Echoes of Us

by Kat Zhang

  We’d loved him, though, in a way. As the face of a country we’d been taught to love. Of a country we did love, despite everything it had done to us, because it was home.

  The president was dead, and though the news anchors claimed nothing was certain, they talked about the hybrid gathering around the White House. Talked about the rumors that it had all been nothing more than a distraction. A plot to create an opening for an assassination.

  “That isn’t true,” I cried.

  Jenson glanced at us. “Don’t worry. We won’t put all the blame on you. You are a bit young to organize an assassination on the highest office in the country. We’ll say there was a whole team of people working with you. That they were the masterminds. You were only the weapon. They pointed you and pulled the trigger. Took advantage of your youth and instability. You might come out of this whole thing looking like a tragic victim.”

  I shook our head. “No one—there was never any plan to kill the president. Why would anyone do that?”

  “Because now, we’re going to need another president,” Jenson said.

  “The vice president—”

  “The vice president will take over,” Jenson agreed. “But who knows if that will last? Do you know how this regime first came into power, with the president’s uncle? The Great Wars had started, and the American public was afraid. The man campaigned with the promise of safety. He and his nephew understood that if you make people fear something, then assure them you’re the only one keeping them safe, you’ll have them in the palm of your hand.” Jenson stared up at us, almost languid. “The people are more afraid than they’ve been in a long time. And it’s the hybrids that are the villains. They’re not going to want a vice president who was chosen two decades ago, who has never been virulent about hybrids. They’ll search for someone who knows hybrids. Who has been working for years to protect the people from them. Who has even been developing a cure, to eradicate them forever.”

  He smiled.

  Jenson called in two guards to usher us into a bedroom upstairs. At least one of them was still stationed out in the hall, just beyond the closed door.

  I couldn’t stay still. The bedroom, despite the lushness of the furnishings, was almost worse than the tiny cell Addie and I had been locked away in at Hahns. Then, at least, we’d thought our friends and family were safe.

  I said softly. I needed to know the extent of what we were facing.

 

  The clock on the wall read half past four. It might be hours before anyone woke and realized we were missing. Until someone heard what had happened on the news.

  When they did, Ryan would realize both his sisters and we were missing.

  Lyle sat on the bed, watching us. He’d been silent since we arrived at Jenson’s house—since we’d been captured back at the Capitol mall. But now, softly, he said, “Are we going to escape?”

  I smiled at him. Said, with all the conviction I had, and some I didn’t, “Yes.”

  I continued pacing, but slowed my steps. The bedroom was larger than most I’d ever seen. There were two windows, but a house like this probably had an alarm system. I didn’t want to trigger anything—at least not until I knew exactly what we were doing.

  Addie said.

  We peered out the glass, trying to see in the darkness. There weren’t any nearby trees to climb onto. There was a drainage pipe, though, and the side of the house was stucco. Maybe, maybe we’d get enough traction to be able to make our way down.

  Beyond that, there was just darkness and uncertainty.

  “Are we going to jump?” Lyle said. He’d slipped off the bed.

  I smiled at him grimly. “It might be the only way out.”

  “What about the guards?” he said. “Is it like the Secret Service out there?”

  Despite everything, I felt a laugh in the back of our throat. “The Secret Service protect the president. You know that from your books.”

  “Yes,” Lyle said. “But they think you killed the president.”

  That quickly sobered me again. I shook our head. “Jenson’s trying to make other people believe that. I don’t think he’d let a lot of people know where we are right now. Or that they grabbed us in the middle of the vigil and not in the Capitol building. I don’t think there will be a lot of police out there.” I turned back to the window and the night. “We just need a distraction.”

  “Like a fire?” Lyle said.

  This time, I did laugh, because why not? Laughing wouldn’t make our situation worse. “Yeah, that would probably work. I wish I’d thought to bring a lighter.”

  “You don’t need a lighter.” Lyle climbed onto the dresser so he could reach the clock, then brought it down and flipped it over, removing the batteries.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “You’ve read about this.” He smiled. I couldn’t help smiling back. “I don’t find it weird at all that we’re related.”

  “I need a knife. And some kind of tinder . . .”

  I held out our hand until he passed us the clock. Then I grabbed a pillow from the bed and shucked the cover off. Pressing the cloth over the clockface, I smashed it as quietly as I could. Both Lyle and I froze, listening, but no one seemed to have heard.

  A sliver of the clockface served nicely to rip open the pillow.

  “There,” I said, pulling out the soft fluff inside. “There’s your tinder.” I held up the sliver of glass. “And here’s your knife. What? You don’t think you’re the only one who can be handy?”

  Despite my protests that he was going to cut himself, Lyle insisted on being the one to carefully cut open the back of one of the batteries. We scoured the room for something small and metal to fit into the battery and settled on a paper clip I found in the nightstand drawer.

  Addie eventually persuaded me to leave him to his fiddling while we started shifting the dresser in front of the door. It was even heavier than it looked. Even after Lyle came to help, it took forever to slide it into place—especially since we were trying to be as quiet as possible.

  I frowned at him as he turned back to the tinder. “Lyle, you haven’t tried this at home, have you?”

  “Never,” he said, a bit too quickly. “Look, it’s working—” The bit of pillow fluff had started to glow. Lyle blew on it and said, with what was probably more excitement than necessary or normal, “Come on, give me more to feed it.”

  In a few minutes, the bed was aflame.

  And the smoke alarm started to shriek.

  Lyle seemed a little stunned by the sudden size and intensity of the fire. I grabbed his hand, pulling him toward the window. The table lamp was heavy and sturdy—more than strong enough to smash though the glass.

  I’d been right. The house was alarmed. A second shrieking joined the first, so loud that Lyle clapped his hands to his ears. I was too busy trying to clear the glass from the window.

  Addie said. Her voice was calm, given the circumstances. I discovered I was surprisingly calm, too. Our heart thudded. Our blood roared. But my mind stayed clear.

  Someone pounded on the door. I didn’t doubt they’d break it down before long. If Lyle went first, he had a better chance of escaping the house before the guards came in. But if he went first, and he fell—there’d be no one to catch him.

  I said, and that settled it.

  Lyle hovered nervously as I edged out of the window. The fire behind us grew, spreading. We barely saw the door through the flames. Even if the officers broke through, they’d have quite an obstacle in the way.

  We’d have quite an obstacle in the way if we didn’t get out of here fast enough.

  Addie gasped as I reached for the drainage pipe. Our feet almost slipped on the sill. I retracted our arm. Looked at Lyle, who stared back at us. We could barely reach the pipe. How was he going to do
it?

  It was too late to go back now. I took a deep breath. Wrapped our fingers around the pipe and swung our foot out, scrabbling for purchase against the wall.

  Addie whispered.

  So I did. I launched out of the window and clutched at the drainage pipe and slid down—down—down until we struck the ground. Fell. Rolled through the damp grass.

  I gasped for breath. Picked ourself up. Lyle was leaning out the window. I didn’t dare shout, but I waved up at him. He put his foot against the windowsill, as I’d done, but hesitated.

  Something inside the house banged. Lyle twisted around. When he turned back to us, the terror on his face told us everything we needed to know.

  I forgot trying to keep quiet. I screamed at him, “Jump!”

  Still, he hesitated. He looked behind him again.

  “Jump, Lyle—”

  He jumped—

  Fell toward us, flying limbs and terror, and we caught him—we sort of caught him—we broke his fall. We sprawled against the lawn, the breath knocked from our lungs. Lyle was on his feet first. He pulled us up, too.

  “Come on,” he gasped. “Come on, Eva—”

  We ran into the darkness, past the fire trucks when they came with their wailing sirens, past the crowd of people gathering outside, staring.

  We ran until there was silence in the world again, and it enveloped us completely.

  FORTY-THREE

  Lyle stuck close as we crept through the darkness. Soon, we were downtown, sneaking through the ghost-town streets until we found an abandoned-looking pay phone.

  “Keep watch for me,” I whispered, and Lyle nodded.

  I called the new satellite-phone number. Then held our breath as the phone rang. Once. Twice. Thrice—

  “Hello?” Ryan’s voice was raspy with sleep. The sun hadn’t even risen yet. He must have answered the phone on instinct, because when he spoke again, his voice had sharpened, like he’d jolted more awake. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me,” I whispered.

  “Eva?” Confusion warred with concern in the two syllables of my name. “Where are you?”

  “I’m near the Capitol,” I said. “I—”

  I cut off. Because right then, something started glowing bright red in the darkness of the booth.

  Addie said.

  I stared at it. The light came from under the band—what had Marion said? The light would glow red when the memory was full.

  Addie whispered as she realized, too.

  We’d taken footage of the vigil. We’d never turned the ring off again.

  The raid at the Capitol mall. The car ride to Jenson’s house. Jenson’s words.

  Addie and I had all of it.

  “Eva?” Ryan’s voice broke through my shock. We heard him getting out of bed, the springs creaking. “Are you all right? What’s going on? Are you at the vigil?”

  “I came with Lyle—and Hally. I’ve got Lyle with me, but I don’t know where Hally is. We’re—we’re on Willis Avenue, right before it hits Jamerson.”

  “Wait right there,” he said. “We’re coming right now.”

  Lyle was falling asleep by the time the cars arrived, lulled by exhaustion and the cold air. I’d tried to get him to huddle in the phone booth itself, where it was a little warmer, but he wanted to be where we were, so we ended up sitting by a patch of trees nearby, his head on our shoulder.

  I didn’t recognize the cars at first. I shook Lyle awake and was ready to make a run for it when the first car slowed to a stop and Dad stepped out, along with Ryan. The other vehicle never killed its engine, the low growl muffling Ryan’s footsteps as he ran for us.

  “We’re fine,” I said quickly, reaching for him, letting him obliterate the rest of the world for just a moment with the way his arms wrapped around us.

  I didn’t say anything about Jenson. Not yet. Once I started talking, there would be too much to say. Too much to explain. Better that for now, he simply thought we’d managed to escape the police.

  “Where’s Hally?” he said, but from the tightness of the words, he already knew my answer.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  “Let’s not hang around,” Dad said. He came over and awkwardly squeezed Addie and me on the shoulder.

  Ryan spun to face him. “We can’t head back without my sister.” There was a cold certainty to him. Worry about Hally and Lissa had always been one of the few things to drive him to both fire and ice.

  “It’s a bad night to be roaming the streets,” Dad said quietly. “If Hally is still out there, she can lie low for a while. As long as the government isn’t already on the lookout for her . . . You can’t tell a hybrid by sight.”

  “But she isn’t just hybrid, is she? You can pick her out of a crowd, just by looking.” Ryan’s voice had gotten too loud. He capped it with effort, his throat jumping. His eyes swung back to Addie and me. When he spoke again, the words were quiet. “We have two cars. You take one and head back with Eva and Lyle. I’ll stay with the others and keep looking. We’ve already picked up two people from the vigil. There may be more.”

  “No—” I started to say, but Ryan leaned toward us. Whispered so softly in our ear I could barely catch it—“Your family’s frantic about you, Eva. Go with them.”

  Addie said quietly.

  It all made sense. But sense could be a hard thing to obey.

  “Later,” Ryan said. It was both a promise and a request. He kissed us on the cheek, just briefly. A moment of warmth in a frigid night. “I’ll find Hally and Lissa. We’ll meet you back at the house.”

  “Can we get something to eat?” Lyle murmured from the backseat once we’d pulled away from the curb.

  Dad promised him that there would be food once we got back to the house, and Lyle fell properly asleep soon after. Then it was just Addie and me and Dad, flying along the highway, the moon a sliver in the sky.

  Addie whispered

  I hesitated and turned toward the window.

  Addie was quiet, and I almost apologized for bringing up such a silly, inconsequential thing. But by then, we were both lost in the idea of it. In this darkness, we could almost pretend it was half a year ago, and Dad had flown out to Nornand and demanded we be returned home. How had he put it? I’ll fly right up there and kidnap you from under their noses.

  Funny, how I remembered the exact words after so long. Or maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t strange at all to remember promises one’s father made, and didn’t keep.

  But that wasn’t fair, perhaps, to think. People made decisions as best they could. Sometimes, it seemed like there wasn’t any other choice. Or that there were only bad ones, and choosing the lesser of two evils was the best anyone could do.

  I’d made choices myself I wished I hadn’t.

  “I’m Eva,” I said suddenly. Dad’s eyes shifted from the road to our face. I struggled not to look away. “I—I don’t know if you heard, when Ryan said—I mean, I just wanted you to be sure. In case you weren’t.”

  Dad was quiet a long while. He’d gone back to watching the road.

  “You were always more stubborn than Addie,” he said finally. He turned to us again and smiled. “You liked to take risks. Liked to climb trees and go camping and look over the edge of cliffs like you didn’t know you could fall.” He hesitated. “I don’t know if you’re still like that.”

  For a moment, I was too afraid to speak. Frightened that if I did, our voice might shudder, or crack. But I found it in me to keep it steady, and I said, “I guess I am.”

  I looked up, out the window. “Pyxis,” I said softly. And there it was, faint but visible in the night sky.
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  “The mariner’s compass,” Dad said. He laughed a little. “Do you remember? When you and Addie were little, you guys used to say it looked nothing like a compass. You said it should have been called the telescope. What captains looked through when they were at sea, so they could see the shore.”

  It seemed like half the house was awake by the time we got back, many huddled in front of the television in various states of dress. Eyes were bleary. Hair wild and crumpled. Some nursed cups of coffee. Outside the windows, the horizon held the glimmerings of dawn.

  The news on the TV was much the same as what Addie and I had heard at Jenson’s house. The president had been killed. Investigations were still under way. More information would be released soon.

  I said as we slowly joined the others in the living room.

  Addie said.

 

  Addie said.

  Marion was, of course, among the ones awake. We left Dad and Lyle’s side to reach her, our hand in our pocket where the ring was cool to the touch. The news anchor had just started to talk about the inauguration of the vice president, Carson Loyde.

  Hybrids hadn’t officially been blamed yet for the initial attack, but I figured it was only a matter of time before Jenson spun his story.

  Meanwhile, we had our own.

  “We need,” I said, quietly, to Marion, “to make one more broadcast.”

  Marion couldn’t extract the video from the ring here. She needed special equipment. But we didn’t have time to waste. Addie and I wanted this footage broadcasted before the government officially pinned the presidential assassination on hybrids.