by Kat Zhang
Jenson.
Our eyes shot back to Dr. Lyanne. She’d noticed the door, too. In a flash, she shoved the piece of paper in her lab coat pocket and stepped so she blocked the package from view.
Mr. Conivent and Jenson glanced at her, and Mr. Conivent nodded. She nodded back, easing down a little so it seemed like she was just resting against the desk as she surveyed the room and the children.
But Mr. Conivent frowned, even as he continued his conversation with Jenson, and after a moment, he gestured for the other man to step into the Study room. They entered, talking as they drew ever closer to Mr. Conivent’s desk and Dr. Lyanne and the package I was 100 percent sure she wasn’t supposed to be looking through. A pair of security guards followed them into the room, but stopped by the door. Maybe Jenson needed protection from us kids now. Or maybe Dr. Lyanne was already in trouble.
I wasn’t quite sure what they’d do, but neither Mr. Conivent nor Jenson was pleased with her to begin with, and—
Addie said. To Kitty, she said, “You go first. Do you have the dice?”
Kitty nodded and cupped her hands together, shaking them up and down. Devon looked at us out of the corners of his eyes, but Addie turned resolutely to the game board. There were only a few more hours to go until lights-out. Until the hospital emptied but for us patients and the skeleton staff. Until our escape.
We didn’t need anything more from Dr. Lyanne. She’d given us the codes to the basement rooms.
But—
Mr. Conivent and Jenson had almost reached us, and we were pressed against the wall about halfway between them and Dr. Lyanne. Somehow, I had to stop them—give her time to put everything back. I could just go up to them and say something. But what could I say to keep their attention riveted on us and give Dr. Lyanne enough time?
There was a flash of red and white in our peripheral vision. Cal’s card house had fallen again.
Cal.
I said.
“Cal,” I said. The word slipped from our lips with resistance, but not as much as I’d expected. Devon raised his head. Kitty stopped shaking the dice.
“Eli,” she whispered.
Cal had looked up at his name, frowning, wary. I hadn’t even realized the significance of what I’d said. Cal. When was the last time someone had called him by his real name?
“But he isn’t Eli,” I said. “Is he?”
Kitty averted her eyes and let the dice drop. One of her hair clips had slipped loose. “He’s whoever the doctors say he is.”
“No,” I said. “No, Kitty—”
I hesitated. She was right. But Mr. Conivent was only a few feet from the back of the room now, paused as he pointed out a child to Jenson, and I could see Dr. Lyanne clutching the edge of the desk.
“Cal,” I said. “Cal, could you do me a favor?”
“What’re you doing?” Devon said.
It was getting easier now. Every word took specific concentration, but I could do it. “We have to distract Mr. Conivent before he reaches his desk. Dr. Lyanne—”
“Now isn’t the time to think about her,” Devon said.
“She helped us,” I said. “She gave us the code to Hally’s room—”
He fell quiet, and I didn’t wait for whatever he might say next. “Cal,” I said, “could you—could you distract everyone? Just for a few minutes.” Then a thought struck me. They drugged Cal when he and Eli fought. They might drug him again. Now, when the clarity was just coming back into his eyes—
Cal crouched over his cards, his lower lip pushed out. He was only eight. Younger and smaller than Lyle. Only a little older than Lucy. I’d been insane to think to ask him something like this, put him in the way of even more harm.
Our shoulders dropped.
And then Cal screamed.
His cry sliced the room right open—deep down, past the uneasy stillness and straight to the chaos within. I lurched backward, Kitty scurrying beside us. Devon half raised his hands to his ears.
An entire deck of cards slammed into the wall, followed by an abandoned board game. Cal screamed again. Cards flew everywhere. White. Red. White. The other children in the vicinity scrambled out of the way. The security guards by the door stared but didn’t move. Maybe they didn’t know what they were supposed to do with a small, shrieking boy.
Mr. Conivent turned.
I grabbed Kitty’s hand and ran for the far wall as he came toward Cal, his mouth grim. Jenson stayed where he was. I dared a glance at Dr. Lyanne. She was half turned, stuffing the white containers back into the cardboard box.
Cal stopped screaming just as Mr. Conivent tried to seize him, ducking and darting out of reach. The sudden silence hurt. Mr. Conivent’s jaw tensed. He made another grab at Cal, and again, Cal slipped out of the way. They regarded each other, the boy and the man, neither saying a word.
And then Mr. Conivent sighed, as if this had all just been the world’s biggest inconvenience. He turned to Jenson with a look like Kids. What can you do?
Dr. Lyanne was by the bookshelf now, her hands at her side. The package was no longer on Mr. Conivent’s desk.
I took a long, shuddering breath and looked at Devon. He slowly leaned against the wall, his fingers unclenching, pressing flat against his legs. Then Kitty squeezed our hand. When I didn’t immediately look down, she pulled on our arm until I did.
“What?” I whispered, but then I followed her gaze, and I didn’t need to ask any more.
Mr. Conivent was heading toward us.
He saw the small yellow screwdriver on the ground the same instant we did.
Thirty-one
Mr. Conivent didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t hold up the screwdriver and demand to know who it belonged to. He just bent, picked it up, and slipped it into his pocket. Then he gestured toward the security guards, telling them to take us and Devon back to our rooms.
We didn’t go quietly. We screamed and fought and kicked and heard Devon fighting behind us. But they were stronger, and they shoved us into our room, that terrible room with the heavy metal beds and the boarded-up window. The security guards stayed outside after throwing us onto our bed, but Mr. Conivent came into the room with us, and I wanted to attack him—I wanted to shove him against the wall—but we didn’t. We grabbed the edge of the bed and cried, “Why?”
Mr. Conivent’s eyes were hard. “Because I want to see you get out of this one.” He came toward us, and we scrambled away from him on the mattress until our back was pressed against the wall. Still he came closer. “I’d like to see you tear the wood from the window with your bare hands, Addie. I’d like to see you knock down that door.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Addie said hoarsely. “You don’t have to lock me up.”
Mr. Conivent stopped at the edge of our bed. “But just to be safe,” he said. “I don’t want you anywhere but locked in here while Hally Mullan is on the operating table tonight.”
We slumped against the wall.
Tomorrow. Dr. Lyanne had told us the operation was tomorrow.
She’d promised us tomorrow.
“You could almost say it’s your fault,” Mr. Conivent said as he backed away, leaving us frozen in our bed. His tone turned chastising, disappointed. “You’re the one who nosed around where you shouldn’t have. If you’d just behaved, Hally wouldn’t have made a misguided attempt to help you. She w
ouldn’t have been chosen.”
He closed the door behind him and left us in the aftermath of his words.
We tried the window. But not until we’d pounded and pounded and pounded on the door. Not until we’d tried kicking at it until our shinbone ached. They’d taken away our nightstands, so the only furniture remaining were the beds, and they were too heavy to make good battering rams. Finally, someone outside our door shouted for us to shut up and quiet down. A guard, maybe. Mr. Conivent had left a guard in the hall. There would be no easy escape that way.
So we tried the window. We wedged our fingers into the cracks between the wood and the wall, braced ourself, and pulled as hard as we could. We pounded our fist against the center of the planks, hoping to smash it. The cut on our left hand reopened and leaked blood through the white bandage. But nothing budged. Nothing even cracked.
We went and sat back down on the bed. Everything ached. Our chip lay beside us on the thin mattress, pulsing softly red. What was Ryan doing in his room?
How could we have dropped the screwdriver?
Guilt crumpled our chest, crushing our ribs like scrap metal. The sharp edges bit into our heart. My guilt, my plan—my stupid plan. We’d helped Dr. Lyanne, yes. But we’d lost the screwdriver. And with it any chance of getting out of our room.
I’d thought I was mastering power over our body, but then the tears came, and I wasn’t controlling them at all. They seemed to be controlling me.
Tears for our parents, who’d been too afraid to protect us.
For Hally and Lissa, who needed so badly to be protected.
For Jaime, for who it was already too late.
I cried until we were limp, our hair sticking to our cheeks, our vision blurry. Our hands throbbed painfully.
But I said
Keep hope.
Keep hope.
I could feel Addie there, huddled next to me. Warm and sturdy and a source of strength.
If the operation hadn’t already started. If it wasn’t already too late. But it couldn’t be. I refused to believe it was. We could still do it. We could still save Lissa and Hally and Jaime and all the other kids—
Where were the other kids? It had to have been more than an hour since Mr. Conivent locked us in here. Everyone should have been back at the Ward by now.
But a guard would quickly call an alert, and then the place would be crawling. I knew that. I just wished it weren’t true.
But just as that was sinking in, just as our eyes slid back to the ground, our shoulders slumping against the wall, a key clicked in the lock, the door opened, and Dr. Lyanne walked in holding Kitty’s hand.
I was off the bed before the door was all the way shut again, running toward her, jerking Kitty away from her, hissing, “You lied. You lied. You said it wasn’t until tomorrow. You—”
“Plans change,” she said. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know—”
“Shh, Addie,” Dr. Lyanne said. She still wore her white doctor’s coat, and her hair was smooth, brushed back from her face.
“Why?” I demanded. “Why should I?”
“Because the guard won’t let me take you if you’re kicking up a fuss,” said Dr. Lyanne. “He’s by the outer door, but he’ll come running if you keep screaming like this. And if he does, I’m leaving you behind.”
I stared at her, then down at Kitty, who looked at us with so much confused hope in her eyes I couldn’t speak.
“I called Peter,” Dr. Lyanne admitted, as if that were a failing, as if even now—even in the middle of this—it felt wrong for her to contact her hybrid brother. “He knows the time. He’ll be there, at the side door. They’ll have vans—” She stopped. Looked at us. “I’m sure you already know.” I nodded dumbly. Kitty’s hand tightened around our own. “That boy—Devon. He’s the one you told Peter’s people about, isn’t he? He can disable the alarms?”
Was she tricking us? Had she discovered our plan somehow and was trying to—I didn’t even know. But if she already knew so much, what was the point of questioning us?
“Yes,” I said.
“Then come on,” said Dr. Lyanne. She dug something out of her coat pocket and tossed it at us. I had to scramble to catch it before it hit the ground. A key. “For the maintenance room. You still have the map?” I nodded, bending and tucking the key in our left sock, never taking our eyes from Dr. Lyanne’s face. The key was colder against our skin than Ryan’s chip. “The other kids are waiting. We don’t have much time.”
“The other kids?” I frowned. “Everyone? Jaime and Hally, too?”
“No,” said Dr. Lyanne.
“Then we’ve got to get them,” I said. “It won’t take too long, not with the code—”
Dr. Lyanne shook her head. “It isn’t that easy, Addie.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Of course it won’t be easy, but—”
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“Then explain.”
Dr. Lyanne looked away from us and toward the boarded-up window. “We’re not taking Hally.”
Addie and I reacted at the same time, disbelief building on disbelief, anger feeding anger.
“What?” I choked on a laugh. “Of course we are.”
She shook her head. “Addie, don’t you get it? You think this hospital is just empty at night? That everyone just packs up and leaves all the patients here alone?”
“No,” I said. “No, of course not—”
“There are always doctors here,” Dr. Lyanne said, her voice rising. “Always. Always nurses. Always someone making rounds.”
“Yes, but—”
“Except,” she said. “Except on the days when they operate on one of you kids.”
I fell silent. I couldn’t be hearing this. She couldn’t be saying this. But she was. She was, and she kept on talking.
“Addie, people go to see. People go to watch. Not all the doctors, but a good number of them. The review board will all be there. And the nurses will be thinned out, too; they’ll need them in the operating room, so there will be fewer in the halls. I can tell them I’m taking the kids for an exam. It’ll be suspicious, but as long as they don’t—”
“No,” I said. “No.”
“Hally’s surgery is giving us our chance,” Dr. Lyanne said.
“No.” I didn’t scream it. I didn’t shout it. But I said it, and our voice was steel. “Never. We don’t leave her behind. And what about Jaime? He’s down there, too. Are you abandoning him? Again?”
Dr. Lyanne took a step toward the door, a dangerous flush in her cheeks. “When you grow up, Addie, you’ll realize that sometimes you have to make hard sacrifices so you can—”
“Is that,” I said, “what you told yourself when they cut into Jaime?”
This stopped her.
No one spoke.
Kitty’s hand squirmed in ours, and it took me a moment to realize she wanted us to let go. I looked down at her, but she was focus
ed on Dr. Lyanne. I released her hand. A few short steps took her to the woman’s side. Kitty wrapped the fingers that had just been entwined with ours around Dr. Lyanne’s.
“Take me out of here,” she said, watching Dr. Lyanne with those wide, dark eyes, that pale, almost fae-looking face. “Take me out of here, please. Let Addie go to the basement. And just get the rest of us out.”
Thirty-two
It took an eternity for Dr. Lyanne to unlock Ryan’s door. I had to hold myself back from snatching the keys from her hand and doing it myself. If we had any hope of making it to Hally before the surgeons did, we had to move fast. There was the tightness in our chest, too, the pinch I knew would lessen, just a little, if I could see Ryan and know he was okay.
Then the door was open and he was jumping out of bed, and in five steps I knew it was Ryan, not Devon, running toward us, confusion all over his face, and I reached up, wrapping my arms around his neck and burying my face in his shoulder. I felt his heart beat beneath his shirt, thump, thump, thump-ing just as fast as mine. The heat of his chest in the chill of the hospital. There was a second—but only a second—before his arms wrapped around me, too.
“Eva,” he murmured into my hair. I nodded, and his arms tightened. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”
“We’ve got to run,” I said.
The halls were still half lit, but empty. Our footsteps echoed, our shadows trailing us like burnt ghosts. Every once in a while, we’d pass a window, running through a patch of moonlight before plunging back into the darkness. Darkness and light. Darkness and light.
Then we reached the stairwell, and there was no light at all. Our hand hovered over the railing, ready to grab hold if I stumbled, but I didn’t. We just kept running and running and running. Ryan was sometimes beside us, sometimes a little ahead, sometimes a step behind. By the time we reached the basement landing, we were out of breath.