Page 14 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Nine

Riva

B efore we arrive at the room for Introduction to Sociology, my nerves are jumping at the thought of crashing a class where we don’t belong. Just how badly are we going to stick out?

Then I step through the doorway and jolt to a halt before the annoyed murmurs of the students behind me propel me onward.

The lecture hall is massive, practically a coliseum. There must be a thousand people packed into the folding chairs in the graduated rows that end maybe fifty feet above the level of the central stage.

Zian and I are both minor blips in the huge crowd—which would reassure me more if we weren’t also surrounded by a swarm of unknowns.

I keep my hood up, even though I can spot girls with stranger hair colors than mine in a brief glance around the hall. All my senses are on the alert.

I’m no longer worried that we’ll stick out in this crowd, but my instincts are screaming at me that there’s no way I can keep track of every potential threat.

Zian drops into a seat at the top next to an aisle—easy to escape from as need be. In my apprehension, I approve of his choice.

As I sink into the padded seat next to him, he yanks up the little wooden desk surface that’s attached to the chair and sets his notebook on it. I’ve got one of those too, and a couple of pens—all part of keeping up our front.

If anyone does wonder about the new arrivals in the townhouse residences, we want to give every appearance of being totally normal students. Definitely no freaks on the run from sadistic experimenters here.

The twitching of my skin gradually ebbs as the relaxed murmurs of the other students flow around me. How are the other guys faring in the computer lab?

My mind slips back to the memory of them leaving the townhouse, Jacob and Andreas looking like normal if breathtakingly handsome students but Dominic a little awkward in the padded parka he swapped his usual trench coat for.

It obscured the lumps on his back completely, but he must be hot in it even keeping the front wide open.

But I doubt he wants to be trapped in the townhouse any more than I do.

My hand slips my pendant out from under my shirt. I click the pieces apart and snap them back together, willing myself even calmer, even more focused.

If a threat happens to come from anywhere in this horde, I’ll be ready for it.

After the third click-snap , Zian glances over at me. My hand freezes, and then I stuff the pendant back out of sight, remembering Jacob’s vicious response when he first saw it.

Maybe it’s better not to remind the men of what I’m still holding onto from the guy we lost.

The professor walks onto the stage below, looking more like a doll than a person from way up here. He swipes his graying hair to the side of his forehead, takes his spot behind the podium, and activates his microphone with a brief fizzle of static.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” he says in a drawling sort of voice. “Let’s get started.”

I didn’t expect to pay all that much attention to the content of the lecture. My pen moves over the page, but I’m making notes about the kinds of clothes the other students are wearing, doodling their poses in their chairs.

I don’t need to study Sociology. I need How To Appear To Be A Regular Human Being 101.

The short missions we went on under the guardians’ instructions never lasted more than a day. We were never prepared to fully integrate.

Or at least I wasn’t.

A fresh prickle of annoyance tingles through me. Why are we trying to blend in at all? It would be so much easier if we just vanished to someplace we could live off the land and avoided making the slightest ripple in anyone else’s life.

Other people do that. And then I wouldn’t have to be stressing about whether I’m making my ripples in just the right shape.

The professor’s voice drones on with a flicker of bullet points changing on the projection screen. I study Zian from the edge of my vision, deliberating the best strategy to get through to him.

“Listening to an old dude talk for hours on end isn’t what I pictured freedom looking like,” I mutter under my breath in a dry tone.

Zian’s eyebrow twitches, but he keeps his gaze on whatever he’s jotting down in his notebook.

Still keeping my voice low so only he can hear with his keen ears, I tap my pen against my scrawled-on paper. “I wonder if we couldn’t just grab a few computers and set up our own workstation someplace out of the way.”

“We don’t just need computers,” he replies brusquely. “Once we figure out who she is, we need to find her . We can’t just hide.”

And what kind of a mess are we going to end up in if the guys insist on confronting this woman who at least used to work with the exact same people we’re running from?

I scowl at my paper, but this isn’t exactly an ideal setting for getting into an extended debate. And Zian isn’t really the debating type—or he never was before, anyway.

There’s so much I still don’t know about the guys I used to be so in sync with.

But I have him to myself for just the next two hours. There’s got to be some way I can start to convince him that their crazy plan is too dangerous.

As I stew over the problem, the professor’s voice filters through my thoughts.

“That brings us to the concept of tribalism. Now, obviously forming bonds with our fellow human beings is an important factor in our survival as a species. But our tendency to create ‘packs’ of sorts can also have major negative consequences.”

I cock my head, intrigued despite myself—because my guys and I are basically our own little pack, aren’t we? Does this bigwig think there’s something wrong with that?

He rambles on for a little while about how human brains aren’t capable of comprehending huge populations as a cohesive unit and the good that can come from collaborating with like-minded peers before getting to the points I’m more interested in.

“Once we connect with people we consider our tribe, though, there’s frequently an impulse to view anyone outside that tribe with suspicion.

At its worst, we see certain groups completely dehumanizing other people, thinking of them as if they aren’t even the same species—and treating them as if they don’t deserve the same kindness and respect.

Slavery, genocide, and other atrocities can stem from that skewed perspective. ”

My fingers tighten around my pen. Unwanted images trickle up from the back of my mind of the guardians’ demanding voices and harsh grasps. Always pushing us to perform for them and then shutting us in a cage when they didn’t have a current use for us.

Because we were different from them. Strange. Freaks.

But they made us that way.

Anger stirs in my gut with a pinching sensation that brings me back to other memories. The fighting ring. The boss’s smirk.

All those twisted bodies.

I close my eyes for a second and swallow down the uncomfortable emotions that’ve started to rise up. Then I forge my voice into an arch but light-hearted tone. “Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it? Maybe the guardians should have taken this class.”

Zian doesn’t answer me, but the corners of his lips curve upward with a hint of amusement.

The tiny victory gives me a surge of exhilaration, washing away the last traces of my uneasiness. I press my advantage.

“But then, maybe they weren’t really human. With that metal getup, they could have been secret robots for all we know.”

Zian shakes his head at the absurd suggestion, but his smile grows.

“They definitely treated us like they didn’t have any concept of humanity,” I go on. “Like we were circus animals for their entertainment.”

I pause and reach toward his arm to try to solidify the connection we do share, whether the guys have been willing to admit it or not. “And I don’t know if they’ll ever let us go, not?—”

My fingertips graze Zian’s smooth skin just above his wrist. In the very first instant, a jolt of warmth flows up my arm, catching hold of my heart and tugging me closer.

The very next instant, Zian is wrenching away from me, jerking around in his seat with a flash of bared teeth. A whiff of pheromones gusts off him that’s stress and also something like… fear?

“ Don’t touch me ,” he snarls, low but so fierce several heads around us swivel our way.

I plaster a mild expression on my face and lean back over my notebook, pretending nothing’s wrong for the benefit of our audience. Underneath, my insides are a shaky jumble.

Does he really hate me that much? What would he be afraid of?

I don’t understand any of this.

It isn’t fucking fair.

But nothing in our lives has ever been fair, has it?

From beneath my pained bewilderment, a surge of unnervingly volatile frustration rises up. It sends a prickling vibration through my lungs that chills me to the bone.

No. I don’t want to feel that way. I don’t want to feel anything that could lead me back to the horror show in the arena .

So I blank my mind and go through the motions of attentively scrawling out notes until the projection screen goes dark and the students stand up from their seats.

Oh. It’s over.

I shake myself out of the sort-of trance I’d fallen into and get to my feet alongside the others. As we tramp out of the lecture hall, Zian doesn’t speak to me, doesn’t even look at me.

What would he do if I veered off in a different direction like I was going to explore the campus on my own instead of heading back to the townhouse like a good little girl?

After hearing the hatred ringing through his voice over a much smaller transgression, I’m not sure I’d want to find out.

I’m supposed to be showing I’m still a full, loyal member of our “tribe.” That I’m willing to play along because it matters so much to me to re-earn the guys’ trust. It’d be stupid to jeopardize that out of some momentary pique anyway.