Once We Were (10 page)

“She’ll be there,” Addie said. “She likes to be early.”

Sophie smiled weakly. For a moment, the worry faded from her face, replaced by some emotion I couldn’t name. “You talk like you know her well.”

I thought about Dr. Lyanne watching Jaime pass in the gurney. Her soothing him in the darkness. Telling us the code to the basement doors. Showing up in the Ward holding Kitty’s hand. Out with us on the fire escape at Peter’s apartment, watching the cars below.

“Well enough,” Addie said.

Addie was almost right. Dr. Lyanne wasn’t at Henri’s apartment yet, but we’d only gone up a flight of stairs when we heard the rapid click of heels echoing below us. It was ridiculous to say we recognized Dr. Lyanne by the sound of her footsteps, but instinct made us pause in the stairwell.

Little by little, she came into view. Her ash-brown hair was longer now than it had been at Nornand. It might have been the humidity in Anchoit, but her hair seemed a little less straight, as well. She wore it coiled over her shoulder, strands floating around her face.

She’d grown thinner. The delicate planes of her face were sharper, her limbs birdlike. We’d learned that she was a couple years younger than Peter, so she could have only been twenty-eight or twenty-nine at most, but she looked so much older as she came up those stairs.

Dr. Lyanne had played a hand in helping us escape from Nornand—had tried, in fact, to rescue all the kids there. For that, she’d given up nearly everything. Emalia managed to rustle up enough falsified documents to get her a job at a clinic, but I got the impression that it was basic work, something Dr. Lyanne was immensely overqualified for.

Maybe she enjoyed it, though.

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she regretted everything.

“Hi,” Addie murmured.

Dr. Lyanne’s head whipped up. For a moment, she didn’t reply, just studied us as we’d studied her. Had we changed, too, in the past weeks? Or was she comparing us to an even earlier version of ourself? The girl who had arrived at Nornand in a shiny, black car, dressed in a school uniform and her parents’ last hugs and the tattered remnants of her naïvety?

“Hi,” Dr. Lyanne said. She closed the remaining distance between us. “Where are you going?”

Dr. Lyanne was not a comfortable-looking woman. She was all angles. She hardly ever smiled. She and Emalia had never gotten along, though Dr. Lyanne had stayed with her for a little while before finding her own place. Still, there was something
I
found comfortable about her. Maybe it was what Addie had told Emalia—we knew Rebecca Lyanne. We’d seen her when she sat shattered apart at Nornand, when her world lay in pieces and she had to choose how to put it back together. We’d watched her make the decision that brought her here, liaised with a hybrid resistance led by her brother.

There’s a connection that’s made when someone sees you at your lowest. But connection or not, Dr. Lyanne had told us the government would bury Nornand, and Jenson had done anything but bury it in his speech.

Our voice was a whisper. “You were wrong. About Nornand.”

The warning in Dr. Lyanne’s eyes read loud and clear. She moved past us. “We’re not talking about this in the stairwell.”

“You said they were going to bury it,” Addie hissed, following on her heels. “You said they thought it was a complete failure!”

“I got it wrong. It happens.”

“It
happens
?”

Upstairs, someone slammed a door, and we both flinched. Shouting drifted down, angry voices lifted in some unknown argument. Dr. Lyanne gave us a pointed look.

“Is he safe?” Addie didn’t need to specify who. This, finally, stopped Dr. Lyanne’s ascent. For a moment, the stairwell was silent again.

She looked down at us over her shoulder. “As safe as I can make him.”

Did we trust her? She’d failed before. She’d let Jaime down. She might again.

It would be too cruel to point this out. But perhaps cruelty could be excused in a situation like this? Perhaps when something was so crucial, it was okay to be ruthless. The government would stop at nothing to get Jaime back. There had never been another person like him: a hybrid surgically stripped of his second soul. A thirteen-year-old boy who’d had doctors slice into his brain and rearrange it to their own liking.

But in the end, we weren’t that heartless.

“Is he all right?” Addie said.

In the weeks between our escape from Nornand and his moving away, Jaime had gotten better in some ways and worse in others. On good days, he’d watched television with Kitty, helped us make sandwiches, and laughed like laughter was a language itself—one he hadn’t lost. On bad days, he’d grown so frustrated with his inability to say what he wanted to that he’d flown apart in rages. On the worst days, he acted like the rest of us weren’t even there. He wouldn’t look at us, wouldn’t try to speak, wouldn’t even move.

He’ll get better,
Addie and I used to tell each other.
Today’s just a bad day, and it wasn’t as bad as the last bad day. Tomorrow will be better.

We hadn’t even wanted to consider the alternative . . . that Jaime might get worse. That whatever those doctors at Nornand had done, the full extent of the damage hadn’t yet made itself known, and Jaime would continue deteriorating.

“He misses you and the others,” Dr. Lyanne said. “But yes, he’s doing well, overall.”

I wished we could hear a response from Jaime’s own lips. So much had been stolen from him already. I didn’t want anyone to forget that he was a person, that he was more than the victim of a horrific surgery, more than the first survivor of the supposed cure. More than a liability and a thing to be protected.

For years, I’d been reduced to the Recessive Soul, the worst half of the Girls Who Just Won’t Settle. I knew what it was like to exist only as a label. And I knew what it was like to be voiceless.

Addie and Dr. Lyanne started up the stairs again. We’d almost reached Henri’s door when Addie asked one last question. “This meeting—you’d tell us, wouldn’t you, if they’re trying to hide anything?”

Dr. Lyanne frowned. “Who’s
they
?”

“Peter,” Addie said.

“Why would Peter hide anything from you?”

It wasn’t that we thought Peter
maliciously
kept things from us. It was more that he only told us what he thought we needed to know, and as far as Peter was concerned, we didn’t need to know much. He hadn’t said anything about Nalles’s speech at Lankster Square, and he was sure to know about something like that.

What else had Peter withheld from us?

Dr. Lyanne sighed. “Peter isn’t hiding anything. There are things that are best discussed by as few people as possible, or—”

“Like what?”

“—or everyone will butt in with an opinion, and nothing will ever get decided.”

“How do you know if you’ve heard all the important opinions unless you hear them all?” Addie demanded. “Peter doesn’t tell us everything. I know he doesn’t. Maybe he can’t. Okay. I understand. But anything—anything really important. Anything big that affects us or Jai—that affects us—you’d let us know, right?”

Dr. Lyanne looked at us for a moment, her hazel eyes steady on ours. Then she bent down a little so we were the same height. She said, quietly, “We’re discussing plans to keep you kids safe. We’re talking a little about the Powatt institution. That’s all. No secrets, Addie.” She pulled away. “All right?”

Addie hesitated, but she nodded.

S
omehow, without Addie and I really discussing it, it fell to me to tell Hally and Lissa about Sabine’s plan. We didn’t have to wait long for an opportunity. Soon after Emalia left for Henri’s apartment, Ryan and Hally came downstairs.

“We were kicked out,” Hally said, raising her eyebrows.

I was too busy sneaking glances at Ryan to immediately reply. He must have read the message in our eyes, because he gave a small nod.

“We’ve got something to tell you, Hally,” I said, and she laughed like she thought it might be some happy secret. As if we still had things like happy secrets.

“Well, what is it?” Hally said once I’d shut the bedroom door behind us. Her smile turned a little more hesitant but at least it was still there. If it had been Lissa in control, the smile would have disappeared completely.

I looked to Ryan, and he looked to me, so I took a deep breath and explained everything.

Hally wasn’t happy about it. Kitty was in the living room, so she couldn’t make a fuss, but the look on her face said enough.

“Are you in?” Ryan asked. The television helped mask our voices, and he spoke just loudly enough to be understood.

Hally opened her mouth, then shut it again. She shook her head, forming each word slowly. “You’re really considering this?”

“Yes,” Ryan said.

“Because just what we need right now,” Hally snapped, “is for one of us—or
all
of us—to get caught again.”

I said nothing. The Mullan siblings didn’t fight often, at least not with any kind of real heat, but being cooped up with the same group of people for more than a month will grind anyone’s nerves. Addie and I quickly learned to stay out of things.

But I couldn’t help wondering: Two months ago, would Hally have hesitated about this plan? She’d been the incautious one, the one who’d persuaded her brothers to reach out to Addie. Was this part of what Nornand had stolen from her? Her zeal? Her wholehearted enthusiasm? Her lack of fear?

“Hally,” Ryan said quietly. “What are the chances,
really
, of someone recognizing one of us in the streets? We’re a thousand miles from Nornand, even farther from Lupside. Do you really think, out of every city, they’re going to figure out we’re in this one?”

Hally glared at him. “They might if you start causing chaos at government-sponsored events. We’re not six anymore, Ryan. These aren’t war games in the backyard. The others—they’re sending
you
where it’s most dangerous. If anything happens . . . if you get trapped in that building . . .”

“Remember why we used to play those games?” Ryan asked. Hally looked away, then back to meet her brother’s eyes. For a moment, they were caught in some shared memory. “We wanted to be able to do something someday. Change something.” His voice held a quiet intensity, a lightning storm wrapped in a blanket. “Back at Nornand, when they took you . . . when they said they were going to cut your head open—I couldn’t do anything, Hally. I couldn’t do anything then, but I can now, and I will. I have to.”

The television filled in our silence. Addie’s held breath was my held breath.

“Okay,” Hally whispered finally. “Okay.”

Once again, we snuck out after dark. The others met us on the street, then led us to the photography shop. I made sure to memorize the route this time, reading the street names as we passed.

Everyone quickly folded Hally and Lissa into the group, and Hally, true to form, managed a grin for everyone in return. But I caught the lapses in her smiles. The moments of apprehension, even fear.

“First things first,” Josie said once we were all situated in the attic. The fairy lights caught the gleam in her hair.

Just as I’d tried to map our route, I tried to map the differences between Sabine and Josie. Josie moved differently. Quicker. Sharper. If Sabine glided like a dancer, Josie duck and wove like a bird. Sabine’s smiles were a slow warmth, steady embers. Josie’s were flashes in a pan. She and Vince got along well, I could tell.

“If we’re going to do this,” Josie said, “we can’t keep meeting in the middle of the night. Curfew means no one’s on the streets after midnight without a special permit. With everything else we’ll be up to, it’s not worth the risk. Do you think you’d be able to make it if we met in the evenings? Or late afternoon, anyway.”

Ryan nodded. “Henri’s already used to Hally and me spending a lot of time at Emalia’s. He never comes to check. And Emalia’s at work all day.”

“What about Kitty and Nina?” I said.

He hesitated. “You could tell them. Say you need to go out, meet a few people. Make them promise not to say anything to Emalia. They’d listen to you, Eva.”

Addie said.

I was positive that if Addie and I asked Kitty and Nina to keep something secret, they would. They trusted us that much.

Did this count as a breach of that trust? I wasn’t sure.

As we found out the following week, convincing Kitty to keep mum about our leaving the apartment was almost too easy. She was quiet as I explained how Addie and I, along with Ryan and Hally, planned to meet up with Sabine and her friends. How we were trying to make plans, trying to help, but it had to be a secret. Okay?

She nodded. “Okay.” Anxiety must have clouded our face, because she smiled a little and said, “I get it, Eva. It’s fine. You’re trying to help people like Sallie and Val.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

Soon we were going to the attic nearly every afternoon. It wasn’t a long walk, but Addie and I never breathed easily during it. It got even worse once the posters went up for the speech at Lankster Square. We passed two just getting from our apartment to the photography shop—both bright yellow and blue, with a bold, black font.

Addie ducked our head every time we had to pass one. When I was in control, I wanted to avert our eyes, too, but I couldn’t. The posters drew my attention like a car crash. But most people’s eyes glazed right over them. Only a few stopped to read.

One day, one man—young, twenties—walked by, hands in his pockets. As he passed the poster, he reached out and tore it down.

I was so startled I stopped in my tracks. The man looked around. Our eyes met. He looked uncomfortable a minute, then tilted his chin up with something like defiance and disappeared around a corner, the poster now lying crumpled in a ball by the gutter. I never saw him again.