Once We Were

<Lyle would be impressed> I said softly. <First breaking out of Nornand. Now held captive in a secret attic room. Very adventure-novel.>

Addie was quiet, and I was afraid it might have been too much to bring up Lyle at a time like this. But when she finally spoke, she said <It’s only a proper story if we escape. Lyle would never stand for a story where the hero doesn’t escape.>

I tested our restraints. Our wrists were crossed behind our back, and it seemed like Sabine had wrapped the tape in both directions. I could hardly budge our hands at all.

<She’s got to let us use the bathroom at some point> I said. <She’ll have to unbind us then.>

The bell downstairs rang again. Josie was back. She and Katy exchanged a few quiet words by the trapdoor. Then Katy glanced in our direction one last time, her eyes deadened, and went down the stairs.

Sabine—it was Sabine now, with her quiet, steady eyes and that particular dancelike way she moved— brought over the plastic bags of takeout. “If you scream when I ungag you, Eva, I’ll just have to gag you again and then you won’t be able to eat.”

I nodded.

She undid the gag. I didn’t scream. I breathed several times, quickly, through our mouth, and swallowed, trying to get the taste of cloth off our tongue.

“I brought sandwiches.” Sabine turned back to her bags. “I’ll have to—”

“I need to go to the bathroom.” I’d planned on saying it as innocently as I could, but I realized two words in that I had no idea how innocent sounded after being attacked and tied up by people you thought were friends.

Sabine glanced at Ryan. He’d slumped against the wall, looking back at her unblinkingly.

“I don’t know if I trust him up here by himself,” Sabine said.

“Then stay up here with him and let me go to the bathroom.”

She smiled crookedly. “No, I think I’ll come down with you.” She produced a pocketknife and pointed it at our binds. “Same deal as with the gag. You only get one chance. Struggle, and it’s gone.”

I could feel how difficult it was for Addie to keep from taking over our limbs, from striking out as soon as our arms were free. Our muscles felt strangely wobbly. Sabine pulled our hands in front of us and bound them again, but looser, with a length of enforced duct tape about five inches long between our wrists.

She was more hesitant about our legs. Finally, she cut those bonds, too—but not before crafting makeshift manacles around our ankles.

“You’re good at this,” I said quietly, to hurt her.

“This is what they did to us, sometimes, at the institution,” she said, to hurt me.

<That makes no sense> Addie said. <Duct tape? As if they wouldn’t have something more—more professional.>

I felt the hit in our gut anyway. I didn’t say anything else as Sabine pulled us to our feet.

“Be back soon,” she said to Ryan, as if we were just popping off to the bathroom in the middle of a party.

We headed down the stairs, step by careful step. Sabine showed me to the bathroom in the back room on the other side of the store. “Don’t take long,” she said before closing the door.

As soon as she did, I locked it and whipped around, searching for something—anything—to free our hands. There was just the toilet, a sink with a drawer and a cabinet, and a mop in the corner, next to a stack of toilet paper.

Toiler paper. I turned to the dispenser, but it wasn’t the sort found in department stores, with jagged edges. There was no paper towel dispenser, only a box of tissues atop the toilet tank.

I flushed the toilet and turned on the sink so Sabine couldn’t hear what we were doing. The door might be locked, but I didn’t doubt she had a master key.

I bit at the binds around our wrists, the duct tape bitter in our mouth. It stretched under the force of our teeth, but didn’t break.

<Check in the drawer> Addie said, but there was only some drain cleaner and old air freshener. I tried to no avail to break the length of duct tape using the edge of the sink—

<Eva> Addie said. <Eva, our chip is blinking.>

<Our what?>

<Our chip. It’s blinking in our pocket, and it wasn’t a moment before.>

I threw a glance toward the bathroom door, but the chip’s weak light wouldn’t make it all the way out there. It was scarcely visible through our pants pocket.

The chip was barely pulsing, a good three seconds between flashes.

<It can’t be Ryan> Addie said. <If it was Ryan, both of our chips would have been glowing upstairs.>

<Then who—>

Addie and I came simultaneously to the same conclusion. I knew because her rush of hope and fear only compounded mine.

Hally. Lissa.

“Eva?” Sabine called through the door. “You’ve got one minute before—”

“Before what?” I snapped.

Hally and Lissa were out on the street somewhere. Close by. Looking for us—because why else would they have Ryan’s chip?

In our hand, the chip pulsed faster and faster. She was getting closer. Should we scream? Would Hally and Lissa hear us?

Then, almost at the exact same moment—the pulse of the chip’s light became a steady, red beam. And there came a quiet knock.

Not on the bathroom door. Farther away.

The front door.

“HALLY!” I screamed, then again and again. “HALLY! HALLY!”

There was a great scuffling outside the bathroom. Sabine rattled the doorknob, trying to get inside. The knocking on the front door became a pounding—

“HALLY!”

The pounding became the shattering of glass.

THIRTY-SIX

The rattling on our doorknob ceased, but I didn’t stop screaming Hally’s name until Addie shouted <Eva! Eva, we can’t hear what’s going on.>

My next scream caught in our chest, a hard, aching lump beside our heart. We no longer knew what Sabine and Josie might do. Hally and Lissa were in danger.

Our fingers fumbled, but I managed to unlock the door and shove it open. I flinched, half expecting Sabine to jump us. There was no one there. Then there was, but it wasn’t Sabine or Josie. It wasn’t even Hally.

It was Jackson.

The sight of him stunned us to stillness. But only for a second. We barrelled past him, struggling in our makeshift bonds. “Hally!”

Hally ran into view, her eyes huge. She grabbed for our hands. “Where are Ryan and Devon? Are they okay? Are you okay?”

“Upstairs,” I managed to say. I tried to move in front of her, shielding her from Jackson. “Go. Run. Get —”

“It’s okay,” Hally said. “Jackson came to get me. I didn’t believe him at first, but—”