The Girl Who Started the Revolution

4 | c y b o r g

I woke up with who-knew-what tied around my ankles and hands. The roughness of my bindings made me think it was some sort of hardened tar.

For the longest time my vision was black until I thought I was blind. Then I realized I was still in the library. There was that book smell. And something else. Something that smelled like oil.

"I was wondering when you'd wake up."

That dour voice again.

I looked up from my position next to a sofa to see a boy my age—not over sixteen years—sitting with his legs crossed reading a book.

But it wasn't his bleached hair or silver eyes that drew my attention. It was his arms.

From the elbow down, gleaming metal replaced flesh and skin on both of his arms. I recoiled at the sight of them. That was where the oil smell was coming from.

"Don't like cyborgs, eh?" He smiled, but there was no mirth in his unusual moon-bright eyes. The boy closed the book with titanium hands and set it on the side table next to him. "I figured that'd be weird for a robot," he said as he stood. Cloaked from head-to-toe in black leather, his boots made no sound as he moved toward me with the smoothness of a snake. He knelt next to me, and it took everything I had not to spit in his face. "What's a human doing here in the library?" he asked.

"What's a cyborg doing here in the library?" I was practically barking the words.

The boy sighed. "Reading. Now answer my question. Why are you here?"

Reading? Why would a cyborg need to read? How did he even get here in the first place? He couldn't have been one of the staff because the few remaining population of cyborgs were being hunted down by the government. And why did he even want to know why I was here in the first place? All these questions buzzed in my head, but the only thing I could say was, "I came to read a book."

His eyebrows rose. "In one of Toran's most heavily guarded areas?"

I wasn't going to tell him that I had made sure the guards would be gone. I made such a ruckus that they wouldn't even think to check the library. "I like the danger," was all I said.

The boy smiled. This time, I could see it in his eyes. "I like you," he said. "What's your name?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Why not?"

Was he an idiot? "Because you're a cyborg."

"And what's wrong with that?"

I would have thrown my hands up in exasperation if they weren't tied behind my back. Instead, I just huffed. "Plenty of reasons why that's wrong."

He settled down on the crimson carpet in front of me. Setting his chin on his metal hand, he said, "Humor me."

"Well, for one, cyborgs aren't human."

"Wrong," he sang, causing the hair to stand up on my arms. "Humans are the only creatures that have souls. I have a soul, so what does that make me?"

"Tainted," I snapped. "That's what they call all of you monsters, isn't it?"

He didn't seem annoyed at my words. He seemed amused.

And that only made me angrier. "Your hair is white, your eyes are silver, and your hands are metal," I pointed out. "Humans don't have that. Humans are normal. Humans—"

"Humans are fun to argue with."

If it weren't for these stupid bindings, I would have strangled him with my bare hands. "You're impossible. Humans aren't impossible."