Superior

Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

Delaney

I never thought I'd say it, but after a few more days in the Capitol, I started to get bored. Our room was narrow and tight, with only one window that was bolted shut. There was nothing to do but sit on our respective twin beds, watch the outdated, static-filled television, or, as we more often opted to do, stare listlessly at the ceiling as if the white plaster would suddenly transform into something interesting.

It never did.

By the fourth day, I was coming down with a nasty case of cabin fever, and it seemed my roommates were too. I woke up that morning to the sounds of Abigail scratching circles into the wall with her nails and Trai tapping a drum beat on his wooden headboard. They had dead, tired eyes that I'm sure were a mirror of my own.

"I'm going to the bathroom," I mumbled, squirming out from under the white comforter.

"I hope you have loads of fun," Abby muttered in response, not looking at me.

Rolling my eyes, I dragged myself into the bathroom. The face waiting for me in the spotless mirror was not a pretty one. For once, I wished for Lizzy and her makeup bag to come and give me a major makeover. I was in dire need of one, there was no doubt about that.

When I returned to the room several minutes later, my tangled hair was in a messy bun on top of my head; I'd long given up on taming it. I dropped right back into bed and reached for the remote control on the bedside table next to me, setting it in my lap but not making any moves to turn the television on.

"I wish Miracle would just make up her goddamned mind already," Abby shouted suddenly, driving her fist into the wall then falling back, howling in pain.

"I know," Trai agreed hollowly. "I'd rather her tell us that we're going to be killed than sit here waiting for the verdict."

I scoffed. "I wouldn't go that far. Granted, though, it'd be better to just know. This suspense is agonizing." Sighing, I flopped back onto the mattress, covering my face with my hands and peering out from between my fingers.

Abby, nursing her bruised knuckles in the bed to my right, smirked a little bit. "Who knows, maybe she'll turn us into Superiors? Wouldn't that be an adventure?"

To my left, Trai grimaced. "Yeah, right, like we're good enough to be in their system. Unlike Caleb," he said dryly, shaking his head in disgust. "The traitor."

It was silent for a while as thoughts of Caleb's betrayal trickled into our minds. I was still shocked, not at the fact that Miracle had proposed Superiority to Caleb—that was expected—but at Caleb's acceptance of the it. He'd been against the Superiors before any of us, yet now he was joining their ranks. Something about it didn't seem right, but at the time, I was only looking for someone to blame.

And when I thought of Caleb, blaming was easy.

"Do you think he'll remember us?" Abby asked after a while. Her voice was so quiet that I had to strain to hear it.

"What do you mean?" I asked, frowning at her.

She shrugged. "You know what Fairleigh said: when kids are changed into Superiors, their memories of everything from their lives before are completely erased. All they remember is their Superiority."

I'd forgotten about that completely. It was a horrifying thought; to have your memories taken from you, to erase your entire life as you knew it and replace it with false beliefs—the idea of it was disgusting.

"Assuming that's true," I said, "how would it work?"

Trai ran a hand through his hair. "Well, the thing is, it shouldn't work," he stated. "See, to erase someone's memories, you'd have to destroy the area of their brain where memories are stored. But the thing is, there's no specific place where long-term memories are stored; they're spread throughout the brain, and it'd be hard to separate individual threads from each other. So for the memory wiping process to work, and work well, there would have to be some major work done." He frowned. "Honestly, I don't know how you'd avoid brain damage."