Once We Were. Kat Zhang
A faded denim jacket sat bulkily on narrow shoulders, dwarfing her dancerlike frame. Jackson opened his mouth like he was going to introduce her, but she beat him to it.
“I’m Sabine.” She stuck out her hand. Her smile softened some of the gesture’s formality, but not all of it. Her grip was cool and firm, stronger than I’d expected from someone barely taller than we were.
It had been weeks since we’d met anyone new. I couldn’t help staring at her, studying everything from the missing gold button on her jacket to the scuffs on her turquoise ballet flats. Her nails were cut almost to the quick, but smooth, not like she’d bitten them.
<Stop it> Addie said. <She knows you’re staring.>
I looked away, but too late. Sabine’s eyes caught ours, and she smiled. Not disparagingly, though. Gently, like she understood.
“Josie and I have seen you around before,” she said. “When you guys were still staying at Peter’s place.”
Josie and I. Josie and Sabine, then—the two souls who shared this body. I still wasn’t used to the easy way hybrids here referred to themselves. Of course, they only did it in private, among other members of Underground, but it seemed like such a risk to even speak the names aloud.
“It’s Eva and Addie, right?” Sabine said. “And Ryan and Devon?” She turned to him. “We were just up at your place, but no one answered the door. Jackson’s been talking about these inventions you make. They sound amazing. Which was the one you were telling me about yesterday, Jackson? The clock—”
Ryan cut Sabine off with a harried smile. “I’m just messing around. It’s something to do.”
“I figured you guys were bored.” She looked around the apartment, as if she could flip through the days we’d spent cooped up here as easily as I flipped through Addie’s sketchbook. “Everyone goes through this when they first escape. It’s like quarantine. But you guys are planning to stay, right?”
“Stay?” Ryan asked.
Sabine nodded. “In Anchoit, I mean. You’re not going to let Peter ship you off somewhere?”
“No,” I said quickly. I looked toward Ryan. “Not if it would mean getting separated.”
“It probably would,” Jackson said. “Peter and them, they’ve got connections with sympathetic families across a pretty wide net, but they’re spread out. I doubt they’d be able to place you all in the same area. Especially since …” He looked at Ryan, then shrugged awkwardly. “Well, you know.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I know.”
Placing Ryan and Hally would mean finding a family that looked like them. They were only half-foreign, on their father’s side—and their father wasn’t even really foreign; he’d been born in the Americas—but it still came through in the olive complexion of their skin, the shape of their brows, the large, deep-set look of their eyes, the curve of their chins. At least one member of any foster family would have to look like them. A nonforeign family adopting a foreign child would draw more attention than it was worth.
“We’re staying,” I said.
<We can’t live with Emalia forever> Addie said.
<It wouldn’t be forever. Only—>
We had three more years before we were eighteen. Of course, couldn’t Emalia forge us papers saying whatever she wanted? We could be eighteen in a few months, if need be. We could be eighteen right now.
“You guys can always come stay with us,” Sabine said. I looked at her in surprise. We’d only just met, and she was offering us a place to live? “I share an apartment with a friend of ours. There isn’t an extra room, but there’s a couch someone can use, and we could fit mattresses if we rearranged some furniture.”
“I’d offer my place, too,” Jackson said, “but it’s smaller. And between my roommate and me—”
“Between his roommate and him, they keep the place a complete dump,” Sabine said, laughing.
Jackson spread his hands and shrugged. “We’re busy people.”
Jackson and Vince worked part-time jobs all around the city. To date, we’d heard him refer to waiting tables, walking dogs, manning food stands at the park, and working in grocery stores. He seemed to lose jobs as quickly as he gained them.
He had to keep working. No one else was supporting him. But watching him smile now, he looked like any other eighteen-year-old boy on summer vacation. Never mind that he and Vince no longer attended school. They didn’t see the point. Neither, I supposed, did they have the time.
The phone rang before I could thank Sabine for her offer. Emalia had instructed us to take calls. Most of the time, it was just a telemarketer. The chance of someone recognizing our voice was small—smaller than the chance of Emalia or Peter needing to get in contact.
I smiled apologetically at the others as I answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey.” A boy’s voice, gruff and urgent. “Are you Eva? Addie? One of them?”
Our eyes flew to Ryan, who was halfway across the room before I managed to say, “What? Sorry, who is this?”
<Eva—> Addie said, but couldn’t finish her sentence. Even my name had been little more than a tremor.
Who is it? Ryan mouthed. Behind him, Sabine and Jackson had gone still, both staring at us.
Our heart pounded. Should I hang up?
No. No, that was stupid.
“It’s Christoph,” the boy said. “Is Sabine there? Can you put her on?”
Slowly, I took the phone from our ear and covered the speaker. Our voice was halting. I forced it steadier. “Do you know someone named Christoph?”
Sabine sighed and nodded. I found myself relaxing slightly as I handed her the phone. “Hey, Christoph. Next time, you could try not scaring everyone to death, you know?” She paused as he said something. Her exasperation melted away. “Which station? Okay, thanks.” She closed her eyes. Just for a second. Then she took a sharp breath, opened them again, and hung up. “Mind if we turn on the television?”
I shook our head. At her touch, the TV flickered on with its usual grainy quality.
On the screen was Jenson.
Our muscles, bones, organs liquified.
Jenson.
Jenson of the review board. Jenson of the dark suits and creased pants and never-ruffled voice.
Jenson, who had chosen Hally and Lissa for surgery. Whose cool, steel voice frightened us more than Mr. Conivent’s silk. A man who didn’t need Mr. Conivent’s slick smiles or ready excuses. Who had watched us like he owned us.
He looked just as I remembered. Dark hair. Light eyes. Suit jacket. Not young and not old, and brutal in the way a panther was brutal—claws retracted inside soft paws. He stood before a podium, his expression crafted from a block of marble. A band of text ran across the bottom of the screen: Mark Jenson, Director of the Administration for Hybrid Affairs for Sector Two. Nationwide address.
Director for all of Sector Two? The Americas were divided into states, which were grouped into four sectors: two in the northern continent, and two in the southern. The president presided over us all, but lesser government heads watched over each sector. I’d known Jenson was part of the review board that had come to examine Nornand—I’d seen the importance the clinic had put on his visit—but I hadn’t realized just how powerful he was.
“Our country was formed as a haven for the single-souled,”