“Do you think she’ll pick me?”
Kaylee shrugs. “It’s possible. For you to win this you need to present yourself as a man she can depend on. Her life is going to get pretty wild, and she knows it. Someone nice, secure, and stable will be a good thing for her. She’s probably looking for someone who she can come home to after a big day who’ll remind her of simpler times. Someone who’ll cook her dinner and care for her children. But there’s a problem.”
My heart thunders.
“Juliet is, let’s put it simply, not your typical Chosen. She likes to shake things up. It’s part of the reason my bosses are so interested in her. Any sane person in her position would pick a Nice, but Juliet is daring. The innovative mind that makes her worth monitoring is what makes her so unpredictable. She might not even care about things that appeal to most people, or the pressures of society. Don’t let her appearance or her dreams fool you—making Juliet choose you is going to be tough.”
“That depends on my rival. Do you know who he is?”
She nods.
“You’ll meet him pretty soon. He’s good, man. Like, real good. When I met him he turned on the charm so hard I nearly fell apart on the spot. He’s much more charming than you. You should be careful. He’s a killer, that one.”
“Maybe I’m saving the charm for the real deal.”
She rolls her eyes. “Let’s hope so. Well, I’m out of time, so I have to go. This will be the last time I see you while you look like this! And don’t worry too much about the procedure. You’re lucky—I think they’re only going to make superficial changes, so it shouldn’t hurt that much.” She taps the spot behind her ear. “Talk soon!”
She skips out of the room, leaving me, once again, alone. I sit for a few minutes, my fingers drumming on the table, my legs bouncing up and down, my posture reverting to its natural hunch.
Whoosh.
I look up. Standing in the doorway is a boy. He’s a Bad, that’s obvious, but he’s unlike any Bad that I’ve ever seen. He’s slim, maybe even skinnier than me, but his biceps fill the black leather jacket he’s wearing. The collar of his gray T-shirt dips low, showing a small stretch of smooth skin. Unlike most Bads, who seem to favor military-style buzz cuts, his hair is long and stylishly messy. It screams, I’m the lead guitarist in a punk band you’re not cool enough to know about. It’s jet black, though. Of course it is.
A grid of red light appears in the middle of the room, separating us. The air hums with static.
He steps forward and raises his hand so his fingertips hover an inch away from the light. “It must be to stop me from killing you.”
“Or me from killing you.”
“You wouldn’t do that, would you? You’re my rival, which means you’re a Nice guy, and Nice guys don’t kill people. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
THIS BOY WILL KILL YOU.
The door whooshes closed behind him.
He scratches the back of his neck with one hand. “I guess they wanted us to meet before it all starts.”
“I guess so.”
“And, well, before they change us. Apparently all this”—he waves a hand in front of his face—“is about to get seriously shifted.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say to that.”
“You could say you’re sorry? You know, offer me some of that classic Nice guy sympathy?”
I shake my head. “Yeah, that’s not really my style.”
He leans back, inspecting me. “For a Nice, you’re not very nice, are you?”
I smile. “Nope!”
He laughs. “I’m not that Bad either. But hey, what can you do? Maybe we could ask them to swap our dispositions?”
“Um, I’m going to go ahead and respectfully pass. The only reason you’d want to switch this late in the game is because you know she’s going to pick the Nice.”
His face falls, and my smile falters, then fades. All I can think about now is him standing alone in the middle of the incinerator.
I breathe in deep, then exhale. I can’t think of him like that. I’ve always known whoever I went up against must die, so I can’t start feeling bad about it now. Not when the guilt could distract me from my goal. “Listen, man, I want to say I’m sorry. I wish it didn’t have to be like this. I don’t want you to die.”
That’s a lie.
He’s staring at me with one eyebrow slightly raised, but the corner of his mouth keeps twitching up, so very close to a smile. “Maybe you are Nice after all. Maybe I should be worried.”
He grabs the chair and swings it around so the high back faces me. The legs screech against the concrete. Then he sits down, with his chest pressed against the chair’s backrest and his hands propping up his chin, which is covered in a few days’ worth of black scruff. A large patch on his right cheek is totally hairless.
He looks me in the eye. His eyes are a rich, earthy brown, so startlingly normal that they’ll probably be changed. Brown is too boring for a Bad. I hope I’m wrong, because he’s incredibly handsome already. Any improvements would just increase the chances of her falling for him at first sight.
“I realized something,” he says. “This is the last moment we have to be ourselves. As soon as they call us, we’ll stop being us and we’ll start being Love Interests, with our whole identities changed to fit what she wants. So I want to take this moment, the last moment of being me, and avoid all that competitive bullshit and spend a second saying what I truly think. And seeing as you’re here, I want to have, like, an actual conversation with you. My—no, our—last one. So what do you say? Would you like to talk, properly talk, with me?”
I’m a bit weirded out by his friendliness, but I definitely don’t want to hurt his feelings, so I just nod.
“Great. So, what makes you tick? Like, seriously. Not the answer you’ll give Juliet. What do you really feel? About yourself, about this place? About anything.”
He can use this against you.
“You first.”