Firstlife. Gena Showalter

your tongue quiet...or you’ll lose both.”

      Bow flicks me an amused glance. “Hey, what do you call a blonde with only half a brain? Gifted!”

      Am I really caught in the middle of this? “Have you forgotten that you are a blonde?” And Troikan! Forgive and move on.

      “So,” Bow says, tapping her chin. “You’re suggesting I blow in her ear for a data transfer?”

      “That’s it! Say goodbye to your tongue.” Sloan pushes Bow with enough force to make the girl stumble.

      Before she can do anything else, I react without thought, slapping her arm away. “Hands off.” Guess I’m going to protest today. Which might do more harm than good. Like the rest of us, Bow has to learn to defend herself. There’s no other way to survive.

      Sloan’s narrowed gaze focuses on me. “What are you gonna do, Nutter? Huh?”

      “Do you really want to know?” I ask softly. Being the crazy girl in a place full of crazy girls certainly has its advantages. No one is ever able to anticipate my next move. “What I say, I’ll do. No take-backs.”

      We’ve thrown down before, Sloan and I, and it wasn’t pretty. Forget scratching and pulling hair, the quintessential “catfight.” We punched and kicked and ripped at each other like animals.

      We both bear the scars.

      I’m not afraid of physical pain. Not anymore.

      I’m hit with surprise when my roommate says, “Dude. Do you have any idea how funny this is? Sloaner the Moaner has a mouthful of number two while she’s talking to Ten.”

      Another round of boos and cheers ring out.

      Sloan forgets all about me, baring her teeth in a scowl. “Maybe I won’t remove your tongue and eyes...yet. I want you to see what I do to you, and beg for mercy I won’t give you.”

      “Enough!” A harsh voice booms from overhead speakers. “You know the rules, girls. There’s no loitering in the hallways. Go to the cafeteria or go to the whipping post. Your choice.”

      I look at Sloan, who’s glaring at Bow, who’s smirking at Sloan.

      Sloan bares her teeth and says to me, “You do know your boyfriend wasn’t the only one capable of paying the guards to shut off the cameras, right? If I were you, I’d start sleeping with one eye open.” With that, she turns on her heel and flounces off. Or tries to.

      I grab her arm, stopping her, and get in her face. I keep my voice low as I say, “You sneak into my room, and I’ll fillet you like a fish. No one will pay attention to your screams. You know that, right?”

      You scream, I scream, we all scream. No one cares. The asylum’s unofficial anthem.

      Sloan jerks free and stalks away.

      I cast Bow a humorless smile. “Welcome to Prynne.”

chapter two

      “Take comfort. Our laws are the same yesterday, today and forever.”

      —Troika

      Bow laughs, which I don’t understand. My temper is a bear that’s just been poked with a stick. I don’t like threats. And I especially don’t like waiting to deal with threats. Yet, she’s amused.

      “Come on,” I mutter, dragging her down the hall despite my physical discomfort.

      There are multiple doorways, each painted puke green. The walls are medicine-tray gray, and the floors are some type of soil-your-pants brown. I know this for a fact. Last week, a guard threatened a new guy with castration and all hell broke loose...just like his bowels.

      “Thank you for having my six.” Bow bumps shoulders with me, only to mumble an apology when I wince. “Yeah, I could have taken her down, no problem, but you still put yourself on the line.”

      “Don’t thank me. Just keep your head on a swivel and your insults to a minimum. I don’t want to mop up your remains.”

      Her grin slips a little. “I didn’t enjoy lashing out at her. Sloan has some pretty big baggage. But her general nastiness triggered my inner bitch. I didn’t even know I had an inner bitch! But yeah, okay, I should have handled the situation differently.”

      “How do you know about her baggage?”

      “Uh, perhaps I misspoke. I mean, who doesn’t have baggage, right?”

      True. We all arrive with a couple carry-ons.

      We pass through the commons, where our classes usually take place. There’s no escaping high school, even here. There are plush leather couches and three different circles of chairs—which makes sense. (1) Thought, (2) word and (3) deed, the sum total of human capability.

      Around the corner and through a wide set of double doors is the cafeteria. A colorless, utilitarian room with a sea of tables and benches that have been bolted down. The male inmates are already seated, eating from trays.

      As Bow and I take our place at the end of the buffet line, I narrow my focus to the nitty-gritty. The number of inmates in the room: one hundred females versus ninety-seven males. It’s uneven. I don’t like uneven. The scales should always be balanced.

      There are twenty guards—ten males, ten females—one “good guy” for every ten “bad guys.” Despite the fact that outside these walls there’s a Laborer from both Troika and Myriad for every one hundred humans, there are no Laborers here.

      “Are you mathing?” Bow asks. “You look like you’re mathing. Well, here’s an equation I think you’ll like. There are roughly two billion people in the world, and twenty million Laborers. With those kind of odds, I never should have been assigned to stay in your room.”

      “Are you hinting life is a zero-sum game? You won, and I lost.”

      She snorts. “You basically won the lottery, and you know it.”

      “Or, your guardian paid extra to pair you with an Unsigned, preferably one with a Myriad background.” Which is actually counterproductive to Dr. Vans’s goal in my case. But when has the man ever resisted a bonus?

      “Hey, look at you! Pretty and smart.”

      “And hungry,” I grumble.

      As we edge our way to the front of the line, multiple conversations take place around us.

      “—too bad. I called dibs.”

      “—did you hide them? Tell me!”

      “—don’t allow Myriad scum near me.”

      How many of these kids are pro-Myriad? How many are pro-Troika? How many are Unsigned?

      Bow clearly hasn’t gotten the memo. Talking about the Everlife is forbidden. Well, only with each other. Dr. Vans’s way of avoiding a riot inside these walls, I guess.

      I deduced Sloan is Unsigned, which wasn’t exactly hard to do considering she’s said “I’d rather be a queen in Many Ends than a drone in the realms” countless times.

      Okay, not countless. Twenty-three.

      “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together,” Bow tells me. “Let’s get to know each other better.”

      “No, thanks.”

      She persists. “How were you introduced to the realms?”

      “The usual way.” Since public schools aren’t allowed to lean one way or the other, only private schools, children are told stories by biased parents. Also, different facilities offer virtual tours but, depending on who’s running them, the tours are always skewed.

      My aunt Lina is my dad’s crazy twin sister who, I’ve been told, suffers from polyfused disorder, meaning the