What's Left of Me (23 page)

I said softly. My words slipped through the cracks of Addie’s self-imposed prison. I felt her shuddering inside, wrapped around herself, trying to shut me out.

If Addie lost control, I’d be her and she’d be me—stuck in our head. Watching, listening, paralyzed.

I understood.

I said.

Addie said nothing, just stared blankly through the fence. There were a few odd cars parked near the building and a black van a bit farther away, but that was all. Nornand’s backyard was not the neat green jewel the front was. A delivery guy unloaded boxes from the back of a van, a cap jammed low on his head to protect him from the unforgiving sun. He rolled his shoulders, stretching out his arms and flexing his fingers before making his way to a side door with a bulky box cradled in his arms. His trip took him within a few feet of us. We watched him silently. Focusing on him meant we didn’t need to focus so hard on each other, could speak without scrutinizing each other’s souls.

I said.

she said. Her words tore at our tenuous peace. Our heart clenched. She closed our eyes.

She took a deep breath, our muscles aching from the pure tension in our limbs.

Something clattered against the fence, jarring us from the recesses of our mind. We snapped back to the world around us: the courtyard, the hot, dry air, the metal links beneath our fingers. The fence. Something was caught against the fence—a square of something—cardboard, blown by the wind. We bent and tried to grab it. Our hand was just small enough to fit through the fence. We winced as we pulled it back, the rough metal scratching our skin.

Addie’s unfinished sentence still hung between us, gossamer and smoke:
And I—And I—

But it would hang forever unfinished. We read the message scribbled in black felt-tip marker on the piece of cardboard in our hands.

Addie. Eva.

We want to help you get out.

Addie looked up, but there was nobody. Nothing. Nothing there but the cars and the pavement and the—the delivery boy, almost to the building by now.

He saw us staring at him, and he smiled.

Twenty-seven

D
evon didn’t sit next to us at lunch, and I wasn’t sure if it was to appease the nurses or to appease us. No. Appease Addie. Because Addie wasn’t me and I wasn’t her, and that was good—but right now, we felt so separate I was afraid we’d rip right apart.

We no longer had the piece of cardboard. It was too dangerous. Addie had hidden it under our shirt until we got indoors, then stuffed it to the bottom of the trash can in the bathroom after smudging the writing with water. She would have flushed it, but it might have clogged up the pipes.

Addie. Eva.

We want to help you get out.

The nurse clapped her hands, calling everyone out of their seats to line up at the door. I saw Devon glance at us, just once, but his expression betrayed nothing. Then he looked away and there wasn’t anything I could do to catch his attention again. We still felt dizzy from time to time, the world tilting when we stood up too quickly. Our limbs hurt. Bruises had materialized overnight, purple and red on our legs, our arms, around the bandage on our forehead.

Devon was near the front of the line, so we edged in toward the back. The other kids were still ignoring us. We must have looked such a mess—almost frighteningly so. In a way, I was glad to be left alone. We had too much to think about already.

The delivery boy. The one we’d seen our first day, our first few minutes in Nornand. He’d stared at us then, and we’d assumed it was because we were hybrid and he’d been morbidly interested. But what if it had been because we were hybrid and—

We want to help you get out.

But not just us, surely. He meant everyone. All the kids. So why contact us, and why now?

And what did he meant by
We
?

Did it matter? If they were going to help us get out, did it matter who they were?

We closed our eyes and I saw a flash of Jaime crying in the basement.

He’s gone. They cut him out. He’s gone. He’s gone.

Mr. Conivent in the Study room, the pencil jabbing into our hand.

Perfect day for a surgery.

We would leave this place for anywhere. More importantly, we had to get Lissa and Hally away before it was too late.

We ran into the little girl in front of us when she stopped walking. She turned around just long enough to frown at us and gesture pointedly at the nurse, who’d paused to chat with one of the orderlies. The girl had the palest blond hair we’d ever seen and was perhaps eleven, Kitty’s age. Pretty, I would have thought at any other time. Now I just fought to keep from imagining her locked down in the basement next to Jaime, sobbing and pounding on the door. Or laid out on the surgery table, her feather-light hair half shaved, baring her scalp to the knife.

Addie nearly cried out when someone grabbed our wrist. But thank God we swallowed it down, because when we twisted around to see who it was, we caught a glimpse of the delivery boy’s face—pale blue eyes, a long nose, ragged bangs—as he put his finger to his lips and pulled us a couple of yards down the hall, then pushed us through a half-open door.

We stood in some sort of storage closet, surrounded by shelves of cleaning solutions, cramped between a mop in one corner and a broom in the other. Everything smelled funny.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” the delivery boy whispered. He leaned toward us and didn’t seem to notice when Addie shifted away, nearly knocking over a bottle of window cleaner. The only light came from a penlight he’d clicked on after shutting the door. “Addie?”

“I’m listening,” Addie said. She squinted in the light beaming toward our face; the boy jerked the penlight aside. “But I—who are you?”

Despite everything—the cramped quarters, the looming threat of getting caught—the boy grinned. We could just barely see his teeth in the dimness.

“Jackson,” he said. “And I shouldn’t be talking with you. I really shouldn’t—Peter would kill me if he knew. But Sabine agreed that you ought to know.”

“Know what?” Addie said. It was so, so hot in the storage closet. It took everything in us to keep from pushing past the boy blocking the door to cooler air. He was skinny enough and the closet was big enough to keep us from touching, but his height made him loom. Addie had to tilt our head up to meet his eyes, and that only reminded us constantly of how low the ceiling was.

“To keep hope,” he—Jackson—said. “You’ve got to keep hope.”

Keep hope. Such a strange way of phrasing things.

Keep hope.

“
What
?” Addie said.

Jackson took a quick, sharp breath. This seemed to bolster him. “We’ve been watching Nornand. For a while now. And we’re going to get you out.”

“Who’s
we
?” Addie said.

“Emalia calls us the
Underground
,” Jackson said, and dared to smile, as if there was time for jokes. “I think—”

“I don’t care about your group name,” Addie said.

I said, but Jackson didn’t seem fazed at all. In fact, he was still grinning. He had a smile like a lit match, warm approaching hot.

“Hybrids,” he said, and something jolted in our stomach. “Like you. Like us.”

Us.
He
was hybrid? The boy who we’d imagined judging us a freak was one of us?

“Peter—he’s sort of the leader, you know. He’s done this kind of thing before. Breaking kids out. He had a plan for Nornand, but it fell through. Someone he thought would help”—his expression darkened—“well,
she
fell through.”

Breaking kids out. Plans. Peter.

Before we could digest even this much, Jackson was hitting us with more. “He’s planning again. He’s got to change the plan now, and he wants to keep a low profile until then, so I’m not supposed to talk with you at all. But I know—I know what it’s like.” He wasn’t smiling anymore. Not a bit, and it made him seem much older. “So I’m telling you we’re coming. You’ve just got to wait a little longer. And you’ve got to keep hope.”

We were woozy again, whether from the tight quarters or yesterday’s fall or the stream of information the delivery boy kept dumping over our head, I didn’t know. Maybe all three.

“They’re cutting kids open,” Addie said finally. It was the most important thing we knew right now, and in the face of so much confusion, we had to get this piece of information out. She looked away. “And the vaccines they give everyone . . . those vaccines for babies—they make it so most people lose one of their souls. And . . . and with some of the kids, they’re
deciding
who’s dominant and who’s not. They’re choosing who lives—”

Jackson put his hand on our shoulder, and Addie met his eyes again. “I know,” he said.

“Are you people going to stop those things?” Addie shifted away from his touch. “Is this
Underground
going to make it all better?” She inflected the name as he had, mocking him.

“We’re trying,” Jackson said, and suddenly, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough at all. “Addie,” he said quietly. “Trust me, okay? I—”

“I don’t even
know
you,” Addie said, and he threw up his hands, urging her to keep our voice down, his eyes wide.

“You will,” he said, as if that was any sort of legitimate argument.

I said.

Jackson smiled that exasperating smile again. “There’s so much you don’t know yet—but you will. You’ve just got to get out of here first.”

Addie gave him a narrow look. We were sick and tired of learning things we didn’t know. So far, none of it had been good. “Like what?”

“Like—” He hesitated, but Addie stared at him until he went on. “Like how the Americas isn’t as isolated from the rest of the world as the government would like you to think.” He hurried on before Addie could interrupt. “We don’t have time to go into it now. But I swear, one day we’ll talk as much as you want. You just have to wait a little longer.”

I could feel Addie about to insist he explain himself, but Jackson was right—we didn’t have time.

I said.

Our lips thinned, but Addie bit back her questions. Instead, she said, “We don’t have time to wait. This girl—my friend—she’s scheduled to go into surgery. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. Why can’t we leave now? Tonight?”

“All the side doors are alarmed and locked at night,” Jackson said. “You can’t even open them from the inside, so no one can get in or out. The only way is through the main door, and that’s always guarded by a night shift.”

There was a breath of silence. It might have stretched, but there wasn’t time. Any moment now, the nurse would finish her conversation or one of the other kids would realize we were gone.

“What if we disabled the alarms?” Addie said. “Would that unlock the doors, too?”

Jackson grinned. “No, but it would give us time to break in without calling out the cavalry. Why? You an electrical genius?”

“No,” Addie said. “But I know someone who is.”

We stepped out from the closet slightly dizzy, Jackson behind us. The nurse was still a little ways down the hall, talking to the orderly. The other kids stood in a vague approximation of a line, some chatting quietly among themselves, some just leaning listlessly against the wall.

How long had we been hidden away? Three minutes? Four? Had no one—

No, someone had noticed. Devon had noticed us missing. He frowned at us, and it wasn’t until Addie put our finger to our lips that he jerked his eyes away, pretending he hadn’t seen.

We looked behind us, at Jackson. He grinned, and Addie stretched our lips in a shoddy semblance of a smile. What plans we’d made had been hastily stitched together, built from on-the-spot decisions and not a few guesses. But the basic structure was in place. We’d have to fill in the rest as we went. We didn’t have time for anything else. Lissa and Hally didn’t have time.

Addie turned and hurried back to the group.

Twenty-eight

M
r. Conivent quarantined Addie and me at a table close to his desk during study time. Every few minutes, he would look up and stare over at us, checking to make sure we were doing our assignment. Whenever more than a minute or two passed without us writing something down, he’d clear his throat. Maybe he assumed we were safer when doing math problems. Maybe he thought they were keeping us occupied, that if our head was a jumble of matrices and obtuse triangles and long division, we wouldn’t have room for things like escape plans.

It might have been a safe assumption, if we weren’t hybrid. Between the two of us, Addie and I solved math problems and had all the space in the world to figure out the important things.

Jackson had run through the plan during our last moments in the janitors’ closet. The Underground had vans and plane tickets and fake identifications for fifteen kids. They had everything we’d need once we escaped the hospital. But we had to escape first.

We didn’t steal a glance at Devon over our shoulder—Mr. Conivent was sure to catch it—but we’d seen him sit down when we first entered, and I could feel his presence in the room as solidly as I could feel the coin-sized chip tucked below our ankle. It would be glowing an uninterrupted red right now, but it was pressed under the side of our shoe and our black sock. No one could see.

Mr. Conivent shifted at his desk, filling out some sort of paperwork. The review board hadn’t shown up today, and I wondered if they’d left for good.

Addie said.

The Study room door opened. Heels clicked, then quieted as they left the tiled hallways and sank into the carpeting. Our eyes rose and met Dr. Lyanne’s. She stood framed by the doorway in her black pumps and her perfect, wrinkle-free skirt and blouse, her white doctor’s coat. Pretty, almost beautiful. A woman full of angles. She headed for Mr. Conivent’s desk.

Addie and I finished our work sheet as we watched them speak out of the corner of our eyes. They whispered, but Mr. Conivent sat only six or seven feet away, and though we couldn’t pick out words, we could hear the tension in their voices, growing stronger and stronger and stronger until Mr. Conivent set down his pen with all the power of a judge pounding his gavel. He looked straight at us.

We forgot ourself and stared back.

“Addie,” he said. His voice retained an echo of danger. “You missed getting your blood tested yesterday. Dr. Lyanne will take you to get it done now.” Addie didn’t immediately stand, and he said, “
Now
, Addie.”

We stood, leaving behind our pencil and math problems. We followed Dr. Lyanne out the door. There was something we needed from her now, specific information she
had
to give us, and our mind whirled with plans.

“Hello,” Addie said quietly as we sat down in the small examination room. It was our first word to Dr. Lyanne since this morning. Here in this room, almost everything was white. The walls. The floor. The small table that separated us from Dr. Lyanne. And we were a spot of blue, perched on a chair. The machine between us was gray, a contraption the size of a typewriter with glass vials contained inside, visible through some silver meshing. They were connected to plastic tubing that snaked out onto the table.

The room appeared even smaller once Dr. Lyanne closed the door. After being shut up in that closet with Jackson, it was nothing, of course, but both we and Dr. Lyanne seemed to take up so much space, though she was such a thin woman and we’d never been tall.

“Give me your arm,” she said. Her voice was still authoritative for all the paleness of her cheeks. Addie complied.

We’d undergone so many blood tests when we were younger that needles no longer fazed us. Addie didn’t flinch when the needle slid coldly in or when our blood spiraled out in the tube, dripping into one of the glass vials. For a long time, no one said anything. The needle under our skin barely hurt. We watched first one vial, then the other, fill up. Dr. Lyanne sat across from us, staring idly at the machine, too.

“What were you guys arguing about?” Addie said, and this brought Dr. Lyanne’s attention back onto us faster than anything.

“Who?” she said. As if we could be referring to anybody else.

“You and Mr. Conivent,” Addie said.

Dr. Lyanne pressed down on our arm with a cotton ball, then slid the needle out. “Nothing, Addie. And it’s none of your business to begin with.”

“Was it about Jaime?” Addie said.

“No,” said Dr. Lyanne. “No, it wasn’t about Jaime. Keep pressure on your arm.”

Addie obeyed but didn’t take our eyes off Dr. Lyanne as she grabbed a tangle of wires from behind her. They were connected to another gray machine—larger than the first—on one end and what looked like a skullcap on the other.

“Was it about Hally?” I said, and shuddered. My being in control wasn’t part of the plan and I hadn’t intended to take it. I’d meant to wait for Addie to ask. But she had taken too long, and I had to know. “Is Hally safe?” Then, because that was stupid—that was the most stupid question I could have asked; of course Hally wasn’t safe—I said, “They haven’t done it yet. They haven’t—they haven’t operated on her.”

Dr. Lyanne’s face was so bland. So bland and pale and cold. She was so
calm
and it grated against me. How could she be so calm?

“No,” Dr. Lyanne said. Sweet, cold relief made our whole body limp.

I felt my control slipping, and I let it, but then Addie said

I said.

“Where is she?” I said, punching back against the weariness. Dr. Lyanne was staring at us now, and I had to swallow, to take a breath, to reorient myself in our shared body, before I could speak again. “Where are they keeping her? In the basement? With Jaime? When are they planning the operation?”

“That isn’t for you to know,” Dr. Lyanne said.

“Why not?” Our voice shook. Dr. Lyanne had a bottle of clear liquid in her hands. She clutched it so tightly her knuckles shone white. “If things turn out anything like they did with Jaime, one of my friends is going to
die
and the other one’s going to lose her mind—I deserve to know
when
.”

“Most likely, it won’t,” she whispered. The plastic bottle collapsed in her grip. “Jaime was lucky.”

Something icy slipped through me. Head to foot. Fingertip to fingertip. “What do you mean?”

She didn’t speak, didn’t look at us, didn’t even seem to breathe. Still, like a rock, like a crystal.

“Dr. Lyanne—”

“All the other children they’ve operated on . . .” she said. “They never left the table. Jaime . . . Jaime was the only one to survive.”

Methodically, Dr. Lyanne started unscrewing the bottle in her hands. They shook, and she fumbled the cap.

I swept the bottle off the table.

It clattered onto the tiled floor, spilling the clear liquid in a wide arc as it spun into a corner. The sting of alcohol pierced the air, acrid and pungent.

“Help us,” I said, and it was no longer a plea.

Dr. Lyanne remained motionless, her eyes still on her hands. I tried to remember the woman in the basement, sitting in Jaime’s room, the look on her face when he was in her arms, the way she’d held him.

“You could get Jaime out,” I said, and, when she didn’t respond, I took a deep breath. “There are people . . . people who would get us away. They’d take him, too. He’d be safe.” It was the only thing I could think of—the only big, shocking thing I could think of to say to make her
look
at us,
acknowledge
us.

It worked. Dr. Lyanne’s head shot up, her mouth opening slightly, a spot of color rising in her cheeks. A strange shift in expression—not confusion, but fear.

Then she spoke, and it was as if from a dream. “You spoke with Peter?”

Our limbs weakened. “You know Peter.”

We could almost see Dr. Lyanne break apart, piece by piece. We’d entered the room feeling like it was too small, that we and Dr. Lyanne took up too much space. Now the woman seemed to take up no space at all. She was as insubstantial as a figment of the imagination. See-through.

“He’s my brother,” she said.

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t hold ourself together like this—take in all this and manage to keep our heart beating and our lungs expanding and—

But I had to. I had to, because I was in control of our body.

“He’s your
brother
? Your brother’s a hybrid, and you work
here
?”

“I told you,” she said. There was a touch of resolve in her voice again. “I wanted to
help
—”

“Then
help
,” I cried. “Help. Now. Help us get out.” The alcohol fumes stung our eyes. “If you’re not helping us get out, Dr. Lyanne,” I said vehemently, “then you’re helping them kill us.” I stared at her, and when she looked away I grabbed her hand. “Is Hally in the basement?”

Finally, finally, she nodded. Just once.

“The doors are keypadded.” I forced our voice to be strong and demanding and powerful when I could barely breathe, could barely keep our body upright and our words clear. “I need the code.”

Quiet. Breathing, hers and ours. Quick, quick, quick. Shallow. The hard wooden desk. The uncomfortable chairs. The angles of Dr. Lyanne’s face. Her thin lips, the weary lines on her forehead, between her green-brown-green-brown eyes.

She told us the code.