by Kat Zhang
Marion’s contact at the news station, the one who’d been hacking the system to broadcast our footage, would have everything necessary to retrieve the ring’s footage. We decided, in the end, to just trust him to piece everything together. Sending the ring by post would take too long. Someone would need to drive there and deliver it directly.
But first, there was something we needed to add to the video.
Marion set up a camera in the dining room. I waited as she fiddled with the camera settings. Our parents stood near the back wall, silent and watching. Jackson hovered near us at the table, but Marion shooed him out of the way so she could pin a microphone to our shirt.
There was an air of command about her I hadn’t noticed before. A kind of casual assurance and precision in her motions.
Finally, she grew still, calling for quiet.
“Whenever you’re ready,” she said and smiled at us with real encouragement.
I swallowed. Addie and I stared straight into the camera’s cold eye, but I tried to picture in my mind the footage we would be broadcasting before this segment—the beauty, then terror, of the vigil. The hysterical attempt to beat the flames from Lyle’s clothes. The ride to Jenson’s home.
Then we’d cut to the jump out the window and our escape.
The gap in the footage was intentional.
We’d end in this room. With this recording of Addie and me.
So I did.
I didn’t call him out by name. Didn’t crush him like I could have, if I’d wanted to.
Just said, steadily, for the camera—for Jenson—for the entire country to hear: “I have the rest of the footage. The part missing in the middle. But I won’t show it. Not for now. Not when we can talk.”
We stared into the cold camera lens until Marion nodded. She switched the camera off. “We’ll just put this along with the ring. If we can get someone to leave soon, they’ll have it delivered by this evening.”
The dining-room door opened. “I’ll take it,” a voice said.
It was Logan. He had a nasty cut on the side of his face, but it had mostly stopped bleeding. Behind him came Ryan.
I found ourself standing. Ready to ask—
But then we saw his face, and I didn’t need to ask.
He hadn’t found Hally and Lissa.
The footage broadcasted the next morning, Christmas Day, in the middle of a rerun of Carson Loyde’s first address to the American public as president. This time, Marion had been warned, and we were all gathered in front of the television, waiting.
As vice president, Loyde’s face and presence hadn’t been as ubiquitous as that of the president, but we’d been exposed to it all our lives. When I saw him, I hardly saw a person. I saw the pages in our history books, where pictures of him as a young man filled the chapters about the campaign he’d shared with the last president. I saw all the early mornings before school when parts of his speeches would play on the morning news, and the dinners where his voice murmured in the background.
He was younger than the previous president. Maybe sixty, maybe a year or two under. I couldn’t remember. His hair wasn’t yet all the way gray. There was a slow deliberateness to the way he moved on the screen, the way he spoke.
For more than twenty years, Loyde had been second fiddle in a regime established around the old president. One that had been formed even before their election, during the previous presidency.
Now he was suddenly in power. And the country was in disarray.
Loyde’s face winked out, replaced by our own footage. We watched tensely—we hadn’t been paying attention to where the ring was pointed, so there had never been any assurance that we had any clear shots. But Marion’s contact had promised us he’d pieced together something comprehensible.
We watched in silence. The vigil. The car ride. The escape. Then the footage of ourself in the dining room.
Static.
Beside us on the couch, Devon remained expressionless. Both he and Ryan had barely spoken since yesterday, when they returned to the house without their sisters.
“Now we wait,” he said.
FORTY-FOUR
We didn’t need to wait long. A little after dinner, the satphone rang.
Henri, we all thought.
But it wasn’t.
“Jenson released me to send you a message,” Hally Mullan whispered over the line.
She refused to join us at the safe house—urged us, in fact, to move somewhere else with fewer people. She and Lissa were someplace safe; they promised us. She was almost sure she hadn’t been followed after being released, but she couldn’t be positive. Not until more time passed. She didn’t want to lead anyone back to us.
But she had called as quickly as she could, because Jenson wanted to meet Addie and me tomorrow morning, at a café on the corner of Bente and Stentwood.
“I’m fine,” she assured us again and again.
We had no choice but to believe her.
Jenson was already at the café when Addie and I arrived. He’d told us to meet outside, on the abandoned terrace, and I shivered as we stepped from the restaurant’s temperature-controlled room and back into the winter chill.
But there wasn’t any need for such theatrics. Jenson knew we didn’t dare gather in large numbers, or create a scene. I didn’t doubt he’d have some kind of security, but considering what kind of secret he was trying to keep, he wouldn’t want to cause a fuss, either.
Jenson sat by himself at the edge of the terrace. He’d brought a newspaper with him. A cup of something steamed near his hand.
I hesitated just beyond the door. Addie had almost completely recovered her strength. She’d offered to be in control today, for the meeting. But I’d wanted this. I’d wanted to speak directly to this man.
The man who’d shown up at Nornand so many months ago dressed like he was going to the symphony—who we’d seen at Powatt in shirtsleeves and polished shoes—who was never short of impeccably dressed on the evening news—reclined against the delicate café chair in a plain, brown jacket and uncollared shirt. He hadn’t even looked this casual when he’d received Lyle and us at his home.
Was he trying to be inconspicuous? He’d become such a public figure over the last few months—all part of his plan, I now realized. There were other directors of hybrid affairs, but none I—or the people—knew as well by name. Jenson had fame. Jenson also had Jaime, and the so-called cure.
Then I sat down, and my boldness disappeared under the weight of Jenson’s eyes. He lowered his newspaper. Folded it. I couldn’t help the way our gaze drifted to the headline about Loyde’s ascension. All eyes were on him, waiting for his first decisions as head of the country. Anything he did now would set a precedent for the years, perhaps decades, to come.
If Jenson didn’t get rid of him, the way he planned.
“You’re brave,” he said. “Meeting me here like this. Or perhaps just stupid. I haven’t decided.”
I forced myself to stare him in the eyes. There was something almost unnatural about them—how unwavering they were. Or perhaps they just scared me, and that was why I found them inhuman. Wasn’t that a mix-up people made all too frequently?
We’re strong. We’d get through this, as we’d gotten through everything else.
“We understand you,” I said. “And what you want. It provides a kind of security.”
“We?” he said.
I set our hands on the table. I wished we still had our ring.
“Addie and me,” I said. It wasn’t as if there was any point in pretending about that anymore. If Addie and I weren’t hybrid, then we wouldn’t be here. None of this would have happened.
“Eva Tamsyn.” He rolled my name around in his mouth, but otherwise hardly reacted. As if the idea that I wasn’t Addie—that he was speaking to one of the recessive souls his program, his cure, sought to eradicate—didn’t matter at all. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I want Emalia Foy freed,” I said. He didn’t react in the least to her name. “She was arrested about two months ago. I don’t know where she is now, but I want her released.”
“If we have her,” Jenson said. “How do you know she isn’t hiding somewhere?”
We couldn’t know for sure, not with the way people disappeared nowadays. But if Emalia and Sophie had been able, they’d have found a way to contact us by now. They’d been extremely talented forgers, had known Peter’s network well. They wouldn’t have just buried themselves.
“You have her,” I said, as calmly as I could. “And I want her released.”
He nodded. “Fine.”
I swallowed. Bargaining Emalia’s release had felt easy, but promises were only promises, and this next request would be much harder. “There’s an institution in the mountains of Hahns County.”
“I know it,” Jenson said. Of course he did. It fell under his jurisdiction.
Our hands felt naked on the tabletop. I itched to wrap them around the edge of our seat—it was more Addie’s habit than mine, but physical tics sometimes bled between us. As if catching my faltering, Addie gripped on to me. Held me steady until I could do it myself.
“I want the institution dissolved,” I said. “It’s old—it’s falling apart. You can give them any excuse you want to. But I want the institution closed and all the children freed.”
“What would you have me do with them?” he said. “Despite what you may believe, not every family of a hybrid child wants him back.”
He was right. I didn’t want him to be, but he was. The country was changing, but not enough.
“Send them home with the families who will take them,” I said quietly, and hoped that it would be enough. That the kindness of a few would stretch far enough to give each child a place to stay. At least for a little while. Until they found new homes.
Jenson nodded, his expression unchanged. I had no way of reading his thoughts.
“Is that all?” Jenson said. “Because—”
“No,” I said. Blurted, really. Each moment in his presence, even when he was being amiable, made me feel sicker. I wanted this over and done with. “You won’t blame the president’s death—whatever really caused it—on hybrids. And I want Jaime Cortae.”
“Yes,” Jenson said. “And no.”
I fought the urge to tighten our hands into fists. “No?”
“I won’t give you Jaime.” Jenson leaned back in his chair. “I couldn’t if I wanted to. Releasing that Foy woman? If we have her, I haven’t heard about it, which means she isn’t important. No one would notice. Dissolving Hahns? A bigger hassle, but as you’ve said, I can come up with reasons. But Jaime Cortae is the key to the future. I cannot give him up.”
I tried to remain calm, but it was hard with the rush of heat his refusal sent thrumming through our body. “I can release the video. It’ll destroy you—”
“Losing Jaime would destroy me,” he said. “And you won’t release the video. Not while I have him.”
He let me sit in silence for a moment, searching desperately for something to say.
Then he leaned toward us. “I will give you Emalia. And Hahns. A gift, of sorts, for your cooperation. I won’t blame you for the president’s death. But don’t think you have the upper hand. The world is not on your side, Eva. It never has been.”
“The other countries—” I started to say, and his face darkened. He laughed a short, brutal laugh.
“This is not the school yard, Eva. Countries do not play games for marbles and pennies. Do you think those other nations are purely altruistically interested? That they’ll be happy to just step in and help out, then go home again when you don’t want them anymore?” He stood. “You think it’s a good thing that you’re cracking this country open, leaving it weak and exposed. You think change can only be for the better. But you’re playing with a fire you don’t know how to control. And you’d better be careful before everything burns down around your ears.”
FORTY-FIVE
Two days after our meeting with Jenson, four days after the first announcement of the president’s death, Marion heard through her sources that Hahns had just been shut down, the children sent away. There was no way of being positive Jenson had kept his word about actually sending them home, but Marion assured us that it seemed to be true.
We’d received no word about Emalia and Sophie yet, but Hally had joined us at our new lodging, an isolated cabin Marion managed to rent under the guise of a tourist.
There had still been no official decree for the cause of the president’s death. The reports—and there were so many reports—all claimed that investigations were under way, that as soon as all the facts were straightened out, they’d release them to the public.
The delayed information whipped the country into a frenzy of theories. People clamored for the truth, and in the absence of an official story, created their own. Hybrids had done it. Foreigners had done it. Foreign hybrids had done it.
“It’s all going to explode,” Marion kept saying. The situation worried her; I could tell. Because the instability truly concerned her? Or because she liked to be in control of the storytelling around her?
“What do we do now?” Hally said, looking from Addie and me to Devon, then Jackson. “Send Jenson another message?”
We were gathered in the foyer, sunlight catching the dust in the air. I could see the strain on everyone’s faces. We were exhausted like we’d never been exhausted before. The months of worry, of fear and stress and torment, had taken their toll.
“It won’t make a difference,” Jackson said. “We have nothing new to bargain with.”
“We’re not bartering,” Addie snapped, then pressed our fingers to our forehead. Said, quietly, “Sorry. You said bargain. I just—”
Jackson wrapped his hands around ours. Lowered them, gently, from our face. He and Addie looked at each other a moment, silent in their understanding.
I’d asked Addie about her and Jackson. Where they stood with each other. And I’d understood when she said she wasn’t sure.
I like having him near, she’d said. That’s all I know for right now.
The truth was, we all had much bigger things to worry about. I hoped one day for the luxury of worrying about the everyday things. The non-life-threatening things.
“We need something to break the stalemate,” Devon said.
Addie and I tried to focus on what we could. Jackson and Vince were the best at getting people to relax and lose themselves. They cracked jokes, talked too much, and got even the most dour-faced in the cabin to smile from time to time.
This stalemate, however tense, was also a time of forced rest. With everyone cooped up in the safe house, there was no excuse to avoid anyone for long. It was mend fences or put up more walls, and as far as our family was concerned, Addie and I didn’t want the latter.
We used to eat primarily with Ryan and the others, but we made a point now of searching out our parents and Lyle for some meals.
One night, Mom said, “Eva, want me to get more carrots for you?” as if it were the most casual thing in the world.
And it was. Or should have been, and I struggled to overcome the swell of emotion I felt at the sound of my name. The feeling of her recognition.
Addie understood. Perhaps not perfectly, but better than most.
Things were a little easier after that. Slowly, bit by bit, our family fit back together again. We’d never be exactly the same as we’d been before, but I found myself coming to love our new whole.
Then came the morning Addie and Lyle were bickering about something stupid—spilled cereal, splashed milk—and the television in the living room burst into static.
We froze.
Turned.
And saw—heard—the missing footage from the night of the vigil. Jenson’s voice explaining his plans. A brief shot of his face as he moved to the couch.
Our only bargaining chip for Jaime. Now lost.
The stalemate had broken.
There was only one person who could have broadcasted the footage. Addie hurtled through the cabin until we found Marion seated by the kitchen window.
“Why?” Addie demanded. We were so furious our body seemed to burn from the inside. Our face flushed, heat ripping through our veins. “Why’d you do it, Marion?”
She was calm. Or tried to be calm. But I caught the flicker of discomfort on her face before she hastened to wipe it away.
She spoke softly, but steadily. “Because it was the right thing to do. It’s been too long, Addie. And I kept telling you—things were going to explode. The hybrids were going to take the brunt of the damage. You must see that. And Jenson is dangerous. By delaying this footage, you were giving him more time to plan—to come up with some scheme that would leave you with no cards, instead of one.”