s going to have to quit, another surge of energy bursts through her, and she keeps going. Nina stopped taking pride in this a few days ago, when it really sank in that none of this was because of anything special about her.

It’s all the tech.

Everything hurts, but it’s not the pain that drives her. There will always be pain of some kind or another. Nina is convinced of that. She pushes herself because once she proves to them that she can do everything they want her to do, be all that they’re expecting her to be, maybe then they’ll release her from the hospital. She’ll be able to go home. See her family. Get back to the life she left behind.

There are huge parts of that life missing from her memory, but she doesn’t let this stop her. She can get them back. That’s what she tells herself as she sweats and runs and jumps and pushes. Harder. Faster.

Stronger.

“C’mon. Let’s go. You can beat your last time, no problem. Get through this course in under five minutes, and you can have an extra helping of pudding with lunch.”

The crack of Marco’s big hands is extra loud, and Nina has to focus on dialing back her hearing. She’s still learning how to adjust. The first few weeks in the recovery hospital had been a terrifying, exhausting, and excruciating stream of lights and noise. Now that she’s here in this other place, it’s getting easier.

She wipes her hand over her eyes to clear them. She tastes salt when she licks her lips. She straightens, stretching her back, shoulders, and neck, all sore. Then each leg. Her arms, too. She jumps up and down, shaking out her hands, clenching them into fists before spreading her fingers wide apart.

In front of her is an indoor obstacle course designed to be changed every time it’s used. This means that she can’t rely on memory to get her through it. Every time is brand new and a little more dangerous because of that.

Nina wants to believe the people who run this facility haven’t deliberately set up an obstacle course that will actually kill a runner unwary or unskilled enough to not make it through. She is not, however, convinced that’s true. There are others like her, but she’s never seen any of them. For all she knows, they could be picking them off, one by one, in some kind of test to leave only the strongest standing. If that’s the case, Nina thinks as she breathes out slowly, focusing, then she intends to be the one who’s left.

“Ready?” Marco claps again, the sound sharp and piercing, digging deep into her skull.

Nina gives him a wry look. “If you really think pudding is a great motivator . . .”

“C’mon, they make the best tapioca I’ve ever tasted. But shiny fine. Pudding or not, I do know that you want to win this thing.” Marco’s laugh reveals a line of straight white teeth that sparkle, literally, with some kind of cosmetic upgrade.

Maybe her idea about it being a competition isn’t so far off. “I didn’t realize it was something I had to win.”

“Everything in life is something you need to win,” Marco says. “Let’s go.”

Nina doesn’t wait a moment longer. She pushes off the platform she and Marco have been standing on. She’s airborne, but not flying. Falling. She hits the ground in a crouch. They took the padding out of the floor last week, and at first it made a difference, but now she’s used to the impact. She rolls before springing back onto her feet.

“Fancy moves!” Marco shouts. “But you’re losing time!”

Above her is a mirrored observation window. Nina has no idea how many people are behind it, watching. She gives it a cheery wave anyway as she jumps onto a balance beam and runs across it. Today, she pretends there are snapping alligators on either side of it and if she falls off, she’ll be gobbled up. At the other end, she has two choices. One, a pegboard wall without any hand-or footholds that she can see. The other, a series of foamy mushroom type platforms on wobbly springs. Both choices lead to the next section of the course, but if she picks the wrong one she will lose more time, or possibly face something worse. Sometimes, they have electric shocks set into the obstacles. Or gas that can knock her out for minutes or longer. Or something she hasn’t yet experienced.

She chooses the wall because it looks harder and therefore seems less likely to be rigged. She’s wrong. As soon as she leaps at it, the current of electricity runs through her, stiffening every muscle. Nina doesn’t let go of the wall’s top edge, not because she’s that good at hanging on, but because her fingers curl and cramp and keep her from falling.

A low, guttural moan rips from her throat. This new, fresh torment sends her into a sharp focus. She can give in to it. Fall. Or she can fight it back, and that’s what Nina does. In another moment she’s up and over the wall and landing on the other side. Hard, on her side, her feet still not ready to get under her and her body tense and shaking from the shock. She manages to get up but without the grace and coordination of that first fall.

The tech has given her greater control over her body’s reactions. It doesn’t mean nothing can wound her, just that she can recover faster. They didn’t bother to tutor her on how to do this. She’s learning the same way she learned to walk as a toddler, one step at a time. Her brain takes over, moving the muscles that need to tense or stretch. Coordinating her nerve impulses. Helping her balance.

She is going to beat her last time on the course. She’s determined, now. This determination has nothing to do with tapioca pudding and everything to do with the fact that those faceless, voiceless observers behind that glass think it’s entirely shiny fine to do this to her simply because she signed some papers that said in the event she lost her life in the pursuit of protecting her country, they could use her body. She’d thought it meant they’d take her organs, not that they’d fill her head with experimental tech and bring her back from death.

Nina finishes the course a full half a minute faster than she did the last one. She breathes hard, because having greater control over the rate at which her lungs and bloodstream work together to absorb oxygen doesn’t mean she’s still not worn out from the effort. She gives Marco a solid, steady stare. A smile, teeth bared. Nina waits for him to acknowledge that she’s allowed to leave the obstacle course room and have lunch.

“I’m starving,” Nina says when Marco doesn’t speak up right away. “You promised me pudding.”

He puts a finger to his ear, cocking his head. He must be listening to his personal comm via an earbud. He gives Nina a long look while he nods at whatever the person on the other end of the call is saying. Finally, Marco grins.

“You won it,” he says. “I knew you could do it.”

His praise sounds genuine, but leaves Nina cold. She hasn’t been doing any of this to impress him, and even though she knows Marco is only doing his job, right now she kind of feels like punching him directly in his sparkling smile. Instead, she takes the hand he offers her. She squeezes, holding his grip a little too long, until he winces and tries to drop the handshake.

“Sorry,” Nina says, not sorry at all. “I guess I don’t know my own strength.”

“I figured you’d be more excited,” Marco says.

She waits for giddy joy, or satisfaction, or a sense of gloating, but all she feels is . . . nothing. It’s a relief, this numbness she realizes must have been growing inside her for a while now. It’s better than the constant pressure of terror or grief or anger. She’s glad for it, though only vaguely.

In the cafeteria, Nina loads her tray with food without so much as a dollop of pudding. She takes a seat near the window overlooking the parking lot, noticing as always the mesh on the inside of the glass. The bars on the outside.

“It’s not to keep us in, you know,” says an unfamiliar voice. Low, hoarse, and yet somehow soft at the same time. “It’s to keep other people out.”

The person sitting across from Nina at the cafeteria’s narrow table has short, white-blond hair in a crew cut that accentuates the matching pale brows above ice-green eyes. The curves and bumps beneath the black athletic gear, the same as what Nina wears, would suggest the stranger is female. She’s got an androgyne star tattooed on the spot between her thumb and forefinger, though, which means that her gender identity is fluid.

“I’m Allegra Chastain. Al,” the other person says. “You’re one of us, huh? The enhanced.”

Nina slices into a hunk of synthbeef, wishing for the days when she’d first awoken and they’d fed her the real stuff. The food here isn’t . . . bad. But it’s far from good. “Nina Bronson. Yeah. I guess you are, too?”

“First time they’ve let us in here at the same time.” Al looks around and stabs her fork into the air at nothing Nina can see. “I wonder why?”

“I don’t know, but it seems like a lot of effort at scheduling, if that’s what they’ve been doing. It’s been months since I woke up. How about you?”

Al shrugs. “About that, yeah. I think we all got fixed around the same time. I heard one of the docs saying they had to get everything done before the laws got changed.”

“Laws?” Nina pauses in chewing. Her stomach is slightly full, but she’s no less hungry.

“That’s supposed to be healthier for us, you know? That synthbeef. Grown with extra protein and nutrients, less fat, all that. Doesn’t taste the same. If they can do everything else to it, why not keep the flavor?” Al doesn’t have any synthbeef on her tray. She’s got piles of sautéed veg, some rice, pasta. Bread with synthbutter.

“The law,” Nina reminded, wondering if Al was playing some sort of mind game on purpose or if she were naturally flighty.

Al nodded. “Right. I guess they’re passing some laws to make the procedures we had illegal.”

“Why?” Nina slices more food, tucks it into her mouth. Chews. She’s more interested in feeding her body than enjoying the food, which makes her suddenly sad enough to put her fork down. When there’s no joy in eating, why bother? She might as well be fed through a tube directly into her gut.

“No idea. I just want to get out of here. I’ve had about enough of this.” Al plunges her fork into the pile of pasta on her tray and slurps some so that a saucy noodle leaves spatters of pink on her cheeks.

Nina echoes that sentiment, for sure. She looks again at the windows. “Who are they trying to keep out?”

“Anyone who wants in here.” Al must see Nina’s confusion in her expression, because she laughs. “There’s a whole bunch of angry people out there who want us dead.”

“We’re soldiers. What’s different about that?”

“These are our own people,” Al says.

Nina shakes her head, taking another bite and chewing slowly. “Anyone who wants me dead isn’t my own people.”

“Well, whoever they are, they’d gladly see us all as dead as we all should have been,” Al says, “and while I won’t deny there haven’t been days when I’m not sure I don’t wish the same thing, I sure as all the random hells would prefer that to be left up to me and not them.”

* * *

Nina woke with a start, eyes wide and staring into the soft pale glow of moonlight coming in through the window. She turned on her side, a hand curled under her cheek. It would be a long time before she got back to sleep, she could tell that already.

Too much to think about.

With a groan, Nina rolled onto her back again. She lifted her personal comm, noting the time. Too many hours until morning, and she didn’t think there’d be any more sleep for her.

She could hear Ewan from all the way down the hall, if she tried to listen. The soft whistle of his breathing. The rustle of his body against the sheets.

She thought about this afternoon. Kissing him in the transpo. His mouth on her. They would have made love if she hadn’t had that glitch. No, she reminded herself. Not made love. They would have fucked, she thought, although she couldn’t convince herself that was all it was.

The pain in her head and behind her eye had faded hours ago, but she touched her temple anyway. Although there were only thirteen of them left, the enhanced didn’t tend to keep in touch with one another. They didn’t have a forum to chat in, or a group ping or anything like that. Nina knew them all, of course, some better than others, but they tended to keep to themselves. Still, it would be helpful to know if any of them had been experiencing the kinds of glitches that she’d been having. She thumbed a message on her comm to Al, not mentioning the dream at all, because that would be kind of weird. Instead, Nina briefly described the glitches, the pinpricks of blankness in her memories, the other effects. She didn’t expect an answer right away, seeing as how it was the middle of the night, but the light on her comm flashed with a message almost immediately.

Nothing like that for me, sorry, Al replied. Have you asked anyone else?

Nina typed quickly. No.

She waited, but nothing more came through after that, and she set the comm on the nightstand with an uneasy sigh. It didn’t have to mean anything, she thought. Al might be having glitches that manifested differently, that’s all, if her tech hadn’t degraded in the same way.

But what if it was something only happening to Nina? She frowned, restless, discontented. She sat up, finally, pressing her fingertips to her temples.

The tech didn’t operate like a computer program. It responded to her body’s natural resources, but she couldn’t feel it working or force it into action. She didn’t have to think about listening for sounds that would normally have been too quiet to hear, she just heard them. She didn’t have to think about her lungs taking in more oxygen, they simply did.

Just as she didn’t have to force her heart to love Ewan—she loved him as easily and simply as her heart beat faster when she needed it to. She could no more stop herself from loving and wanting him than she could force herself not to hear or smell or breathe.

Nina got out of bed.

* * *

Of all the things Ewan had missed about Nina, hearing the sound of her breathing soothing him to sleep had been the hardest to get past. He’d never been a man who enjoyed sharing space with another person, particularly his bed. He liked to stretch out, roll around. The feeling of someone’s breath on his face in the night had always irritated and in fact disgusted him. Somewhere along the way though, with Nina, he’d become more than accustomed to the weight of her dipping the mattress beside him, and the soft in-out huff of her sleeping inhalations and exhalations. He’d grown to crave the sweet, distinctive scent of her breath and the exact temperature of her bare skin next to his.

Now he ached with missing her, because although she was in the room right down the hall from his, she might as well have been on the moon’s abandoned space station. He shifted under the weight of his blankets, kicking them off only to pull them back up over him in the next moment. He punched his pillow, then again, not to shape it but because the act of punching it was a kind of relief.

Sleep would not come.

He should have been used to that by now. He’d invested in sleeptech, but hated himself for relying on a small chip implanted in the shallowest layer of his skin. If using that to put him under was all right, he could hear Nina saying, why couldn’t he accept and support her enhancements?

The bedroom door creaked on its hinges, and if there’d been any hint of sleep before that, it vanished in a second. It had a while since any kind of threats had been made against him, but maybe he’d been stupid to move here to this house without on-site personal security other than Nina.

In the next moment, he relaxed. “Hey.”

She didn’t answer him, but the bed dipped when she climbed in beside him. Her naked warmth pressed him as she nudged him firmly onto his side, facing away from her. He shivered a little at the tickle of her breath on the nape of his neck. Her breasts pressed his back. Her groin nudged his rear. Her hand slipped around to lay flat on his belly.

Ewan breathed in, a stirring erection beginning to throb at her touch. He waited, holding his breath, for her to grip him. To stroke. His hips bumped forward of their own accord.

“Hush,” Nina murmured against him. “Sleep.”

It was both what he craved and what he didn’t want at the same time. Yet as soon as she spoke, he relaxed against her. Their breathing synced. He wanted to face her, to kiss her, but instead Ewan let her hold him until he could no longer fight the heaviness in his eyes.

In the morning, she was gone, without even the heat of her on his pillow to prove she’d ever been there at all.