Then I grabbed the sheaf of papers from our bag. On his rooftop, Vince would be doing the same. I didn’t need to look at the posters; Addie and I had helped Cordelia design them. We had three sets, Vince another three. Six sets in total. Six distinct posters, each bearing the face of a single child. Three girls, three boys, brought to life through Addie’s pencil.
Each was a hybrid someone in the group had been locked away with. One who death had stolen before Peter came knocking with another, more gentle freedom.
Three girls, three boys. Their names and ages were printed below their faces:
I’d thought about choosing Sallie and Val, Kitty’s old roommate, to be one of the children depicted. Addie had even prepared a sketch of her, asking Kitty for the little girl’s description. But in the end, we decided it would be too dangerous. There hadn’t been many hybrid children at Nornand, and fewer still had escaped. Anyone tracing Sallie’s picture and name might be able to guess who was involved.
The wind battered at our hair, made the posters whip about in our hands. The face on top belonged to Anna H. Anna H., fifteen, with short, dark hair and light eyes and a smile like she wanted to tear up the world. That was how Cordelia and Katy had described her for Addie, watching carefully as Addie drew sketch after sketch.
In a few moments, dozens of copies of Anna’s face would fly scattering into the wind. Would rain down to the streets below.
I dug around our bag for the walkie-talkie, then lifted it to our ear, listening. It was still quiet. I set the firecracker in the middle of the roof. It was so small—smaller even than our closed fist. I flicked open our lighter, stared at the flickering flame.
“Ready,” came Lissa’s breathless voice through the walkie-talkie.
A pause.
“Ready,” said Vince. Then Cordelia.
“Ready,” I whispered into the walkie-talkie.
There came another cheer from the crowd—a wave of noise that was sandpaper against our ears.
I gripped the lighter. A blast of wind blew the flame so close to our skin I felt a scorch of heat.
The walkie-talkie crackled with static. Then Josie’s voice funneled through.
Wind scratched at our eyes. I knelt down, lit the fuse, and ran to the edge of the roof. I released the sheaf of papers. Threw them into the air.
The firecracker exploded.
Then, from across the square, another explosion.
Then another. Another.
Echoes. Echoes. Echoes.
The crowd screamed again. A completely different kind of scream.
The sky filled with paper wings, the names of dead hybrids, the words stamped across their faces:
FOURTEEN
I’d known the
I’d heard fireworks before. Fourth of July. Hot summer nights. This sounded different. There was no sharp, warning whine before the explosion—the explosion wasn’t a deep, rolling
Like gunfire.
Our knees gave out. I dove down, arms covering our head, before my mind even registered what I was doing. When I stood again, half-bent over, the crowd was in chaos. A rippling, screaming, terrified mass of people that made me freeze in horror where I stood.
We bolted for the ladder. Our hands slapped against the rungs. We climbed down, down, down—
The crowd was still screaming. People in the building below us shouted.
People in the building below us.
A man stuck his head out the window, turned, and stared right at us. We stared back. He was thirty or forty or somewhere in between. He had short hair and a blond beard. He had old acne scars and dry lips and wide, round eyes that would not, would not leave ours.
Something unintelligible slipped from his mouth, something that was shock and fear and anger slammed together.
He knew. I was utterly, utterly certain that he knew.
There was a feeling like being knocked sideways—but it wasn’t real. It was only in my head, in our minds. It was Addie shoving herself into control, grabbing the reins to our limbs, yanking our hands free from the rungs so she could scramble to the ground.
We couldn’t hear the crowd anymore, or maybe we could and just couldn’t distinguish it from the yelling coming from much closer by. The alley below us was still empty of people, but the shouting surged closer. Louder.
Our feet touched the ground. Addie threw us away from the ladder and hurtled down the alley. We didn’t know which way we were going. We just ran.
Police sirens shrilled through the air.
Footsteps pounded behind us. We put on a burst of speed, our head whipping around. It was Cordelia. Her eyes lit up when she saw us. She shouted, gesturing wildly, urging us onward. Where was Lissa? Where was Vince?
We reached the end of the alleyway. Slammed a hard right. Nearly smashed into a store window. Saw the poster pasted there.
A poster with Jaime’s picture.
For one confused, breathless second, my addled mind thought,
Picture-Jaime wore Nornand’s blue uniform, with its starched collar and short sleeves. His hair was thick and curly, no part of it shaved to bare his scalp. A picture taken presurgery.
Who had been in control when the camera snapped the photo? Jaime? Or the soul who’d been lost?
Not lost. Murdered. Carved bloodily from his body with a violent scalpel.
The words on the poster finally registered. This wasn’t like one of Addie’s posters at all. This demanded Jaime’s return to government hands. Without thinking, we snatched the poster from the window. Stuffed it in our pocket.
A stream of fleeing people gulped us down. Cordelia grabbed our arm and yanked us deeper into the crowd. We tried to tell her
More police sirens. An elbow rammed into our face, pain exploding in our cheekbone. We jerked from Cordelia’s grasp. The crowd separated us in seconds. She spun around, fighting the mob to reach our side
