Once We Were

by Kat Zhang

  I asked.

  Addie said, but she explained quickly anyway.

 

 

  “Didn’t he visit Nornand before the hybrid wing opened there?” Emalia asked.

  The Powatt institution would never open. Hybrid children would never fill its beds, sleepwalk through its halls, whisper fearfully to one another after lights-out.

  We were making sure of that.

  “He did, but . . .” Peter hesitated. “I’m not sure what the man is doing here so early. He went to the Benoll Hospital downtown as part of some kind of criminal investigation.” Our heart stilled, even before Peter’s next words: “An oxygen tank was stolen, or something like that. It’s a strange thing for a man like him to be looking into. But I suppose they’ve got good reason to be taking these things seriously. It’s nearing two months since Lankster Square, and they haven’t caught anyone, haven’t found Jaime . . . the curfew doesn’t seem to have an end in sight . . . people are getting frustrated.”

  Addie controlled our breathing, averting our eyes—and caught Nina staring right at us.

  The little girl frowned. “Are you okay?”

  This, of course, made Peter and Emalia turn to us, too.

  “Yeah,” Addie said quickly. She faked a cough. Looked everyone in the eye and smiled, holding it for a count of one, two before ducking our head and taking a bite of dinner. She was getting better at lying. Or maybe she’d always been good. She’d lied for three years to our parents, hadn’t she? “I’m fine. Swallowed something the wrong way.”

  “You don’t need to worry about Jenson, Addie.” Peter’s voice was gentle. “He’s just a man.”

  “I know,” Addie said.

  Peter was right, in a way. Jenson was just a man, just a human being of flesh and blood. But he was a man with power over our lives. Power made a person more than a person.

  “Has he been director long?” Addie asked.

  Peter set down his fork. Everyone had given up the pretense of eating, even Nina. “A few years. He used to oversee a single institution, a bit like Daniel Conivent.” He glanced at Emalia, then back at us. “Emalia said you’ve become friends with Sabine.”

  Was he trying to change the subject? It wasn’t like Peter to be so obvious, so clumsy with his words. But Addie just shrugged. I’d told her about our conversation with Sophie the night of the LOX heist. “Sort of.”

  Peter nodded. “Sabine and Christoph knew Jenson, back before he was made director. He was the head of their institution.”

  I said.

  But Addie had gone still, like she hadn’t remembered until now.

  “I don’t think Sabine’s heard about Jenson being here,” Peter said quietly. “There’s no need to upset her with the news, all right?”

  I knew he meant to be kind, and not patronizing, but I couldn’t help being annoyed anyway.

  “Yeah, all right,” Addie mumbled. Her mind was elsewhere; I could tell. But she offered me no explanation.

  A silence fell upon the table, thick and muffling. Peter picked up his fork again but only stared at his plate. Emalia’s eyes flickered up to meet ours, then quickly moved away again. Nina pushed at her food, cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces. This was like a mockery of a family dinner, everything the opposite of what it ought to be. I was suddenly so homesick it was a physical pain.

  I wanted my family back. I wanted the family I’d had before Mr. Conivent came to take us away.

  No. I wanted the family I’d had before Addie and I turned ten years old. Before we’d turned six. Before our parents had started to worry. Before the tests and the hospital visits, the medication and the counselors.

  I wanted a family I could barely remember, that was half dream.

  “I found somewhere safe to develop your videos, by the way,” Emalia said, too brightly. She smiled at Nina. “It’ll be done in a few days.”

  Addie bent our head and went back to finishing our meal. I was left with the strangest feeling—like even after so many minutes, I was still stuck in the disoriented state of having just woken to an unfamiliar world.

  Addie said it would only be fair for me to have the rest of the night to myself, since I’d let her have the afternoon. Honestly, at the moment, I didn’t care. I didn’t particularly want to be alone. But Addie disappeared, and I was left with my thoughts.

  Jenson was in Anchoit.

  The poster of Jaime was still hidden under our mattress. I drew it out, smoothing the crinkles from Jaime’s face. Did Jenson know Jaime was here? Was that why he’d come early?

  What would he think when we blew up the Powatt institution? Security was already high around the city. It was sure to tighten even more after the bombing. Were we placing Jaime in more danger by doing this?

  That hadn’t been the point. The point was to save people, not hurt them.

  I folded up the poster of Jaime and slipped it back under the mattress. Emalia and Peter had left together after dinner, so it was just Nina and me in the apartment.

  “I’m just going upstairs,” I told her as I pulled on my shoes.

  Lissa opened Henri’s door when I knocked. I tried to slip inside as soon as she did, and it took me a second to realize she wasn’t stepping aside. Instead, she put an arm out to block the doorway.

  “Hey,” she said. Her voice was hard. So were her eyes, dark behind her glasses.

  I tried to smile. “Hey. Are you going to let me in?”

  “No.” She let me stare dumbly at her a minute before sighing and coming out into the hall, shutting the door behind her. She pulled me to the stairs, speaking just above a whisper. “If you come in, then Henri will ask where Devon is.”

  I blinked. “And where’s Devon?”

  “Officially, he’s downstairs with you.” Lissa and I were in the stairwell now, and she checked both the next flight up and the flight down before saying, “That’s what I’m supposed to tell Henri.”

  “Ryan told you to say that?” I kept my voice as quiet as hers. Sound traveled in the stairwell, bouncing against the dirty concrete walls. But few people would be suspicious of two fifteen-year-old girls whispering on the landing. We could be talking about so many things. Complaints about our parents. Our brothers. School gossip. Who was dating whom and who had broken up already.

  Lissa shook her head. “No. Devon did.”

  Devon with or without Ryan?

  “And you don’t know where he really is?”

  “Do I ever know where either of you are anymore?” Lissa said. “No. No one tells me, and I’m just supposed to cover for you two. And okay, that’s what we do, right? We look out for each other. We cover for each other. But this is getting ridiculous, Eva.” She took a sharp breath and looked away. “You wanted me to trust you. You said you were going to make things okay. Well, make them okay, Eva, or I swear, I am going to go to Peter. I don’t care if he separates us. I hardly see you anymore, anyway. And—and I’d rather have us separated than . . . than have you guys go through with your plan.”

  Did she know about the test run earlier today? Did she know about Sabine’s plans for next Friday?

  Most likely, she didn’t.

  Lissa stared at the scratches and graffiti on the walls. “You know, Eva . . . when Hally and I first suspected that you and Addie might—well, might be like us, I . . .” She hesitated. “I was so hopeful, you know? I just really wanted someone—someone other than my brother—who knew what it was like. Who would get me. Who would understand. And maybe that was selfish of me, to drag you into this because I—”

  “Lissa,” I said. “You didn’t drag me into anything. You gave me a life I didn’t even think was possible, okay? That’s—I’ve never even s
aid thanks for that.”

  Lissa looked back at me, then nodded. “Look, I get where you’re coming from. I get why you’d want to—to do what you’re planning to do. But you can’t, Eva. You just can’t do something like this.” She squeezed my arm. “I trust you, all right? I trusted you and Addie when I first told you about us, and I trust you now.”

  I found myself nodding, too. I was helpless to do anything else.

  THIRTY

  I didn’t get the chance to speak with Ryan until later the next day. Addie wanted to spend the morning with Jackson, so I spent it asleep, dreaming soft dreams of the ocean, home, and everything I used to have. Our regular sleep was plagued by nightmares. When going under, I never had nightmares. Mostly, it was memories—so real it was like reliving them, but each slipping away after it was done, dissolving as the real world took its place.

  This time, I woke in the stairwell to gray, dirty walls. There were no windows here, and it was impossible to tell what time it was, or how long I’d been under. But Addie knew that, and she said, quietly

  I could feel her distraction, even if I couldn’t know her thoughts.

  I asked awkwardly.

  Addie climbed the last flight of stairs, then left me in control of our limbs.

 

  she said.

  Her mind was elsewhere, as if she were the one who’d just woken, and not me. Whatever had happened while I was asleep, it had disturbed her. But she didn’t offer any explanation, and I didn’t press. A few minutes later, she disappeared.

  Ryan dropped by Emalia’s apartment to see me. It was the first time we’d been truly alone in a while, and as perfect a moment as I was going to get to bring up Addie and Jackson. I hid a bitter smile. This was my perfect moment: a little precious time salvaged before blowing up a government building.

  Nerves made me bring up Devon first. “Do you know where he’s been going?” I asked.

  Ryan shrugged. “Devon and I haven’t really been talking much for a long time. He never got over the . . . well, us agreeing to this plan.”

  “But he said he wanted to go,” I said. “He wanted to go with Sabine to Powatt.”

  “I don’t know, Eva,” Ryan said.

  “Can’t you ask him?”

  He hesitated. “I have before. He says he just walks around. Scopes out the city. Devon is Devon. Now that we can have time alone, I’m not surprised he wants some.”

  I understood his reluctance to make Devon divulge his secrets. As hybrids, we’d had so little room for things that belonged to us and us alone. But when did a secret become too big to be kept? When did it stop belonging to just one person?

  “That day I went to Benoll,” I said in a rush, “to steal the oxygen . . .” Ryan caught the change in my tone and shifted so he could see my face. I didn’t fight it. I wanted to see his expression, too. “Remember how I said there was something between Addie and me?”

  He nodded. I could feel my heartbeat thrumming underneath my skin. Stop it, I told myself irritatedly. Having a body that reacted to my commands was wonderful, but sometimes, my body reacted to my emotions even when I didn’t want it to.

  “Well, it’s not entirely just between Addie and me,” I said. Ryan didn’t prompt me to continue, just waited. I kind of wished he would, just for something to fill the silences between my sentences. “She was with Jackson. They’re together. Apparently.”

  “With him,” Ryan echoed. His arm was still slung around my waist. I could feel the sudden tension in his muscles. “With him how?”

  I restrained myself from rolling my eyes at him. Did he really want me to spell it out? As if this weren’t awkward enough already. Thinking about Addie being with somebody was like thinking about Lyle in a couple years being with somebody, only a hundred times worse. Then I realized what Ryan was really asking.

  “No, Ryan. They were kissing, all right? That’s it.”

  “How do you know?” he asked quietly.

  “Because Addie would have told me otherwise,” I snapped. “And beforehand, not after.”

  Because at the end of the day, we trusted each other. Because that trust was all we had to keep us sane.

  Ryan and I were silent. We both kept our breathing carefully controlled.

  “Look,” I said finally. “Who do you really think this is weirder for, you or me?”

  I cracked a smile, and after a moment Ryan looked away. When his eyes met mine again, he wore the barest hint of a smile, too. He shrugged, his arm tightening around me, and conceded, “Maybe you.”

  I laughed. “Only maybe? Imagine if it were Devon.”

  “I’m really trying not to,” he said dryly.

  This time, the silence between us was more comfortable.

  “How do you feel about it?” I asked. “Addie and Jackson?”

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. He pressed a kiss against my forehead. “I’ll figure it out. It’s fine.” He was looking at me, but I couldn’t be sure if the assurance was for me, or himself.

  I sighed, fiddling with the edge of his shirt. “Hally and Lissa want us to stop with the plan. They don’t know about Friday, do they?”

  Ryan didn’t comment on my swerve in topics, just shook his head.

  “This is still worth it, right?” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  But he sounded no more sure than I felt.

  Saturday and Sunday passed. Then Monday. Three days of endlessly thinking about what would happen if I tried to stop everything. What would happen if I didn’t.

  When Addie and I were awake at the same time, I could tell the passing days weighed heavily on her, too. She spoke little, hiding herself from me. I tried to shield my worry from her, too.

  Less than a week now until the bombing.

  Less than a week to stop them, if you want to, a part of me whispered. Automatically, I clamped the voice quiet. It was easier to not think about things like that. At this point, it would be so much easier to just carry on, do what the others wanted.

  When had it become a case of my doing what the others wanted? I’d wanted this. In the beginning, sitting on that beach with Ryan, I’d made the decision to be part of this. It had seemed like the right thing to do. At the time.

  But now?

  I’d promised Lissa I would make everything okay. That I would figure things out. It had just been placating words at the time, spoken half in panic. But it was still a promise, one now lodged deep inside me. One I had to keep.

  But what did it mean to make everything okay?

  Blowing up the Powatt institution was supposed to be a step toward making things better. A drastic step, maybe. But like Christoph had said once, this wasn’t a game. We weren’t playing for poker chips. There were children’s lives in the balance—those already lost and those currently in danger.

  Maybe I was just second-guessing everything because I was scared. Because I wasn’t strong enough to do the things that had to be done. Was that it? Was I just weak? Eva, the recessive soul, doomed to be lesser.

  Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. When Addie left me alone late Tuesday morning, I snuck out of the apartment and traced the now-familiar path through the streets to the photography shop.

  Sabine stood at the counter, rustling through the drawers as if searching for something. She was so absorbed she didn’t notice me until I had almost reached her. Then she startled, her head snapping up.

  “Oh, hi.” She straightened and tucked her hair behind her ears. Smiled. “I didn’t expect you to come by.”

  I shrugged. Sabine nudged the drawer shut with her hip. She was still smiling, but I caught the distraction in her eyes. The rest of the small store was empty, not a single customer browsing the rack of postcards or studying the larger framed works on the walls.

  “Is Cordelia gone today?” I asked.

  “She’s at a wedding shoot.”
Sabine came around the counter, reaching for her purse. “And I was just about to go home for lunch, actually. What’s up?”

  I’d never been completely alone with Sabine before. After all this time, it should have been comfortable, but it wasn’t. Sabine was steady. Sabine could inspire confidence like no one else. But Sabine also often wore a weighing sort of look, like she could search inside a person and measure the quality of his soul. She had that look on now.

  “I just wanted to talk,” I said. “About Friday.”

  “Sure,” Sabine said lightly. She waved me toward the door and flipped the sign to Closed. “Why don’t you come back to the apartment with me?”

  Sabine’s apartment was only a few minutes’ drive away. The building looked a lot like Emalia’s, old and run-down. The stairwell smelled like grease, and Sabine warned me not to put my weight on the railing.

  “Home sweet home, I guess,” she said, unlocking one of the identical doors on her floor. The apartment was small, and like the photography shop, it was covered in pictures. But unlike those, these photographs were of people I recognized: Sabine laughing into the camera, Jackson and Cordelia at the boardwalk, even Peter as he turned, surprised by the flash.

  I stared at a panorama of the darkened ocean. There was something troubling yet seductive about the blackened water, the slivers of moonlight at the crests of the waves. Out of the corner of my vision, I caught Sabine’s eyes sweeping the apartment, her forehead creased. Still searching for something.

  “Cordelia and Katy are obsessed with taking the perfect night shot of the ocean,” Sabine said, noticing my attention and directing it back to the photo. “That picture there gets replaced every couple months. They’re never satisfied.”

  The apartment was messier than I’d expected. I guess I’d always imagined Sabine would be neat. The attic was well kept. So was the rest of the shop. The apartment was clean, but cluttered with books, camera equipment, and loose paper. I stared at a strange contraption on the dining-room table for a few seconds before recognizing it as the cutaway lock Sabine had used to teach Devon how to lock-pick.