Once We Were (23 page)

Devon. Devon with cold, black eyes staring down at the smoke.

He said nothing. He looked back toward me, his expression a mask I couldn’t break.

T
he drive back to Anchoit was at once more relaxed and more tense. The others chatted, even laughed from time to time. Devon—it was still Devon in control—was silent. I kept our hands in our lap, our arms tight against our body.

We reached the city limits, then the same parking lot we’d left from that morning. No one seemed to want to leave the car. To be alone with the immensity of what we’d done. Finally, Cordelia suggested we all have lunch in the attic.

Food didn’t make me feel any better. Sabine was unusually quiet, focused on the turnings of her own mind. Jackson and Cordelia supplied most of the conversation, but eventually, even their well of words ran dry. The attic fell into a lull of silence that wasn’t entirely comfortable. Takeout boxes sat littered about the attic, some still full of fried fish and sweet rolls, others with nothing left but a slick of grease.

Devon spoke first. “When are we going to do it for real?” When no one replied, he looked around the room and repeated himself. “When are we going to blow up the institution?”

“We know what you mean,” Jackson said, but he was smiling, and there was no real heat to the words. Still, he didn’t give an answer.

Sabine hadn’t looked up at the sound of Devon’s voice, and she didn’t look up now. She studied the fairy lights strung around the room like there were answers hidden in their knots.

“Next week,” she said. “Next Friday night.”

Exactly seven days from today.

“Why Friday?” Devon said.

Finally, Sabine met his eyes. “According to the schedules we got from Nalles, they haven’t set up the surgical machinery yet. They’ll be moving them in all next week. They’ll be done by Friday.”

“You’re sure?” Devon said.

Sabine nodded. “Like I said, it’s in the schedules.”

“Next Friday night . . .” Cordelia moved over to sit beside Sabine, putting an arm around her. “Are you sure, Sabine? It’s so soon.”

Sabine nodded. Her gaze had drifted again, to the floor this time. “Why not? We know it works. We’ve got the bomb. Why wait longer than necessary?”

“
I’m
ready,” Christoph said.

“And Friday’s a good day of the week to do it,” Sabine said. “If anything does go wrong—if the government responds in some dangerous, unexpected way—Jackson and Christoph don’t need to be in at work, and it’s not suspicious if they don’t turn up. Everything’s less regulated on the weekends.”

Cordelia nodded, her pale head resting against Sabine’s shoulder.

“Not everyone needs to actually go to Powatt, anyway,” Christoph said.

“Really, only one person needs to go,” Sabine said. “I could go alone. It would be safer.”

“It wouldn’t be safer for
you
,” Jackson said.

Some of Sabine’s usual strength came back to her voice. “Not having you there to mess things up would make it a lot safer for me.”

They smiled, the smile of old friends who didn’t need words to understand each other.

“Still, you shouldn’t go alone.” There was steel underlying Jackson’s words, a stiffness coming from something I couldn’t pin down. Fear? Not quite fear. His eyes flashed toward ours, then away again.

“He’s right,” Devon said. His voice was low. He looked at us, then Jackson, like he’d caught his glance. “I’d like to be there. See the thing come down.”

I asked Addie. It seemed like forever ago. Like we’d been different people then.

Addie said

Neither of us had gone under since the day of our fight, and her request made something twinge inside me. But I said

I meant it. Of course Addie would still want time to herself, just like I did. She hadn’t even spoken with Jackson since I fled his apartment, and she wouldn’t want me around when she did.

I needed time, too, to digest what had just happened. I wanted, maybe, just a little time to be asleep and not have to feel anything. Dreams were preferable to this. When I woke, I could sort things out.

Addie said.

I took one last look at the attic around me, the dark wooden boards, the fairy lights gleaming on the walls.

Then I disappeared.

Fireworks

The first time I saw them

Independence Day

I feel the bloom

The crack

Of their noise

As if they too are trying

To shake me loose

Shake me from my limbs

Make me fade away

Like they do

Here

A burst of color

Then gone

I woke in the middle of dinner, fork tines against our tongue, our elbows on the dining table. Even after weeks of practice, it was still disorienting to be thrust into the real world after living in timeless, liquid dreams.

Addie’s first words were simple. A caution:

My dreams snapped away. Our eyes focused on the other people seated around the table: Emalia, Nina, Peter. At the moment, no one was saying anything, busy with their food.

Addie swallowed. She lowered our fork, setting it carefully on the woven placemat, beside our plate.

I cried.

But Addie shushed me as she said, aloud, “Did you always know he was coming, Peter?”

Peter sat to our left, lost in his thoughts and the mechanical motions of eating. His eyes lifted at the sound of our voice. He nodded. “He leads the government review board, after all. But apparently, he’s been in the city for a couple weeks already. No public announcement. Nothing. No one’s supposed to know.”

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—”