Once We Were

His hands squeezed mine.

Ours.

FIVE

A month ago, on the beach, Jackson told Addie and me how hybrids coped with their situation—or at least how they coped with part of it. Some things we didn’t talk about. He didn’t teach me how to suppress the nightmares of Nornand’s white walls, didn’t let me know if it was okay that sometimes I felt so furious with my mom and dad for what they’d allowed to happen to us.

But Jackson explained how hybrids could achieve a semblance of independence when their bodies could never truly be theirs. They forced themselves to disappear, one soul slipping into unconsciousness.

I’d done it once, by accident, when Addie and I were thirteen, but never since then. It had been an unspoken promise between Addie and me that I’d never leave her again. But we were fifteen now, and though leaving Addie forever was unthinkable, a few minutes or a few hours was something else entirely. The possibility of freedom taunted me.

Addie said every time I brought up the possibility of going under, as Jackson called it.

A week ago, I’d finally drawn up the courage to ask Sophie: If I make myself disappear, is it possible I won’t come back?

She laughed as if I’d asked if we might stick our head out the window and be struck by lightning.

“Of course you’d come back, Eva. Haven’t you ever done it before?”

“But how do you control how long you’re gone? What if you’re gone for days? For weeks?”

She’d smiled. “Then you’ll have to let me know, because that would be a world record.”

“So it’s never happened.”

The urgency in our voice must have reached her; her expression gentled. “The longest I’ve ever heard of anyone being out is half a day, Eva. If you’ve never done it before, it can be hard to control how long you’re gone. You might only manage a few minutes, or it could be a couple hours. But you get the hang of it. You learn to control it.”

“How?”

“It’s—it’s hard to explain. It’s something you learn through doing, more than anything. Just keep trying. You and Addie will figure it out.”

But Addie and I had figured out nothing, because Addie refused to try.

I said.

Addie was right. It had always been Addie who yearned for normality. She’d had the luxury of thinking about it. Growing up, there had been no version of normality that could coexist with my survival.

Now there was. And I wanted it, more than anything.

Still, it was Addie’s choice as much as mine, and I could feel how torn she was. But I could also feel the ghost of Ryan’s lips against our jaw, and the phantom twist in our gut every time he got too close—the pain that wasn’t mine.

I couldn’t stay like this forever.

Maybe it was Emalia who convinced Peter to let us attend the meeting. But something in me felt it was Sabine who pulled through for us in the end. Jenson’s speech had set everyone on edge, even Emalia. Ryan shot us an exasperated look behind Emalia’s back as she fluttered around, giving us instructions: don’t talk, keep walking, attract as little attention as possible. By the time we left the building, it was dark out, the streets lit only by sallow streetlamps and the occasional headlights. From what Jackson had told us, this was the part of the city tourists didn’t visit. No one lived here but the people who had to, the ones who couldn’t afford better housing. Or, I supposed, the ones like us, in hiding.

Usually, only a select few were called to Peter’s meetings, or chose to attend. But tonight, there must have been at least thirty people. It was overwhelming to look around, see these faces, and know that almost all of them were hybrid, like us. Living in secret, like us. Carrying on relatively normal lives in a country that wanted them dead.

They looked like anyone else. There was a middle-aged man who might have been a banker. A young woman in sweats like she’d come here straight from the gym. An older lady who reminded me a little of our fifth-grade teacher. I caught Hally’s eyes flickering from person to person, too, drinking in this crowd. Even Kitty had been allowed to come—if only so she wouldn’t be left alone. But not everyone was here. Two, at least, were missing: Dr. Lyanne and Jaime.

Addie said. They stood in the dining room along with two others: a strawberry-blond boy about Jackson’s age with a constellation of freckles, and a girl with platinum-blond hair but dark eyebrows. Sabine caught our eyes and smiled. Addie smiled back. Other than Kitty, we were the youngest in the room.

Peter stood, and conversations dwindled. Physically, he was intimidating—tall, broad-shouldered, and sturdy, but with a face that could be kind. It was at his most austere, though, that I best saw his resemblance to his sister, Dr. Lyanne. They had the same strong brows, the same sharp eyes.

He resembled her now, as he said, “I’m sure by now you’ve all heard about Mark Jenson’s address this morning.” He took a long, slow breath. “But not all of you have heard about the Hahns institution, and that’s where I’ll start.”

The room sat silent as Peter explained. He’d been keeping tabs on an institution in the mountains of Hahns County, up in the north, since before the Nornand breakout. The conditions were frigid during the winter, the building old, the children ill dressed and uncared for. In other words, they died like flies when the snow came in.

Plans for rescue developed slowly. The mountain terrain complicated things, so it was decided that any attempt would have to be conducted in summer, when conditions were fairest. A woman, Diane, had been seeded as a caretaker—institutions weren’t staffed by nurses and doctors, like Nornand, but caretakers—and Peter had flown up to meet with her.

Everything fell apart when Diane’s cover was blown. Desperate, she stole away six children in her car as she made her escape.

She didn’t make it far.

She and two children died when their car went over the side of the winding mountain road. The remaining four kids extracted themselves from the wreckage and fled before the officials arrived.

Ten hours later, they stumbled into a small town still wearing their institution uniforms, filthy and bleeding and exhausted. The eldest of them was twelve, the youngest ten—just past the government-mandated deadline.

The police were called, the children whisked away. But not before their story of terror and pain spread, twisted in eager, gossiping mouths.

Peter laughed low, humorlessly. “It was an ugly thing for the townspeople, I’m sure, on a Sunday morning.”

Easy to not think about other people’s suffering, when it was hidden away. Harder to stomach when it collapsed on your front porch.

At Nornand, we’d all worn blue.

What color did they wear at Hahns?

“But it’ll never get beyond that.” Sabine’s voice was quiet, but clear. “The media will never be allowed to pick up the story.”

Peter shook his head. “It was unlikely to begin with. It’s impossible now, with the announcement Jenson made this morning. Which was probably the point.”

Addie frowned, but I understood. By saying they were making headway in a hybrid cure, they could quash the Hahns story. And by saying something about possible hybrid retaliation, they now had an excuse to dial up security without having to admit to the recent breakouts.

“Diane was a cautious woman,” Peter said. “But someone found out enough to be suspicious. We don’t know if they’ll connect the dots between this incident and the Nornand breakout—or if they have anything that might tie her back to us. So everybody, be alert. Be cautious. We’ll have to lie low for a while.”

“What about that new institution at Powatt?” It was Sabine again. She fingered one of the golden buttons on her jacket as she spoke, running her thumb along the smooth edge.

Peter turned toward her. “What about it?”

“Powatt’s barely an hour and a half from here. We’re not concerned they’re starting to build institutions within easy driving distance of major cities?”

“Say what you mean to say, Sabine,” Peter said.

Sabine began to reply, but the redheaded boy cut her off. “She means: Don’t you think it’s a problem that it’s okay now to stick institutions near a bunch of people? Everyone knows about them, but once upon a time, they still had enough of a conscience to not want a hundred dying children in their backyard. Now nobody cares?”

His voice was familiar—rough and heated and laced with anger. It had to be Christoph, the boy who’d called this morning.

“The country’s getting more and more apathetic, Peter,” Christoph said. “And the government’s getting bolder. Soon, they’re not even going to worry about covering up stuff like the Hahns institution. They’ll be able to round up hybrid kids in the street and put bullets in their heads—”

“Christoph,” Peter said just as Jackson nudged the other boy’s shoulder with his own. Christoph quieted, but didn’t control the mutinous look on his face. “We’re gathering more information about the Powatt institution. Once we know what we need to know, we’ll address it as it needs to be addressed.”

I had a sudden, gut-wrenching thought.

How long had Peter “gathered information” before he decided to launch a rescue plan? The first time we’d spoken with Jackson, when he’d pulled us into that storage closet at Nornand, he’d told us to keep hope because a rescue was coming, but it needed more time. We’d told him we didn’t have more time, that Hally and Lissa were due for the operation table.

If Jackson hadn’t spoken to us that day, the rescue might have happened days or even weeks later. Hally and Lissa might be dead.

Addie’s disquiet weighed heavy against me. She hesitated.

There was no way to know.

The rest of the meeting passed in a blur. By the time I managed to refocus on something other than my own tumbling thoughts, the room had broken up into more private conversations. I didn’t notice Sabine heading toward us until she’d almost reached our side.

“Hi again,” she said to us and Devon. There was a casual warmth to her voice, as if we’d met more than once. “I’m glad you ended up making it.”

“Yeah.” Addie didn’t bother making our voice sound anything but dull.

The look in Sabine’s eyes said she understood. Hally broke the awkward silence that followed by smiling and introducing herself. As the two of them chatted, I snuck another glance at Peter. He was still seated at the dining table, deep in a conversation with Henri and Emalia.

I said.

How could I demand Peter rush into a rescue after what had happened at Hahns?

Still, I couldn’t help my impatience. Every day we didn’t act was another day those kids had to suffer. We’d survived Nornand. We knew what it was like.

Peter didn’t notice our furtive looks, but Henri, sitting across from him, met our eyes. He smiled and nodded in acknowledgment.

Jackson had told us Henri’s story early on. Ryan and Hally only looked foreign, but Henri truly was foreign. He hadn’t been born here—hadn’t grown up in the Americas, hadn’t even learned English until he was in his twenties.

He and Peter had met nearly five years ago, when Peter made his first trip overseas. Then a fledgling journalist, Henri got to hear firsthand about a locked-down country, one that few had entered or left in decades, since the first few years of the Great Wars. The two kept a clandestine correspondence even after Peter’s return to the Americas. And a few short months ago, Henri made the trip here himself.

I couldn’t imagine the danger he’d put himself in, sneaking into a country that hated him, where the ebony-dark gleam of his skin and the strange lilt in his words could so easily give him away. The latter was the real problem. There were people who looked like Henri in the Americas—many more, in fact, than there were people who looked like Ryan and Lissa. But no one spoke like Henri did. He couldn’t open his mouth without ruining the ruse.

Henri wasn’t even hybrid. And yet he’d come all the way across an ocean to try and help. Addie and I had seen the drafts of his articles, pages filled with strange sequences of letters, some with odd additions—extra marks where they didn’t belong. French, Henri had explained, and read us a little, the syllables sliding and flowing into one another.

They’d spoken French once, in parts of the Americas, especially far to the north. But languages other than English had been officially stamped out before Addie and I were born.

“How often do Peter’s plans fail like this?” Devon said abruptly. He was looking toward the dining table, too.

Hally sighed. “Devon.”

“Not often,” Sabine said. “He’s meticulous.”

“Peter knows what he’s doing.” Hally looked to Sabine, as if for confirmation. “He’s been at it for years.”

“Almost five, now.” Sabine smiled, just a little. “I was in the first group he ever rescued—me and Christoph.”

“Long time,” Devon said.

A long time to be free, and yet not really free.

Sabine and Devon observed each other like careful statues. Devon was a couple inches taller, but somehow Sabine made it seem like they were exactly eye to eye.

“Yeah,” she said finally. And listening to that one word, I could hear the long, trembling echoes of every one of those years.

SIX

Addie and I were still awake that night, thinking about Hahns, and Nornand, and dying children, when the nightmares came for Kitty.

At first, it was just a restlessness in her limbs. An inability to keep still. Then she cried out—not a scream, but a whimper, as if even asleep she knew she had to hide.

I hurried from our bed. It was too dark to see much, but Kitty had curled up into a ball beneath her covers, her breathing erratic.

“Kitty?” I whispered. “Kitty, wake up.” I gripped her shoulders as she rocketed upward. Her eyes snapped open. “Shh … shh … It’s all right.”

There were no tears. No screaming. Just two wide, brown eyes and five dull fingernails digging into our hand.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re okay.”

She pressed her face against our shoulder, a blunt, animal need for warmth and safety. I wrapped our arms around her. For a long time, neither of us said anything. Sometimes, the sight of Kitty in the bed next to ours—or just the feel of her in our arms—shocked me back in time to another shared bedroom. One where the beds were made of metal, not wood. Where the floor was cold and nurses came at intervals to check on us in the night.

Kitty spoke, her voice thick. “Eva, are Sallie and Val dead?”

“What?” The word dropped, a startled, black stone from our mouth.

Kitty’s hand tightened around our wrist until it hurt. “Our old roommate at Nornand. Sallie and Val. The one we had before you and Addie. The one—the one they said had gone home. Like Jaime.”

I shifted, trying to see her face, but Kitty resisted. Our shirt muffled her words. “You rescued Jaime. And Hally. You would’ve rescued Sallie and Val if they’d been down there, right?”

I couldn’t speak. I could only think Oh, God. Oh, God.

Kitty and Nina having nightmares was nothing new. But neither had brought up their old roommate since leaving Nornand. Had the meeting earlier tonight sharpened old memories? Or had they been silently wondering all this time, too frightened to ask?

I’d forgotten that they didn’t know Sallie and Val’s fate. I hadn’t stopped to imagine what it might be like for them, not knowing.

Still, I didn’t want to answer.

Go back to sleep, I wanted to say.

It was only a dream, I wanted to say.

But sleep wouldn’t solve anything, and this—this horror that had happened at Nornand—was not a dream.

How were we supposed to tell an eleven-year-old girl that her friend was dead?

That she had been, for all intents and purposes, murdered?

That no justice had been exacted?

But Kitty and Nina were waiting.

Addie whispered.

I crushed Kitty against us, not knowing if we were doing the right thing, if we were doing it the right way. “Yes, they are.”

She didn’t reply. Her hands tangled in our shirt.

I said helplessly.

But she hadn’t been all right, any more than we’d been all right, or Ryan, or Hally, or Jaime. We’d been out of Nornand for six weeks, and sometimes, I wasn’t sure what all right really meant anymore.

Kitty and Nina weren’t the only one with nightmares.

“You’re safe,” I whispered fiercely in Kitty’s ear. “Nothing will happen to you. I promise.”

I stayed with her for nearly an hour in the darkness, until she drifted back to sleep.

Henri had given us a world map three weeks ago, when Addie and I first arrived at Emalia’s apartment. Since you love it so much, he’d said in his lilting, accented voice, and laughed when Addie fixed it above our bed with sticky tack. He’d brought the map from overseas, so it was like no map Addie and I had ever seen. We’d been fascinated since we first found it rolled up in a corner of his apartment.

Now, as dawn broke, sunlight seeped through the yellow curtains and crawled across the ceiling. Bit by bit, the map came into view. Our eyes took in the neatly labeled countries, each stained a different color. Russia, with its bulk, its eastern mountain ranges and great, thick, blue river veins. Australia, lonely in the southeast, a country and a continent. I thought of Australia most often. Despite the distance between us, there was a comforting familiarity to its loneliness.

The Americas were alone, too. Almost all the other countries of the world shared continents. A few were nearly the size of our northern half, but most were hardly a hundredth our size. How strange it must be to live in a country so small, surrounded so claustrophobically by other nations. The Americas dominated the entire western half of the map, two continents attached by a thread.

A familiar whirring and clicking came from Nina’s side of the room, and I shifted to face her.

“Nina Holynd.” I kept my tone light even as I examined her, searching her expression for signs of the pain she and Kitty had crumpled beneath last night. Nina had always been better than Kitty at hiding pain. The mornings after the girls had a particularly bad dream, it was almost always Nina who took control. Who got out of bed smiling like the nightmares had never happened. “You have got to find somebody else to film.”

“There’s nobody else to film.” Nina directed her video camera right at our face, giggling. I groaned and pulled our covers over our head. “You move a lot in your sleep, you know that?”

“No.” The blankets muffled my words. “And I don’t need cinematographic proof, thank you very much.”

Nina’s camcorder really belonged to Emalia, who had accidentally broken it years back. Nina had unearthed it in a cabinet, and Ryan had fixed it. Since then, Addie and I woke far too often to a camera lens hovering above our bed, filming the apparently fascinating movie of Addie & Eva Asleep.

The video camera was enormous and heavy, but that didn’t seem to dissuade Nina. She and Kitty had gone through two Super 8 film cartridges already, keeping them in our dresser drawer in hopes Emalia might go through with her promise to develop them. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Emalia would probably wait months before deeming it safe enough—if she ever did.

“Eee-va.” Nina drew out my name on a two-toned pitch. “Come on. Get up.” When I didn’t move, she sighed. “Fine. I’ll just look through Addie’s sketchbook, then.”

This jerked Addie into control. “Nina—”

Nina pulled the sketchbook from the nightstand drawer and flipped it open with stubborn glee. After years of hiding her drawings, Addie still disliked people looking through her sketches.

“Who’s this?” The sketchbook had fallen open to a picture of a young boy, light-haired and eager-eyed.

“Lyle.” Addie slipped from our bed and crossed to Nina’s. The younger girl leaned against us, like it was automatic.

“Why’s he dressed like that?”

Our lips crooked in a smile. Addie had drawn him in a soldier’s uniform right out of one of his spy-and-adventure novels. “Because he always wanted to have adventures. For a while, he was convinced he was going to be a soldier when he grew up. He taught himself Morse code and everything. By the time he moved on to the next thing, I’d practically memorized it, too.”

“Do you still remember it?”

Addie nodded. Nodding was easier than speaking around the sudden lump in our throat. She picked up the pencil and reached for her sketchbook, drawing a line and a dot; then two dots; another line and dot; and finally a dot followed by a line.

“N-I-N-A,” she said, and tapped the letters out with the pencil.

Nina stared down at the pattern, her own fingers moving slowly. “Can you teach us the whole alphabet?”

Addie grinned wryly. “Sure. Numbers, too.”

Nina tapped out her name again, a little faster. “What’s Kitty?”

Addie wrote and tapped it for her. Funny how we remembered it even better than I thought we would. Mom and Dad had learned a few words, too, but we were the ones Lyle tapped messages to after we went to bed, rapping on the wall between our rooms long after he was supposed to be asleep. He never stopped until Addie tapped something back.

Addie shut her sketchbook and slipped off the bed, pulling Nina after us. “Come on, have you eaten breakfast?”

“Nope. I was waiting for you. I’ll make you pancakes, if you want.”

“That would be great.” Addie smiled as Nina grabbed her camcorder and headed for the kitchen.

We glanced, one last time, at the map stuck to the ceiling.

The world maps we’d studied in school had always come with the disclaimer that they were old, made before or shortly after the Great Wars began. World War I and World War II, as Henri called them.

The Great Wars had always smashed through our history classes like a giant’s fist, leaving the rest of the world fragmented, unworthy of mapping. We’d been told country lines were muddled, contested to the point of being barely existent. They shifted constantly, as some desperate people attacked another and were assaulted in turn.

Lies. So much of it lies.

World War I and World War II seemed so neat in comparison.

Wars can destroy a country completely, Henri told us. But they can also shape it, push it forward. Some of the world was destroyed. Some was shaped. And some was pushed forward.

What do they have that we don’t? I’d asked. Flying cars?

Henri laughed. No, no flying cars. But faster cars. And cell phones. Internet.

We’d never heard of them. He told us about tiny, cordless phones everyone carried around in their pockets, so widespread that pay phones were all but extinct. He tried to describe some sort of information network that connected computers, allowing one to instantaneously send data to another. He kept running into words he didn’t know how to translate, and the entire concept baffled Addie and me, who could count the number of times we’d even sat down in front of a computer.