Once We Were

chatted, even laughed from time to time. Devon—it was still Devon in control—was silent. I kept our hands in our lap, our arms tight against our body.

We reached the city limits, then the same parking lot we’d left from that morning. No one seemed to want to leave the car. To be alone with the immensity of what we’d done. Finally, Cordelia suggested we all have lunch in the attic.

Food didn’t make me feel any better. Sabine was unusually quiet, focused on the turnings of her own mind. Jackson and Cordelia supplied most of the conversation, but eventually, even their well of words ran dry. The attic fell into a lull of silence that wasn’t entirely comfortable. Takeout boxes sat littered about the attic, some still full of fried fish and sweet rolls, others with nothing left but a slick of grease.

Devon spoke first. “When are we going to do it for real?” When no one replied, he looked around the room and repeated himself. “When are we going to blow up the institution?”

“We know what you mean,” Jackson said, but he was smiling, and there was no real heat to the words. Still, he didn’t give an answer.

Sabine hadn’t looked up at the sound of Devon’s voice, and she didn’t look up now. She studied the fairy lights strung around the room like there were answers hidden in their knots.

“Next week,” she said. “Next Friday night.”

Exactly seven days from today.

“Why Friday?” Devon said.

Finally, Sabine met his eyes. “According to the schedules we got from Nalles, they haven’t set up the surgical machinery yet. They’ll be moving them in all next week. They’ll be done by Friday.”

“You’re sure?” Devon said.

Sabine nodded. “Like I said, it’s in the schedules.”

“Next Friday night . . .” Cordelia moved over to sit beside Sabine, putting an arm around her. “Are you sure, Sabine? It’s so soon.”

Sabine nodded. Her gaze had drifted again, to the floor this time. “Why not? We know it works. We’ve got the bomb. Why wait longer than necessary?”

“I’m ready,” Christoph said.

“And Friday’s a good day of the week to do it,” Sabine said. “If anything does go wrong—if the government responds in some dangerous, unexpected way—Jackson and Christoph don’t need to be in at work, and it’s not suspicious if they don’t turn up. Everything’s less regulated on the weekends.”

Cordelia nodded, her pale head resting against Sabine’s shoulder.

“Not everyone needs to actually go to Powatt, anyway,” Christoph said.

“Really, only one person needs to go,” Sabine said. “I could go alone. It would be safer.”

“It wouldn’t be safer for you,” Jackson said.

Some of Sabine’s usual strength came back to her voice. “Not having you there to mess things up would make it a lot safer for me.”

They smiled, the smile of old friends who didn’t need words to understand each other.

“Still, you shouldn’t go alone.” There was steel underlying Jackson’s words, a stiffness coming from something I couldn’t pin down. Fear? Not quite fear. His eyes flashed toward ours, then away again.

“He’s right,” Devon said. His voice was low. He looked at us, then Jackson, like he’d caught his glance. “I’d like to be there. See the thing come down.”

<Remember how he was against this, in the beginning?> I asked Addie. It seemed like forever ago. Like we’d been different people then.

Addie said <Eva, could you give me a few hours alone today?>

Neither of us had gone under since the day of our fight, and her request made something twinge inside me. But I said <Yeah. Of course.>

I meant it. Of course Addie would still want time to herself, just like I did. She hadn’t even spoken with Jackson since I fled his apartment, and she wouldn’t want me around when she did.

I needed time, too, to digest what had just happened. I wanted, maybe, just a little time to be asleep and not have to feel anything. Dreams were preferable to this. When I woke, I could sort things out.

<Thanks> Addie said.

I took one last look at the attic around me, the dark wooden boards, the fairy lights gleaming on the walls.

Then I disappeared.

Fireworks

The first time I saw them

Independence Day

I feel the bloom

The crack

Of their noise

As if they too are trying

To shake me loose

Shake me from my limbs

Make me fade away

Like they do

Here

A burst of color

Then gone

I woke in the middle of dinner, fork tines against our tongue, our elbows on the dining table. Even after weeks of practice, it was still disorienting to be thrust into the real world after living in timeless, liquid dreams.

Addie’s first words were simple. A caution: <Peter’s here.>

My dreams snapped away. Our eyes focused on the other people seated around the table: Emalia, Nina, Peter. At the moment, no one was saying anything, busy with their food.

Addie swallowed. She lowered our fork, setting it carefully on the woven placemat, beside our plate. <Jenson’s in Anchoit.>

<What?> I cried.

But Addie shushed me as she said, aloud, “Did you always know he was coming, Peter?”

Peter sat to our left, lost in his thoughts and the mechanical motions of eating. His eyes lifted at the sound of our voice. He nodded. “He leads the government review board, after all. But apparently, he’s been in the city for a couple weeks already. No public announcement. Nothing. No one’s supposed to know.”

<How does Peter know?> I asked.

<Shh> Addie said, but she explained quickly anyway. <He’s got someone planted in government. An informant.>

<Didn’t he tell Sabine it was too dangerous to go anywhere near the government? >

<Shh, Eva. And yeah, maybe because it’s dangerous and he didn’t want her to get hurt.>

“Didn’t he visit Nornand before the hybrid wing opened there?” Emalia asked.

The Powatt institution would never open. Hybrid children would never fill its beds, sleepwalk through its halls, whisper fearfully to one another after lights-out.

We were making sure of that.

“He did, but . . .” Peter hesitated. “I’m not sure what the man is doing here so early. He went to the Benoll Hospital downtown as part of some kind of criminal investigation.” Our heart stilled, even before Peter’s next words: “An oxygen tank was stolen, or something like that. It’s a strange thing for a man like him to be looking