Audrey loaded the vial of nanos into the injector. She’d already given me the neural inhibitor and waited thirty minutes for it to take effect, but I didn’t feel any different. I wouldn’t know if it worked until it was too late.

“Ready?” Audrey held the flat head of the injector against my skin.

I stared at the gray liquid. It held tens of thousands of nanos that would rush through my body, healing me as they worked. But was I ready?

No. I wasn’t ready for what I would feel if the inhibitor didn’t work. The dread in my stomach felt like a swirling pit of lava.

She said I was going to be okay, but I didn’t know that. I’d barely survived the nanos the first time I had them, and now I was tired and hurt, and I wasn’t sure how much I had left in me.

“Maité?” Audrey asked again.

Trusting someone—especially a virtual stranger—went against the grain for me, but there was nothing else I could do.

Audrey had used a handheld MRI scope to look through the shoes. I hadn’t looked at the screen—I didn’t want to know what was under those shoes—but from the way her hand shook as she put down the scope, I knew my feet were basically garbage under those half-melted soles.

I had to have the nanos if I wanted to walk again.

And I wanted to walk. More than that, I wanted to fight. If I couldn’t fight, I wouldn’t know who I was.

I took one last calming breath and gave her a slow nod. “Do it.”

Audrey pushed the button. My arm ached as a pressurized stream of nanos entered my system, and I wanted to throw up.

The problem with nanos was that they worked to repair anything in the body. Not just whatever was recently harmed. They’d keep repairing any damage to the body until they ran out of juice and processed out of the body. Sometimes that took months. I knew that from the one time I’d been injected.

I’d gotten pneumonia when I was eleven, and the antibiotics weren’t working. When I started coughing up blood, my mom flipped. Jorge and Roan’s mom pitched in for a single dose.

The nanos fixed my pneumonia quickly, but they’d stayed active. I spent six weeks writhing in bed before the damned things ran out of juice. My mom had to strap me down to keep me from trying to claw them out of my veins.

I would’ve done anything to make the constant crawling and burning under my skin to stop. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t hold a glass to drink. I couldn’t do anything but scream.