Once We Were

We looked around at the devastation. The building was still standing; we saw no sky. But there was so much smoke and dust. Blown-apart bits of walls and ceiling and floor. We heard a fire crackling, saw licks of orange and yellow.

We coughed and whimpered when our ribs felt like they were cracking with each breath. I was too exhausted to move. There was blood on Jenson’s face. On his shirt, which had been white but was now stained by soot and dark-red blotches.

“I knew I would find you.” His voice was a hoarse, mangled version of its usual steel. He stared at Addie and me, as if all his attention was for us, even in the face of total destruction. Whatever strength had powered him in helping us from the rubble had seeped away. “The fireworks in Lankster. The police dashboard video. I saw you.”

<What’s he talking about?> Addie whispered. Her horror was a hard, black thing. Jenson spoke like a man gone mad.

Then I realized. There had been a police car at Lankster. The one that had hit Cordelia right in front of us. The policeman had met our eyes.

Police cars had dashboard cameras.

“The oxygen.” Jenson groaned. His words dissolved into a gasp for breath. “The doctor—I spoke to him, and I knew. It was you. I said I would find you.”

The doctor smoking in the doorway of Benoll, the end of his cigarette an ember in the darkness.

“Where’s the boy?” Jenson grabbed our shoulder. His fingers were talons through our thin shirt. I gasped at the pain, trying to pull away. “They took him with you from Nornand. Where is he?”

“You can’t have him,” I whispered.

“Where is he? Where is Jaime Cortae?”

I shook our head.

“Eva!”

The shout came from far away. Both Jenson and I looked up, searching.

“Eva!”

Closer now. Louder. Clearer. A boy.

Ryan.

His name came to our lips but got no farther.

“Where are you?” Ryan shouted. Frustration ripped at his words, made his voice raw. There was too much smoke and debris to see more than a few yards away.

“Found her!” came a voice through the rubble. But it wasn’t Ryan’s.

Dr. Lyanne emerged from the smoke like an apparition. A ghost wearing an A-line skirt and unsensible heels, hair pulled back severely from her face. We were so dazed we just stared, watching her come toward us, looking so casual with her purse hanging from one shoulder.

She tensed at the sight of Jenson, then knelt in front of Addie and me. I tried to speak and started coughing again. We felt her hand slide up our shirt, feeling gently at our ribs. I hissed in pain.

“My ankle,” I managed to say.

She moved to our legs. “Which one?”

“The . . . the right. Don’t,” I gasped when she touched it. She reached into her purse and drew out a small first-aid kit before gently removing our shoe and sock. Our ankle had already started to swell.

Jenson spoke, his eyes on Dr. Lyanne as she rummaged around the kit for scissors and a roll of bandages. “What made you do it? Steal the boy? Betray all you ever worked for?”

“Can you move your toes?” Dr. Lyanne asked me. “Point your foot?”

I tried and managed to twitch a few toes. Pointing was harder. “Is it broken?”

“Hard to say for sure,” she said. “Your other leg’s all right?”

“I—I think so.”

She nodded and I tried to stay still as she carefully bound our ankle. Everything hurt. Dr. Lyanne had a number of pill packets in her kit, along with a few small, packaged syringes. I was about to ask if any of them were painkillers when she reached for our hand. “Come on. I’ll help you stand, see if you can put any weight on it. The security guard up front has already called the police. They’ll be swarming the place soon.”

Ryan crashed onto the scene before either of us could move. Jackson was only a step behind him. Both stared at me, then at Jenson, then back to me.

“God, Eva,” Ryan said, and didn’t seem able to say any more. He joined Dr. Lyanne by our side, reaching hesitantly for our face.

Dr. Lyanne climbed to her feet. “She’ll be fine. Help me get her up.”

It took a few tries, but with Jackson and Ryan helping, I managed to stand, balancing on our good leg. Our body felt so heavy, our head most of all. I thought we might throw up.

Now, finally, Dr. Lyanne turned to Jenson. The two of them examined each other.

“You two get her out of here,” Dr. Lyanne said to Ryan and Jackson. “Go the same way we came in. Don’t let the guard catch you.” She pressed a packet of pills into our hand. “Take these. Two every four hours. It’ll help with the pain.”

“What about you?” Ryan said.

Dr. Lyanne nodded at Jenson. “Somebody’s got to get him out.”

Jenson was silent. He had saved Addie and me, in the end. He’d come back for us in the stairwell, at great risk to himself. He’d unburied us from the rubble when he could barely stand. Perhaps he’d done it in pursuit of his own goals—his own obsessions—but he had saved us.

“Why are you helping him?” Jackson demanded.

“I’m a doctor,” Dr. Lyanne said. “It’s what I do.”

The sky was purple and orange when we finally left the building behind. How long had we been unconscious? I looked at the wreckage. Half the building was nearly gone, collapsed like a child’s toy in smoldering ruins. The other half—the half where we and Jenson had been—was still standing. It all burned.

By the time we reached Jackson’s car, Addie and I were shaking, our muscles jelly. Ryan helped us into the backseat. We collapsed in a heap, taking shallow breaths because our ribs hurt too badly for deep ones. I’d dry- swallowed the pills Dr. Lyanne had given us, but so far, they didn’t seem to be working.

“I thought you were going to Peter’s place,” I whispered.

Ryan’s eyes met ours. “I thought you were going back to Emalia’s apartment. What happened to understanding that if you get into trouble, the only place I want to be is right there with you?”

I looked away.

“I did go to Peter’s apartment,” Ryan said. “He wasn’t there. I waited until Hally showed up. Then she stayed there while I went to call Dr. Lyanne. She was the only other person I could think of who could drive us out here.” He pulled the door shut behind us as Jackson threw the car into drive. His voice was edged. “I should have come with you, Eva.”

“If you weren’t here, you could argue your innocence,” I said softly. Jackson’s eyes met ours in the rearview mirror. I realized he’d claimed the same thing about keeping Sabine’s real plans secret from Addie and me. But this wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same at all. “Sabine and Christoph?”

Jackson explained how he’d run into Sabine and Christoph while searching for us. How they’d prevented him from going into the building after us—the guard I’d pushed past had run in after me, but another had replaced him at the door.

Those guards had, in a way, saved our lives. Unable to actually enter the building, Sabine and Christoph had set up the bomb outside, which was why only half the institution had collapsed.

If we’d taken the flight of stairs on the other side of the building . . .

“Everyone else,” I said. “The officials, the other doctors . . . they all got away?”

Jackson nodded. “A crowd ran out right before the explosion. They left with some of the security guards. What happened in there, Eva?”

I told them about Jenson. What he’d said. How he’d been watching us, in a way, this entire time. We drove and drove and drove under a darkening sky. Everything was a too-sharp dream.