“If I reach behind my hair, just at the nape of my neck, I can feel it; the slight bump of the tiny electronic device that the men who invaded New Haven surgically implanted in me. Other chips were placed in the rest of the children stolen from the facility. As far as I can tell, they’re a means of keeping tabs on us…and for most they’re meant to neutralize the gifts we were born with. What they meant to do and what they actually did, however, were far removed from each other.”

“Each of us was completely oblivious as to how much things were about to go to hell.”

“The moment had drawn us together like magnets, planetary masses caught in the same gravitational field. I could feel the pulse of his warm breath against my cheeks, caressing my cold lips.I should have pulled away.I had every intention of pulling away.I wasn’t pulling away.”

“In the end, dying isn’t the hard part. Everyone always treats death like it’s such a traumatic ordeal. But death is quiet and unless it happens instantaneously, it comes up to you like an old friend and wraps itself around you and just holds you there. It cradles you as you let your fear envelope you and burn through you. But you can only struggle against the inevitable for so long, and once you get over the panic and accept what’s happening to you, it’s actually almost kind of pleasant.No…death isn’t hard.Living, however…now that’s the real ass-kicker.”

“Let's do this thing!”

“Why do boys kiss girls? Because they like them. Do girls kiss boys because they like them too? …Usually…”

“We kissed each other until we were too tired to keep going. I could still feel him holding back. It was my penance for what I had done to him. All I could do was hope the walls would fall and that I could have all of him again, but I was always leaving and he was tired of watching me walk away. We both knew that I couldn’t stay and that he couldn’t come with me, but still, we couldn’t let go.”