I’m staring at a bowl of granola Adam left for me to eat. It feels so wrong to be eating this food when James has to eat the unidentifiable substance in the foil container. But Adam says James is allocated a certain portion for every meal, and he’s required to eat it by law. If he’s found wasting it or discarding it, he could be punished. All the orphans are expected to eat the foil food that goes in their Automat.

So many questions, so little time.

If they’re all starving, why would they need a law to tell them to get food?  How does anyone track that?  Are they not allowed to eat anything other than their allotted food?  Does this food get delivered to the house that maybe isn’t a house and also no one knows about?  Where did the granola come from, and who would know if Jamie ate it?  Does this ten year old kid have granola sitting around at home and he’s not eating because some government that doesn’t know where he lives told him so?  How can the government control how much food this kid eats, but not where he lives?  If they’re so concerned about orphans eating, why not put them in an actual orphanage?

And, I’m sorry but this is a really big point:  WHERE DID THE GRANOLA COME FROM?  You’ve told us this is a world where people routinely starve to death because there is not enough food to go around.  Where you’re getting your food from is actually a big deal in this case, doubly-so because you’re on the run and can’t go through any sort of official channels.

Someone knocks on the door.

Adam is in the shower.

James is at school.

I’m absolutely defenseless.

YOU HAVE THE MAGIC MURDER TOUCH AND CAN TEAR THROUGH CONCRETE WALLS WITH YOUR BARE HANDS, BUT YOU’RE DEFENSELESS BECAUSE SOME TEN YEAR OLD LITTLE BOY ISN’T HOME?

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Adam comes out of the shower, and they answer the door to find some guy named Kenji.  He’s another soldier that we met back at the other building (do we even know what that other building was?  I still don’t know what to call it.  Garrison?  City hall?) but we didn’t spend any time with him.  Anyway, he’s been shot!  He’s come here for help, even though he shouldn’t know where Adam lives and also they’re pretty far away from that last location.  They had to drive several hours to get there after all.  He stumbles inside and sees Juliette.

“Dude, you ran off with the crazy chick! You ran off with the psycho girl!” he’s calling after Adam.

This is getting really fucking annoying.

See, even though we’ve been reading her narration and realize that all is not-quite-right in Julietteville, SHE’S NOT ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING CRAZY.  There is nothing about her speech her or actions that indicates she’s insane.  There is no reason anyone would have to call her crazy.  If no one knew about her magic murder hands, then this might make sense, but everyone knows about that!  At best, she’s a bit antisocial, but given that she kills people she accidently touches and also Warner was controlling her movements, “crazy” should not be anyone’s first assumption. 

At no point anywhere in this story has Juliette done ONE SINGLE THING to make anyone think she’s mentally unwell.  She’s got magic skin and is immune to radiation and these things can be proven and are openly acknowledged by the rest of the characters, and for some reason everyone calls her insane for that and tries to cure her.

The VERY PREMISE OF THIS BOOK makes so little sense that it is literally fucking up every other thing that it tries to do.  The foundation is flawed; nothing steady can be built on it.

Turns out Kenji was “tortured for information” about Adam, because apparently that’s their default setting?  I’ve already covered how ridiculously inefficient it is to torture someone for information, and the way this is so casually tossed out here makes it clear the author doesn’t care.  The government is evil, therefore they torture people, because torture is just a literary shorthand for bad, right?

No.

“How did he even find you?”

Adam’s face hardens. “He started screaming [from me digging a bullet out of his leg] before I could ask.”

Well he’s not screaming now.  Why don’t you go back and ask, since THAT’S ACTUALLY A REALLY IMPORTANT BIT OF INFORMATION.

Since Kenji might/might not be getting tracked by that serum stuff, they have to leave as soon as Jamie comes home.  Um, no, you have to leave now and collect Jamie on your way out, duh.

They finally ask Kenji how he got there, and some mysterious stranger actually carried him to Adam’s door and dropped him off.  Since that’s suspicious as fuck, Adam claims Kenji is part of some trick. Kenji says “nu-uh” and then also mentions he knows a super secret safe place they can run to, because that’s not suspicious at all.

These idiots agree to go with him.

Kenji makes ridiculously over the top and cheesy come-ons to Juliette, and they’re not even the funny kind of cheesy, they’re just obnoxious.  And they’re downright harassing after she tells him, several times, that she’s not interested.

“Well, I’m permanently uninterested.” I want so badly to tell him that I’m unavailable. I want to tell him that I’m in a serious relationship. I want to tell him that Adam’s made me promises.

But I can’t.

I have no idea what it means to be in a relationship. I don’t know if saying “I love you” is code for “mutually exclusive,” and I don’t know if Adam was serious when he told James I was his girlfriend. Maybe it was an excuse, a cover, an easy answer to an otherwise complicated question. I wish he would say something to Kenji—I wish he would tell him that we’re together officially, exclusively.

Why?  Why the fuck should this matter?  Why would ‘I’m dating Adam’ be more important than ‘I don’t want to touch you’?  This is bullshit.  This should not be important in this conversation.  She is allowed to not want Kenji just because she doesn’t want Kenji.  The fact that he doesn’t respect that does not mean she needs a ‘better’ excuse, it means he’s an asshole.

I mean, she can still wonder about all this stuff, but it’s beside the point at hand.

James comes home, and he’s happy to be running away simply because it means still being with his brother and not getting left behind.  They start discussing how to leave, then Kenji hears something ominous.  The four of them run into a secret exit just as the house gets invaded.

See, if you’d left immediately and collected James on the way, this wouldn’t be a problem.

They get outside, but Kenji is slow because of his injuries.  Adam leaves James with him and runs off to find a car to steal.

Adam doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t tell me to be brave. He doesn’t ask me if I’m okay, if I’m scared. He doesn’t offer me encouragement or assure me that we’ll be just fine. He doesn’t tell me to leave him behind and save myself. He doesn’t tell me to watch his brother in case he dies.

He doesn’t need to.

We both understand the reality of our situation.

Or it could be because you’re both currently running down a crowded street with soldiers actively shooting at you.

What, did you actually think that this would be a good time to stop and chat if you two didn’t know each other so well?

They chase the two into a warehouse, and then the soldiers start calling to Adam, saying that they only want the girl and they’ll let him go if he hands her over.  It actually sounds pretty genuine, like they all know each other.  So Adam shoots one of them.

“I’m only shooting to disable,” he says. “Not to kill.”

That is fucking stupidest thing I’ve ever had to read.

First, bullets in bodies are unpredictable.  You can get shot in the foot and die from it.  (It’s not probable, but it is possible.)  More likely they’re getting shot in shoulders or legs, but still.  You can die, especially if you’re shot in the leg; there’s a lot major arteries there.  Even if the bullet doesn’t bounce around inside your body (or, more likely, fragment and send bits in every direction to do more damage) and tear up something important, shock can easily kill a person.  You can die from shock without a single physical wound on you.

Second, no one is that good a shot.  You’re just not.  I don’t care what the character says, he’s not.  No one is.  Not under stress, on a moving target.  No matter how good you are or how much you practice, no matter what you come back with, no.  You’re not that good.  You cannot shoot to maim.  If they were standing still, if Adam had time to take careful aim, maybe.  But this?  No.  Fuck no.

Third, an injured person can shoot back.  Even someone fatally injured can shoot back.  It takes a while to die from your gunshot wounds, and adrenaline can keep you functioning for much of that time.  Soldiers will quite often return fire while injured, both before and after receiving battlefield first aid.  We’re actually told to do that.  Put a quite tourniquet on that leg and keep shooting, because all the first aid in the world won’t do jackshit for you if the enemy shoots you again. This is why we’re told that you only shoot something you want to kill, and you should empty your fucking magazine into it whenever possible.  “One shot, one kill” BULLSHIT.  You fire until that bastard stops moving, because it could actually take five or ten rounds to do that, and you don’t want to let your guard down and have him fire off a few of his own before he dies.  If you don’t want someone dead, don’t fire at them!

Guns should never ever EVER EVER be used for someone who wants non-lethal force.  EVER!

They finally get away from all the probably-dead or dying friends that Adam just shot up and escape out a back door where they find three cars.  But someone else is there, too!  Dun, dun, dun.