by Kat Zhang
There were no alarms, either, though I didn’t think of that until we were already climbing out the window. The wind whipped at our hair. We’d gotten rid of most of the glass on the sides and bottom, but our legs and hands were bleeding by the time we found a place to put our foot on the outside of the building.
The sky was all peaches and cream, marred only by a giant, lazy swirl of bloody raspberry right through the center.
We didn’t look down. We were three stories up, and a part of me laughed hysterically. This was ripped right out of Lyle’s adventure books. But in adventure books, no one ever died falling off a window ledge trying to sneak into a room three feet away. We had no such security.
We held our breath and let go of the sill with one hand to grab the edge of Lissa’s window. We hadn’t cleared the glass enough, and a shard bit into our skin, but we didn’t let go. We swung one foot up to the edge of the window and pushed hard, hard with the other and tumbled into Lissa’s room, cut up and bleeding but more or less intact.
Lissa gasped. She had tears on her cheeks and a mouth falling open and her glasses askew. She stared as we said, hoarsely, “Are you okay? Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
Twenty-four
Lissa had red marks on her arms from where the security guard had grabbed her and a cut on her hand from I didn’t know what, but otherwise she seemed okay, and we couldn’t imagine what had happened to make her struggle like that, to make her scream like that, until she flew into our arms and cried, “They’re going to do it to me next. They’re going to cut into me next.”
“What?” Addie grabbed her shoulders.
Lissa was shaking. “The man from the review board. He said—Oh my God, Addie, you’re bleeding. The window.”
“Forget the window,” Addie said. I’d never heard our voice sound so hard and fierce and cold. Never in our life. “What did he say? Exactly.”
“He said we would be a good candidate for surgery,” Lissa said.
Our hands and legs throbbed where the glass had cut, but other than the gash on our hand, nothing seemed too deep. Addie collapsed onto one of the beds, staining the sheets with our blood. “They can’t,” she said, two words on a breath. “Why you? Why not us? We were—I was the one who actually—”
Lissa hadn’t sat down. Her tears were disappearing now, replaced by a sort of heat that burned through her eyes and her voice as she said, “Addie, Addie, look at me.”
We did. We looked at her and saw her wide-framed black glasses with the artsy white rhinestones, her thick, curly hair, her long hands and small feet and sharp nose.
“Addie,” Lissa said, and now she sounded tired, so tired. “My father can’t find a decent job because no one will hire him. My mother’s parents send money because they’ve got enough of it to throw around, and their conscience is at least that strong, but I’ve never met anyone on that side of the family. They’ve never wanted to meet us.” She came and sat beside us on the edge of the bed, bunching up the sheet and pressing it against our hand to stanch the bleeding. Addie flinched but didn’t draw away. “Addie,” Lissa said. “Don’t you see? They think our lives are all worthless because we’re hybrids, but for us, it’s worse than that. If they operated on you, someone might still care. If your parents complained and kicked up a fuss, there’s a tiny chance someone might listen.” She took a shuddery breath. “But us? Or Devon and Ryan? No one would care about us.”
No one would care about a half-foreign, hybrid child. The government could do whatever it wanted, and no one would say a thing. They could destroy the Mullans, rip them out of their house, take away every last cent, throw them into jail on a technicality, and no one would blink, no one would question it. It would almost be expected. I could hear the whispers that would arise, the relief. I’d always known they were up to something, they’d say. Didn’t I keep telling you? A family like that . . . They had to be up to something.
“Well, it’s wrong,” Addie said. “It’s all wrong.”
I couldn’t remember the last time Addie had hugged someone other than our parents or Lyle. Not willingly. Not on purpose. But she put our arms around Lissa now. “I shouldn’t have gotten you involved,” she said into her shoulder.
“Hey,” Lissa said softly. “I’m the one who got you involved.”
It was at that moment, our chin resting on Lissa’s shoulder, that we looked through the ruined window and saw a nurse on the other side of the building, across the courtyard. Staring back at us. We couldn’t see her clearly enough to make out her expression, but there was no mistaking the flash of her wrist, the black walkie-talkie. The obvious call for help.
Addie jerked backward.
Lissa started, then spun around, following our gaze. “You’ve got to get back to your room,” she said, then laughed at the ridiculousness of her own suggestion. As if that would help, considering the state of the windows, the state of our hands and legs.
“Help me move this.” Addie grabbed one end of the bed and attempted to ignore the new stab of pain. “Hurry.”
The steel frame was heavier than it looked and screeched every foot of the way across the floor. We were barely strong enough to shove the bed against the door, and by the time it was jammed against the wood, Addie was breathing hard. She let go of the bed frame to brush our hair out of our face, and I tried not to pay attention to the bloody handprint we left on the metal.
“Now the other,” Addie said, and soon the second bed was jammed against the first.
“What now?” Lissa said.
What now? The beds were against the door, but that only kept them from getting in—and only for so long. Addie ran to the window. Going back to our room wouldn’t do any good. That door was locked, too. Below us was a three-story drop and hot, hard concrete. We could maybe break the window on the other side of Lissa’s room and try getting out through there, but just as Addie went to grab one of the nightstands, we heard the unmistakable sound of someone starting to unlock Lissa’s door.
Down was impossible. Sideways was useless.
A half-formed memory swam in my mind, something I’d seen—we’d seen—that I had to remember. Something important.
“Addie—” Lissa said as the pounding started, the shouting, Open up! Get away from the door! “Addie!”
Then it came to me. The first day. Before we’d ever stepped foot in Nornand’s sanitized halls. We’d seen someone on the roof.
Addie stuck our head out the window and craned our neck. Yes—yes, we could, maybe. There was a small overhang not far above the window, and if we were careful, if we were very, very careful, we could reach it and, from there, get onto the roof.
This was ten times crazier than what we’d just done getting to Lissa’s room from ours, but now that we knew what they were planning to do to Lissa, how could we stay and wait for them to take her away?
“Come on.” Addie darted over and grabbed Lissa’s hand. “We’re going up.”
“Up?” she cried.
“To the roof,” Addie said grimly as the pounding got louder, more rhythmic, like some sort of battering ram. The beds screeched toward us, bit by bit.
“And what do we do once we’re on the roof?” Lissa said, staring at us. “We’ll just be stuck there.”
Addie explained about the men we’d seen our first day, speaking as quickly as she could. “They got up there somehow, and it certainly wasn’t through breaking windows. So there’s got to be another way down to the ground.”
“What if they had a ladder?” Lissa said. “What if they block all the ways down? And we can’t just leave my brother—”
The door was open half a foot now.
“There’s no other way,” Addie said. “I’ll go first. Then I’ll pull y
ou up. Lissa—Lissa, listen to me.”
“But Devon and Ryan—”
“Lissa,” Addie shouted. “Lissa, they would want you to go. You can only help them if you go.”
Lissa threw one last look toward the door, her lips thin, then nodded. Addie took a deep breath.
We prayed that the last thing we saw on this green earth wouldn’t be the side of the Nornand Clinic of Psychiatric Health as we plummeted to the ground.
“Careful,” Lissa whispered as Addie eased out of the window. We’d never been athletic. We’d never played sports or run track or even danced. What we had done a lot, as a kid, was climb trees. I’d loved it, loved the shade of the leaves, the feel of the bark, the smell of sap and dirt and sunlight in the park.
I pretended we were climbing a tree as Addie grabbed hold of the overhang far above our head and gritted our teeth as our wounded palm scraped against the concrete. We’d have to rely mostly on arm strength to pull ourself up. Us, who’d never been able to do a single pull-up in gym. But we’d never had a team of security guards breaking down a door to motivate us, and as I whispered encouragement and prayed and hoped, Addie reached up with our other hand, held on as tightly as we could, and then launched upward with our feet.
There was a terrible moment of weightlessness. Of hanging in the air. Of not knowing, of scrambling with our arms, our elbows, our fingers, for purchase against tiles. Of blind panic and the thought that this was it; it was all over. And then we stopped sliding. Addie grabbed on. And with a wrench that made our muscles scream, she hauled us up and over and onto the overhang.
The sky was awash with color. Violet. Red. There wasn’t time to drink it in. There wasn’t even time to catch our breath.
“Lissa!” Addie shouted and reached down. “Grab my hand!”
We yanked Lissa up beside us just as the bedroom door shattered.
The wind battered our faces as we tore across the roof, whisking the sweat from our forehead, our brow, our neck. Every step clanged. Every breath hurt. But we couldn’t stop. We had to find a way down. Any way down.
The roof seemed enormous, and it wasn’t all flat. Nornand was a building of odd angles, of strange protrusions that hid parts of the roof from sight. We didn’t like looking over the edge of the building, but we had to, searching for some kind of fire escape or built-in ladder or something. Something.
Something flashed in the dwindling sunlight. Something metal. Addie darted toward it, but Lissa was faster. It was a hatch. A metal hatch that led back into the building.
And just as Lissa reached down to grab the handle, the hatch flew open and a security guard climbed out.
Lissa lurched away, spinning around and running full tilt back toward us, but she wasn’t fast enough. The guard grabbed her around the waist. She screamed. We launched forward and smashed into the security guard’s side. The man grunted but didn’t seem particularly hurt.
“Let go!” Lissa said. Her legs flailed—kicking, thrashing.
“Some help?” the guard shouted. The roof rang with flying footsteps. Another second and two more men surrounded us. Black-clothed. Hard-faced.
“Stop,” Lissa said. “Let go!”
“Calm down,” one of the new men said. “No one wants to hurt you.”
He eyed Addie and me as he spoke, moving closer and closer. We backed away. One step. Two.
“Let her go,” I said, our eyes flickering to Lissa. “He’s hurting her.”
“He’s not,” the man said. Another inch forward. Another. Another.
Lissa screamed. I flinched, scrambling back two or three feet.
And discovered with a sudden weightless, breathless shock that there was nothing there.
Our head jerked around. I flailed for balance.
“Addie!” Lissa shouted.
The sky was deep, deep purple.
I swallowed one last breath.
And felt the security guard’s fingers just slip through ours as we tumbled backward off the roof.
Twenty-five
Hey. Hey, remember?
Remember when we were seven and those kids locked us in that trunk?
We were playing hide-and-seek, remember? And that kid—what was his name? He told us to hide in the trunk because no one would ever look in there.
He was right, wasn’t he?
No one found us.
Not for hours.
Waking up. Pressure. Pressure and pain in our head. Dizziness. Nausea. We tried to move—Lissa and Hally. The man had Lissa and Hally. I tried to move. Everything was blurry. “Lissa?” I said. Hands pushed us down, held us still. A new prick of pain. Something pulled us back under, burying us in the darkness. Shh. Shh . . .
I woke, pulled from one kind of darkness to another. It took a moment to remember what had happened. Memories of today mixed with those of yesterday and the days before, slippery silver fish in a murky pond. It was a little hard to think—thoughts dissipated, half formed. But one thought lingered through it all.
Lissa. The men in black uniforms closing in on the rooftop, one of them clutching her as she screamed and twisted.
I jerked upright—and nearly cried out as the nausea hit, stone-fisted against our skull. Our breathing was shallow. Our head pounded, each heartbeat sending another burst of pain shuddering through us.
We weren’t in our room. Something crinkled under us. Paper.
I clutched our head and fumbled off the examination table, nearly crashing onto the cold ground. Our fingers pressed against something cottony and soft on our right temple. A bandage. I winced. There were more bandages on our legs and one wrapped around our left hand and—
And I was the one moving.
Addie . . .
Oh, God, no—
She answered.
We crouched there on the floor, assuring each other that we were still okay, both of us, still alive and present and here. The bandage tore against our skin as we peeled it off, and we almost cried when our fingers brushed against the open wound beneath, but it was just that—a wound. No stitches, even. No surgery. I went weak with relief.
“Lissa?” Addie whispered.
No answer. The pain was receding enough for us to stand and keep our balance. We looked around and saw the big light on a swiveling arm, the monitors, the abandoned silver trays. The examination table.
A surgery room.
She stumbled toward the door and ripped it open.
The hallway was dim, lit only by emergency lights. Addie looked right, then left, using our shoulder to prop open the door. The sickly, pallid light didn’t reach very far. Darkness loomed on either end of the hall. Other than a faint buzzing, all was quiet and still.
Addie edged out into the corridor and eased the door shut. We didn’t recognize this hall.
I didn’t see a difference, and I told her so. It was hard to think straight. Our head still pounded. The nausea came in howling waves. Our hand throbbed.
Addie hesitated, then turned right. The silence amplified our breathing, the rustle of our clothes, the sound of our footsteps on the tiled floor. Doors flanked us on either side. Like people. Like soldiers.
Was Lissa inside one of those rooms? What about Ryan? Had they taken him, too? Addie checked the chip still tucked inside our sock, but it sat cold and blank. Wherever he was, he wasn’t nearby.
If this was the third floor, it was a wing we’d never seen before. The walls looked different—somehow starker. Maybe it was just the sallow light. The doors, though, were clearly metal, not wood like the ones near the Ward, and there were no windows at all.
Addie kept staring at one of the doors, as if looking at it long enough could make Lissa appear beyond it. On the left, there was what looked like a small speaker and two black buttons. Another button, red and sh
aped like a triangle, sat a little on the side. The door itself was plain but for the B42 stamped high on the frame and a small, rectangular panel at eye level. A keypad was installed above the doorknob, taking the place of a normal lock.
I said.
Addie nodded. She grabbed hold of the panel’s metal handle. It was cold in our palm. We’d check every room if we had to, if that was what it took to find Lissa and Hally.
But there were so many rooms. What else might we find first?
We swallowed.
She pulled. The panel slid smoothly aside, revealing a glass pane underneath.
At first, we saw nothing but a pinpoint of light shrouded in darkness. When we squinted, we realized it was a night-light—a little kid’s night-light in the shape of a sailboat. It illuminated the corner of the room farthest from the door, but the room wasn’t big; soon our eyes adjusted enough to see the bed.
And the boy sitting on it.
His head was bent, his shoulders slightly hunched. Thin legs hung over the edge of the mattress. We couldn’t see his face clearly, only enough to tell that—
But whatever the boy was muttering didn’t stand a chance of making it past the thick door.
Immediately, a boy’s voice filtered out of the speaker: “. . . and . . . uh. And, uh, they, on—on the day before. Before yesterday. We . . . we, uh . . . again. Again, and, uh . . . when they . . .”
Addie pushed the button again. His voice cut off.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Our eyes flickered back to the window and the boy still muttering inside.
It did. There was a popping, crackling sound when Addie first pressed the button, then quiet.
