Once We Were

by Kat Zhang

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Cordelia left first. Christoph was next, moving slower. His lip still bled, and he kept rubbing at it, smearing the blood across his chin.

  “Go clean yourself up in the bathroom,” Josie said as he made his way down the stairs. “And bring me up the first-aid kit.”

  He made no reply, but returned in a few minutes with his face clean and a small, white box in his hands. Josie nodded her thanks. He walked away without a word and this time did not come back.

  Now it was just Josie and Jackson, who still stood across the room, staring toward the window. His arms were crossed. We tried not to look at him. It hurt every time we did.

  I ventured, but all I got was a wordless response that felt like a suppressed scream.

  Josie approached Ryan with the first-aid kit. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore—not profusely, anyway. He stared at her but didn’t recoil as she cleaned the blood from his face.

  “Jackson,” she said as she worked. She didn’t look at him. He didn’t notice, because he wasn’t looking at her. “You can go. It will be all right.”

  He half turned. For a moment, I thought he might argue. His eyes swept through a point a little above our head, his lips parting. But then he just nodded.

  More than Christoph or Cordelia or even Sabine, I was furious at him. Because Addie had trusted him, had been happy with him. And now that was gone.

  He disappeared down the steps.

  Josie crouched in front of me. “Will you hold still if I try to get that blood out of your hair?”

  The gag pressed against our tongue, the sides of our mouth. I didn’t reply. She dabbed at the back of our head with a damp cloth.

  She didn’t try to say anything more to either Ryan or us, and while she was busy tending to our head, I met Ryan’s eyes. He held our gaze a moment, then began looking around the room. At first I thought he was following the string of fairy lights.

  Then I realized he was looking at the nails.

  They were old, long but not particularly thick.

  I whispered. She was still curled up tight, and I knew how hard it could be to let go once you got like that. But I knew, too, that sometimes it was better to.

  Addie’s voice was the faintest of echoes.

  I reached for her with ghostly fingers, drew her free from her hiding corner in the back of our minds.

  This was much easier decided than accomplished. Josie stayed with us all through the day, leaving only briefly when Katy dropped by in the afternoon to ask if she wanted to go home for a bit. Josie didn’t, but she left us with Katy to run and get food as well as call Emalia. She closed the trapdoor, so her voice was muffled by the ceiling and layers of insulation.

  Katy stood uneasily by the hatch, not looking at Ryan and me. I tried to take the opportunity to scoot closer to Ryan, but my movement caught her eye.

  “Don’t,” she said. The command was strong, despite the guilt wrought into her body. The usual cloudiness in her voice was gone, replaced by a pained sort of steel.

  I stopped.

  The bell downstairs tinkled faintly, signaling that Josie had left the store. We hadn’t heard any customers enter or leave all day. Josie must have closed the shop.

  Addie said.

 

  It had been hours since we last ate, but our stomach was clamped too tightly for food.

  Addie said.

 

  We’d screamed earlier, but no one had come.

  Addie said bitterly.

  I didn’t answer. Bitterness was better than pain, better than paralyzing fear. I’d allow Addie all the bitterness she wanted. She deserved it.

  I said softly.

  Addie was quiet, and I was afraid it might have been too much to bring up Lyle at a time like this. But when she finally spoke, she said

  I tested our restraints. Our wrists were crossed behind our back, and it seemed like Sabine had wrapped the tape in both directions. I could hardly budge our hands at all.

  I said.

  The bell downstairs rang again. Josie was back. She and Katy exchanged a few quiet words by the trapdoor. Then Katy glanced in our direction one last time, her eyes deadened, and went down the stairs.

  Sabine—it was Sabine now, with her quiet, steady eyes and that particular dancelike way she moved—brought over the plastic bags of takeout. “If you scream when I ungag you, Eva, I’ll just have to gag you again and then you won’t be able to eat.”

  I nodded.

  She undid the gag. I didn’t scream. I breathed several times, quickly, through our mouth, and swallowed, trying to get the taste of cloth off our tongue.

  “I brought sandwiches.” Sabine turned back to her bags. “I’ll have to—”

  “I need to go to the bathroom.” I’d planned on saying it as innocently as I could, but I realized two words in that I had no idea how innocent sounded after being attacked and tied up by people you thought were friends.

  Sabine glanced at Ryan. He’d slumped against the wall, looking back at her unblinkingly.

  “I don’t know if I trust him up here by himself,” Sabine said.

  “Then stay up here with him and let me go to the bathroom.”

  She smiled crookedly. “No, I think I’ll come down with you.” She produced a pocketknife and pointed it at our binds. “Same deal as with the gag. You only get one chance. Struggle, and it’s gone.”

  I could feel how difficult it was for Addie to keep from taking over our limbs, from striking out as soon as our arms were free. Our muscles felt strangely wobbly. Sabine pulled our hands in front of us and bound them again, but looser, with a length of enforced duct tape about five inches long between our wrists.

  She was more hesitant about our legs. Finally, she cut those bonds, too—but not before crafting makeshift manacles around our ankles.

  “You’re good at this,” I said quietly, to hurt her.

  “This is what they did to us, sometimes, at the institution,” she said, to hurt me.

  Addie said.

  I felt the hit in our gut anyway. I didn’t say anything else as Sabine pulled us to our feet.

  “Be back soon,” she said to Ryan, as if we were just popping off to the bathroom in the middle of a party.

  We headed down the stairs, step by careful step. Sabine showed me to the bathroom in the back room on the other side of the store. “Don’t take long,” she said before closing the door.

  As soon as she did, I locked it and whipped around, searching for something—anything—to free our hands. There was just the toilet, a sink with a drawer and a cabinet, and a mop in the corner, next to a stack of toilet paper.

  Toiler paper. I turned to the dispenser, but it wasn’t the sort found in department stores, with jagged edges. There was no paper towel dispenser, only a box of tissues atop the toilet tank.

  I flushed the toilet and turned on the sink so Sabine couldn’t hear what we were doing. The door might be locked, but I didn’t doubt she had a master key.

  I bit at the binds around our wrists, the duct tape bitter in our mouth. It stretched under the force of our teeth, but didn’t break.

  n the drawer> Addie said, but there was only some drain cleaner and old air freshener. I tried to no avail to break the length of duct tape using the edge of the sink—

  Addie said.

 

 

  I threw a glance toward the bathroom door, but the chip’s weak light wouldn’t make it all the way out there. It was scarcely visible through our pants pocket.

  The chip was barely pulsing, a good three seconds between flashes.

  Addie said.

 

  Addie and I came simultaneously to the same conclusion. I knew because her rush of hope and fear only compounded mine.

  Hally. Lissa.

  “Eva?” Sabine called through the door. “You’ve got one minute before—”

  “Before what?” I snapped.

  Hally and Lissa were out on the street somewhere. Close by. Looking for us—because why else would they have Ryan’s chip?

  In our hand, the chip pulsed faster and faster. She was getting closer. Should we scream? Would Hally and Lissa hear us?

  Then, almost at the exact same moment—the pulse of the chip’s light became a steady, red beam. And there came a quiet knock.

  Not on the bathroom door. Farther away.

  The front door.

  “HALLY!” I screamed, then again and again. “HALLY! HALLY!”

  There was a great scuffling outside the bathroom. Sabine rattled the doorknob, trying to get inside. The knocking on the front door became a pounding—

  “HALLY!”

  The pounding became the shattering of glass.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The rattling on our doorknob ceased, but I didn’t stop screaming Hally’s name until Addie shouted

  My next scream caught in our chest, a hard, aching lump beside our heart. We no longer knew what Sabine and Josie might do. Hally and Lissa were in danger.

  Our fingers fumbled, but I managed to unlock the door and shove it open. I flinched, half expecting Sabine to jump us. There was no one there. Then there was, but it wasn’t Sabine or Josie. It wasn’t even Hally.

  It was Jackson.

  The sight of him stunned us to stillness. But only for a second. We barrelled past him, struggling in our makeshift bonds. “Hally!”

  Hally ran into view, her eyes huge. She grabbed for our hands. “Where are Ryan and Devon? Are they okay? Are you okay?”

  “Upstairs,” I managed to say. I tried to move in front of her, shielding her from Jackson. “Go. Run. Get—”

  “It’s okay,” Hally said. “Jackson came to get me. I didn’t believe him at first, but—”

  Jackson went to get her?

  He looked away. His voice was low, dulled. “Sabine ran out when we came in. She knows when to cut her losses. She’ll be headed for her apartment to get the bomb, then to the institution.”

  Hally grabbed a large shard of broken glass and sawed at the tape between our wrists.

  “You shattered the window,” I said hoarsely. Our eyes kept returning to Jackson, but each time, I forced them away again.

  A shadow of a grin touched Hally’s lips. “Yeah, well, a rescue for a rescue, right? Don’t think you get all the window-breaking fun. I didn’t even have a nightstand handy.”

  Hysterical laughter winnowed through us. At Nornand, we’d smashed a window to get to Hally’s room. Then, to escape the security guards, we’d run up to the roof. Somehow, that escape seemed simpler. The bad guys were just bad guys. We hadn’t spent weeks with them. Months with them. We hadn’t eaten and laughed with them.

  “I’ll go upstairs,” Jackson muttered. “Make sure Ryan’s all right.”

  He never made it upstairs. He met Ryan on the way out of the storage room—Ryan, who grabbed him and slammed him against the wall. No warning. No words.

  The picture frames jumped. One clattered to the ground, smashing into pieces. More glass. More fragments.

  “Ryan,” I shouted. I started for him and fell, our legs still hobbled. It was Hally who reached them first, who grabbed her brother from behind, saying Ryan, Ryan, stop. Stop.

  He must have sawed his hands free against a nail. He’d also sawed up quite a bit of his skin. His hands were covered in blood. It soaked into Jackson’s shirt, left smudges of red in the white fabric.

  Jackson didn’t speak. He hadn’t even shouted out when Ryan attacked him. The two of them stared at each other now, Ryan’s hands bunched around Jackson’s collar.

  Slowly, Ryan let go. Backed away. His eyes focused on me and Addie.

  Then his arms were around us. He was whispering, “Are you okay?” into our hair. I nodded.

  Hally demanded to know what had happened, so Ryan and I told her. Everything. All at once and stumbling over our words and interrupting each other. Jackson leaned against the wall. He didn’t contribute to our story. He didn’t speak at all.

  Addie didn’t speak, either.

  I didn’t know what to say to either of them.

  “We have to get to Peter,” Hally said.

  I shook our head. “We have to get to the institution.”

  Ryan’s hands were still bleeding. He’d pressed them against his stomach, staining his shirt with blood. The cut across his temple had opened up again, too. It wasn’t bleeding much, but it looked painful.

  “Whatever you guys decide, we have to get out of here,” Jackson said. “Hally’s smashed the display window. If somebody hasn’t already called the police, they’re going to do it soon.”

  Ryan caught my look and moved his hands away from his bloody shirtfront. “No one will notice.”

  “Ryan, go check if Peter’s home.” I cut him off before he could argue. “You’re going to attract way too much attention running around the city bloodied up like that. Tell him what’s going on and get a new shirt from him or something.”

  “I’m not going to attract any less attention going to Peter’s,” Ryan said.

  “It’s closer.” I turned to Hally and kept our voice hard. “I need you to go and see if Sabine’s car is still parked in its usual spot. There’s a pay phone on that corner. Call Peter’s place and let him know if the car’s there or not.”

  “Are you going with her?” Ryan said.

  I shook our head. “I’m going back to Emalia’s apartment. I’ll call her work number, tell her what’s going on, and get her to come back home. If we can’t get in touch with Peter, we’re going to need some other way to get to the institution. Emalia’s got a car.”

  “What about him?” Ryan nodded toward Jackson, who glanced at him, then at me. “What’s he going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t care.”

  Jackson looked away again. Part of me was glad he didn’t meet our eyes. Part of me was furious he wouldn’t. Addie hadn’t said a word since he arrived.

  The four of us made it out onto the street, hurrying to the other side of the road just in time to see an officer round the corner. I averted our eyes. None of us spoke until there was a good two blocks between us and the store.

  Then I said softly, “Meet back at Peter’s.”

  “Twenty minutes,” Ryan said, looking between us and his sister. “That’s it.”

  I nodded. I reached up and kissed him. No one commented—not Hally, not Jackson, not even Addie in my mind.

  Ryan tasted like blood. It only made me more sure that I was doing the right thing.

  “Twenty minutes,” I repeated, and, because I knew no one else would make a move until I did, I broke away from the others and headed down the street. I didn’t look back until I’d counted to a hundred. By then, Ryan and Hally were gone.

  Addie said, which was her way of saying what I was telling myself: that they’d get hurt. Ryan was already hurt. W
orse than he was letting on. And Hally—Hally and Lissa should never have gotten involved in the first place. This wasn’t their mess to clean up.

  Slowly, Addie and I walked back in the direction we’d come. Jackson was still standing where we’d left him. He seemed, if anything, a bit lost.

  But he watched as we approached, and now, finally, he met our eyes. “You never meant to go to Emalia’s apartment.”

  “I need to get to the Powatt institution,” I said.

  Even if we’d had the money, no taxi would take us all the way there. Any driver I asked would probably kick us out, think we were pranking him. But I needed to go, and we couldn’t exactly walk. I could have waited for Peter, but God knows what Peter would have done. Peter with his careful plans and his details. I didn’t have time for Peter.

  Henri didn’t have a car. Emalia wouldn’t get home fast enough. Even if she did, she would agree to nothing before calling Peter, and that would take time we didn’t have.

  I could call the cops. Would they take me seriously? Would they act quickly enough to stop Sabine?

  Was it worth the risk to all the other hybrids in Anchoit who were connected to us?

  Addie and I could still stop this. We could still do it on our own.

  “Do you know someone we can borrow a car from?” I said.

  Jackson hesitated, then nodded. “But we’re never going to make it in time.”

  I shrugged.

  “Keep hope,” I said.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Our car careened down the road, going so fast I feared each turn might send us flying into the air. Nearly half an hour had passed since we’d left Anchoit, and it had taken Jackson a while to contact someone who would lend him his car on such short notice. I tried not to think about Ryan and Hally, waiting for me to reach Peter’s apartment, getting more worried by the minute.

  I tried not to think about getting to the Powatt institution too late.

  “We won’t get there before Sabine does,” Jackson said. “Not with her head start.”

  “Then we’ll have to make sure no one enters the building.” I stared out the window, keeping a sharp eye out for police. The last thing we needed was to get stopped for speeding. The scraggly landscape flew past, a blur of brown.