Reboot

Reboot Read Free Page B

Book: Reboot Read Free
Author: Amy Tintera
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survive with less food and water than a human; we had a higher threshold for pain. We might have been monsters, but we were still stronger and faster and far more useful than any human army. Well, most of us anyway. The lower numbers were more likely to die in the field, making training them a waste of my time. I always picked the highest number.
    “I give Twenty-two six months,” Ross One-forty-nine said from beside me. He rarely said much, but I got the feeling he enjoyed training as much as I did. It was exciting, the possibility of shaping a scared, useless Reboot into something much better.
    “Three,” Hugo countered.
    “Wonderful,” Lissy muttered under her breath. At One-twenty-four, she was the lowest of the trainers, and therefore got last pick of newbies. Twenty-two would be her problem.
    “Maybe if you trained them better all your newbies wouldn’t get their heads chopped off,” Hugo said. Hugo had been my trainee two years ago, and he was just ending his first year as a trainer. He already had an excellent track record of keeping his newbies alive.
    “Only one got his head chopped off,” Lissy said, pressing her hands against the messy curls that sprang from her head.
    “The others were shot,” I said. “And Forty-five got a knife through the head.”
    “Forty-five was hopeless,” Lissy spat. She glared at the floor, most likely lacking the courage to turn that glare on me.
    “One-seventy-eight!” Manny called, motioning me over.
    I walked across the gym floor into the center of the circle the newbies had made on the ground. Most avoided eye contact.
    “Volunteer?” Manny asked them.
    Twenty-two’s hand shot up. The only one. I doubt he would have volunteered if he had known what was coming.
    “Up,” Manny said.
    Twenty-two bounced to his feet, a smile of ignorance plastered on his face.
    “Your broken bones will take five to ten minutes to heal, depending on your personal recovery time,” Manny said. He nodded at me.
    I grabbed Twenty-two’s arm, twisted it behind his back, and cracked it with one quick thrust. He let out a yell and jerked the arm away, cradling it against his chest. The newbies’ eyes were wide, watching me with a mixture of horror and fascination.
    “Try and punch her,” Manny said.
    Twenty-two looked up at him, the pain etched all over his face. “What?”
    “Punch her,” Manny repeated.
    Twenty-two took a hesitant step toward me. He swung at me weakly, and I leaned back to miss it. He doubled over in pain, a tiny whimper escaping from his throat.
    “You’re not invincible,” Manny said. “I don’t care what you heard as a human. You feel pain; you can get hurt. And in the field five to ten minutes is too long to be incapacitated.” He gestured at the other trainers, and the newbies’ faces fell as they realized what was coming.
    The cracks reverberated through the gym as the trainers broke each of their arms.
    I never liked this exercise much. Too much screaming.
    The point was to learn to push aside the pain and fight through it. Each broken bone hurt just as much as the last; the difference was how a Reboot learned to work through it. A human would lie on the ground sobbing. A Reboot didn’t acknowledge pain.
    I looked down at Twenty-two, who had slumped to the ground, his face scrunched up in agony. He looked up at me and I thought he might yell. They usually yelled at me after I broke their arms.
    “You’re not going to break anything else, are you?” he asked.
    “No. Not right now.”
    “Oh, so later, then? Great. I’ll look forward to that.” He winced as he looked down at his arm.
    Manny pointed for the trainers to go back to the wall and gestured for the newbies to come to him.
    “You should get up,” I said to Twenty-two.
    Oblivious to Manny’s glare, Twenty-two slowly got to his feet, raising an eyebrow at me.
    “Are we doing my leg next?” he asked. “Can I get some warning next time? A quick ‘Hey, I’m going to snap your bone

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