by Kat Zhang
We’d undergone so many blood tests when we were younger that needles no longer fazed us. Addie didn’t flinch when the needle slid coldly in or when our blood spiraled out in the tube, dripping into one of the glass vials. For a long time, no one said anything. The needle under our skin barely hurt. We watched first one vial, then the other, fill up. Dr. Lyanne sat across from us, staring idly at the machine, too.
“What were you guys arguing about?” Addie said, and this brought Dr. Lyanne’s attention back onto us faster than anything.
“Who?” she said. As if we could be referring to anybody else.
“You and Mr. Conivent,” Addie said.
Dr. Lyanne pressed down on our arm with a cotton ball, then slid the needle out. “Nothing, Addie. And it’s none of your business to begin with.”
“Was it about Jaime?” Addie said.
“No,” said Dr. Lyanne. “No, it wasn’t about Jaime. Keep pressure on your arm.”
Addie obeyed but didn’t take our eyes off Dr. Lyanne as she grabbed a tangle of wires from behind her. They were connected to another gray machine—larger than the first—on one end and what looked like a skullcap on the other.
“Was it about Hally?” I said, and shuddered. My being in control wasn’t part of the plan and I hadn’t intended to take it. I’d meant to wait for Addie to ask. But she had taken too long, and I had to know. “Is Hally safe?” Then, because that was stupid—that was the most stupid question I could have asked; of course Hally wasn’t safe—I said, “They haven’t done it yet. They haven’t—they haven’t operated on her.”
Dr. Lyanne’s face was so bland. So bland and pale and cold. She was so calm and it grated against me. How could she be so calm?
“No,” Dr. Lyanne said. Sweet, cold relief made our whole body limp.
I felt my control slipping, and I let it, but then Addie said
“Where is she?” I said, punching back against the weariness. Dr. Lyanne was staring at us now, and I had to swallow, to take a breath, to reorient myself in our shared body, before I could speak again. “Where are they keeping her? In the basement? With Jaime? When are they planning the operation?”
“That isn’t for you to know,” Dr. Lyanne said.
“Why not?” Our voice shook. Dr. Lyanne had a bottle of clear liquid in her hands. She clutched it so tightly her knuckles shone white. “If things turn out anything like they did with Jaime, one of my friends is going to die and the other one’s going to lose her mind—I deserve to know when.”
“Most likely, it won’t,” she whispered. The plastic bottle collapsed in her grip. “Jaime was lucky.”
Something icy slipped through me. Head to foot. Fingertip to fingertip. “What do you mean?”
She didn’t speak, didn’t look at us, didn’t even seem to breathe. Still, like a rock, like a crystal.
“Dr. Lyanne—”
“All the other children they’ve operated on . . .” she said. “They never left the table. Jaime . . . Jaime was the only one to survive.”
Methodically, Dr. Lyanne started unscrewing the bottle in her hands. They shook, and she fumbled the cap.
I swept the bottle off the table.
It clattered onto the tiled floor, spilling the clear liquid in a wide arc as it spun into a corner. The sting of alcohol pierced the air, acrid and pungent.
“Help us,” I said, and it was no longer a plea.
Dr. Lyanne remained motionless, her eyes still on her hands. I tried to remember the woman in the basement, sitting in Jaime’s room, the look on her face when he was in her arms, the way she’d held him.
“You could get Jaime out,” I said, and, when she didn’t respond, I took a deep breath. “There are people . . . people who would get us away. They’d take him, too. He’d be safe.” It was the only thing I could think of—the only big, shocking thing I could think of to say to make her look at us, acknowledge us.
It worked. Dr. Lyanne’s head shot up, her mouth opening slightly, a spot of color rising in her cheeks. A strange shift in expression—not confusion, but fear.
Then she spoke, and it was as if from a dream. “You spoke with Peter?”
Our limbs weakened. “You know Peter.”
We could almost see Dr. Lyanne break apart, piece by piece. We’d entered the room feeling like it was too small, that we and Dr. Lyanne took up too much space. Now the woman seemed to take up no space at all. She was as insubstantial as a figment of the imagination. See-through.
“He’s my brother,” she said.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t hold ourself together like this—take in all this and manage to keep our heart beating and our lungs expanding and—
But I had to. I had to, because I was in control of our body.
“He’s your brother? Your brother’s a hybrid, and you work here?”
“I told you,” she said. There was a touch of resolve in her voice again. “I wanted to help—”
“Then help,” I cried. “Help. Now. Help us get out.” The alcohol fumes stung our eyes. “If you’re not helping us get out, Dr. Lyanne,” I said vehemently, “then you’re helping them kill us.” I stared at her, and when she looked away I grabbed her hand. “Is Hally in the basement?”
Finally, finally, she nodded. Just once.
“The doors are keypadded.” I forced our voice to be strong and demanding and powerful when I could barely breathe, could barely keep our body upright and our words clear. “I need the code.”
Quiet. Breathing, hers and ours. Quick, quick, quick. Shallow. The hard wooden desk. The uncomfortable chairs. The angles of Dr. Lyanne’s face. Her thin lips, the weary lines on her forehead, between her green-brown-green-brown eyes.
She told us the code.
Twenty-nine
I tried to hold on to my control. I did. I fought for it, struggled for it, and I knew Addie wasn’t fighting back. But it slipped away like water through grasping fingers. I was so exhausted. And as much as I would never admit it, maybe I was just a little relieved to let Addie take back over, let her hold the reins so I didn’t have to.
So it was Addie who got us through the rest of the day, Addie who caught Devon’s eyes during what should have been game time but had been converted, instead, to solitary reading time—most likely because of us. Addie who whispered to Devon as we slipped by him in the hall: Watch your chip after lights-out.
Devon just nodded. And when Addie sneaked from our room that night, we didn’t need to wait long for him to show up in the hallway.
There, seated at one of the small tables in the main Ward, Addie recounted everything. So much had happened; it felt like we’d never be able to relay it all. But Addie did, hesitating sometimes, answering questions as Devon came up with them, trying her hardest to stay calm and precise and reliable. She and Devon didn’t look at each other when they spoke. They both had their chips out—the outer Ward was completely dark otherwise—and everything glowed softly red.
“So could you do it?” Addie asked finally, glancing at Devon. He sat perfectly still, staring off into the blackness. “Could you and Ryan disable the alarm system?”
He frowned. “Would we need to do it neatly? Subtly?”
“Just destroy it,” Addie said.
“Then yes,” he said. “If we got to the wiring box, we could shut off everything. Lights. Alarms. Maybe security cameras.” He looked toward the door at the far end of the room, swathed in shadow. “We still have to get out of here first.”
“I’ve asked Jackson to get us a screwdriver,” Addie said simply. “The doorknob comes off, same as the one in Lissa’s door.”
And then it was Ryan sitting across from us, not Devon, and he smiled, just a little bit. That sideways smile I missed.
“We do it tomorrow night,” Addie said. That made Ryan’s smile disappear, because we had to do it tomorr
ow night. There was no more time to wait.
We’d demanded to know, and Dr. Lyanne had answered: Hally and Lissa’s surgery was scheduled for the day after tomorrow.
“Should we tell the others?” Addie said.
“Not yet,” Ryan said. He fiddled with his chip, pushing it around the tabletop with what might have been absentmindedness except for the deliberate pressure of his fingers. “Not until we have to. We don’t know how good they are at keeping quiet.”
Addie nodded. It didn’t feel right to keep such a big secret from the other kids. But maybe it was best to hold off for a while. With eleven kids, someone might let something slip.
Bridget—Bridget was sure to. Would she even leave with us when the time came? Bridget with her hard gray eyes and sharp tongue and forever folded arms. So angry, but so certain she would be saved. That she’d be cured. Who else was hiding in her body? When it came time for us to escape, would this recessive soul be strong enough to take over? Would she want to?
“Then good night, I guess,” Addie said, closing our hand around our chip. The red glow seeped between our fingers, lighting our hand from within. “I’ll see you—”
Ryan stopped fiddling with his chip and looked up from the table. “Thanks, Addie,” he said. He had a way of looking at people like they were all that mattered, like they were important. I’d felt it before, dozens of times, and I thought Addie felt a bit of it now. She fell still, anyway, staying in our seat. “Thanks for checking on Lissa when you were both locked up. If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have known about the operation at all.”
Addie looked down, rubbing our nightgown’s hem between our fingers. “Wasn’t just me. It was Eva, too.”
“I know,” Ryan said. “But that means it was also you.” He smiled, and it was a little sad. “So thanks. And sorry. About before.”
Our hands fidgeted in our lap. Addie shifted in our chair.
“We’ll save her,” she said finally. “We’re saving everybody. And we’re getting out of here.”
The next morning, we got up before the nurse came for her usual wake-up call. Kitty hadn’t so much as shifted in her sleep when we slipped in and out of bed last night, and she didn’t wake now. Addie didn’t do much, just sat on the edge of the bed. A few days ago, we’d been awake at this time, too. We’d moved to the window and watched the sunlight creep in. There, right up against the glass, we could feel heat through the window before Nornand’s air-conditioning whisked it away. We could see a little of the world beyond the hospital.
But now the window was boarded up with planks of wood driven right into the hospital walls. Not a sliver of light made it inside.
By tomorrow morning, it wouldn’t matter.
We were leaving tonight.
Jackson had told us he had another package to bring Mr. Conivent today. He’d make up some excuse so the delivery happened late in the day instead of during the morning and slip us the screwdriver then. We’d still have to find a way to hide it until we returned to our room, but at least we wouldn’t have it on us all day. It would be hard enough already since we had no pockets to speak of. We could maybe stow it somewhere in the Study room while we were there, but when we showered, brushed our teeth, changed for bed—all that was done in a locker room with the other girls and a nurse by the door.
We’d manage it, though. We had to.
The review board was back today, but they no longer watched us as they had before. I guess we warranted only one day of observation. There’s only so long you can be at the zoo before it gets old. Now we passed them in the hall and caught glimpses of them in examination rooms, mostly with Mr. Conivent, sometimes with Dr. Wendle as well. They seemed to be showing the board members the machines Nornand used. Once, we saw one of the men ushering a nurse into a room and shutting the door behind them. An interview? An interrogation?
Whatever they were doing, it kept the nurses high-strung and Mr. Conivent busy. When Jackson came that evening just before dinner, he stopped the nurse leading us through the halls and told her he’d dropped by Mr. Conivent’s office but couldn’t find him. He distracted her long enough for Addie to slip from our spot near the beginning of the line—where the nurse could keep an eye on us—to the very end.
Jackson, we learned, was a stupendous talker. By the time the nurse finally convinced him he simply could not disrupt Mr. Conivent at this moment—he would have to wait or come back—we were late to dinner and the nurse, flustered and irritated, hurried toward the cafeteria without checking the line behind her.
Jackson met eyes with Ryan as he passed, just a glance that both boys quickly broke. Addie lagged as the rest of the kids started walking again, and when Jackson passed, she held our hand just a little away from our body. Jackson was much taller than we were. He had to tilt down, just slightly, to slip his hand around ours. We felt the cold, sharp metal of the screwdriver, the crisp edges of the map he’d drawn us to the maintenance room, where Ryan would go to disarm the alarms. Our fingers tightened around them both.
It all took less than three seconds. Addie didn’t look over our shoulder to watch Jackson continue down the hall, though we could hear the slight squeak of his shoes against the polished tiles. She picked up our pace until we were back at the end of the line, slipping the screwdriver into the waistband of our skirt. The paper, though, would fall through. She bent down to tuck it into our sock, next to our chip.
When she straightened back up, one of the other girls in line had stopped walking, too. She stared at us, her blond, plaited hair snaking over her shoulders.
Bridget.
Had she seen?
“What?” Addie said. “My sock was falling down.”
Bridget’s eyes were inscrutable. “You’re supposed to be at the front of the line.”
“Girls?” the nurse called, finally noticing two of her flock had stopped. “Hurry it up. And Addie, get back up here. You know you’re not supposed to fall behind.”
Addie walked calmly past Bridget, who watched every step we took.
Thirty
They sent Dr. Lyanne to watch us in the Study room after dinner, which had never happened before. Mr. Conivent didn’t belong in the cafeteria. Dr. Lyanne didn’t belong in the Study room—not as a watcher.
But both Mr. Conivent and the nurses had disappeared to places unknown, and we were left with Dr. Lyanne. She was no longer the woman we’d seen in the examination room, falling apart. She’d pieced herself back together again, was hard and cool and professional. But there was a glaze over her face that hadn’t been there before, a half vacantness in her eyes that made the children bolder than they might have been with the nurses, and certainly more than they would have been with Mr. Conivent. We were supposed to be playing our tattered board games without speaking, but slowly, a murmur of conversation started up. When Dr. Lyanne didn’t say anything, just kept her stiff perch on a chair by the door, more and more people started talking, until the room filled with quiet chatter.
Addie didn’t look up when Devon came to sit next to us. We were on the ground, half hidden by a table and set of chairs, a good six or seven feet from the nearest person, Cal.
“You have everything,” Devon said in that way of his, making a sentence sound halfway between statement and question.
Addie nodded. Cal had snatched a pack of cards and was building and rebuilding a house from them, never so much as flinching when they fell down. His movements were still clumsier than they should be, though his eyes were clearer, more alert. Did that mean they’d taken him off his medication?
Then, hopefully, he would be fine. He would recover. He wouldn’t be irreparably damaged in some terrible way.
Addie looked toward the front of the room, at the clock hanging above the door. Seven forty-five. Not too long now.
It took me a second to realize who Addie mean
t. But the empty chair was answer enough.
“Addie?” someone said behind us. Kitty clutched a board game, the worn box crumpling in her fists. “Do you want to play?”
Addie managed a smile as she patted the ground beside us and Devon. “Sure. Could you set it up?”
Kitty nodded. Addie glanced back over toward Dr. Lyanne’s empty chair.
“There,” Devon said, tilting his head to speak into our ear. I saw Kitty’s eyes flick up from the game board, but only for a moment. “By Mr. Conivent’s desk.”
Dr. Lyanne moved around Mr. Conivent’s desk. Anyone who wasn’t paying attention like we were would have thought she belonged there. But we knew how to read Dr. Lyanne now. And we were hybrid, surrounded by hybrids. We were attuned to every change in voice, in movement, in expression. We saw the tension in her hands as she opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out a small cardboard box.
“What’s she doing?” Addie whispered.
Devon didn’t reply. He was staring at Dr. Lyanne, who had set the box down and opened it, revealing smaller white containers inside. She lifted them out and set them aside, reaching for what lay at the bottom—a sheet of paper.
“It’s a package,” he said.
He was right. We could just make out the post office’s stamp on the side. It had to be what Jackson had been carrying earlier, when he’d slipped us the screwdriver and the map, when he’d been arguing with the nurse about finding Mr. Conivent, because only Mr. Conivent could sign for these packages.
Why could only he sign?
Kitty had finished setting up the board. She picked a game piece and placed it at Start, then offered the handful of pieces to Devon. He took one and put it on the board next to hers.
Dr. Lyanne still stood by the desk, her eyes darting up and down that sheet of paper. Addie had turned to tell Kitty she could go first when the door opened. She tensed, her words never leaving our throat. Mr. Conivent stood on the threshold. But he’d turned to say something to the man behind him.