Once We Were. Kat Zhang

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СКАЧАТЬ <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.

       FOUR

      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,” Jenson said. “Since the first rise of civilization, the hybrids have thought themselves better—smarter, more able. For thousands of years, our ancestors were subjugated to slave labor and then near–slave labor, to monstrous and inhuman treatment. Finally, they took a stand. They fought for their right—our right—to be free of hybrid rule.” He paused. “The Americas were truly a new world—colonized, perhaps, by hybrids, but built on the backs of the single-souled. We fought for and won this land during the Revolution. It is our haven in a world gone mad. And as such, it must be protected.”

      <What is this?> Addie said softly.

      Our initial sickness hadn’t faded, only soured and curdled.

      “In past times, when the world was a more barbaric place, the hybrids were able to maintain their power through sheer brutality and superior numbers. But today, we can see them for what they truly are: mercurial in mood, unstable in action. That is, if they do not simply succumb to insanity. Who but the insane could so savagely treat their fellow human beings for thousands of years? Who but the unstable would continue to fight endless wars, until they’d all but driven themselves into the ground?”

      Ryan had come to stand beside us, slipping his fingers through ours. We felt the heat of his arm through his sleeve. It wasn’t until he gently squeezed back that I realized I was crushing his fingers.

      Jenson stared out from the television screen. It felt like he was talking specifically to us. To me. “We’ve long closed our borders to the hybrids overseas. But unfortunately, that didn’t solve the problem of the ones being born into our midst. For a long time, the institutions were our best solution to the hybrid condition. Institutionalization allowed hybrids to be secured and cared for away from those they might harm. It allowed them to be protected from themselves. But times are changing. As a country, we improve and move forward, discovering better ways to resolve our problems. And that is what I wish to introduce to you today—the next step in our answer to the hybrid issue: not containment, but a cure.”

      A cure.

      A cure was what they’d been looking for at Nornand. Child after child had died on the operating table in search of a cure. Jaime Cortae—thirteen years old, funny, brilliant—had gone under the knife and lost a part of himself he would never get back. All because they’d been searching for a cure.

      <Dr. Lyanne> Addie said. <She said they’d given that up. She said that the review board—the government considered Nornand a complete failure. She said there would be—there would be backlash—>

      Surely, they hadn’t changed their minds so quickly. СКАЧАТЬ