Surrender Read Online Free Page A

horrific medley. At least I wasn’t cuffed, and the redness on my wrists had started to fade.
    Jag settled back on the bed, stretching out and putting his hands behind his head. “Nice try.”
    I ignored him as I sized up his cell. A shelf above the bed held a few rare printed books, and his tray from breakfast still lay on the floor where he’d chucked it. This cell had a toilet in the corner. I’d finally made it to the big time. Next to the toilet, a metal sink held a bottle of teeth-cleaning tablets and a tube of green gel.
    In an ungentlemanly way, Jag stayed on the bed, leaving the concrete floor as my only option for places to sit. I paced for a minute, but that merely increased my tension as I could only take two steps before turning around.
    I stared through the bars, fighting down a stream of profanity and wishing I could fly somewhere far away and never come back. When I turned around, Jag was sitting up.
    “What?” I asked.
    He grinned. “Nothing.”
    Didn’t look like nothing to me. “Why are we in here together?”
    “You have wicked hair.”
    “Shut up,” I said, folding my arms. “I got arrested for walking in the park with a boy. Now they have me living with one. This makes absolutely no sense.”
    He lay back down, his eyes dancing with amusement.
    “You gonna hog the bed?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Fine.” I sat with my back against the metal bed frame and flinched when he tousled my hair.
    “Don’t,” I growled.
    “I like it. It’s just like mine. Very posh.”
    “Sure, posh.”
    “Bad,” he said, and I twisted to look at him. He managed to shrug with his arms behind his head. “I like it.”
    I ignored his comment. I’d always longed to be bad, maybe then my mother would have a real reason to hate me, and I wouldn’t feel so
bad
about myself all the time. But now the thought of really becoming bad scared me more than I wanted to admit.
    “How are we gonna get out of here?” I asked.
    “I think you already know the answer to that.”
    Umm, no, I don’t. That’s why I asked.
He didn’t seem troubled by my glare. A superior glint reflected in his eyes.
    “I’m not living here with you for a week,” I said.
    “You can have the bed. I don’t sleep much anyway.”
    The sleeping arrangements were not my main concern. I glanced at the toilet and he laughed. “You can go when they take me to shower.”
    “How often is that?”
    “Every morning.”
    “Great,” I said, turning around and admiring the blank wall three feet in front of me, wondering how long it would take to train my body to use the toilet only once a day.
    The night stretched into eternity. Jag let me have the bed, but he paced back and forth, and the constant squeak of his boots kept me awake. Finally I sat up, and he told me about life in the Badlands. People didn’t have teleporters in every room because they actually walked to their destinations.
    “Really?” I asked. “They walk?”
    “Yes, Vi,” he said. My nickname sounded natural in his voice, like we were old friends or something. “The Baddies don’t have access to your superior tech crap.”
    “I thought that’s why you were here,” I said.
    “Yeah, but—”
    “Yeah, but nothing, jerk. You like our superior tech crap.”
    Jag did his annoying shrug. He reached above me to the shelf and pulled down a book. He lifted my legs and slid his underneath, leaned his back against the wall, and trained his eyes on the pages.
    “What’s with the books?” I eyed the two remaining on the shelf.
    “It’s called reading.” He didn’t look up. “Surely you know how to read.”
    “Of course I do. It’s just that we don’t publish books anymore.”
    Jag finally lowered the book, his gaze sharp enough to make me flinch. “But you used to. I requested something to read. This is what they brought me.”
    Maybe they didn’t want him to have access to our tech, didn’t want to give him an e-board. Whatever. He went back to reading while I thought