Once We Were (15 page)

I said quietly. But I wasn’t sure which words to use, how to phrase it.

I’m sorry I freaked out and you couldn’t leave me behind? I’m sorry I should have warned you I hate crowds?

I’m sorry you could have been caught, or even died, and it was my fault.

“Don’t worry about it,” Cordelia said, as if she could read my mind. Now, finally, she met our gaze. “I’m feeling fine. Gone through worse.”

“I’m sorry—” I started to say, but she cut me off with a faint smile.

“Really, Eva, it’s fine. Had a nasty bruise for a while, and I think Sabine got some kind of sadistic pleasure out of drugging me out of my mind, but I’m right as rain now.”

I almost thought we might be talking with Katy, who was usually less effusive. But Katy had a way of walking and talking like her head was just brushing against the clouds, and the girl who led Devon and us to the storage room was very much present and focused—just focused on something that wasn’t us.

“There you are,” Sabine said as we climbed up into the attic. She, at least, didn’t look or act any differently than usual. Her steadiness was comforting. Vince and Christoph were already there, reclined on the sofas.

Devon’s eyes were strangely unfocused. He caught me watching him and shook from his trance. Not for the first time, I wondered what he and Ryan were talking about.

“What did you call us here for?” Devon’s voice wasn’t loud, but it silenced all the others. Eyes roamed the room, moving from one person to another. Eventually, we all turned to Sabine.

“Your sister didn’t come,” she said. The sentence seemed more observation than question, and Devon didn’t reply. Sabine didn’t appear to expect an answer, just nodded a little to herself.

Addie said.

At first, I didn’t know what she meant. Then I noticed the tension stifling the attic. The scrutiny everyone was directing at
us
. Only Devon still had his eyes on Sabine, a frown creasing his forehead.

This was building up to something. They were waiting for something. For Sabine to tell us and Devon what the rest of them already knew.

“I’ve looked over the information we got from Nalles’s computer,” Sabine said. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s got everything about Powatt. Everything I needed to figure out what to do.”

“And what’s that?” Devon asked.

Vince’s smile was a razor blade. “We’re going to blow the damn thing up.”

A
ddie and I tried to speak at the same time. Nothing came out but a half-strangled sound in the back of our throat. Our next sound was almost a laugh—an unbelieving, rocks-grinding-against-rocks laugh.

“You’re going to blow it up?” Devon said. “Then what?”

“Then it’ll be gone,” Christoph said.

“And after that?” Devon’s words dripped cold disdain. “Everyone will suddenly come to their senses? Realize what a great thing we’ve done? They already hate us. They already think we’re mentally unstable. You’d only give them more ammunition.”

Christoph leaned forward. He’d flushed, his normally pale skin splotched with color. His hands gripped into fists at his sides. “It’s not about making them
like
us. No one’s ever going to give hybrids the chance to prove we’re
likable—
”

“Wars and revolutions,” said Vince, “are not won through being
liked
.”

Wars and revolutions.

Was that what this was? A war? A revolution?

We shuddered. Wars did not belong here, at home. Wars belonged to history, or to those far-off nations beyond the ocean. And the only revolution we’d ever learned about was the one that had founded the Americas, when the non-hybrids had won their freedom from the hybrids over two hundred years ago. Wars and revolutions meant death and untold horrors. We’d been taught that much at school.

Addie shook our head. Up until that moment, we’d still been caught in the middle of our control, neither of us firmly at the reins. But with that movement, things shifted to her side. Our hand slipped down, worrying at the thin fabric of our skirt.

“Devon’s right,” Addie said. “All those people at Lankster Square—do you really think they’re any more eager to help us than they were before?”

Devon glanced at us. He didn’t seem thankful for Addie’s support—or even surprised. Just that indecipherable look he sometimes wore, revealing nothing.

“Lankster Square,” Sabine said quietly, “let the city know that not everyone here supports the cure. Getting rid of Powatt—it tells them that we’re serious. That we’re willing to fight. And even if it doesn’t? Then at least it’s an institution gone. It’s surgical machinery gone.”

No one spoke. Sabine was the one who broke the silence again, this time with a question. Her eyes were on Addie and me. “How many hybrids do you think there are? Here in the Americas, I mean.”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Addie said.

“Me neither,” Sabine said. “Peter doesn’t know. Maybe the government doesn’t even know—not with the percentage of hybrids in hiding. I think our numbers are small, but not as small as they’d have us believe. Say only one in five hundred people are hybrid. That’s more than a
million
hybrids in the Americas, Addie. They make us feel isolated. And that’s why a lot of people give up, you know? Because this isn’t the sort of thing you can fight alone. It feels so big—the government feels so big and so powerful and all those parents, all those children—they can’t talk to anyone about it. They don’t know of anyone else going through it. So they give up because they feel too weak to do anything.” Sabine didn’t look at anyone as she spoke, her eyes focused instead on an empty spot on the sloping attic wall. As if it took all her concentration just to come up with what to say. “When you pick a fight, you have to keep going until you win or you can’t fight anymore. We are
not
going to be another news story about how the hybrids were cowed.”

Sabine’s words expanded until they filled the entire attic, pressing against us, taking up all the air. I didn’t think anyone could breathe, let alone fit any words of their own into the remaining space.

“Spending four years in one of those institutions,” Sabine said quietly, “you get to dreaming about blowing them up. You fantasize about it.”

Four years in an institution. Four more years since Peter had gotten her out. Eight years. In eight years, Addie and I would be twenty-three. Lyle would be nineteen. He’d be a freshman in college. Eight years was almost a decade. More than a tenth of a lifetime.

If things didn’t change—if we didn’t
force
things to change—then we might not see our little brother again until he was a grown man. If ever.

“But that’s not why we need to do this,” Sabine continued. “Because in the end, we’ll never be able to blow up every single institution. Even if we could just keep going and going, they’d just keep building them. I want to give the other hybrids out there a reason to fight, Addie. I want them to know that the government’s not the only power, that their neighbors aren’t the only power. That we’re a power, too.”

Her eyes were as steady as ever. She didn’t smile. But there wasn’t a shred of antagonism in her voice or her expression. Just a calm, collected warmth. “But it’s just an idea for the time being. As a group, we make decisions together. We take everyone’s opinion into consideration.”

She turned to Devon. “We would need your help again, anyway, to get things off the ground.”

Devon didn’t react in the least.

“So.” Sabine looked around the room. When her eyes fell on Addie and me, they were gentle, but I felt the force behind them. “Let’s take some time to consider things.”

“Addie!”

Sabine and the others had already gone downstairs. Devon turned along with Addie at the sound of Vince’s voice, but Devon’s eyes met ours, and whatever he saw there convinced him to keep going down the attic steps, leaving Addie and Vince alone in the attic.

“What, Jackson?” Addie stepped away from the trapdoor and leaned against the wall. A nail dug into our back.

I said, but Addie ignored me.

She must have been right, though, because the boy didn’t correct her. He ran his hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face. He seemed like he didn’t know how to proceed. “What’s wrong, Addie?”

What’s wrong? He—Vince—had just dropped the fact that they were planning to blow up a government building, and now he was asking us what was wrong?

Addie said irritably.

Our hand fluttered to our forehead, our fingertips rubbing circles against our temples.

Aloud, she said, “Look, Jackson . . . I’ve just got—I’ve got to think about things.”

He approached us, gently tugging our hands from our face. His hands felt rougher than I’d expected, his palms callused. “Come on, what’s there to think about?”

Addie laughed. “Blowing things up? Yeah, that takes a little considering, Jackson.”

“Not just random
things
.” His eyes were wide, earnest. His hands still grasped ours, left me feeling pinned against the wall. I waited for Addie to push him away, but she didn’t. “Addie, we’re not planting explosives in playgrounds. It’s an institution. A hybrid institution with nobody in it. And we’re making sure nobody’s ever
going
to be in it.”

Addie stared past him, at the fairy lights on the far wall.

“Those people at Lankster Square . . .” she murmured. Too softly, maybe, because Jackson frowned in confusion. Addie bit our lip and raised our voice a little. “I know what you and the others want, Jackson. I do. And I want the same thing, but—”

“But what, Addie?” Jackson said. When Addie hesitated, he sighed and looked away. “Powatt isn’t going to be anything like Lankster Square. The building’s going to be deserted. No people. No crowds. Just a building full of empty beds, waiting for its prisoners. It’s an
institution
, Addie—”

“I know.” Our voice sharpened. “Eva and I were in one. We get it.”

Jackson’s smile held no warmth. “No, Addie, you kind of don’t. Nornand wasn’t an institution; it was a hospital. And it was terrible, I know. I’m not saying you spent a week at a five-star hotel. But Addie, you were there a week, and they fed you properly, and clothed you properly, and . . .” He hesitated, his grip on our hands loosening. “And there were windows.”

Addie drew our hands tight against our sides, but his hands, entwined around ours, came with them. “There was also Jaime locked up in the basement and kids
dying
on those surgery tables—”

“Which is exactly what’s going to happen in Powatt.” Jackson’s voice was a half-hoarse whisper. “This new institution’s twice as big as Nornand, Addie. And it’s all for hybrids, every inch of it. How many kids do you think they’ll be able to stuff inside? Can you picture them?”

Our breathing went ragged. Did my trapped feeling come from being cornered by Jackson? Or cornered by the images he threw into my mind?

“The ones who get picked for the surgeries will be the lucky ones, Addie. The others will just—” His voice cut off. He swallowed, his throat jumping. “Do you know how many kids die in hybrid holding tanks? That’s what those are, those institutions. Holding tanks. They hold us until we die, and they do everything short of putting a bullet through our heads to speed up the process. They lock us up—stuff us into these rooms, as many as can fit. These places in the middle of nowhere. And there’s nobody. Nobody but the kid dying in the bed next to yours of God knows what, and the caretakers who really don’t give a damn.”

Addie had been looking at Jackson’s mouth as he spoke, or at his nose, or his chin or just to the left of his ear. But she met his eyes now.

“I went into an institution at twelve,” said Jackson quietly. “And for three years, I never left the building.”

He was quiet—quiet in a way Jackson was never quiet.

Keep hope,
he’d said to us at Nornand. Had he kept hope for three years? How was that even possible?

Addie was gripping his hands now, not the other way around. But it only lasted a moment. Then she disentangled our fingers from his and pushed his gently away. He stepped back, let us slide away.

“I’ve got to think about it, Jackson,” Addie said softly. She waited, and he nodded once. She glanced over our shoulder as she walked down the stairs, like she couldn’t take her gaze from this lanky boy with the pale eyes, couldn’t take her thoughts from the child he’d once been, who’d lain in a tiny metal bed and dreamt of sunlight.

W
e did think about it.

We thought about it at dinner while Nina and Emalia ate and laughed, blinking from our reverie only when Nina tapped us on the arm to ask, “Don’t you like it?”

It took us a moment to realize she meant the food in our Styrofoam box. Some kind of fish. We’d barely touched it, but managed to nod and smile anyway. If either Nina or Emalia noticed anything off, they didn’t mention it.

We thought about it while brushing our teeth. While in the shower. While we dressed for bed. After we clicked off our lamp. After we told Nina good night.

Addie said.
crazy
. We should tell—>

Our hands were folded across our chest. A moment ago, they’d been at our sides. Before that, under our neck. We couldn’t get comfortable.

I said.